PHIL 1010 Lecture 1: PHIL1010 Understanding Liberty and Freedom
30 Jun 2016
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Document Summary
In leviathan, thomas hobbes makes some surprisingly strong claims about one"s freedom, which i believe to be true. Further into the text, hobbes shares his definition of liberty, and explains how we control our own liberty. In this paper, i will demonstrate how hobbes" opinion on one"s liberty is entirely accurate due to how we, as citizens of the state, can choose who we believe would be our most beneficial leader. To begin, hobbes defines liberty as, the absence of external impediments (hobbes 71), which can further be translated to the ability to act according to one"s own will without being physically obstructed in any way. According to hobbes, these physical impediments include chains and imprisonment, meaning that all citizens under sovereignty have absolute liberty. When pondering about our true freedom, we must remember that we, ourselves, created the artificial chains that we are bound by.
