Hobbes on Power & Equality (was Re: Baruch and Hobbesy, freedomof speech, etc.)

[Ken Hanly]

True, Hobbes does not say that they are equal in power per se but per accidens
since the weaker can combine, outwit, etc. the physically more powerful. But
even this is not empirically true as far as I can see. In the state of nature
the situation in the Lord of the Flies is a possible outcome. The weak and
decent kid gets shafted. Certainly powerful leaders whether through
intelligence or strength or whatever impose rules upon others. It may be
reasonable for an egoist to submit but it may be reasonable to escape if
possible or even plot to overthrow the sovereign.

    For Hobbes, revolution is always wrong in the planning  and always right if
it is successful.
Shit.

   Cheers, Ken Hanly

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> Ken H. wrote:
>
> >It is also just not empirically true that people are
> >equal in power in a state of nature as Hobbes holds
>
> It doesn't make sense to you because you are _more individualist_ than
> Hobbes is.  Hobbes does _not_ claim that all individuals, _taken as
> individuals_, are equal in power in the state of nature.  He assumes that
> individuals can come together to make a collective even in the state of
> nature (unlike, for instance, Locke), and it is in part on this likelihood
> of the confederacy of the weak that he bases his argument regarding
> equality:
>
> *****   Nature hath made men equal, in the faculty of the body, and mind;
> as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in
> body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together,
> the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one
> man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not
> pretend, as well as he.  For as to the strength of body, the weakest has
> strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by
> confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himself.   *****
>
> In other words, again, the guiding idea is violent death at the hands of
> others: even the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest; and
> weak individuals may enter into confederacy with others who are in the same
> danger and kill the strongest.  Hence equality (without all being identical
> in the faculty of the body and mind).  This is empirically true.
>
> Yoshie