![]() ![]() An odd choice of terminology, given the term’s original and subsequent common usage, in the Bible and in shared mythology, as a force of destruction (usually a sea-monster or a serpent). For Hobbes, ‛Leviathan’ was another term for the community or the commonweal. Hobbes’s influence on political thought has endured since the seventeenth century, and is reflected not only in the works of subsequent philosophers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant, but also in much of the utopian and dystopian literature to be discussed now: in particular the belief in the causal link between rational, moral and political decision-making and self-interest. ![]() ![]() The principle of separation of civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers is rejected in favour of absolute rule. Any abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. The desirability of avoiding this leads to the acceptance of a clear need for the restraining agency of a social contract whereby the people give up some rights to a government or other authority thereafter responsible for preserving social order through the rule of law. ġ In Leviathan Hobbes sees man’s nature as tending to war, including civil war (Hobbes, 1998). But do we know how to dismount? You see this as a very unstable world and a very dangerous world. The world in general, and the US in particular, is riding a very fine tiger. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea no commodious building no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force no knowledge of the face of the earth no account of time no arts no letters no society and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, nor grief, nor crying nor shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall pitch his tent among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be among them – their God. And I, John, saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the former heaven and the former earth were passed away and the sea was no more. ![]()
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