Early modern theorists linked the idea of sovereign power to a conception of absolute power developed during the medieval period. Ockham had reframed the already extant distinction between God's absolute and ordained powers in order to argue that God was free of moral constraint in ordaining natural law for human beings. Thus, the natural law could command the opposite of what God had ordained if He wished to make it so. Bodin extended Ockham's argument to earthly sovereigns, who do not (...) (he argued) have to obey civil law. However, Bodin undermined his absolutism by maintaining that civil law has to be consistent with natural and divine law. Hobbes more consistently argued that while mortal sovereigns are accountable to God, the power of sovereigns to command is not subject to moral constraints. Underlying Ockham's view of God's sovereignty, and Bodin's and Hobbes's view of earthly sovereigns, is a notion of the will's unconstrained power. But this notion is self-referentially incoherent. This incoherence, in turn, infects the very notion of sovereignty. (shrink)

Hobbes’ natural law theory has been discussed far and wide. Some interpreters ended up defining Hobbes as a natural law theorist, some others as a legal positivist. In this paper, I analyse the work of two important scholars, Howard Warrender and Norberto Bobbio, whose insights have stimulated an interesting debate about Hobbes’ political theory. Warrender gives God a central function in Hobbes’ political science. On his account, God is a lawmaker, his will is the source of a universal obligation, and (...) civil order is necessary to give force to the natural law that is the expression of divine will. In Bobbio’s interpretation, Hobbes is the first legal positivist of Modern age, as natural law is only ever given content by the sovereign’s will. Finally, I ask which is natural law and God’s function in Hobbes’ political thought, questioning some contemporary scholars in order to clarify Hobbes’ modernity. (shrink)

Hobbes’s own justification for the existence of governments relies on the assumption that, without a government, our lives in the state of nature would result in a state of war of every man against every man. Many contemporary scholars have tried to explain why universal war is unavoidable in Hobbes’s state of nature by utilizing modern game theory. However, most game-theoretic models that have been presented so far do not accurately capture what Hobbes deems to be the primary cause of (...) conflict in the state of nature – which is uncertainty, rather than people’s egoistic psychology. Any game- theoretic model that does not incorporate uncertainty into the picture is, therefore, I claim, the wrong model. In this paper, I use Bayesian game-theory to show how universal conflict can break-out in the state of nature - even when the majority of the population would strictly prefer to cooperate and seek peace with other people - due to uncertainty about the other person’s type. Along the way, I show that the valuation of one’s own life is one of the central mechanisms that drives Hobbes’s pessimistic conclusion. (shrink)

I offer an alternative account of the relationship of Hobbesian geometry to natural philosophy by arguing that mixed mathematics provided Hobbes with a model for thinking about it. In mixed mathematics, one may borrow causal principles from one science and use them in another science without there being a deductive relationship between those two sciences. Natural philosophy for Hobbes is mixed because an explanation may combine observations from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles from geometry (the ‘why’). My argument shows (...) that Hobbesian natural philosophy relies upon suppositions that bodies plausibly behave according to these borrowed causal principles from geometry, acknowledging that bodies in the world may not actually behave this way. First, I consider Hobbes's relation to Aristotelian mixed mathematics and to Isaac Barrow's broadening of mixed mathematics in Mathematical Lectures (1683). I show that for Hobbes maker's knowledge from geometry provides the ‘why’ in mixed-mathematical explanations. Next, I examine two explanations from De corpore Part IV: (1) the explanation of sense in De corpore 25.1-2; and (2) the explanation of the swelling of parts of the body when they become warm in De corpore 27.3. In both explanations, I show Hobbes borrowing and citing geometrical principles and mixing these principles with appeals to experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Terrorism is perhaps the greatest challenge of the contemporary age. Of all the canonical figures in political theory, Thomas Hobbes is the most likely candidate to offer genuine insight into this problem. Yet although his analysis of the state of nature is immediately relevant to the diagnosis of this problem, his metaphysics cannot sustain his politics. His aspiration to “immutable” natural laws grounded in the universal motivation of the fear of death crumble when this fear is no longer universal. (...) When terrorists are inspired by a religious ideology that makes them willing to die for their beliefs—and when they benefit from other asymmetries with the civilian populations against which they are arrayed—Hobbes the theorist of war and international relations becomes less relevant than Hobbes the prescriber of “rational” (fearfully pacific) human nature. (shrink)

In recent years there has been growing interest in the contrast between Humean theories of property, on the one hand, and Lockean and Rousseauian theories, on the other. The contrast is a broad and abstract one, along the following lines.

Epicurean contractarianism is an attempt to reconcile individualistic hedonism with a robust account of justice. The pursuit of pleasure and the requirements of justice, however, have seemed to be incompatible to many commentators, both ancient and modern. It is not clear how it is possible to reconcile hedonism with the demands of justice. Furthermore, it is not clear why, even if Epicurean contractarianism is possible, it would be necessary for Epicureans to endorse a social contract. I argue here that Epicurean (...) contractarianism is both possible and necessary once we understand Epicurean practical rationality in a new way. We are left with an appealing version of teleological, individualistic contractarianism that is significantly different from Hobbesian contractarianism. (shrink)

En este texto quiero hacer un análisis de las propuestas de paz del gobierno de Uribe Vélez y sus efectos en las instituciones y la cultura democrática colombiana. El análisis no pretende evaluar directamente si las propuestas de paz fueron efectivas para dar por terminado el conflicto, sino mostrar el vínculo que existe entre una democracia débil, como la colombiana, la gran influencia de la personalidad de Uribe Vélez en el imaginario político y sus proyectos de seguridad democrática y de (...) estado comunitario, en la medida en que estos proyectos hicieron parte de sus propuestas de paz. La tesis central que defiendo en este artículo es que precisamente la debilidad democrática colombiana permitió que una propuesta como la de Álvaro Uribe frente a la paz fuera apoyada por una inmensa mayoría, aunque esta propuesta en vez de profundizar la democracia hubiese debilitado más sus instituciones y la cultura ciudadana. (shrink)

Since the early 20th century, advocates of public relations professionalism have mandated that practitioners serve the public interest making it an ethical standard for evaluating the morality of public relations practice. However, the field has devoted little research to determining just what it means for practitioners to serve the public interest. Most research suggests practice-oriented solutions. This article focuses what practitioners must do to serve the public interest. It reviews theories of the social contract and the public interest to identify (...) an approach to serving the public interest that will help practitioners reconcile moral obligations to themselves, their client organizations, and the public. It concludes that combining superior individual interests with John Dewey's public philosophy will contribute to the moral development and improvement of practitioners and the public. (shrink)

A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to deliver a (...) straightforward solution to the so-called “conditional fallacy.” But it faces some formidable challenges. On the face of it, it seems to be straightforwardly conceptually incoherent. And it seems to deliver a solution to the conditional fallacy at the cost of being vulnerable to what I shall call “the concessional fallacy.” I shall consider how, if at all, these challenges are to be met. I shall then conclude by considering what this might mean for the so-called “ideal/non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

This paper calls attention to matsyanyaya, or state of nature theories, in classical Indian thought, and their significance. The focus is on those discussions of matsyanyaya found in the law books, political treatises and the Mahabharata epic. The significance and relevance of matsyanyaya theories are shown through a comparison with early modern state of nature theories and an elaboration on the possible place of rights and dharma in matsyanyaya and the consequences of this for classical Indian political theory.

The main purpose of the paper is to present a new framework of meta-ethics which I call the Functional Model of Analysis. It presupposes that the most important meta-ethical question is not “What is the meaning of normative words, sentences and what is the ontological fabric of the moral world?” but “What should morality and ethics be for?”. It is a form of meta-ethics that focuses on finding theoretical resources that can be helpful in understanding ongoing ethical debates between disciples (...) of Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, Augustine, Hobbes, utilitarians and Kant, and in building normative ethical theories that can help us to answer normative questions. As an example of such output I will present a formal sketch of Hybrid Function Consequentialism – a normative ethical theory based upon the meta-ethical framework proposed here. (shrink)

The most influential justification of individual property rights is the Propertarian Argument. It is the idea that the institution of private property renders everyone better off, and crucially, even the worst-off members of society. A recent critique of the Argument is that it relies on an anthropologically false hypothesis – the idea, following Thomas Hobbes, that life in the state of nature is one of widespread scarcity and violence to which property rights are a solution. The present article seeks to (...) reformulate this Anthropological Objection in a way that more directly addresses Hobbes’ original argument. It then shows that private property is justified to the extent that it allows anyone to reclaim their free time. (shrink)

The paper argues that Leviathan can be interpreted as employing a constructionist approach in several important respects. It takes issue with commentators who think that, if for Hobbes man is not naturally social, then man must be naturally unsocial or naturally purely individual. First, Hobbes's key conceptions of the role of artifice and nature-artifice relations are identified, and uncontroversially constructionist elements outlined, most notably Hobbes's conceptualisation of the covenant. The significance of crucial distinctions in Leviathan, between the civil and the (...) social, between science and philosophy, between mankind's nature and the human condition, is developed. A constructionist reading of the argument of Leviathan is then advanced. The interpretation focuses on the contribution of nature-artifice relations, and of Hobbes's notion of civil philosophy, in understanding the critical issues of the state of nature and individual subjectivity. This reconstruction of the meaning of the text highlights the necessarily social character of human life in Leviathan, expressed in the way that the social' gives meaning to the 'natural', as well as because for Hobbes we live in a mind-affected world of perception and ideas. Leviathan can be interpreted as, in particular, a political social construction, because both social and individual identity logically require the social order and arrangements that only a strong government can supply. The social world, in Leviathan, cannot exist prior to the generation of a political framework, in civil society, the commonwealth, and law. (shrink)

This article argues for greater realism in political theory with respect to judgements about what politicians ought to do and how they ought to act. It shows that there are major problems in deducing what a given politician should do from the value commitments that are common to liberalism and it makes a case for recognizing the major role played by the context of action and particular agent involved. It distinguishes political virtue from moral virtues and argues that the ‘decisionist’ (...) features of political agency render evaluation a partly post hoc process. The article advocates a version of political realism that is rooted in an understanding of the distinctive character of political rule and that provides the basis for a contextualist but non-relativist account of ‘what is to be done’. (shrink)

When any man, even in political society, renders himself by his crimes obnoxious to the public, he is punished by the laws in his goods and person; that is, the ordinary rules of justice are, with regard to him, suspended for a moment, and it becomes equitable to inflict on him, for the benefit of society, what otherwise he could not suffer without wrong or injury?

Is it legitimate for a business to concentrate on profits under respect for the law and ethical custom? On the one hand, there seems to be good reasons for claiming that a corporation has a duty to act for the benefit of all its stakeholders. On the other hand, this seems to dissolve the notion of a private business; but then again, a private business would appear to be exempted from ethical responsibility. This is what Kenneth Goodpaster has called the (...) stakeholder paradox: either we have ethics without business or we have business without ethics. Through a different route, I reach the same solution to this paradox as Goodpaster, namely that a corporation is the instrument of the shareholders only, but that shareholders still have an obligation to act ethically responsibly. To this, I add discussion of Friedman’s claim that this responsibility consists in increasing profits. I show that most of his arguments fail. Only pragmatic considerations allow to a certain extent that some of the ethical responsibility is left over to democratic regulation. (shrink)

Hobbes’s interpreters have struggled to find a plausible semantics for evaluative language in his writings. I argue that this search is misguided. Hobbes offers neither an account of the reference of evaluative terms nor a theory of the truth-conditions for evaluative statements. Rather, he sees evaluative language simply as having the non-representational function of prescribing actions and practical attitudes, its superficially representational appearance notwithstanding. I marshal the evidence for this prescriptivist reading of Hobbes on evaluative language and show how it (...) sidesteps various textual and philosophical problems that bedevil the traditional interpretations. (shrink)

William Perm summarized the Magna Carta thus: “First, It asserts Englishmen to be free; that's Liberty. Secondly, they that have free-holds, that's Property.” Since at least the seventeenth century, liberals have not only understood liberty and property to be fundamental, but to be somehow intimately related or interwoven. Here, however, consensus ends; liberals present an array of competing accounts of the relation between liberty and property. Many, for instance, defend an essentially instrumental view, typically seeing private property as justified because (...) it is necessary to maintain or protect other, more basic, liberty rights. Important to our constitutional tradition has been the idea that “[t]he right to property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.” Along similar lines, it has been argued that only an economic system based on private property disperses power and resources, ensuring that private people in civil society have the resources to oppose the state and give effect to basic liberties. Alternatively, it is sometimes claimed that only those with property develop the independent characters that are necessary to preserve a regime of liberty. But not only have liberals insisted that, property is a means of preserving liberty, they have often conceived of it as an embodiment of liberty, or as a type of liberty, or indeed as identical to liberty. This latter view is popular among contemporary libertarians or classical liberals. Jan Narveson, for instance, bluntly asserts that “Liberty is Property,” while John Gray insists that “[t]he connection between property and the basic liberties is constitutive and not just instrumental.”. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically review the game-theoretic discussion of Hobbes and to develop a game-theoretic interpretation that gives due attention both to Hobbes's distinction between “moderates” and “dominators” and to what actually initiates conflict in the state of nature, namely, the competition for vital goods. As can be shown, Hobbes's state of nature contains differently structured situations of choice, the game-theoretic representation of which requires the prisoner's dilemma and the assurance game and the so-called assurance dilemma. (...) However, the “state of war” ultimately emerges from situations that cannot be described by any of these games because they represent zero-sum games in which the outcome of mutual cooperation does not exist. (shrink)

Hobbes repeatedly expressed concerns about moral and political language, e.g., about the bad consequences of various uses and misuses of language. He did not simply focus on the consequences though. He also attempted to understand the problems, using the central semantic notion in his philosophy of language, signification. Hobbes, in both the Elements of Law and Leviathan, argues that a wide variety of terms – including ‘good’, ‘bad’, and the names of virtues and vices – have a double and inconstant (...) signification. This paper explores and explains that theory of Hobbes's. (In the course of the discussion, two other interpretations of Hobbes's claims are discussed: Pettit’s discussion in terms of indexicals, and Alexandra’s in terms of sense and reference.) This phenomenon is, Hobbes thinks, pervasive in our use of moral and political language. Indeed he says his analysis applies to all “names of such things as affect us, that is, which please, and displease us” (Leviathan 4.24), which seems a very broad category indeed. This inconstancy of signification has considerable potential to cause confusion and conflict. Given those practical consequences, it is of some importance for Hobbes to find a solution to this problem. The paper examines several possible Hobbesian solutions to the problem. There is, however, reason to think that these suggested solutions cannot completely solve the problem. The paper concludes, then, by arguing that double and inconstant signification would always be a danger, even in a properly constituted Hobbesian commonwealth. (shrink)