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Reading through difficult philosophy texts line-by-line to try to figure out what’s really being said.
On Leviathan (1651), ch. 21, "On the Liberty of Subjects." Thomas Hobbes is known for defending absolute monarchy, so as you'd predict, he's not going to say we have a lot of "natural" liberties.
We do always have the right to self-defense, but that doesn't mean that the sovereign can't with complete justice command you executed (even if you're innocent). Yet Hobbes wants to say that even under a repressive regime we all have lots of liberty, in the sense of no one physically stopping us from doing what we will. And he wants to dismiss as unintelligible any other sense of liberty tied to non-physical obstacles, so this entirely rules out any debate about free will.
Read along with us, starting on p. 161 (PDF p. 197).
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Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes
Reading through difficult philosophy texts line-by-line to try to figure out what’s really being said.
