Machiavelli, Hobbes-LH 9-10. FL 11-12, HWT 11-12.
1. What did Machiavelli say a leader needs to have?2. Machiavelli's philosophy is described as being "rooted" in what?
3. The idea that leaders should rule by fear is based on what view of human nature?
4. Life outside society would be what, according to Hobbes?
5. What fear influenced Hobbes' writings?
6. Hobbes did not believe in the existence of what?
FL
1. What was Arthur C. Clarke's 3d law regarding technology, and what's its converse?
HWT
1. How do eastern and western philosophies differ in their approach to things, and what is ma?
Thomas Hobbes was a 17th-century English philosopher who is on hand to guide us through one of the thorniest issues of politics: to what extent should we patiently obey rulers, especially those who are not very good – and to what extent should we start revolutions and depose governments in search of a better world?
Hobbes’s thinking is inseparable from one major event that began when he was 64 years old – and was to mark him so deeply, it coloured all this subsequent thinking (remarkably he died when he was 91 and everything he is remembered for today he wrote after the age of 60).
This event was the English Civil war, a vicious, divisive, costly and murderous conflict that raged across England for almost a decade and pitted the forces of King against Parliament, leading to the deaths of some 200,000 people on both sides.
Hobbes was by nature a deeply peaceful and cautious man. He hated violence of all kinds, a disposition that began at the age of four, when his own father, a clergyman, was disgraced, and abandoned his wife and family, after he’d got into a fight with another vicar on the steps of his parish church in a village in Wiltshire.
The work for which we chiefly remember Hobbes, Leviathan, was published in 1651. It is the most definitive, persuasive and eloquent statement ever produced as to why one should obey government authority, even of a very imperfect kind, in order to avoid the risk of chaos and bloodshed... (SoL, continues)
CHAPTER 6. CURRICULUM: POLITICAL THEORY
Machiavelli's Advice for Nice Guys
Machiavelli was a 16th-century Florentine political thinker with powerful advice for nice people who don’t get very far. His thought pivots around a central, uncomfortable observation: that the wicked tend to win. And they do so because they have a huge advantage over the good: they are willing to act with the darkest ingenuity and...
CHAPTER 6. CURRICULUM: POLITICAL THEORY
Niccolò Machiavelli
Our assessment of politicians is torn between hope and disappointment. On the one hand, we have an idealistic idea that a politician should be an upright hero, a man or woman who can breathe new moral life into the corrupt workings of the state. However, we are also regularly catapulted into cynicism when we realise...
DQ
- Do you agree with Machiavelli that it's okay for a leader to lie if he perceives it to be in the best interest of his people?
- Do you agree with Hobbes that, left to our own devices and without the authority of the state and its institutions and laws to govern us, we would create a "war of all against all"?
- Is there a sharp difference between writing well and thinking logically? Why do you think so many scholastic/medieval philosophers were poor writers? How can you become a better writer and clearer thinker?
- Was Machiavelli right, about how power works in the real world?
- If European explorers like Vespucci understood that European knowledge was at best incomplete, at worst just wrong, why were so many of them still so confident that the natives they encountered in the New World were sub-human? Why in general are humans still so quick to denigrate those who are different, or who have different customs?
- Is there any proper place for astrology and magic in the modern world?
- COMMENT: 'The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read." -Mark Twain.
- It's been estimated that the average social media user could read 200 books in the time they spend online. What would they gain? What would they lose? What's the right balance?
- Do you trust your own conscience and experience more than that of religious leaders like the Pope? Why? 441
- Does knowledge need foundations? Why or why not?
- Can you agree with Machiavelli about leadership without being a sexist or an autocrat?
- Are people fundamentally selfish, in your experience? Are you? Can selfish people change?
- What memorable hiking experience have you had? Tell us about it!
- Our JW author emphasizes the importance of beginning any great effort under the right circumstances. Do you have a similar opinion? What do you make sure to do before you begin a signficant task?
Arts & Letters Daily search results for “hobbes” (11)
2012-12-12 | Before Hobbes, political thought was historical thought, much of it wacky. Since Hobbes, political thought is about ideas, many of them preposterous more »
2019-05-25 | Step aside, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Mill. Meet the oddballs, underdogs, and outcasts of British philosophy more »
2010-01-01 | Thomas Hobbes: a hero to some, but to many philosophers the source of a malignant liberalism, Jacobinism, or even Bolshevism more »
2016-09-24 | When the milieu makes the philosopher. Descartes, Hobbes, and their contemporaries lived through the Scientific Revolution and several wars of religion. Their narratives matter more »
2015-02-10 | Aquinas, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Diderot, Rousseau: Esotericism ? disguising real meaning through surface contradiction ? was an art that is all but lost more »
2012-08-18 | Leviathan was always an enemy-maker for Hobbes, for a time the most loathed thinker in Britain. But his heresies helped generate British philosophy more »
2018-09-06 | Hobbes, Hume, and Kant alike sympathetic to the thought that “there must be something more,” and sensitive to the limits of speculating about God more »
2018-04-27 | How blank are our slates? Hobbes and Rousseau believed in the existence of human nature, but today’s philosophers are skeptical. Biology suggests an answer more »
2017-04-21 | We suffer from “nature-deficit disorder” and the accompanying pretenses of citified life. Take a cue from Hobbes, Rousseau, Einstein, Dickens, and Hazlitt: Take a hike more »
2016-10-08 | So Hobbes was an atheist with a gloomy view of human nature? Rousseau believed in a peace-loving “noble savage”? Wrong and wrong. We misunderstand the great philosophers more »
2017-09-13 | The Enlightenment emerged from a 150-year “staccato burst” of European philosophy. Why did these thinkers — Hobbes, Descarte, Voltaire, Rousseau — write as they did? more »
2021-01-07 | Amid these apocalyptic-seeming times, one philosopher’s vision stands out. This is a moment for Machiavelli more »
2018-11-21 | Calculating, cutthroat, self-interested, teacher of tyrants: What was Machiavelli up to? Debunking ideas of virtue and vice more »
2015-08-08 | Machiavelli was brilliant, ruthless, cunning, clear-eyed, mercurial, a little boastful, and pathetic. But a comedian? more »
2020-05-05 | What was most shocking about Machiavelli wasn't original, and what was original wasn't shocking: his realism more »
2014-12-13 | 'I never say what I believe and I never believe what I say,' declared Machiavelli. 'If I sometimes say the truth, I conceal it among lies? more »
2013-10-08 | 'I depart from the orders of others.' With that, Machiavelli reconceived both politics and philosophy. He was not a product of his time, but the father of ours more »
2011-01-01 | Niccolo Machiavelli was an amoebic being: imperialist, proto-libertarian, atheist, neo-pagan, Christian, lover of freedom, tutor to despots, armchair strategist more »
2013-09-26 | Machiavelli was not so much cruel as unsentimental. His worst instincts were tempered not by moral concern but by prudence. He was a realist more »
2015-02-10 | Aquinas, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Diderot, Rousseau: Esotericism ? disguising real meaning through surface contradiction ? was an art that is all but lost more »
2013-11-22 | Machiavelli has been unjustifiably scandalous for 500 years. Why? Critics mistake his realism for cynicism, his impatience with moralizing for cruelty more »
2013-07-25 | Whether or not he was an apologist for violence, an enemy of virtue, Machiavelli knew that in politics, one should never confuse hope and reality more »
2012-08-16 | Sincerity is a fickle friend, an artful pretense. Machiavelli manipulated it, Montaigne prized it, the Romantics made a fetish of it more »
2015-05-26 | Weighing Machiavelli, Dale Carnegie, and "the no-asshole rule," we've endured a long debate about what personality type breeds success more »
2017-05-08 | Satan's emissary, cunning fox, cold-blooded destroyer: That's the conventional view of Machiavelli. But was his advice in The Prince really meant to be followed? more »
2017-03-18 | Machiavelli was not Machiavellian, but just a good-hearted guy who wrote The Prince ironically. Or so asserts a new book. Terry Eagleton is having none of it more »
2015-12-10 | A modern Machiavelli. Edward Luttwak is a TLS-toting, bovine-raising intellectual. He claims a central role in the Prague Spring and in creating the Toyota Prius more »
2017-03-03 | The myth of Machiavelli as an amoral schemer is just that — a myth. But as to whether he had a dim view of women, even by the standard of Florentine men of his era: guilty as charged more »
Machiavelli & Hobbes, Osgood & Scully
Hobbes was a “rigid determinist” but something got him up and going each morning, out into the English countryside. Did it really feel involuntary? Does it? Not to me.
Hobbes “walked much and contemplated”
Machiavelli, & civil disobedience
“I never say what I believe and I never believe what I say,” declared Machiavelli. “If I sometimes say the truth, I conceal it among lies”... more»
Hobbes
I was amused when my old friend said he’d just spent five weeks in Britain and came away with nothing more philosophical than a visit to a castle where Hobbes had tutored. My colleague answered rightly by noting that an ancient English castle’s more likely to stimulate the philosophical imagination than is a dusty library in Tennessee. But in any event, Hobbes is a fascinating and over-maligned figure whose steps I look forward to tracking. As I wrote for students awhile back,
Section 009
ReplyDeleteLH
1.) Machiavelli believed that leaders needed to have virtĂą or great courage
2.) Machiavelli's philosophy is described as being rooted in 'what really happens'
4.) According to Hobbes, life outside society would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
HWT
1.) In Western Philosophy there is focus on things. In Eastern Philosophy there is a natural focus on the space between things. Ma is the aesthetic of betweeness.
2.) In Eastern thought, backgrounds and relationships between things are at interest.
4.) A Sakura is a cherry blossom tree
5.) Chinese philosophy takes the place of religion
LH
ReplyDelete1. Machiavelli says a leader needs to have virtĂą, an Italian word meaning manliness or valor. Machiavelli also believed that the amount of success that occurs will depend on luck.
2. Machiavelli’s philosophy is rooted in “what really happens.”
3. The idea that leaders should rule by fear is based on cynicism.
4. Life outside society would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
5. A life without “sovereign” influenced Hobbes’ writings.
6. Hobbies did not believe in the existence of the soul.
FL
1. The third law is “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The converse meaning is “technology that seems magical and miraculous can encourage and confirm credulous people’s belief in make-believe magic and miracles.”
2. Homeopathy was the original “alternative medicine” and the “upside” is that it “inherently fulfills the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.”
3. Mesmerism relied on a “totally bogus extrapolation.”
4. Mary Baker Eddy was a sickly New Englander. Eddy tried homeopathy, water cures and communicating with the dead before mesmerism. Her followers are misleadingly called scientists instead of believers.
5. Dr. William A. Rockefeller was a medicine-seller and a grifter.
6. Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself.”
7. It changed how people thought about “impossible dreams and luck and the shape of reality.”
8. Tocqueville said, “Love of money is either the chief or secondary motive in everything Americans do.”
HWT
1. Eastern philosophy focuses on the space between things while western philosophy focuses on things. Ma is a Japanese concept of the space between and it is important in traditional gagaku music. As one critic said, westerners dismiss ma as “mere silence.”
2. An interest in between things and their backgrounds are more developed in eastern thought.
3. Dukkha translates to “unsatisfactoriness” but is often known as “suffering.”
4. A cherry blossom tree is a sakura. Sakura is also a national symbol of transience.
5. In China, philosophy takes the place of religion.
6. Chinese thought does not distinguish between natural and supernatural. It focuses on the “needs of humans here and now.”
7. A butcher named Ding goes beyond “intellectual knowledge to intuitive mastery.”
8. Animism is reflected with their fascination with robots.
Section 6.
Section 6
ReplyDeleteLH
1. Machiavelli says leaders need to have virtĂą
2. Machiavelli’s philosophy is rooted “...in what really happens.”
3. Cynicism
4. According to Hobbes life outside society would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
5. Hobbes feared life in a society without a “sovereign” authority.
6. Hobbes didn’t believe in the existence of the soul.
Kloey Jackson Section 006
ReplyDeleteHWT
1. Eastern philosophers focus on the the space between while Westerners focus on the thing itself. Ma is the "Japanese concept of the space between, is important in traditional gagaku music."
2.An interest in nothingness and emptiness
3.Unsatisfactoriness
4. A cherry blossom tree
5. Nature
6. "Huamn-made" it focuses on nature and does not stand apart from it
7.A butcher, Ding, goes beyond intellectual knowledge and intuitive mastery and questions the shape of reality.
8. Animism and the total negotiation with nature is reflected in the fascination with robots.
LH
1.A leader may need to learn how to not be good or have virtu meaning manliness.
2. "What really happens"
3.Cynicism
4."Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
5. A life without sovereign authority
6.He did not believe in the existence of the soul.
Section #9
ReplyDeleteLH
1. Machiavelli says a leader needs to have "virtĂą", an Italian word meaning "manliness" or valor. Though a lot of a prince's success depends on luck, you can improve your chances by acting bravely and swiftly.
2. Machiavelli's philosophy is rooted in what really happens.
3. He believed leaders should rule by fear based on his low view of human nature, his cynicism.
4. According to Hobbes, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
5. Hobbes was influenced by the fears that England could descend into anarchy because of their Civil War.
6. Hobbes did not believe in the existence of the soul.
Section 6
ReplyDeleteLH
1. To stay in power.
2. In what really happens.
3. The idea that leaders should rule by fear is based on, Machiavelli’s thought that
human beings were unreliable, greedy and dishonest.
4. According to Hobbes, He thought In a world of scarce resources, particularly if you were struggling to find food and water to survive, it could actually be rational to kill other people before they killed you. In Hobbes’ memorable description, life outside society would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.
5. Fear of violent death, influenced Hobbes' writings
6. Hobbes was notorious for refusing to believe in the existence of the soul.
HWT
1. Easterern natural focus on the space between things as for Western, focuses on things. Ma is the japanese concept of the space between and it is important in traditional gagaku music.
2. An interest in between things and their backgrounds are much more developed in eastern thought.
3. Best translated as ‘unsatisfactoriness’ but often rendered as ‘suffering.’
4. It’s a cherry blossom tree. Sakura is a national symbol of transience.
5. Philosophy takes the place of religion in China.
6. Chinese thought does not distinguish between natural and _supernatural___, focusing on the needs of humans here and now.
7. A butcher, Ding, went beyond intellectual knowledge to intuitive mastery.
8. Animism and the total negotiation with nature is reflected in the fascination with robots.
Section 6
ReplyDeleteFL
4: Founder of the misleading Church of Christian Science
8: The Secondary motive of Americans is money
HWT
1:Eastern thought is more feel focused space between things, as Western thought is focused on things. Ma is the space between things it's a Japanese concept
3:Dukkah means 'unsatisfactoriness'
5: Chinese philosophy takes the place of religion
6: Chinese thought doesn't distinguish between the natural and supernatural
8: Animism the thought is that everything has life including the robots.