 Okay, I've been fiddling with my technology and failing, so we might as well go ahead and get started. I had a little remote that was going to help me, you know, move through this stuff without going over the computer, but it's not working. And this is the first time I've used what Jill and Miranda use, which is called Prezi. It's a presentation format that allows you to try to group your ideas together and show a big picture of how your whole lecture fits together. Mine doesn't look that nice. I need some practice. That kind of looks like a mess, but it does actually look like how the whole thing fits together in that I'm going to start off in the middle with the frontispiece to the whole book. Then I'm going to go off to the right and explain a bit about what I think the frontispiece is doing. And then I'm going to go to the left, which is his argument for the whole idea of the Commonwealth, and then come back to the frontispiece. That arrow is missing, actually. So a little bit more practice with Prezi, but that's the general idea. All right, so this is called the Tomatons Actors and Monsters, all of which I will be talking about for the first two right away, actually. And remember from last time, from Robert Crawford's lecture, and we do have this picture in the red book, the red version of the book. It's just somewhere kind of hidden pages. I can't remember exactly where it is. But he pointed out that this frontispiece to the book shows that the whole state or the sovereign is made up of people. And what is really interesting about Hobbes' first few pages, among other things, is that he really takes this idea pretty far, though he isn't talking about the sovereign as being a made up person. He's talking about the whole state, the whole Commonwealth as being an artificial person made up of us as persons. So we could think of this picture as being the whole Commonwealth or the whole state. And then the sovereign, he says, and I'll get to this in a moment, is the soul of that artificial person of that state. And I want to explain what I think he means by that. But an interesting parallel for me between what we've read so far in Hobbes is that Plato also has a nice parallel between the person and the state. So the state has three parts, the person's soul has three parts, and thus we can think of the state as a kind of large person, or at least it has a parallel structure. And Hobbes says, not referring to Plato, and of course there are many things about Plato that Hobbes disagrees with as we talked about last time in lecture, but Hobbes says something similar that the state or the Commonwealth can be thought of as a person, and he takes this analogy pretty far, which is what I want to look at in a bit. So looking more into this idea of the Commonwealth as a person, I also want to return back to a quote from last time, because I want to talk about freedom and liberty in connection to this quote. So remember this is the idea for Hobbes that human beings along with animals, along with plants, are run by mechanical laws. And for Hobbes there is nothing beyond matter, and matter in motion, and that matter follows regular mechanical laws, so that we can think of ourselves like machines, like automata, which is this picture of a kind of robot. So the quote is, nature is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated that it can make an artificial animal. We can make a robot, essentially. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning where I was in some principle part within, why may we not say that all automata have an artificial life? So we can imitate nature by making automata or robots, which suggests that we are not really that much different from automata or robots. We are imitating nature. We are like those as well. For what is the heart, but a spring, and the nerves, but so many strings, and the joints with so many wheels giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer? God, the artificer, created us, and our joints are not that different from wheels, and our heart is not that different from, what does he call a spring, and our nerves are not that different from strings. We are kind of like robots, in the sense that we are guided by mechanical laws that also guide other material things. Whatever the natural laws are, that guide material things, that make them act the way they do, we also have natural laws. We also are kind of stuck doing the things that nature says. But let me get to that a little bit more clearly, and I'm sorry, this one's kind of small. I'm also not good at this yet, but the slides are big and some are small, and I'm not sure how to fix that. I've got to practice. Okay, but this is jumping to chapter 21, where Hobbes starts talking about freedom, liberty, necessity, and I think it fits with this idea of humans as automata, because Hobbes subscribes to what we now call determinism, brain misfired. Hobbes subscribes to what we now call determinism, but he called necessity in chapter 21. Determinism meaning every event is fixed by previous causes and couldn't have happened in any other way, which is also true of human decisions. And Hobbes thinks this way about us in chapter 21, section 4. So that is page 137, where he's talking about necessity in section 4. Skip about the first half or so of that sentence, about four lines down, and yet, because every act of man's will and every desire and inclination precedeth from some cause, and that from another cause in continual chain, whose first link is in the hand of God, the first of all causes, they precede from necessity. So all of our volunteers, our will, our desire, our inclination, precede from some cause, which come from some previous cause, which ultimately you can trace back to the first cause of the universe, which is God, which means that what we decide, what we will, what we desire, what we have an inclination to do, can all be traced back to previous causes that made it such that we can't help but be how we are, and we can't help but decide the things we do. So Hobbes doesn't call himself this, but in the common parlance of philosophy today, he would be called a determinist, though he's also got another term that I'll get to in a second. Nevertheless, and maybe I'm getting to that term next, I can't remember, yes. Nevertheless he does think we can still have freedom, and that is also in section 4 on page 137, liberty and necessity are consistent. So excuse me, as in the water that hath not liberty but a necessity of descending by the channel, so likewise in the actions which men voluntarily do, which because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty. Okay, compatibilism simply means you do believe that all actions have to occur as they do because of previous causes which necessitate them. Nevertheless, you think there's still something called freedom in our actions. It's called compatibilism because the idea is we can have free actions compatible with determinism. And again, Hobbes doesn't use this term because it didn't come out until later in philosophy, but Hobbes would be considered a compatibilist. He thinks actions that are caused by our will or driven by our desires and choices are free even if the desires, choices and will are determined by something else. So even if we can't have the desires we do, even if we can't help but make the choices we do, as long as our actions are caused by our will and our choices and not by something outside of us, not by an accident, then what we're doing is free. And thus for Hobbes, liberty is the absence of external impediments in what one wills to do. You're free in so far as you have no or few, if you want to talk about degrees of freedom, few impediments outside of you to what you actually will to do in that sense you are free. The more impediments you have, the less free you are. This is going to come into play when he talks about the freedoms we have in the state, in the Commonwealth, but it also comes into play when we think about what the Commonwealth as an artificial person is going to be doing. It shows us again that we are kind of like robots. We are sort of like automata. It's like God has started the universe, started all the causes, created the program and we just play it out. Whatever causes were that started the universe, those run into other causes and effects and into other causes and effects. And we just do what we have to do. It looks like we don't have any free will. And we don't have any free will in the sense of being able to completely pull ourselves out of all the causes and effects that have come to us up until now. We don't have that. But he does think we have a kind of freedom in that whatever is not impeding you to do what you want, then you have that much freedom. Okay. Now I want to look at this link, this interesting analogy between the person and the Commonwealth and point back to this idea of liberty and compatibilism in a bit. This mostly comes from Hobbes' introduction, page three, but there's also some stuff from later in the book that we didn't ask you to read that I just find interesting. So again, what he's doing here is he is connecting the nature of a person to this entity that we create called a Commonwealth, which he calls an artificial person. So the soul of the person, the soul of an individual, you know, he doesn't really define soul. Not exactly. Plato goes into much more detail. But you could think of the soul as at least that which gives life to the creature. If you don't have a soul, you don't have life. Maybe also that which moves you, that which thinks, that which drives you. That's probably if you would go with Plato where your reason is. So if that's the soul of the person, then somehow in this artificial person made up of all of us, the sovereign is that. The sovereign is that which makes, without which this artificial person would not have life. And I think that this unity, this artificial person that is on the frontispiece, only really exists as a unity. If it has a leader, if it has even a group of people who are the leader, who can make it be a union, because otherwise it's just a bunch of people fighting each other. We need to have some leader to move us in one direction or another as a unity. So in that sense, perhaps without the sovereign, you wouldn't have a life of this artificial being, this unity of a person, that is the commonwealth. Then we can think of the will in the person, the will being that which you will to do, that which you decide to do. And for the, what do I want to call it, artificial unified person made up of all of us, what does that whole being will as a unity? He says it's the civil laws. It's the laws. The laws are what we will to do together. And that will hopefully make a little bit more sense later when we see what the civil laws are supposed to look like. The nerves in our bodies are those things that make our muscles move, like transfer from our brain to our muscles. So for the big person, for the artificial person, what makes things move? What makes the parts of the body move? Reward and punishment. So the sovereign or the sovereign either gets you to do things because he's going to provide you with a reward or because you fear the punishment. And that's what causes the parts of the body to move. I'm not going to go through all of these, but just a couple more, strength of the person being, you know, some sense of power, ability to do things, that's the wealth in the commonwealth, the wealth of the members. And most importantly, health of the person is concord, unity, peace in the artificial person. Because if you don't have that, you're going to have death, which is civil war. I guess you can think of death in the artificial person as breaking apart the natural person. Because death in the artificial person in the group is breaking apart of the unity. And if you cut yourself in half, there would also be death in the single person, right? Just a couple more just for fun to show you how far he goes with this analogy. The person themselves, as an individual, is established by the command of God, the fiat of God who says, let there be light and then let there be humans. And we can do the same kind of thing with our own covenants with each other. We can create, in a sense, by fiat, a new person. The person who is an individual gets nourishment through food. The commonwealth gets nourishment through commodities. The next one is kind of interesting. Blood and money seem to go together somehow. But for the individual person, what moves the nutrients around in the body and what moves the life force around in the body is the blood. And apparently that works with the larger person with money, which is what moves things around. It trains between the parts, right? The artificial person, the commonwealth can also have children, colonies. It can spawn its own children. And then these is, this is in chapter 29, all the things that can lead to the disillusion of the commonwealth or the artificial person. Seditious opinions, so, you know, things that incite perhaps to rebellion. Having more than one sovereign power, dividing the sovereignty, lack of money, just like if you had lack of blood, you're going to die. The commonwealth is not going to survive. An insatiable appetite for enlarging dominion. Somehow you can get too big and then you won't be able to govern well and then the whole thing falls apart. All right. So, one of the reasons why I think this is really interesting, besides the fact that it's kind of like Plato in that he's saying, you know, there's this parallel structure between the person and the state, is also because in this way the sovereign is like maybe this a little bit easier later, but the sovereign who's the soul is like an embodiment of our own wills. What we would actually will to do, because the sovereign allows the community, the commonwealth to stay together, to have peace, to be prosperous. So in a way it is doing the sovereign what we would like to do, what it could as a group we would want to have peace, not to have civil war, to have money, maybe to have colonies, I don't know, we can leave that one out, but we can't do it when we don't have someone or a group leading us because we'll just all be in different directions. So that's what sense I make of when Hobb says things like we are the authors of all that the sovereign does. Besides the fact he's got another, you know, he says we have agreed, we have covenanted with each other to follow what the sovereign does. There's a deeper sense in which we are the authors of what the sovereign does, because if the sovereign rules correctly, which I will explain later, the sovereign is just doing what we would will to be done. It's just that we need to find some leader, some group to make that happen. Because if we try to do it just amongst ourselves we'll fight. And that gets us to authors and actors. This is chapter 16, page 101 of person's authors and things personated. Section one, a person is he whose words or actions are considered either has his own or as representing the words or actions of another man. Or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction. This is a very interesting definition of person. A person is he whose words or actions are considered either as his own or as representing the words or actions of another. So I am a person insofar as my words and actions represent myself. Or if I'm authorized to represent someone else, they could represent the words and actions of another person. Section two, when they are considered as his own, then is he called a natural person. And when they are considered as representing the words and actions of another, they are feigned or artificial person. Now the commonwealth is an artificial person. He's already said that. So in some sense the commonwealth is representing the words and actions of another as an artificial person. And the sovereign, as the soul of that commonwealth, is doing so. And then going a little bit further on to number three, the word person is Latin. Instead, where the Greeks have prosopon, blah blah blah. As persona in Latin signifies the disguise or outward appearance of a man counterfeited on the stage and sometimes more particularly that part of it which disguises the face as a mask or a wizard. And from the stage has been translated to any representative of speech and action as well as in tribunals as theaters so that a person is the same as an actor. So I am a person in so far as my words and actions represent myself. I am a natural person. And I am an actor acting myself. Because a person is just an actor. Someone whose words and actions either represent themselves or represent someone else. And the sovereign is going to be the soul of the commonwealth which represents us. Commonwealth being a multitude of men are made one person when they are by one man or one person represented. So we've created this, well we haven't got to yet but we will, create this entity, this unified being, this artificial person called the commonwealth. And then we decide on one man or one person or in fact one assembly because he says the sovereign can be democratic, don't forget. To represent us that person is going to be the actor for the commonwealth and for us. The sovereign becomes our actor. The sovereign is that whose words and actions represent ours. He is an artificial, well he is an artificial person and he is the representative of an artificial person. I'm just going to say he because it's easier. But you should always remember that the sovereign could be a group, it could be an assembly, it could be a demonstration. And yet we are at the same time the ones whose words and actions he represents. We are the ones that are the authors of what the sovereign does. Which sounds kind of strange because the sovereign seems to be, you know, if it's a king, he's off in his court, he's doing whatever he wants to do. In what sense are we the authors of what the sovereign does? Partly because we agree to be so through a covenant which we'll get to in a little bit. But also as I said I think because we can understand what the sovereign is doing as long as the sovereign is doing what he's supposed to do as doing what we would will, as what we would want to happen. That doesn't always be the case, the sovereign doesn't always act that way, but when he is, when he is fulfilling the laws of nature as I'll describe, when he is actually leading us towards peace and concord, then in a way we can think of ourselves as the authors of what the sovereign is doing because the sovereign is doing what we would want to have done. So here is the sovereign as the actor. The best I could do, I was trying to come up with a better mask as that was the closest I could come up with. Because every subject is by this institution author of all the actions and judgments of the sovereign instituted. It follows that whatsoever he doth, it can be no injury to any of his subjects, nor ought he to be by any of them accused of injustice. That's part of the problem many people have with Hobbes is that once you start thinking the sovereign is just the representative of the whole, of the commonwealth, the actor who is speaking on behalf. Once you start thinking along those lines, then you get this result. Well we can't accuse him of injustice, we can't accuse him of injury because he is just doing what we are doing. And Hobbes will often talk about how you can't complain about what the sovereign does to you because you are doing it to yourself. Which is a very odd statement. But it comes from this idea of the sovereign being simply the representative, simply the actor, simply the one whose words represent ours. And we are the authors. And how do we get to that point? We agree to do it. We agree, we come to a covenant with each other that I will follow and authorize, give my authorship to what this person does as long as you also follow and authorize, give your authorship to what this person does. And then we are a whole body, we are a whole commonwealth at that point who have all authorized that one person or that assembly to act on our behalf. And why would we do this is the main question. Why would we agree to make this one person or this one group of people the actor for things that we are supposedly authors ourselves? That is the big question I think. All right, I don't remember what I have next. Yes, I'm going back here. Any questions or comments so far? All right, move back to the frontispiece. Nothing? Okay, so we've got the top of the frontispiece mostly. But there's also the bottom. And the bottom shows nicely how for Hobbes, this entity, this commonwealth that's made up of people with the sovereign as its soul, has powers over both earthly and, well I don't know what you want, secular and religious realms. So on the left you've got secular instruments of power or symbols of power. A castle versus a church on the right. You've got a crown versus a bishop's miter. You've got, I can't remember what the thing is on the right. Oh yeah, a cannon versus the lightning of excommunication, according to one source I read. Implements of war, the tools of war, the tools of logic. And a battle or war, excommunication on the right, court of inquisition, not excommunication, court of inquisition. And the idea is that the sovereign is ruler over all of these. Let me just go back, I don't think I have this on the thing, so I've got to do this. Sovereign is the ruler over all of these. And if you look at him, he's got a sword on this side and a crozier, bishop's crozier, a symbol of office for a bishop on the other side. So the sovereign is in charge, not only of political rule, civil rule, but also religious rule. And later in the text, not in what we read, HUB says the sovereign can decide who's going to be in religious offices, priests, et cetera, can decide how we should interpret the text of the Bible, what kinds of things ought to be taught in the churches, excommunicate is in the power of the sovereign. And he's quite clear in which chapter is this, I cannot remember, chapter 42, you don't have to read this, but HUB's is quite clear in chapter 42 that the pope is not above the sovereign, that the sovereign can decide to give the religious rule of his subjects over to the pope can say, okay, you can be in charge of religion for my subjects, but even then, the sovereign is the one in charge. The sovereign is over the pope. Because it's really important to have one person or one assembly be in charge of both politics and religion. Why might that be the case, do you think? Why do you not want to have the pope versus the sovereign? Yeah, exactly. And he's very clear on that, and he talks about examples where people would say, well, I don't want to follow what my sovereign says. The church says something different. I don't want to go against the church in order to follow the rules of the sovereign. This is a real problem. You need to have some single authority deciding all of it, because if you've got two authorities and no way to decide which one is going to be higher than the other or what people should follow, then you have civil war. So the sovereign has to be in charge of religion as well. Okay, now, we've gone over here to kind of talk about what this artificial person is like, what this big thing made up of people is that it is very much like a person only a person made up of all of us, that it is supposed to be a unity, that the sovereign is the actor or the representative of what we all author. But now, there's my missing arrow, now we need to go over to the left and talk about how he argues for this. Why should we get to the point where we have this commonwealth, where we have this entity, this sovereign that can do anything and it is in our name because we are the authors? Why should we ever get to that? So that's what this arrow is all about. And we talked about this last time, I just want to briefly say a couple of things about his scientific methods. On page 25, and remember he thinks that what he's doing is a science of politics, is page 25, section 17 of book 5. And I'll just start reading at the beginning even though it's not all relevant. By this it appears that reason is not as sense and memory born with us, nor gotten by experience only as prudences, but attained by industry. And here's where science starts. First an apt imposing of names and secondly in getting a good and orderly method in proceeding from the elements, which are names, to assertions made by connection of one of them to the other, and so on, to syllogisms. By defining terms, our names. Then we get a good method in putting those names together into statements, and then in putting those statements together into arguments or syllogisms. And then, till we come to a knowledge of all the influences pertaining to the subject in hand, and that is it that men call science. So that's the method that he's doing in this text. He starts off with definitions, he tries to put them together into statements, he tries to put those statements together into arguments, and then entirely as a whole, his arguments about politics should be a science if he's gotten all those steps right. But of course, there's many sciences, and the table of sciences on page 48 gives you various versions of all the different kinds of sciences, from cosmology to biology to science about natural beings, such as animals and plants, and also the science of individual persons, what they are like, but then what Todd's is mostly interested in is the science of the artificial person, the science of the commonwealth. How do commonwealths work? How can we have a scientific knowledge of this, my lovely drawing, person who is made up of persons? We can have scientific knowledge of individuals, that's pretty easy. We just sort of do observations, we look into ourselves and figure out how we feel and how we act. How do we have a science of a unity of persons? That's going to be political science. That's going to be... That's going to be... How commonwealths work, what? So the science of politics, that was not what I wanted. That's what I wanted. And this, sorry to my seminar already went over this a little bit in seminar. I was jumping ahead, but this is something to think about. I think his argument for the science of politics, how is it that we should get to that persons of persons, that artificial persons that are made up of all of us? And how does that thing work? Here are the main steps, I think. We start off with a discussion of our human nature, what are individual persons like? Science of that. Every chapter of the text are really mostly about that. What desires do we have? What aversions do we have? What passions do we have? And then, chapter 13, how awful it would be if we had to live in a state of nature without any common authority given what we already know about our nature, about our desires, our passions, etc. And then, I probably should have put this up here a little bit differently, but why we should make ourselves into a commonwealth? Why we should create this artificial person? Why we should unify ourselves under a sovereign that is our actor, that is our soul? But I put it slightly differently, what kind of government we need to fulfill our desires, avoid our aversions, and avoid the state of nature, because it is so awful. So, we'll start off with some of our shared desires and aversions. I mean, Hobbes goes through a whole bunch in the text of all the different kinds of passions that we have, all the different sorts of emotions we have, kindness and generosity and Vainglory, etc., etc. But, I went through the text, not the whole book, first half, approximately, all of it. I've read parts of the third part and parts of the fourth part, but never the whole thing. Have you read all of it, Robert? Did you guys have to read it for Arts One, the whole thing? Oh my gosh. See how nice we're being. Wow, okay. So, I went through the first half and I tried to find places where Hobbes says, here are some desires or aversions or passions that we all share, that everyone has. So, somehow he's made comments or made quotes that say, we all have these. And then I'm going to argue from those that we should seek peace given these shared desires and aversions. And then, that the Commonwealth is the best way to do it, with a sovereign. That's the hell that's going to go. So, what do we share? Felicity, a nice Hobbesian word, meaning happiness, but he's got a particular definition of happiness. Let's look on page 57. 57, section 1 of chapter 11. I'm trying to figure out where to start. All right, I'll start kind of in the middle. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore, the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life and differ only in the way. What I get from this about happiness as being a shared desire, something that we all want, because he says the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend towards this, what I get from it is that felicity is continually being able to fulfill the desires that you have as they come up. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. Happiness is having desires and being able to fulfill them. And then even once you fulfill one, you have to fulfill another because another one comes along and once you fulfill that, you have to fill another, another one comes along. Hobbes is not simply a static entity, but we are continually moving. So you can't reach happiness once and for all. You can't just have this final bliss as long as you're alive. What happens instead is that you get happiness from filling one desire but then another comes along and another, and you keep moving. It's the movement from one desire to another. A similar thing is said on page 34 and 35 in chapter 6, section 58, continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say continuing prospering, is that man called felicity. I mean the felicity of this life for there is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here. Life itself is but motion and can never be without desire nor without fear, no more than without sense. So as long as we're alive here on this earth, then, sorry, trying to get to my notes, then what we want, what we aim for, what's the object of all voluntary actions, is just to be able to fulfill our desires. Well that's important because it leads to a second thing that we all share and that is a desire for power. I put for a general inclination of all mankind, again, I was looking for quotes where he says this is something we all have. General inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power. That sounds kind of nasty, I guess. It depends on how you define power but it can make sure of human beings as simply wanting to overpower each other over and over a genuine, excuse me, restless and perpetual desire of doing that and never being happy until we finally succeed. But if you look at his definition of power, it doesn't really look like that. Page 50. Chapter 10. The power of a man to take it universally is his present means to attain some future apparent good. What is power? The means we have to attain something that we think of as good in the future. Another way to think of that, power is simply the means we have or want to fulfill our desires and therefore to get happiness, therefore to get felicity. So if what we aim for in our life is continually being able to fulfill our desires as they come up, then it makes sense that we want power if you define power as simply the means to fulfill your desires. And then a lot of things can become power. What can become power under that definition? Things that count as power as simply means to attain what you might desire now and in the future. Friendship. Yes. Which you might not think of as power and it doesn't sound like a particularly nasty thing to do, to have friends. Though it might be kind of a nasty way to think about your friends. I have friends because that gives me power, which gives me the means to get what I want in the future. So maybe it's not the nicest way to think about friends, but friends are a power. I can't hear you. Money is obviously power because it gets you what you want in the future. What else? Okay, how does that... Okay, all right, explain. Okay. Oh, yes. Okay. Because I'm thinking of means that would allow you to fulfill your desires in the future. But I suppose if your desire is to leave a legacy, that that would work, right? I was thinking, well, maybe, maybe if you're in a society where children take care of their parents when they're older, then it's quite useful to have children that will help you fulfill your desires in the future. Again, not a particularly nice way to think about it. Pretty much. But yeah, I can see having children being power. And actually, I can see it being power depending on, again, where you're living. You know, having someone to hand your estate down to, having someone to help fight off enemies with, et cetera, et cetera. Anything else that could be power? Ecrids, yes. If you know something about somebody else, definitely, yeah. Yes. Yep. Yeah, I mean, depending on the situation, right? If that kind of knowledge is going to be able to get you leverage or somehow help you want then for sure. Yeah. Definitely, social status. Again, depending on the place you live. I think I can get in my notes, but I'm pretty sure that Hobbes also says generosity is power. Maybe I can find it really quickly. Good success, reputation, prudence, nobility, eloquence. These are all in chapter 10. Yes. Chapter 10, section 4 on page 50. Also, riches joined with liberality is power because it procures friends and servants without liberality, not so, because in this case they defend not, but expose men to envy as prey. So he's saying that wealth or riches are power as long as they are joined with liberality or something like generosity using it to give to other people because there's friends. But if you don't have liberality, then it bends you not, but exposes you to envy because you are so rich and you won't give to anybody. Which is an interesting thing I think for Hobbes because we tend to think of Hobbes as being, let's focus on our own selfishness. And in a way you still are because you're trying to get power. Lastly, we have a natural and necessary appetite to our own conservation. Again, looking for things that he says we all share. Pretty straightforward. We have a natural appetite for self-preservation. We have a natural aversion to death. And when you put all these things together, what we want, the object of all of our voluntary actions is fulfilling our desires now in the future. We want the means to fulfill those desires and we are afraid of death. What is this going to lead us to? It says we should want peace. Yes. And it is a natural appetite to want to preserve ourselves. And I suppose what we can think about it is that, and I don't know if Hobbes thinks about it this way, but one way you could think about it is that the human natural being can get corrupted and can end up with desires that are not really natural and ended up existing for reasons that something is wrong with our bodies, something is wrong with our minds. That's one thought. Yeah. Does he... Just like what I said? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Okay, one more slide and then we'll take a break. So all of this tells us what should we do? We need to live in peace because if we don't live in peace, we're going to have death, we're going to have violent death, we're going to have pain, we're going to have injury. The things that we share in a version two, though I couldn't find a nice quote for that exactly, pain. And the only way we're going to be able to fulfill our desires now and into the future is if we have peace. So that should be an obvious result, simply from looking at human nature. And reason also tells us that we should seek peace. And here we're going to start looking at the laws of nature, though we'll look at them mostly after the break. Reason provides rules for how to seek peace, the laws of nature. If we use our reason, we can see that there are certain things we ought to do and certain things we ought not to do in order to promote peace. The problem is going to be that we will not and rationally will not follow these rules unless there's a common power to enforce them. So here's a couple of quotes about laws of nature. A law of nature is a precept or general rule found out by reason by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or take it away the means of preserving the same and to omit that by which he thinks it may be best preserved. He talks about laws of nature in multiple ways. That's one of them. And that first one says, a law of nature tells me what I ought to do to preserve myself by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life or take it away the means of preserving it. So you can think of this as if I use my reason, I can figure out ways or rules that I ought to follow in order to preserve myself because that's a very basic human need. But another way he talks about laws of nature which I think is related is the second one. There are also articles of peace, he claims, that are necessary for preservation of a group. Articles of peace, these are the things and we haven't gone over them yet but we will. These laws are the rules that we have to follow in order to have peace and therefore in order to preserve a group. Laws of nature tell us what to do to preserve ourselves and to preserve groups. But how do we preserve ourselves? Best if we live in a group that has peace. So I think that the two are actually related. Now the problem is, as I mentioned, if we use our reason, we could think of these laws of nature and we'll go over them after the break and we could say, hey, wouldn't it be great if we all did this, this, this, this, and this? And yeah, it probably would. We'd live peacefully. We'd be able to gain our felicity. We'd avoid the things that we are most afraid of, death. You know, to some extent, obviously. We can't avoid death completely but we would die less soon and less violently. But the problem is that there is actually no good reason for each one of us to follow these rules unless we can be sure everyone else is going to follow them at the same time. And we can't be sure everyone else is going to follow them unless we have an enforcer. And that's why the sovereign has to exist. If they don't, and we are simply living in a state of nature, what's going to happen? We're all going to seek our own desires. We're all going to seek what we need and what we want. We're all going to try to get as much power as we can to fulfill our desires. And we're going to end up fighting with each other. And our fear of violence, pain, and death is going to be there, but that's what our life is going to be like in a state of nature. And I'm not going to go over that too carefully because we've already discussed that in seminars, I think. Yeah, let me stop here. Let's take a break for about 10 minutes. And then we'll talk more about the actual Commonwealth he creates. There we go. Sort of like a gavel. All right, so where we are in this argument for why we should have a certain kind of state is how awful it would be if we lived in a state of nature. I'm not going to talk terribly much about this, but I do think that one way of looking at it can be helpful. And that is thinking of it as a kind of gamble. You might see this as a prisoner's dilemma. I'm not really going to call it that. What the situation is in the state of nature. So remember I said we could think with our reason that there might be rules that we should follow to get peace. And Hobbes lists those, what he thinks rules that we should follow to get peace should be. And we could maybe come up with those with our own reason. Wouldn't it be great if we all followed these rules? I'm sorry, this is a little small. I should have made it a little bigger. I hope you can still see it. It says on the top, follow rules for peace. Don't follow rules for peace. And then the same on the left. So the idea is, here I am on the left. I'm trying to decide what I should do. Let's say I know what kinds of things to do would promote peace. Let's say I know that. And I'm deciding do I follow those rules or do I not follow those rules? And then we can get four outcomes depending on what other people are doing. If I follow the rules that get us peace and other people follow the rules that get us peace, we get peace. Right, not surprising. If I don't follow the rules for peace, but others do, then I become a predator. Which isn't that terribly bad for me, actually. Yeah, you could call it crime, you could call it something else. I just came up with predator. They're following the rules and I'm not. That's not a terrible situation. Now, if I follow rules for peace and others don't, now I'm just prey. That's stupid. That's like everybody else is doing whatever they need to to get their power, to get what they want, and I'm going along following the rules, then I'm prey. And that is nobody should have to do that, Hobbs admits. But if I don't follow the rules and they don't follow the rules, that's how we end up in war. Well, the best situation, Hobbs thinks, is peace. Because then we can all achieve felicity as much as possible. I mean, obviously we're not going to all get everything we need, but it's the best bet and avoiding violent death. It's the best bet for that. And the worst is to be prey. The worst is to be complacent, compliant to follow the rules while others don't. I want to avoid prey. Let's say I'm not sure what others are going to do. In the state of nature, I don't have any real reason to know for sure what others are going to do. And I want to avoid prey. That's the worst outcome. So my best bet is to don't follow rules. Because I'm not sure what other people are going to do. I could end up with the best. I could end up with the worst. I want to avoid the worst. I'm not going to follow the rules. So whatever rules could help us live together in peace, it makes rational sense for each individual to think bad idea to follow those. That leads me to the worst outcome. I'm not going to do it. But then what do we get? War. Everybody thinks this way. No one's going to act in ways that will promote peace. Everyone's going to get whatever they need, however they need it. They're going to violate each other's stuff. They're going to kill. They're going to maim. They're going to kidnap. Because if they don't do those things and others are, they're just going to be prey and they're in the worst position. So what we need, if we want to get to the best and get out of war, we have to have a common power enforcing whatever those rules are that can get us to peace. Otherwise, we can't trust that other people are going to hold to those, and so it makes most sense for us not to either. So what we need is some kind of power, some kind of sword, some kind of fear of punishment, so that we can be reasonably assured that most other people are going to follow the rules. And only then does it make sense for me to follow the rules. I have to have a sovereign, this is King Charles II, who was the king after the English Civil War and the Restoration, and this was a friend of Hobbes. So I have to have a king forcing peace to move me to peace or a sovereign assembly or what have you, because otherwise it may for me not to follow rules that might promote peace. The only way I should do it is if somebody is enforcing those rules and then I can believe that other people will also follow them. So the problem with the state of nature is not being able to trust others, not being able to know what they're going to do, not necessarily just that I am a bad person and you are a bad person and we're all evil and we're all going to kill each other, but we can't trust each other. And if we can't trust each other, it's stupid for us to act in a nice and polite way. So it's rational, it's rational to go to war. We need to make it rational to go to peace. And the only way to make it rational to go to peace is to have a common power enforcing those rules. And this explains, I think, the first two laws of nature. Remember, the laws of nature being defined in a couple of ways. One, those things you can determine by your reason that you ought to do in order to preserve yourself. And that makes sense with both of these. And the other definition of laws of nature, I think it makes sense with the other one, so we'll hold off on that. So these are the things that, because we're rational creatures, he says we could just recognize every man ought to endeavor peace. We've already seen that, that would be the best. We could get the things that we all desire and avoid the things we all avoid. As far as he has hope of obtaining it, we should desire peace as long as there's hope of obtaining it. But when there's not, don't. When he cannot obtain it, he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. This is legitimate. This is rational. This is what we ought to do. This is a law of nature. To preserve ourselves when you cannot be sure that other people are going to be peaceful, engage in war. There's nothing wrong with this. Hobbes doesn't say, ah, therefore we are all evil. Hobbes is saying this is simply what nature requires for our preservation when we are with other people. Second law of nature. What we ought to do to preserve ourselves. That we should be willing when others are too, as far forth as peace and defense of himself, he shall think it necessary to lay down his right to all things and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. Okay, when we don't have a commonwealth, we're in the state of nature. We don't have a common power. You should seek peace if there's a chance of obtaining it, but if there's no chance of obtaining it, go ahead and engage in war. But really, in a deeper sense, if others are willing, you should seek peace, as long as you know they're also willing to do this, by agreeing to only be able to have as much freedom against others as you would allow them against you, which means to set up a commonwealth with a government that enforces those rules to promote peace. In the state of nature, Hobbes says, we have a right to everything. We have a right in the sense that we have the freedom to anything we want, to any goods, to any people, to do anything we want to, because there's no common power to enforce rules. We should be willing to give that up, at least part of it. We should be willing to no longer have a right to everything, a right to everybody's person, a right to everybody's property, which doesn't exist in the state of nature yet, but a right to the things they have, a right to their children, a right to their freedom. We should be able to give those, we should be willing, I should say, to give up those for the sake of peace and follow laws that only allow us to have certain freedoms and certain rights against other people. But we should only do it if everybody else is willing to. So, second law of nature, another way to think about it is we should make an agreement with others to set up a common power. And that agreement is a covenant of every man with every man in such manner as if every man should say to every man, I authorize, here's the authoring part, I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this assembly of men on this condition that thou give up thy right to him and authorize all his actions in like manner. You should only do this if everybody is also willing to do it as well. Otherwise it makes no sense. So somehow, and this is the part about Hobbes, I'm not really sure about, somehow, and partly this is just a thought experiment, if you could imagine people living without a government, they could come together and be reasonably assured that each other are going to agree to this enough that they would agree to it too. How can you be reasonably sure that other people are saying they're going to do this but they're not really going to do it? Possibly because as soon as you agree to do it, you set up that common power that defends each other and that holds you to your word. I wanted to read something else though from 109. Let me find it. Okay. So here's where he talks about authorship again. So section 13 of chapter 17. The only way to erect such a common power is maybe able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners and the injuries of one another and thereby to secure them in such sort as by their own industry and by the fruits of the earth they may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is to confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of men that may reduce all their wills by a plurality of voices unto one will, which is as much to say to own and acknowledge himself to be the author of, I'm sorry, I skipped a line, which is as much to say to appoint one man or assembly of men to bear their person and everyone to own and acknowledge himself to be author of whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall act. So what we do when we create a commonwealth is we actually unite into a single person, into this artificial person, and we determine one person or one assembly of beings who then will be our spokesperson, who will be our will, who will act in ways that we are actually authorizing. And we do it through this covenant with each other. This creates a unified entity, the commonwealth, it reduces all their wills unto one will. We become a real unity in one and the same person. And that unity has an actor. That actor who speaks for us is the sovereign. There he is. We have been unified into one being with one will and the sovereign being the one who says what that will is. So what kind of government do we need then? Is it a monstrous one? Is what Hobbes describes as the government that we should instill once we create ourselves as a commonwealth? A leviathan. Is it this horrible, awful, scary sea monster? Which is, that's not exactly a leviathan, that's a squid. That's the closest I could come up with. It's from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I think. It's a public domain work. Is it something we should really be afraid of? I want to say, I think that what Hobbes is saying actually makes some sense, and the kinds of powers that he gives to the sovereign are not that terribly monstrous. Although I can certainly agree that there are places where it's very easy for the sovereign to abuse his power. So let's look at this. The commonwealth is simply, sorry, let me find my notes. One person, an artificial person, of whose acts a great multitude by mutual covenants one with another have made themselves everyone the author. To the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defense. And it's for their peace and common defense that I want to focus on. And I also have mutual covenants with one another. One of the things that's important about thinking about the commonwealth is that when we agree to set it up, we are mutually agreeing with each other and not with the sovereign. So he says, we cannot, and I'll get to this later, we cannot accuse the sovereign of doing injustice because injustice as the third law of nature is defined as breaking of covenants and yet we have not made any covenant with the sovereign. We have made a covenant with each other to do what? To create an artificial person to follow the rules of the sovereign. Now let me just ask you, why might we not be able to make a covenant with the sovereign? Why is it that when we agree together to create this commonwealth, we're agreeing with each other but not with the sovereign? Which means we can't accuse the sovereign of injustice or breaking the contract. Why do you think that might be the case? Okay, because the sovereign is made up of all the people. The commonwealth is made up of all the people. The sovereign is like the spokesperson or the actor or the representer of that whole entire being. And I suppose in a way it wouldn't make sense to have a... Well, you could have a covenant with the one who's acting, who's representing you. You could say, you have to represent us in a particular way. I suppose that is possible. If you think of anything else, why? Any other reason why you can't say you have a covenant with the sovereign? Yes. Yeah, that would be tough. If you're going to have a covenant with the people, it would have to be with the people as a whole, right? And then that's a little bit difficult to do, exactly what does that mean, really? Or if you did it with each individual, you could have different ones, and then you'd break one by following another. So that could be a problem. I think part of the issue, too, for Hobbes, is that whenever you have an agreement, agreements are not really in force in so long as there's no clear assumption that the other person is going to fulfill their role. You have to have power over both parties to hold them to the agreement. Just like in the state of nature, if you don't have reasonable assurance that the other people in the state of nature are going to follow rules, you don't have to do so either. As soon as you do have that reasonable assurance and you've agreed to follow those rules, there is a common power over you. Now you are obliged to follow the rules that the sovereign has put forward. If the sovereign had covenants with the people, even with the whole entity of the commonwealth, there would need to be some higher power to hold that sovereign to that covenant. And in a way there is, because God is a higher power, and God does hold, Hobbes says, the sovereign to the rights of... not the rights of nature, the laws of nature. There are certain rules that the sovereign should put forward in the state, in the commonwealth, the laws of nature, and if he doesn't, then he has to answer to God. God is sort of the overarching power. But we can't have a covenant with the sovereign to do certain things for us, to say you have to act this way and not that way, because we don't have a clear secular power to hold him to that. Okay, so we don't covenant with the sovereign. What the sovereign is supposed to do, and what the commonwealth is supposed to do, is to use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace. The sovereign should enforce the laws of nature. And here's where we'll get to a little bit more about what those things are. The laws of nature being in the second definition I gave you earlier, articles of peace, those things that will lead you to peace if you follow them. What you can understand by your reason is what should get us to peace. The first two are a little bit odd, because the first one says you should seek peace when you can, but when you can't get to war, that one doesn't exactly get us to peace. The second one starts to get us closer to peace when others are willing you too should also lay down your right to all things and agree to set up a commonwealth. That gets us to peace. There's also numerous other laws of nature in chapter 15, there's number three through 19, and I'll just mention a few of them, because there's quite a few, but these are ones I think are more clearly directed towards what we need to do in order to have peace. And these are the things that, according to these chapters, Hobbes says the sovereign ought to do. That doesn't mean he will do, ought to do. Third law of nature, men should adhere to their covenants. If you make an agreement with somebody, you should adhere to it. Failure to do so is injustice. That makes sense, that would get us towards peace. If you have that rule and people actually follow it, you make agreements, you actually hold to them. Fourth law of nature, anyone who receives a gift of benevolence from another should try to ensure that he that gives it has no reason to repent of his good will, otherwise no benevolence or trust will exist and we will return back to war. This is a rule of gratitude. He who receives a gift or benevolence should try to ensure that he that gives it has no reason to repent of his good will. So we should have gratitude when people are nice to us or give things to us. And this being something that would help to lead to peace, because you would actually then continue to have benevolence and help and gift. Fifth, everyone should strive to be sociable, accommodating to others insofar as that is not harmful to yourself. Don't be stubborn, don't be insatiable, don't be intractable. Sixth, we should pardon past offenses by those who repent and desire the pardon. Eighth, no man by deed, word, countenance or gesture declare hatred or contempt of another, because this provokes people to fight. And ninth lastly, don't try to fight for who is the better man. Equality should be acknowledged. Every man should acknowledge others for his equal by nature. Now these sound like, and they are, Hobbes also calls them moral virtues. These are rules for peace. These are also moral virtues. Nevertheless, and there are more that I haven't read, they are also the things that the sovereign should somehow enforce in the state. Because if the sovereign's whole point is to be the spokesperson, to be the representer, to be the will of the commonwealth and the whole point of the commonwealth is to move us towards peace, what the sovereign should do is instill laws, instill rules, instill practices that promote peace. And these Hobbes says are at least some of the things that the sovereign is only answerable to God if he fails to do this and I think I've already answered why. Jump to the gun there. He doesn't have to, or they don't have to, do things in the state that would promote peace. That would follow these kinds of laws of nature. It would be good. They don't absolutely have to. And what happens if they don't? God will punish. So God, the sovereign does have to follow the laws of nature in the eyes of God. But if he doesn't, he will be punished later by God. Except... Hobbes also says, and I'll get to this on another slide, but it makes sense here too. Hobbes also says if a sovereign rules badly and does not promote peace, a couple things can happen. One, natural punishment he calls it. And this is in a section of the text we didn't read. A natural punishment of the violation of laws of nature is people will rebel. If you rule in a terribly oppressive fashion, if you do not treat people equally, people will rebel. They don't have the right to rebel, but they will do it. So you have to be careful, because that will be your natural punishment for violating the laws of nature. You will also get punished for it by God, most likely. But in this world, that's what will happen. And I'll show you on another slide where that comes in. Another thing that can happen for Hobbes, if you don't follow the laws of nature and you don't promote peace, is that people actually, Hobbes says, in certain situations no longer have to follow your rule. It can get so bad that basically there is no common power left. There is no efficient or effective power to promote peace and to enforce the laws, in which case people just don't have to follow you anymore at all. That can also happen. So here are all the powers of the sovereign that he lists in some of the books that we haven't read. And I want you to think about this. Like, how bad is this? Whether it's a monarchy which Hobbes likes the best, I'm going to talk in seminars about why he likes that the best. Or an aristocracy which is an assembly of part of the people. Or a democracy which is an assembly of all of the people. Regardless of what kind of sovereign you have, these are the powers that the sovereign must be able to have in order to promote peace, in order to allow us to get the things that we want. So what can be said or published? Power of a sovereign. That also is with religion to not just anything that you say in the state, but also what can be said or published about religion. The sovereign is in charge of punishment, rewards, honors, taxation. The sovereign needs to be able to raise taxes to do whatever is necessary to promote the peace and keep the peace amongst yourselves and your neighbors. Control of military and police, obviously. If you're supposed to keep the peace. Choosing the magistrates. So choosing the people who are in your bureaucracy. Choosing the people who are going to run the government. Choosing your successor. This works especially for a monarchy. Hobbes says you have to have in a monarchy. You have to have a clear line of succession. If the person who is the current monarch does not choose their successor, we can go down the usual path of tradition and go to their child, their male or female child, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is if there's no clear successor, you're going to end up in war. There's no clear ruler. There's no clear power. There might be divided powers. This one is claiming the seat of power and this one is too and this one is too. You don't know who to follow. Basically you're back to the state of nature. So you have to have a clear plan for succession. Now this also works though for democracy or aristocracy. It's just that what it would be called that I think is the plan for who else gets to be part of this assembly when I stop. Like voting. So the people in the assembly are not going to be there forever. They have to figure out how it is that they're going to get a successor assembly. Well, is it going to be through voting? Is it going to be through, you know, a choice by a king or through some sort of wealth requirement? Whatever that plan is, that's your plan for succession. And then judicial powers. So being in charge of the judiciary, judging all conflicts, that kind of thing. All of that is in the sovereign power. Now I'm not sure that sounds really scary. I'm not sure it sounds all that different besides the fact that we have separate powers from what our government can do. Is it? Thinking about the fact that if we just consider our sovereign as being all the parts of government because, yeah, we've split it up. You know, Hobbes does not like division of powers. And that is definitely what has happened in Canada and many democracies. But other than that, if you think about just the whole government, this doesn't seem like terribly different of the sorts of powers that they have. The only one that might not be is perhaps what can be said or published. Does our government have that power? Explain. That was the one I was going to go to. There's been pornography rules, too. That's another way in which this happens. Of course, again, the way we have done these powers of the sovereign is to split them up. So we've got the judiciary in one place, the enforcement of the rules, the punishments, the executive, choosing magistrates in another place. What we don't have up here is creating the laws. But I don't know why I didn't put that up there. That should be there. Obviously, the sovereign is creating of the laws, is legislative, and we've kind of separated all of these. But ultimately, I'm not sure they're terribly different from what we have. The liberty of subjects. That's the powers of the sovereign. What freedoms do people have? It takes us kind of back to the beginning. Because what does liberty mean? Absence of external impediments to motion. Absence of external impediments to what you will to do. You don't have complete free will, in that you can will anything you want to. You are determined by things from your past. But whatever liberty you have lies in whatever lack of impediments there are to doing what you will to do. Where is my note? So what liberty do subjects have in the commonwealth? Well, he talks about the laws being, I think it's in 21 section 6, the laws being artificial chains. So the laws are impediments to motion in a way. Let me find this. Yeah, section 5 of chapter 21, page 138. But as for men, but as men have made an artificial man, call a commonwealth, so also have they made artificial chains called civil laws, which they themselves have by mutual covenants fastened at one end to the lips of that man or assembly of men to whom they have given the sovereign power and at the other end to their own ears. These bonds in their own nature about weak may nevertheless be made to hold by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them. So we have some kind of chains in the commonwealth, impediments to motion, and those at least among others are the laws, the civil laws. So what's our liberty? Whatever the laws don't prohibit, which is quite a bit actually. There's not going to be laws about absolutely everything you won't have to do in the state. There's going to be things that you may do or may not do, you must not do. There's going to be things that you have to do, but other than that, there's going to be quite a wide range of actions that you are free in. Hobbes says things like... My notes are out of order, I'm sorry. All right, I'll find it on chapter 21. The bottom of section six. The liberty of a subject lieth therefore only in those things which in regulating their actions, sovereign hath pretermitted omitted, such as, for example, the liberty to buy, to sell, and otherwise contract with one another to choose their own abode, their own diet, their own trade of life, and to institute their children, which means educate, as they themselves think fit and the like. And that's just a small part of a lot of things that we were able to do in the commonwealth under Hobbesian sovereign. We do have a fair bit of liberty, he says, as long as you define liberty in a particular way. But there's also the things that you don't have to do, even if the sovereign commands it. And that's actually a pretty big list. There are certain things that we can't give up as rights. We can never be understood to have covenanted away when we agree to the commonwealth. And those things you still have liberty to do. So the sections in blue are what I'm going to read now. Things we can't give up. The right to resist assault by force for the sake of wounds, imprisonment, or death, even if it's the sovereign who comes to get you. So anytime that somebody is trying to wound you, harm you physically, or kill you, you always have the right to resist, even if it's the police coming to get you. You can refuse to abstain from use of things necessary for life. The sovereign commands you not to get food somehow, not to have food. You can refuse to abstain from that. How that's going to work exactly, I'm not sure. You can refuse to confess to a crime, or to accuse those close to you. Similar thing that we have today, where you don't have to stand up in a court of law to confess and you shouldn't be forced to testify against your family members, et cetera, your children. You can refuse to kill yourself, which kind of goes along with the first one. You can refuse to kill or maim another when such refusal does not frustrate, quote, the end for which the sovereignty was ordained. If the sovereign commands you to go to war and kill somebody or to kill somebody for some other reason, you can refuse to do it as long as this does not somehow frustrate the purpose for which the sovereignty was ordained, which was to keep the peace. For example, in war, if you can find somebody else to take your place, you can refuse to serve. Obsess. So it's actually a fair bit. Those are kind of small. But it's actually a fair bit that we can do. What we can't do, charge the sovereign with injustice, as we've already mentioned. Put the sovereign to death, as they did in England, with Charles I. That's not allowed. Dissolve the state and set up a new sovereign power. We can't do this because we've already agreed to have the one that we have. We've already agreed that we are going to come together as a group and agree to have this person or this body of persons bear our person as a group and represent us. And you can't just stop that. You can't just break that covenant and dissolve it. And there is just a quote. So for example, in section 3 of chapter 18, those subject to a monarchy can't justly decide to cast off monarchy and return to the confusion of a disunited multitude, nor transfer their person from him that beareth it to another man or another assembly of men. So you can't just cast off monarchy like they did in England and transfer the sovereignty to some other assembly. Unless the sovereign can no longer keep the peace and the safety of the people. If that happens, if it is the case that somehow the sovereign becomes completely ineffective, if the sovereign can no longer preserve the security of the people, then there is no more obligation to obey it. This is a quote from section 21 of chapter 21. The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long and no longer than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by nature to protect themselves when none else can protect them, can by no covenant be relinquished. The end of obedience is protection, which were soever a man seeth it, either in his own or in another's sword. Nature applied his obedience to it in his endeavor to maintain it. The only reason we would give up some of our rights and join a commonwealth is for the sake of our protection and peace. If the sovereign can no longer do that, we never do give up our right to our own protection, which is why we can fight back if the sovereign comes to kill us. And if the sovereign is no longer protecting us, we don't have to obey anymore. So does that mean it's really monstrous? I kind of think that these rights, excuse me, these liberties we have in the Hobbesian sovereign, these powers that the Hobbesian sovereign has, the idea that we can't just give up and start over, these are not terribly different, I think, from what we might consider we have, except for the fact, of course, that we've split up our sovereign power into several departments, whereas for Hobbes it's all just one assembly or one person. It seems that we also have freedoms to act in ways that the laws leave open for us, but we don't have the freedom to violate the laws. It seems that we also can't just decide, let's give up on democracy, let's give up on this constitutional democracy that we have, this monarchy, this constitutional monarchy that we have. Let's just decide to do something different. It's not obvious that we have the right to do that. It's not obvious in the founding documents that says, you know what, they can just start over. It's very difficult to see how that would be legitimate in the Hobbes as well. Now I'm not saying that we live necessarily in a Hobbesian state, I'm just trying to make it sound like perhaps what he's describing is not that bad. Maybe it's not that monstrous, though there are other ways in which it could be very monstrous and I'll leave you to discuss that in seminars. That's it for today.