Hobbes’s Distinctive View of the Social ContractPhilip Pettit (Princeton University , Australian National University)
March 20, 2023, 8:00pm - 9:30pm
This event is online
Organisers:
Monash University
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For Hobbes, people in the condition of nature have a shared language and society but lack a sovereign and a state Language and society ensure that they are inescapably competitive, unlike other animals. A sovereign and a state would solve the problem, subjecting each to a common, pacifying power. But how are they to transition from the one condition to the other? His theory of the social contract—better perhaps, the political contract—is meant to solve that problem.
