The Relevance of Hobbes in America

Life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” That’s why we need a social contract—an exchange of freedom for security to avoid a dog-eat-dog state of nature. At least, that’s what Thomas Hobbes posited in Leviathan. Michael Knowles and guest John Yoo, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, discuss how Hobbes’s seminal work has shaped political philosophy for centuries.

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