6min chapter

TALKING POLITICS cover image

History of Ideas: Hobbes on the State

TALKING POLITICS

CHAPTER

The Only Price of Security in Hobbes's Conception of Politics

Hobbes's conception of politics is terrifying not that all aspects of your life will be controlled but you never know from one day to the next with absolute certainty which ones will be controlled. To be a sovereign in Hobbes' state is both to have extraordinary power and also to have ordinary power because it leaves the sovereign as the only person who can decide what counts as peace now just one person gets to make that decision. It's almost as though the sovereign is the only one still leading a natural life and yet it's a completely unnatural life, he says. The choice has been removed  what was once the choice has been internalized into the body politic so that everyone so as not

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