September 12, 2006
Hobbes was an optimist
I'm currently rereading Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, persuant to what I hope will be a productive interaction with legal theory.
I'm starting to think that Hobbes is in need of a serious update. His description of the state of Nature is still apt (Do you think people are good? Do you lock your doors at night? What does that say about your previous answer?), but the way in which he gets out of there is perhaps a bit vulnerable to the collapse of Reason as a serious epistemic foundation. I really like his discussion of Power and Honor though. And if you want a really good laugh, read his chapter on Sense.
That being said, I think at root that he's really on to something. He certainly has no illusions about the nature of man, and even in the 17th century was insightful enough to assert that things depend more on perception than they do on essence. What I would ultimately like to do is link an essentially Hobbesian theory of the state with a thorough-going Christian perspective, and from there produce a concrete legal theory. I would like to come to many of the same conclusions that Richard Posner does, but I don't think I need to use Darwin to get there.
I'll probably keep throwing random thoughts up here as I go through this and other works foundational to my area of interest. We'll see what I come up with.
