This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The opposition with Rousseau is in the conception of the state of nature which is fundamental to the liberal ideological grounding of all post 1789 politics.
Rousseau believes that humans are naturally good and that people must give away their natural rights in exchange for civil rights to a government that will promote the General Will: a return to the state of nature through the abolition of all social noms, as they are inherently evil.
Hobbes believes that humans are naturally evil and that people must lease their natural rights to a legitimate sovereign so that he may defend them and prevent the War of All Against All. The goal of good government is to avoid tyranny, which is the violation of natural law by anyone because it returns it's victims to the natural state and makes chaos and rebellion legitimate.
These two tendencies are well represented in the French revolution and hereafter in every Liberal project.
Hynkla doesn't have weird views at all, he's merely got the views held by most people who have been in direct contact with violence, your cops, soldiers, etc. People who know that society is rife with violent deviants who would victimize everyone if not for the organized monopoly on force. And he's constantly advocating for the maintenance of order as the core of right wing politics.
I happen to disagree as a perennial traditionalist and reject the idea of a state of nature altogether at this point, but no it's not a weird position. And it makes perfect sense here: there is chaos and lawlessness at the border and anyone who restores order is legitimate regardless of means because legitimacy requires the enforcement of order first.
I'd say that's a reasonably accurate summary of my position.
More options
Context Copy link
Unfortunately, Hobbes's advice to the governed is to bow down and kiss the feet of the sovereign, obey without complaint almost no matter how horrible they are, because whatever they are is better than being in that state of nature, the war of all against all. Unless, that is, you think you can defeat the current sovereign and do better.
It's certainly a convenient philosophy for those who embody the whip hand; it justifies anything they might do.
You're leaving out the big hole that famously makes Leviathan the "Rebel's catechism".
The sovereign must be obeyed absolutely insofar as he is not a tyrant. Is he to declare war onto you you have free reign to blow him and all his agents up.
Hobbes does not believe in limited government, but he does believe in natural law as a limiting principle of all possible action. God himself damns tyrants.
It is not just untrue to say that Hobbes justifies all sovereign action. It is actually the opposite of what he says and he got exiled and censored out of it so I'd like you to take that back.
That said yes, if you can't do better you shouldn't destroy all of society out of spite. I don't think that's an unreasonable moral standard. I oppose communism on those very grounds after all.
I mentioned it. "Unless, that is, you think you can defeat the current sovereign and do better."
He may, but His damnation does those under the tyrant no good.
Or do anything but obey. For an American, that means that if you're not ready, able, and willing to take on the entire United States Government and personally replace it with something better of your own devising, suck it up buttercup.
"Seeing that from the virtue of the Covenant whereby each Subject is tied to the other to perform absolute and universal obedience to the City, that is to say, to the Sovereign power, whether that be one man or Council, there is an obligation derived to observe each one of the civil Laws, so that that Covenant contains in it self all the Laws at once; it is manifest that the subject who shall renounce the general Covenant of obedience, doth at once renounce all the Lawes. Which trespass is so much worse than any other one sin, by how much to sin always, is worse than to sin once. And this is that sin which is called TREASON; and it is a word or deed whereby the Citizen, or Subject, declares that he will no longer obey that man or Court to whom the supreme power of the City is entrusted."
He spent time in exile because he supported the wrong sovereign.
Except that this "Unless..." is something you've made up out of whole cloth.
Hobbes' thesis is that the individual should want to subordinate their will/desires to a higher authority because that's how you build civilization. Not that the individual has to.
As much as Hobbes is often tarred as an absolute authoritarian, he makes is quite clear in his writing that ultimate agency and responsibility lies with the individual. People don't have to obey the law, they choose to obey the law. The king is not the King because he has royal blood or some divine right, he's the king because people follow him. This sensation of agency and choice is something is central to Hobbes' thesis and the reason Leviathan was characterized in its' day as a subversive work. It also strikes me something that is distinctly missing from our current (almost entirely liberal/left-leaning liberal) political discourse.
Liberals take for granted the notion things like "legality" and "credibility" are qualities that are arbitrated by men in suits far away from where the rubber meets the proverbial road. They take for granted the idea that order is something that is only ever imposed from the top down. Thus the spectacle of a State Governor essentially telling the Biden Administration "Nah Fam, I'm gonna do my own thing." is something they have difficulty rectifying with their worldview.
Chapter XVIII of Leviathan makes it quite clear he IS an absolute authoritarian.
Certainly not; once a commonwealth has been established, it lies with the sovereign.
The King is the King because a majority of the people decided to follow him or one of his predecessors (Chapter XIX), once.
Hobbes would call that treason. But he would disapprove of the United States anyway, because of the system of subordinate sovereigns.
Yes he makes the argument that, if an authority is "legitimate" one should obey it without question, but given that he spends the preceding 7 and subsequent 13 chapters talking about what it means for an authority to be legitimate or not. Accordingly, I don't think it proves what you think it proves. Instead, I would argue that an "absolute authoritarian" who's authority comes with 20+ pages of exceptions and caveats is substantially less than "absolute."
Yes, that is what I said.
And this is what I mean when I say that there is a "Leviathan Shaped Hole" in the discourse. Like I said the sensation of agency/choice is central to Hobbes' thesis. If anything, the American revolution was particularly Hobbesian in nature in that it was ultimately a rectification of the existing de'facto authority with the de'Jure. King George may have been the Sovereign on paper, but the shipping guilds and colonial councils were the Sovereign on the ground.
As the old line goes, the mark of victory is that none dare call it treason, and that's how we ended up with the Declaration of Independence
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link