Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with Kids

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There’s a big clustering of national populations with an average lifespan of around 40 years in 1800. The year 1800 was only 150 years past Thomas Hobbes’ description in “Leviathan” of the life of man as “poor, nasty, brutish and short.” – Houston Chronicle In Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly states that the sovereign has authority to assert power over matters of faith and doctrine and that if he does not do so, he invites discord. Hobbes presents his own religious theory but states that he would defer to the will of the sovereign (when that was re-established: again, Leviathan was written during the Civil War) as to whether his theory was acceptable. Hobbes' materialistic presuppositions also led him to hold a view which was considered highly controversial at the time. Hobbes rejected the idea of incorporeal substances and subsequently argued that even God himself was a corporeal substance. Although Hobbes never explicitly stated he was an atheist, many allude to the possibility that he was. Every subject is author of the acts of the sovereign: hence the sovereign cannot injure any of his subjects and cannot be accused of injustice. Ian’s mother was confused by his question. She had no idea how to answer. And I suspect most adults would find themselves just as flummoxed. Little kids often question things grown-ups take for granted. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons they make good philosophers. “The adult must cultivate the naiveté that is required for doing philosophy,” Matthews said, but “to the child such naiveté is entirely natural.” Seeing my name on the board made me think that my thoughts about what mattered might matter—that I could be a part of a conversation that included people like Aristotle, Kant, and Nietzsche.

My favorite of Matthews’s stories came from the mother of a little boy named Ian. While Ian and his mother were at home, another family came to visit, and the family’s three kids monopolized the television, keeping Ian from seeing his favorite show. After they left, he asked his mother, “Why is it better for three people to be selfish t han for one?” I missed the first day of that philosophy class, because my people—Jews, not philosophers—celebrate the New Year at a more or less random time each fall. But I went to the second class, and by the second hour I was hooked. The professor, Clark Wolf, asked each of us what mattered, and as he went around the room, he scratched our answers on the board alongside our names and the names of famous philosophers who had said something similar. Let us not ignore the radical nature of this. A philosopher, a man, has written a whole book arguing that the setting of the home and the daily act of parenting can lead to profound philosophical insight and debate . . . Hershovitz’s book has already enhanced my philosophical conversations with my children . . . I learn so much from these conversations, intellectually and—a territory philosophy tends to avoid—emotionally.”— Elissa Strauss, The Atlantic English, Latin (Hobbes produced a new version of Leviathan in Latin in 1668: [1] Leviathan, sive De materia, forma, & potestate civitatis ecclesiasticae et civilis. [2] Many passages in the Latin version differ from the English version.) [3]The second cause is the demonology of the heathen poets: in Hobbes's opinion, demons are nothing more than constructs of the brain. Hobbes then goes on to criticize what he sees as many of the practices of Catholicism: "Now for the worship of saints, and images, and relics, and other things at this day practiced in the Church of Rome, I say they are not allowed by the word of God".

Hobbes named Part IV of his book "Kingdom of Darkness". By this Hobbes does not mean Hell (he did not believe in Hell or Purgatory), [16] but the darkness of ignorance as opposed to the light of true knowledge. Hobbes' interpretation is largely unorthodox and so sees much darkness in what he sees as the misinterpretation of Scripture. The following week, my philosophy of law class talked about prepunishment—the idea that we might punish someone before they commit a crime if we know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they’ll doit. Some people doubt that it’s possible to predict well enough to know. I don’t, actually. But there’s another objection that’s a lot like Hank’s. The official blog of Yale University Press London. We publish history, politics, current affairs, art, architecture, biography and pretty much everything else... Seeing therefore miracles now cease" means that only the books of the Bible can be trusted. Hobbes then discusses the various books which are accepted by various sects, and the "question much disputed between the diverse sects of Christian religion, from whence the Scriptures derive their authority". To Hobbes, "it is manifest that none can know they are God's word (though all true Christians believe it) but those to whom God Himself hath revealed it supernaturally". And therefore "The question truly stated is: by what authority they are made law?" Bulgaria became the bad girl lover that would scare the crap out of your mom when she shows up looking a bit on the Kurt Cobain style grunge side but actually had one of those tortured artist souls which could find the beauty where others only saw brokenness.Unsurprisingly, Hobbes concludes that ultimately there is no way to determine this other than the civil power: Johnston, David. The rhetoric of Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes and the politics of cultural transformation, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.