>Theological voluntarism may
>be seen as an interesting example of a conventional might makes right
>argument.
And it's one which is in the minds of all the seventeenth-century writers in this tradition: it's no accident that Hobbbes presents the Leviathan as the mortal God, and that he says the same kinds of things about the Leviathan which theologians usually attribute to God.
> > Interestingly Kant runs a version of the same line.
>
>Where? I know he prized obedience to one's government.
Look at the final chapter of Richard Tuck, "The Rights of War and Peace" (Oxford, 1999) for a string of relevant passages to illustrate 'the Hobbesianism of Kant', which present Kant as even more of a Hobbesian than Waldron allows.
The most interesting passage is the one from A752/B780 of the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant analogises Hobbes's state of nature to the world of competing philosophical doctrines, and analogises the function of the critical philosophy to that of the Hobbesian sovereign.
C. --
Phone: +44 (0) 1865-286793 Email: <chris.brooke at magd.ox.ac.uk> Web: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368