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

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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. Then, we must ask: What are we actually liberating cows from? Could they exist outside of farms? Nature is cruel. There are few if any bovines as we know them in the wild. And if there were, their lives would be nasty, brutish and short. – New York Daily News Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, ed. by Ian Shapiro (Yale University Press; 2010).

Witty and learned ... Hershovitz intertwines parenting and philosophy, recounting his spirited arguments with his kids about infinity, morality, and the existence of God' Jordan Ellenberg, author of Shape Lorenzo: If I survive long enough to get it! Right now it feels like my life is nasty, brutish, and short. Because the covenant forming the commonwealth results from subjects giving to the sovereign the right to act for them, the sovereign cannot possibly breach the covenant; and therefore the subjects can never argue to be freed from the covenant because of the actions of the sovereign. Hershovitz has two young sons, Rex and Hank. From the time they could talk, he noticed that they raised philosophical questions and tried to answer them. They re-created ancient arguments and advanced entirely new ones. That’s not unusual, Hershovitz says. Every kid is a philosopher.It's in this edition that Hobbes coined the expression auctoritas non veritas facit legem, which means "authority, not truth, makes law": book 2, chapter 26, p. 133. A fast-paced and funny investigation of life’s biggest questions, guided by the world’s most clever and creative thinkers—kids. 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. Most books about life in other countries fall into one of two categories: one, the travelog or two, the journey of self exploration that just happens to take place overseas (Tuscany, Provence.) These books are good (and often excellent) for what they are, but they never really give you a feel for what it is like to live in a country. When you find one that does (like Tim Macintosh Smith’s immortal Travels in Dictionary Land, or Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde) they are something special. When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately or by mediation of another man, to whom He had formerly spoken by Himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately may be understood by those well enough to whom He hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another is hard, if not impossible, to know. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it.

Cicero maketh honourable mention of one of the Cassii, a severe judge amongst the Romans, for a custom he had in criminal causes, when the testimony of the witnesses was not sufficient, to ask the accusers, cui bono; that is to say, what profit, honour, or other contentment the accused obtained or expected by the fact. For amongst presumptions, there is none that so evidently declareth the author as doth the benefit of the action. The first is by extinguishing the light of scripture through misinterpretation. Hobbes sees the main abuse as teaching that the kingdom of God can be found in the church, thus undermining the authority of the civil sovereign. Another general abuse of scripture, in his view, is the turning of consecration into conjuration, or silly ritual.Some of the best philosophers in the world gather in surprising places— preschools and playgrounds. They debate questions about metaphysics and morality, even though they’ve never heard those words and can’t tie their shoes. They’re kids. And as University of Michigan professor of philosophy and law Scott Hershovitz shows, they can help grown-ups solve some of life’s greatest mysteries. After lengthy discussion with Thomas Hobbes, the Parisian Abraham Bosse created the etching for the book's famous frontispiece in the géometrique style which Bosse himself had refined. It is similar in organisation to the frontispiece of Hobbes' De Cive (1642), created by Jean Matheus. The frontispiece has two main elements. The solution, Hobbes argued, was to put some powerful individual or parliament in charge. The individuals in the state of nature would have to enter into a ‘social contract’, an agreement to give up some of their dangerous freedoms for the sake of safety. Without what he called a ‘sovereign’, life would be a kind of hell. This sovereign would be given the right to inflict severe punishment on anyone who stepped out of line. […] Laws are no good if there isn’t someone or something strong enough to make everyone follow them.’ Powered by questions like: Does Hank have the right to drink soda? Is it ever okay to swear? and, Does the number six exist? the Hershovitzes take us on a fun romp through classic and contemporary philosophy. If we join kids on philosophical adventures, Hershovitz argues, we can become sharper thinkers and recapture their wonder at the world.

The fourth is by mingling with both these, false or uncertain traditions, and feigned or uncertain history. By express words, or testament, when it is declared by him in his lifetime, viva voce, or by writing; as the first emperors of Rome declared who should be their heirs. 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". 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.He believed that without a central government, there would be no culture, no society, and it would seem like all men were at war with one another. But where testament and express words are wanting, other natural signs of the will are to be followed: whereof the one is custom. And therefore where the custom is that the next of kindred absolutely succeedeth, there also the next of kindred hath right to the succession; for that, if the will of him that was in possession had been otherwise, he might easily have declared the same in his lifetime... Religion [ edit ] If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. And for the question which may arise sometimes, who it is that the monarch in possession hath designed to the succession and inheritance of his power Aaron Levy (October 1954). "Economic Views of Thomas Hobbes". Journal of the History of Ideas. 15 (4): 589–595. doi: 10.2307/2707677. JSTOR 2707677.

Hobbes's Moral and Political Philosophy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2018. (Retrieved 11 March 2009) This is the only parenting book I would insist everyone read, whether they have kids or not. Hershovitz is a total delight—energetic, compassionate, patient, wise, and very, very funny, even when he is talking about weighty or difficult ideas. I’m grateful to have him as a model for how to talk to my children and how to think alongside them.” —Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers There is an enormous amount of biblical scholarship in this third part. However, once Hobbes' initial argument is accepted (that no-one can know for sure anyone else's divine revelation) his conclusion (the religious power is subordinate to the civil) follows from his logic. The very extensive discussions of the chapter were probably necessary for its time. The need (as Hobbes saw it) for the civil sovereign to be supreme arose partly from the many sects that arose around the civil war, and to quash the Pope of Rome's challenge, to which Hobbes devotes an extensive section. Definition: How terrible life can be under certain conditions; the natural state of man. Origin of Life is Nasty, Brutish, and Short

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Some of the best philosophers in the world gather in surprising places—preschools and playgrounds. They debate questions about metaphysics and morality, even though they’ve never heard the words and perhaps can’t even tie their shoes. They’re kids. And as Scott Hershovitz shows in this delightful debut, they’re astoundingly good philosophers. Hobbes begins his treatise on politics with an account of human nature. He presents an image of man as matter in motion, attempting to show through example how everything about humanity can be explained materialistically, that is, without recourse to an incorporeal, immaterial soul or a faculty for understanding ideas that are external to the human mind. In his witty and learned book Nasty, Brutish, and Short, Hershovitz intertwines parenting and philosophy, recounting his spirited arguments with his kids about infinity, morality, and the existence of God, and teaching half a liberal arts curriculum along the way.” —Jordan Ellenberg, New York Times bestselling author of Shape 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