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Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinona Show,
continuing the Continental Philosophy series. Thomas seven seven seven is
with us? Are you doing today, Thomas, I.
Speaker 3: Know it pretty well.
Speaker 2: I know, like I said last episode, that it probably
seems peculiar to focus this much on Hobbes and a
continental philosophy discussion, but it's essential. And Hobbs and Machiavelli
are the key thinkers of modern political theory in terms
of its origins. I mean, obviously, i'd privilege Hegel is
the most important political theorist who ever lived. But the
transition from the classical view of the political to the modern,
you've got to understand Hobbes and Machiavelli and continental theorists,
particularly those from a juristic or mathematical school, which again
all things encompassing theoretical mathematics were referred to as geometry
in the early modern era.
Speaker 3: All of those thinkers were in.
Speaker 2: Dialogue with Hobbes, and Hobbs credited himself as the discoverer
of the science of politics, whether whether you accept the
existence of such a thing or not. Hobbs considered himself
to be the founder or discoverer rather of that paradigm,
and basically everyone subsequent who accepts that postulate views him
that way too. It's not accidental that he called his
book Leviathan. What Leviathan is is significant to this symbolic
psychological aspect of what he was talking about in basic capacities.
If you're a Protestant, you mostly know Leviathan from the
A Good Job. Leviathan features in the Psalms, in the
Book of Job, in Isaiah, and in a lot of
the apocrypha. Leviathan is is in the book you know,
you know, and Catholics and Orthodox I believe, I believe
Leviathan is depicted within a lot of medieval artwork and
subsequent as the sin of envy. Okay, that's not that's
that's not really what it represents in scripture significantly, The
O fights are the fights. I'm sure I'm punching that pronunciation.
They were a Gnostic sect in Rome in the third
and fourth centuries a d. They were revered serpents, intotemic capacities.
A lot of the stuff, including in the Conan movie
where people are worshiping Set, you know, the Egyptian deity.
Speaker 3: I think Sets, Lord of the Dead or something. Okay, but.
Speaker 2: Anyway, these sorts of sinister pagans or depicted as worshiping snakes,
well that was the O Fightes that's where that comes from.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Specifically, they believe that the serpent in the Garden of
Eden in Genesis was like an instantation of wisdom and
sacred knowledge. And they also revered Leviathan. What as far
as to say they worship Leviathan, Leviathan was the embodiment
of the world soul that encascelated all living things, in
animate mayor, and it was depicted almost like the Viking
world serpent. Leviathan spaan and surrounds the earth like in
a quair, and you know, presumably he straddles, you know,
the corporeal realm as well as whatever is beyond. You know,
Narcissism is essentially neo Platonists. Okay, But in the Bible,
the most that's written about Leviathan is Job forty one,
and hob specifically was referring to Job forty one thirty four,
which says he he meaning Leviathan, he beholdeth all high things.
He is king, He is a king over all the
children of Pride. So in other words, Leviathan is this
terrible monstrosity, and it's so powerful it can crush Pride
out of men like all Neil before it. You know,
no matter how pride they are or how much humorous
has possessed them. Okay, well, Leviathan is literally in physical terms,
it's a giant sea monster. It's a sea serpent. It's
Lord of the Sea. And when God created the cosmos
and the earth and the sea, there was all these
primordial demons that ruled the earth. Leviathan ruled the sea.
And there's none more powerful at sea. Behemoth was the
beast of the land. He's depicted either as an elephant,
the Hemoth is or this kind of chimeric monster. And
Zizz is Lord of the air. Ziz is a giant
terror bird kind of like across a griffin and a pterodact.
Speaker 3: Okay, so.
Speaker 2: These in earliest creation, and these monstrous, massively powerful, chaotic
almost loved crafty and creatures. They ruled over certain aspects
of creation. But then they were ultimately so objugated by
God and almost and like literally made to heal and
they were turned into kind of almost pets. But this
makes sense that an Englishman would would would view the
absolute sovereign, the most great and terrible thing as Leviathan,
because obviously the sea encapsulates Great Britain. You know, and
it's the source of its power, you know, even back then,
and something that was going to subjugate and crush even
the mightiest war lords and would be sovereigns and self
I've anointed in the siah Is. It very much tracks
with kind of the psychology of of the people native
to Britannia that it would be the sea monster, you know.
But that's but the key, the key to it is
what I said, it's Joe forty one thirty four. Like
Leviathan looks upon all the highest things, and he is
a king over all in his domain. You know, he
can only be subjugated by God, and he's so powerful
and terrifying he can crush pride out of all men
who aspire to power and greatness. Now, this seems that
there's an overemphasis on fear emanating from the essence of
the sovereign. That's not an accident, because that's the essence
of sovereignty. It's not just mortal decisionism and the power,
you know, determined matters of life and death over those
subjugated in the body politic.
Speaker 3: But fear is.
Speaker 2: The mechanism of sovereignty that facilitates political order within this
mathematical paradigm or geometric paradigm. Rather, you know, Hobbes's view
of virtue is pragmatic.
Speaker 3: The entire.
Speaker 2: Book Leviathan is in dialogue, is in punitive dialogue with
Aristotle and the Aristotelian concept of virtue. To Hobbes, virtue
was in the past in most political writing, and especially
that which was written for the benefit of princes and nobles.
It was basically a rationalization for how powerful people are
able to exploit and invent their own strength to enrich
themselves and create value. And Hobbs wasn't saying that that's
necessarily a bad thing. But to pretend that there's this
kind of metaphysical value to it beyond that which is
pragmatic is misguided. Have declared that virtue is nothing more
than the habit of doing what tends towards one's own
self preservation. But owing to it's fundamental condition and essence,
you know, part of what contributes to one's own self
preservation and enrichment is to facilitate permitting others to do
the same, you know, and acting like a brute ultimately
is counterproductive and sabotage is that self interested enterprise you know,
so there is a balancing calculus here vice contra. This
pragmatic orientation towards virtue is basically anything to the contrary
that is offensive to order, and that is self sabotaging.
And we'll get into this in a minute, because first
we've got to define more about the essence of sovereign authority.
But this is why, even from a pragmatic perspective, things
like modern government are legitimate, like sabotaging the fortunes of
entire classes of people based on this like imaginary appeal
to you know, the dignity of some race or population.
That's the definition of tyranny. It's also self sabotaging of
the enterprise of sovereignty, which only exists derivative the consent
to the body politic.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So this is important because some people misread Hobbes and
say that, well, you know, once once Leviathan is anointed,
it can do whatever it wants. That's not true. But
moving on, one of the reasons why Hobbs is credited
to is kind of the father of liberalism, up with
a lot of liberalism, even though in America people generally
assigned that significance to John Locke because the American system
as it existed, I mean, it hasn't existed for you know,
since Agent's sixty five. But Locke drew upon a lot
of Hobbes's political ontology, but he frankly softened it and
also his view of the social contract a totally different parameters.
And also Locke wasn't nearly as hostile to the concept
of of aristocracy. Like we talked about the last episode.
Hobbs rejected the Riscitilian postulate that you know, some men
are by nature, you know, more worthy to command, and others,
you know, axiomatically worthy to serve. He rejected that based
on the economy of violence, and that in the Habbizian
state of nature which precedes political order, you know, any
man can murder an individual in command and seize that
command for himself. You know, there's nothing in nature precluding that.
And beyond that, Hobbs makes the point that in government
one must do everything in their power to prevent the
emergence of pride within representatives of the sovereign, and in
order to abide this in order in order to abide
this conceptual framework where this philosophical orientation, where some men
are the natural aristocracy that does nothing if not inculcate.
Speaker 3: People with pride, and an overweening pride at that.
Speaker 2: And even if they even if they believe themselves to
be good man, and even if by some measure they are,
you know, what what derives from their decisionism is always
going to be rationalized as as you know, deriving from
some essential benevolence and you know, contained within their essential nature,
as you know, the natural elite, you know. And that's
I don't accept that argument, but it's persuasive, and it's
internally logical and within the geometry of politics that Hobbs
genuinely believes that he had discovered, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And beyond that, Hobbs says, even if, even if Aristotle's right,
even if men are fundamentally unequal by nature, individual men,
particularly those of great ambition, will always consider themselves equal,
or at least on equal terms, before the law and
certainly before God. So they'll be unwilling to make peace
unless this is acknowledged, you know. Beyond supervisial terms, there's
got to be some basic equality of status that's structurally
coded in to the sovereign mechanism as well as that's
internalized by the individuals that constant the body politic. And
it can't just be a perfunctory thing that's acknowledged in
passing or by storing language and some official document. It's
got to actually be believed, and it's got to be a
core tenet of how equity is realized and procedural as
well as substantive terms. So for the sake of keys
within the parameters of sovereign authority, that this has to
be acknowledging. And it doesn't exist. So even if it's
a fiction, it is a law of nature in the
Hbisian sense that all men must acknowledge each other as
equal by nature, even if it is a fiction. You know,
this renders natural differences within the body politic irrelevant. Okay,
And again we're talking about the domain of the political,
which is the discrete sphere of human activity. We're not
talking about an absolute existential terms or something like that,
and people misconstrue that as well. So the purpose of
this geometry of politics, it's got a single purpose, and
invoking the laws of nature to rationalize, you know, the
architecture of that purpose. All this tends to make men
sociable and peaceable and to abolish or reduced to a
minimum or as minimal as possible, friction, resentment, hostilities deriving
from pride or partiality, or discrete ambition, or excessive self
love or exploitative convetousness, all of these that's for the
purpose of the entire science of politics is and the
Easian conceptual framework of nature. What they represent are guiding
poll stars and rules and laws for unbiased arbitration and
impartial distribution of goods, and the creation of incentives to
avoid in gratitude becoming endemic within the body politic, and
to breed a basic absolute respect for the law. So
when he's talking about nature and natural laws, he's not
resorting to ethics. He's not talking about natural law arguments
as we think of him in legal theory or that
you know, we think of in the terms that theologians
and these liberal moralists like John Rawls talked about. He's
talking about the basic architecture of the natural world and
the as regards human affairs and the absence of a
governing sovereign. Okay, he literally believed himself to be discovering
identifiable and quantifiable geometric variables relating to power paradigms within
the within human social existence. Okay, so that's important. He's
not passing a value judgment on it. Hobbs has learned
in the Bible, you know, like any Englishman of his
cast and education would be. And he was a believing Christian.
And Hobbs absolutely suggested, I didn't want to do this later,
Why did he go into a part three? He absolutely
suggested that to purposefully and with malice a forethought, make
hash with these laws of nature. There there'll be a
terrible punishment derived from God's architecture. And in the case
of his sovereign you know, who ignores these things, you know,
owing to his own hubris or owing to fact he
believes himself to be a god on earth, you know,
he will probably he will probably be murdered in a
rebellion if he's too much of a tyrant, or if
he merely gross he mismanages his role is sovereign. And obviously,
you know, any anything he accomplishes in legacy terms will
be rapidly dismantled, as whatever structures he erected literally and
figurative will be unable to serve their function of you know,
reducing friction within the body politic to minimal quantities such that,
you know, the regime that he serves and in some
cases created, will exist in perpetuity.
Speaker 3: So that's key. And of course.
Speaker 2: The big critique from subsequent liberal schools of thought as
well as you know, from classical oriented theorist and reactionaries,
was well, how how can how can how can this
geometry of politics be sustainable if there's no true moral
framework and distancentive there artists incentives though you know, again,
what kindcuts of virtue in political terms is do not
doing to others what you would not have them do
unto you. You know, So acting violating natural laws of
political geometry to enrich one sells at the expense of others,
you know, is barbarism under a veneer of of of
some sort of abiding rationale, you know, whether it's some
contrivance of divine right, whether or you know, I claim
that one is uh is a natural lord and those
that he oppresses or natural slaves, or you know, a
man claiming that he's part of a minority uh race
or sect and that affords him special privileges and protections
contra the majoritarian ethnos. I mean, it can be anything.
But this is ultimately self defeating. And we're seeing this
right now in the American situation. And I shouldn't need
to I shouldn't need to paint a simpletons picture as
to what I mean. The subs are smart, so I'm
sure they discern that the uh, and also too, you know,
the central defect of trying to extrapolate Christian ethics to
politics is that, uh, the essential defect of saying that, well, logos,
you know, and and and higher reason should like alan
should rule politics, because you're presuming that every subject, of
of the of the political sovereign is some sort of
God hearing actor. Because the only thing that binds men
in such conditions is there is there is there conscious
is in the individual and the inner witness of the individual,
you know, and beyond that even you know, all all
men are so, even men who fear God, and even
men who believe in the living Christ, you know, the
punishment they have to fear is that of their you know,
immortal soul and judgment before God. You know, if there's
an immediate hope of reward, they'll probably take their chances.
You know, even men who are otherwise you know, basically
decent people. This is what Hobbs called the fear of
quote invisible powers. You know that exists in the state
of nature, and it's ubiquitous, But that's not powerful enough.
The political is man's domain, not God's. You know, you're
ultimately accountable to God for everything you do, but God's
not some arbiter or the political.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: What is needed is the establishment of conditions that reward
people for obeying the natural law of political geometry and
punish people horribly who don't.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: In short, the essence of sovereignty is visible power contra
invisible powers, you know, and security first and foremost within
the body politic must be paramount. Some people suggest that,
particularly the twentieth century, where I think even intelligent people
with a long view of the struggle processes, they developed
a skewed perspective owing to the anomaloust violence of it
and interstate warring becoming normal when in fact it's totally abnormal.
But a lot of these people said, well, Hobbs don't
really concerned with the internal situation and the body politics
ability to come to consensus that violence, you know, because
you know that thirty years war and the war three
kingdoms was what set the tenor for this, you know.
So he was his object his objectivity was compromised by
the specter of murderous civil war. But that's the wrong
way to look at it, because if you don't, peace
within the body politic is what makes all other security possible.
You know that that's what facilitates security and the ability
to defend against enemies of alienage, you know, and foreign
threats like that. The converse isn't the case, you know,
And Hobbs's really the essence of a sovereign polity. The
brass tax of it is the ability to achieve consensus
within a body politic that is ossified around a consensus
that thus then precludes civil war, you know. And it's
and and men voluntarily take themselves out of the state
of war of all against all in order to identify
as a body politic, whereby a moral consensus allows the
selection of a sovereign who will then wield the absolute
power of life and death over every individual constituent element
to the body politic, you know. So it's not the issue,
isn't whether civil war is rare or common or that
that doesn't figure into the calculus. What it is is
it's a prerequisite for the creation of sovereignty and its
establishment and it's and it's functioning according to the you know,
parameters of the previously identified.
Speaker 3: Natural law the UH and this is why, and this
is important because it's another issue of first impression. A
key to Hobbes's political ontology is that the sovereign must
political union of the body politic, authority conceptual and actual
deriving from sovereignty and and and the sovereign itself. This
has to be concentrated within an actual person, you know,
justice and injustice and political terms and what people owe
to the sovereign and what the sovereign knows the body
politic This all rests upon to this day the abstraction
of legal personhood. But an essential postulate of Habbisian politics
political theory is that this must be an actual person.
Speaker 2: And that again that that's an issue of first impression.
You know, there were great kings and Athens obviously, you know,
like Pericles and stuff, and Caesar was revered as a
god on earth, you know, at this at zenith. But
this hadn't been proposed before. People didn't claim that the
essence of sovereignty can only exist within the man of
the king himself, you know. And the reason why there's
a pragmatic aspect obviously because it's comforting to people and
it also allows them to orient themselves correctly if they
can point too like a sovereign king or queen or
emperor or a lord protector, you know, warlord like Cromwell
and say, you know that man is the emperor or
that man is the king, or that man is the
lord protector, you know, and embodied within him is the
will of the body politic. Because your individual will is
sacrificed to the sovereign the interest of you know, security
being sustained internally in perpetuity, as well as you know,
allowing justice and equity to be realized. You know, you
give up your right to punish privately, You give up
your right to make war, you know, and identify criteria
for war and to identify you know who, the the
ability to identify private rivals as public enemies. You sacrifice
all of that to the sovereign. And you know, the
sovereign his will becomes the collective will of the body politic,
you know, and when he takes action, either as warlord
or as law giver, you know, that is where his
power derives from. You know, this can't be vested in
some abstract assembly, you know, or this can't be reduced
to some sort of procedure that can be executed by
any like council of men or women or by some
random guy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's uh, that's not how it works, and that's onto
an ontological nullody, you know. And as a consequence of
that too, you know, the legislature and the judiciary and
any other branch of government. Sovereignty does not invest in
those branches. So it'd be perverse for a president to
claim or an emperor to claim that he's bound by
the court. Now, part of the essence of sovereignty. A
sovereign can say, I'm gonna forego wielding sovereign power over
this court decision and allow its decision to stand. But
this idea that he's not sovereign, you know, a court is,
or a legislature is. That's uh, that's logical perverse, and
it flies in the face of the entire basis of
of of sovereign authority, you know, both the theory of
it and its practice. And this, incidentally, is one reason
why America makes no sense post Wartergate, because basically it's
being alleged, you know, and you can't you can't declare
that three hundred million people decided that John Roberts or
Elaine Kagan, you know, represents the body politic and it
is some sovereign authority, you know, like I'm being I'm
being obtuse. But you know, the point is valid, you know,
And that's why it's not an accident, and it's it's
not some contrivance of you know, horse trading or something
at the original constitutional convention that the President of United
States the only nationally elected representative. You know, this is uh,
the lineage from from Hobbes to the founding of the
United States is more proximate and in conceptual linear terms
direct than people think.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: And also, what preceded Hobbes's identification of a geometry of
politics was an understanding whether again, whether I or any
other man accepts this or not, was an understanding that
was extant at the time of Leviathan being devised and written,
that there was a science of the law, and you know,
a science of equity.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So Hobbes is defining the social contract in legal terms,
and the Commonwealth was defined in terms of legal personhood,
and Hobbs takes it a step further, and you know,
again owing to the fact that if there is in
fact a political geometry that can be discovered, the architecture
of which is what facilitates, you know, the the permanent
peace within the body politic and the psychological acceptance a
sovereign authority, you know, according to the terms contained within
it intrinderic to the laws of nature. You know, obviously
this derives from the same basis as the science of
the law. And there's got to be not just a
theoretical agreement, there's got to be actual practice there that comports.
Speaker 3: With both.
Speaker 2: Conceptual structures, you know, not not just for the appearance
of harmony, but for the actual harmonious exercise or execution
or rather of these things. Give me one a second.
Let me see what time we've got. Okay, So, the
social contract is the basis of.
Speaker 3: Political order.
Speaker 2: Facilitated by sovereign authority, you know, which can only which
can only be derivative of, you know, a consensus among
the body politic and the criteria for who in what
concerts the body politic is important to, especially in the
present day when these concepts are deliberately accusecated or simply
just not defined other than the most abstracted terms. But
we'll probably have to get to that next time. The
social contract has two components. According to Hobbes, what is
a covenant each member of the body politic. The initial
founding act of you know, the creation of Leviathan is
a covenant between in each member of the body politic
to acknowledge, you know, an intent to create a civil
society presided over by a man or a body of men,
as long as these people, you know, are discreetly identifiable
in whom absolute sovereignty is to vest. Okay, And this
is critical because this is a kind of ascending authority,
you know, like a sovereign him deciding, you know, what
the criteria are suisponte that facilitates his authority. That's that
that that's that's tyrannical, but it's also a logical fallacy.
That's not how it works, you know, Or a sovereign
deciding that he wants the body politic to include more
people than it us, you know, based on criteria that
will not be accepted by the actual body politic.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Again, that's that's not just the tyrannical dictad but it's
also it's it's it's also at odds. It frustrates the
purpose of the entire procedure, and it contradicts the laws
of nature that give rise to political authority in the
first place. But moving on, the second component of the
social contract is quite literally the vote determining who were
what is to be the sovereign. We're talking about the
vote in somewhat metaphorical terms, some act of decisionism, some
formal act of decisionism that represents the convenants and the
compact between each member of the body politic to acknowledge
the sovereign authority, the person of the sovereign. Now, how
that person is chosen, you know, how that man is
invested with that authority. That can take like what due
process constitutions for those purposes, can take any number of forms.
It's not that there's not some hard and fast paradigm
instead of criteria by which that has to be conducted.
Save you know again that it reflects, you know, an
extent and actual and verifiable covenant that is accepted by
you know, each party to that compact. What presumably would
be you know, like adult men of full majority, capable
of bearing arms, but that we're gonna go ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 3: But you know, and.
Speaker 2: Presuming a true consensus, you know, not just a raw
majority of fifty one forty nine percent, but presuming that
there's an actual cohesiveness and this covenant is accepted, you know,
by something more I would think than a supermajority would
be the criteria by which legitimacy attaches. But the people
who are outside of the covenant and who refuse to
avail themselves to the contract, you know, people who are
an open revolt against it, they remain in the state
of war according to the laws of nature, and thus
they come the enemies of the body politic okay, and
that's manageable.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It begs the question as to what what what ratio
kinds it is a tipping point and to civil war.
But that's somewhat tautological. You know, that consensus is uh
kind of like what's in for purposes of the social contract.
It's probably kind of like what the Supreme Court said
about pornography, like you know it when you see it,
you know, but this is why you know again, and
we won't have time to get to this in this episode.
But Hobbes very much believed that there had to be
there had to be a basic homogeneity within the body politic,
at least in terms of moral agreement, because you can't
you can't have a third of the body body politic
saying that they'll abide the Covenant. But with these qualifications,
you know, because you know, and and they'll reject certain
affroative criteria on grounds that you know, they worship a
different god or that you know they they don't accept
certain parameters that the majority does of what is you know,
properly within the scope of sovereign authority, you know, based
on a sectarian objection, you know, And that's why Hobbs
goes out of his way in Leviathan to make clear
that the sovereign has the authority to ban or censor,
you know, matters of religious belief. You know, not not
because he's the pope or not because you know he
has any legitimate authority to regulate men's and your witness
and their consciences. But if people arrive or if people
take on, you know, a sectarian belief structure contra the majority,
you know that you're sowing the seeds of civil war,
and you're allowing yourself, as part of the minority faction,
a sort of repudiation device whereby you can return to
the state of war if it suits you, based on
appeal to a theological preference, you know, And that that
that puts the a private right of war into the
hands of a minority element of the body politic. And again,
a sovereign can't surrender his sovereignty. That's that's, you know,
a self refuting postulate, you know, and it contradicts the
essential nature of what we're talking about.
Speaker 3: But you know, and there's no suggesting that.
Speaker 2: The essence of sovereignty is fear and the ability to
to kill.
Speaker 3: That makes people queasy.
Speaker 2: And the lowercase liberal objection to that is that, well,
you know, the dignity of the individual and the dignity
of the group and individual belongs to must be honored
and compliance can't be based on fear. But all compliance
is based on fear. Like again, men are sinners and
avarice is the norm. You can't rely upon invisible power
and men's inner witness to make them abide political authority.
That's preposterous. We're not talking about hobbs and not talking
about rather what is actually virtuous and what is aspirational.
He's saying that coded into nature, there are literally natural
laws of power politicians. The political is a discrete sphere
of human activity, the subject matter of which is violence
and power derived from violence and the threat of violence.
And according to this geometry, this literal geometry, the only
way that a sovereign can perpetuate itself or himself, because
it's literally a person we're talking about, is by resort
to the power of life and death and inculcating members
of the body politic who, despite their initial consent or
that of their sires which they inherited and moral as
well as ontological terms, the only thing that truly prevents
them from resorting to acts derived from destructive ambition is
the fact that they will they will be murdered if
they rise up against the sovereign. That's not to say
that there's there there are no remedies before the government,
or that a sovereign cannot lose his mandate, but he
cannot lose it when acting lawfully and within the scope
of his authority. Some cadre of men simply decide that
they don't want to obey his dictps anymore, or that
they want to seize power for themselves based on a
sectarian imperative or and ideological rationale, you know, And people
confuse those things, especially because one of the reasons why
the what I think is the conception syntax of political
theory in the twentieth century, and we're very much mired
in that paradigm conceptually. But the reason that's a poisonous
because it exclusively derives from moralizing language, you know, even
that which is nominally atheist or purports to be a science.
You know, it's it's just endless moral postulating. And there's
something rather profound there. I mean, yeah, part of it
is just kind of like the vulgarization of discourse and things, obviously,
and the breakdown of the majority and consensus, such that
all discursive language aims to agitate certain segments of the
body politic, you know, and and to exploit these sorts
of divisions. It's all those things. But it's more than that,
you know it. And one of the reasons why I
view the return of general religiosity as a corrective is
because a lot of I just described, I believe it's
born of you know, a kind of moral impoverishment from
religious quarters where moral education should be emanating obviously, you know,
in the absence of that countlessly or not, the people
look at public authority as a source of those things
or what should be, you know, perverses that may be.
It's sort of an an important a storm sort of thing.
But but yeah, we'll get it next time. We'll get
into Hobbes's view of of Christ and things. But you know,
and that's so, to be clear, there are a remedy.
He's held not just by the body politic as a collective,
but individuals constituents there ran and to be clear, Hobbs viewed,
according to their natural law, the body politic to be
discrete individuals contrasting with one another. This isn't a so
sort of notion of you know, some some sort of
psychological or metaphysical whole that the you know, possessive a
collective will. This is important, okay, And this is one
of the things that defines the angle sex and tradition
contra that of of the continent. Clear, Hobbs absolutely believed
in precise remedies contra sovereign authority, you know, But he
viewed as these things. But he viewed these things as
one would controversy in mathematics or in science, you know,
So the emergence of political hostility at scale, it had
to be resolved through resort to precise variables deduced from
the social contract, the law, which itself is derived from
natural laws, you know, and the rights and duties of
the sovereign and his obligation to those subjugated, and you know,
in kind the rights, duties and obligations of the subjects
to the sovereign, you know, and to one another. So
this idea that well, revolution just happens, you know, or
there's a lifespan of every government, and you know, we've
we've got to just accept that civil war, like all war,
arrives like the seasons. Hobbs projected that outright, you know,
he's he posited that it was. It would be tantamount
to stating that there there's an equation that simply can't
be answered, you know, where there's some or an engineering
a bridge, there's there's just no way to you know,
devise a proper load bearing beam, you know. And again, uh,
I don't accept that ontology, but it's internally consistent, and
don't gonna me wrong. Hobb is one of the most
disciplined and methodical the political theorists whoever lived. Like he absolutely.
Speaker 3: This was.
Speaker 2: This truly was like a complete conceptual structure, you know,
like from inception. But even if it wasn't, you know,
the internal consistency has to be sustained before it to.
Speaker 3: Hold any merit, you know, So even if you.
Speaker 2: Reject the substance of these postulates, there's really no other
criteria that could sustain the paradigm, you know, other than
this kind of mathematical model that almost that that almost
parallels Newtonian physics, if that makes any sense. But I'm
gonna I did here he's heard about fifty five minutes,
and I'm going to change gears a bit. I hope
this isn't going on too long again. I I don't
want to discuss angle anglophone philosophy and conin philosophy series.
Speaker 3: But as we move on, like you'll see why I
did this.
Speaker 2: And I didn't want to start talking about I don't
want to start talking about cont or Schmidt and make
reference to Hobbes and then have to, you know, kind
of drop a capsule summary of these street concepts and things.
But I hope people are getting something valuable out of
this from the feedback we got at OGC told me
that they were because it got a lot of crops,
and that makes me very happy.
Speaker 1: Well, anyone who's wondering why you would cover Hobbes Paul
Gottfried's book, it's his textbook. I think he taught school,
taught college course with it on. Schmidt is basically all
about Hobbs.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, I got Freed's a great, a great I
a great thinker like he's I've I I really get
a lot out of his out of his scholarship.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, that's a good point, man.
Speaker 2: I should dig that book out and like Refreshment, recle
leg and Ready years ago and it's it was awesome.
I read After Liberalism lately, which I mean all all
Goffred' stuff is compelling. But yeah, I thanks for reminded
me of the Schmidt. I'll dig it up.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: A mutual friend of ours talked to Paul Gottfried on
Monday and told him that there was a whole bunch
of young kids running around who were reading Paul, you know,
reading him, and his his comment was, I'm I'm glad
that my friends are getting younger and my enemies are
getting older.
Speaker 2: Yeah there's so yeah, yeah, no I I I sympathize.
I mean, Goffrey really is old. He's still going, which
is great. But no, I I even in my own life,
I I see that I'm kind of coming to fruition
and yeah, I I take some Frida in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, just plug your plug, your substack
and anything else and we'll get out of here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My online home is substack. It's real Thomas seven seven seven,
that's substack dot com. That's that's like where all the
magic happens and all the felonies happen. But I'm a
I shouted out earlier today, I need a few days
to recover from the road and stuff. But pursuing to
me like restructuring my brand and content, and that's getting
nude from Discord. I decided Rumble is going to be
our home for our weekly live stream this Saturday. I
got a bunch of stuff to do, and I got
a couple social engagements, I mean, relating the partisan stuff,
you know, just like friends of ours I I gotta
connect with. But a week from save we'll start the
stream again. The weekly stream. It will be un rumble, Like,
don't worry. I'm gonna like pin the link where everybody
can find it on the substack and stuff, and you'll
be able to find my other social media platforms through substack.
And I'm restructuring and rebuilding my website in coming weeks.
So but yeah, for now, get up substack. I'm also
on t gram and Instagram. I'm kind of you biquitous.
I'm on YouTube, but like seek and you shall find.
But yeah, for now, find me on substick and we'll
go from there as kind of things grow and development.
Speaker 1: We were doing a stream recording last night about the
OGC at the event and just doing a recap of
the speeches and one of the things Bagbe's speech came up.
And one of the things that I said was I said,
go subscribe to Thomas A's substack the talks that he's
having with Bagbee and then season of mind phaser. You
are going to want to here.
Speaker 3: That's great, Thank you man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have maybe. Yeah, I'm not you know,
you're my friend. I'm not doing this because you're my friend.
I'm doing this because you people want to hear the conversation.
Speaker 3: That's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you man. Yeah, Babies, I mean, Baby's a
dear friend, and yeah, he's a brilliant guy. Man, And uh,
I've been really blessed. Uh, I mean, I'm always blessed
that you and Jay Burden want to collab with me,
because you guys always bring a lot of fire. But uh,
Begbie and Josh Neil, like both of them guys are
super intelligent, and I think we have a good report
like I do when they do. Our subject matter concentrations
are different, but they dovetail. And yeah, I I owe
both of those guys a tremendous debt. Man John Slaughter too,
he's wrote a great book. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's
a great dude too. But and he's he's every bit
as intelligent as as these other guys. But I'm very
much a I'm very much a like a theoretical guy,
and and Begbie and Josh Neil really kind of compliment
my subject there concentrations. So yeah, no, that's tremendous man.
Thank you for that.
Speaker 3: Enforcement. Yeah we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this weekend is busy, but we can reconvene anytime
next week and continue this series.
Speaker 1: We will, thank you.
Speaker 3: Thomas I appreciate it yea man guys
Speaker 1: H