POL200Y1 Lecture : Hobbes Notes - Complete
24 Nov 2010
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A very different writer, a very different style. The father of liberalism, and therefore of a new moralism and even a new pacifism (antiwar, peace lover) which seems alien to the spirit of the godless and warlike machiavelli. But even so i"ll be trying to persuade you that. Hobbes (and liberalism) are best understood as machiavelli: the sequel. (orwin: he is an intelligent cool dry wind, a great observer of human nature, notices all and sees through all a great debunker. The biggest problems that humans face are psychological. Might think of hobbes as dr. phil. the substance of hobbes consists of the familiar and strange, he offers a liberal argument of despotism. Hobbes thoroughly debunks the prince and then reproduces it his way, he is much more our kind of thinker than machiavelli. In his dedicatory letter, he is following in the footsteps of machiavelli and cuts down the forests of savages and then constructs his own.
