Fascinating! Check this out: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/ (Article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hobbes' Moral and Political Philosophy, revision 2018.) Lots of trouble getting scholarly heads around Hobbes: is he a nascent Objectivist? (Ayn Rand, I presume.) or the father of Game Theory? (Prisoner's dilemm…
Fascinating! Check this out: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/ (Article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hobbes' Moral and Political Philosophy, revision 2018.) Lots of trouble getting scholarly heads around Hobbes: is he a nascent Objectivist? (Ayn Rand, I presume.) or the father of Game Theory? (Prisoner's dilemma.) I also have taken off the shelf Erich Fromm: "Escape from Freedom." (1941) Fromm particularly grappled with how psychology begets sociology. (cover blurb:"Totalitarianism can be tempting.") I would observe that the real "primal scream" may be: "Will somebody just tell me what to doooooo!" But what about the old aphorism about absolute power corrupting absolutely? Maybe America got lucky, in that the Trump incarnation of "Only I can solve it all" was so over-the-top vile and venal that enough of us are motivated to hold the fort against the next dictator, somehow. Thom warns us about the Trumps in velvet gloves waiting in the wings. It's clear now that we can't really do anything about the congenital Igors and Renfields in our midst. The armed. Possibilities turn inside out. Hobbes posits that "state of nature" is state of war, yet that the dictator and/or church is supposed to be what saves society from chaos and war, not what solicits it. Military coup is supposed to be bad, yet will the military be the last hope of democracy in our time?
Fascinating! Check this out: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/ (Article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Hobbes' Moral and Political Philosophy, revision 2018.) Lots of trouble getting scholarly heads around Hobbes: is he a nascent Objectivist? (Ayn Rand, I presume.) or the father of Game Theory? (Prisoner's dilemma.) I also have taken off the shelf Erich Fromm: "Escape from Freedom." (1941) Fromm particularly grappled with how psychology begets sociology. (cover blurb:"Totalitarianism can be tempting.") I would observe that the real "primal scream" may be: "Will somebody just tell me what to doooooo!" But what about the old aphorism about absolute power corrupting absolutely? Maybe America got lucky, in that the Trump incarnation of "Only I can solve it all" was so over-the-top vile and venal that enough of us are motivated to hold the fort against the next dictator, somehow. Thom warns us about the Trumps in velvet gloves waiting in the wings. It's clear now that we can't really do anything about the congenital Igors and Renfields in our midst. The armed. Possibilities turn inside out. Hobbes posits that "state of nature" is state of war, yet that the dictator and/or church is supposed to be what saves society from chaos and war, not what solicits it. Military coup is supposed to be bad, yet will the military be the last hope of democracy in our time?