4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” That’s why we need a social contract—an exchange of freedom for security to avoid a dog-eat-dog state of nature. At least, that’s what Thomas Hobbes posited in Leviathan. Michael Knowles and guest John Yoo, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, discuss how Hobbes’s seminal work has shaped political philosophy for centuries.
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0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Book Club. I'm Michael Knowles and this month we are going to be |
0:16.0 | talking about how man rose up above the condition of a life that is poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. |
0:27.0 | And the way we will do that is by reading Leviathan by Thomas Hobbs, |
0:31.5 | and we will be doing that with John Yu. |
0:34.6 | John Yu, a very well-known legal scholar, |
0:37.4 | professor of law at UC Berkeley, |
0:40.1 | and interpreter of Thomas Hobbs for me who had actually never read this book before this episode. |
0:46.2 | John, thank you for coming on the show. |
0:47.8 | Thanks for having me, Michael. |
0:48.9 | I'm embarrassed to hear that about your lack of knowledge of the philosophy grace but you went to Yale. |
0:56.0 | You know the thing about Yale though actually is people misunderstand this. |
0:59.7 | The undergraduate at Yale is fine. |
1:01.3 | It's the law school actually doesn't turn out the best. |
1:04.8 | I agree with Yale Law School should be closed for the good of the country. |
1:07.8 | You know it's funny because I sometimes think whenever people make jokes about alma mater and things I say, |
1:15.0 | I don't think I can defend Yale really anymore and really what we need is just a massive central power to come up and wipe all of these crazy woke people away. |
1:24.7 | So I guess we could turn our attention to Mr. Hobbs to help us do that. |
1:28.4 | So John, everybody hates Thomas Hobbs, as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, the Libs hate Thomas Hobbs, as far as I can tell. |
1:32.6 | As far as I can tell, the Libs hate Thomas Hobbs, |
1:35.0 | and the Conservatives hate Thomas Hobbs. |
1:37.2 | And yet, when I finally read the book, |
1:40.3 | we're all kind of Hobbesians, aren't we? |
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