Somewhere around the second century CE, the Roman satirist Juvenal coined the phrase ‘bread and circuses’ which has come to mean placating one’s populace with cheap bribes to distract them from their political grievances. Here’s the logic. Thomas Hobbes observed… Read More ›
Hobbes
Thoughtlets. ix.
What is meant by the admonition ‘Think before you speak!’ ? The vast majority of the time we don’t think before we speak. Else we’d never speak. So what is meant is either 1) stop and think about the right… Read More ›
Thoughtlets .iii.
I worry a little that, in this politically charged environment particularly, when someone urges you to ‘be your authentic self’ she means ‘come out here where I can get you’.
Gauthier at the Table
I argue that David Gauthier is too quick, in fact quite mistaken, in rejecting the Nash-Harsanyi threat point as the appropriate baseline. (Morals By Agreement, p 199)
A Reduction of Jus ad Bellum and in Bello to Hobbes’ First and Second Fundamental Laws of Nature Respectively
In this paper, I argue that jus ad bellum and jus in bello are reducible without remainder to Hobbes’ axiomatic first and second fundamental laws of nature respectively. Consequently, all principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello are derived from these axioms. And so a cause… Read More ›
Hobbes on consensus.
The following Hobbes’ quote deserves a write up, slow and careful thought. But I don’t have the time and energy for everything I want to engage in, and neither do you. But sometimes a little seed for thought can get… Read More ›
Thomas Hobbes on controversy. A quote worth contemplating. Series 3.3.
“And as in arithmetic, unpracticed men must, and professors themselves may often err and cast up false, so also in any other subject of reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may deceive themselves and infer false conclusions,… Read More ›
A Walter Lippmann (1922) quote worth contemplating. Timely. Series 3.1.
“And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent… Read More ›
Thomas Hobbes. We are sensing, social things. Series 1. 2.
“Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that… Read More ›
Hobbes’ Humility Check
Lately I’ve been troubled by laughing-at-stupid-people infotainment, especially in partisan news media, and on both sides of the political spectrum. I’d like to watch a broadcast that doesn’t devolve into some version of nanny-nanny-poo-poo-you-have-stinky-pants. That the anchor wears a suit and… Read More ›
