green numbers give full details | back to texts | expand these ideas
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [MacIntyre] |
| 7559 | Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it |
| 2356 | Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes |
| 2357 | Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd |
| 2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd |
| 6214 | Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity |
| 23987 | The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Goldie] |
| 2362 | The will is just the last appetite before action |
| 2363 | Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars |
| 2360 | 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate |
| 2368 | Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so |
| 2359 | Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present |
| 2370 | All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer |
| 2371 | A contract is a mutual transfer of rights |
| 2372 | The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it |
| 8015 | Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre] |
| 5337 | For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Flanagan] |
| 2374 | In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract |
| 2375 | Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it |
| 8016 | Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre] |
| 2377 | No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen |
| 2379 | If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it |
| 2373 | The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy |
| 2382 | Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others |
| 2383 | Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living |
| 2376 | Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed |
| 2367 | In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short |
| 19764 | Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Rousseau] |
| 20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Oksala] |
| 2366 | There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another |
| 20485 | Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Wolff,J] |
| 2369 | If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights |
| 20484 | We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Wolff,J] |
| 7573 | The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Jolley] |
| 2380 | Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence |
| 2361 | If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition |
| 2364 | Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between |
| 2365 | Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening |
| 2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip |