Hobbes Second Law Analysis

There seem to be two modes of thinking involved in reading and understanding the theories of past philosophers; first, involves the philosophical tools accessible to the reader in understanding the content. This involves the use of up-to-date dictionaries to define unfamiliar terms, or secondary sources that compose a variety of graded translations and arrangement of the material so that it can be read chronologically. The second mode involves a far more difficult task than the first, to develop a philosophical partnership with the author. This partnership requires an investment in the material, a submersion that allows the linkage between the reader’s brainstem and the author’s arguments or ideas so that one’s breathing and temperature coincide …show more content…
The second law Hobbes derives from the first, which states that when peace and self-preservation demand it, one must be content with as much liberty as he or she would afford others against them. Hobbes discusses the elements in the first two laws and the transformations they have undertaken throughout human history under the influence of religious authority. The first criticism of political rhetoric is the confusion between ‘rights’ and ‘laws’;
“confound ius and lex, right and law, yet they ought to be distinguished, because right consisteth in liberty to do or forbear, whereas Law determineth and bindeth to one of them; so that law and right differ as much as obligation and liberty, which in one and the same matter are inconsistent” (Leviathan, …show more content…
The construction and deconstruction Hobbes undertakes in Leviathan is one that could save our current politics from the time-devouring arguments that originate in confusion and a lack of historical sense. The progress of civil rights movements, immigrant legalization or paths to citizenships, economic disparity, and most alarmingly, the continued degradation of the lives of African Americans will find little momentum without a confrontation and reconsideration of a political system formed over two hundred years ago. This will entail an understanding of the constitutional elements, the functions they served, and the context in which they were written. Definitions will have to be traced and clarified, the contextual background will have to be updated from a colonial region to the United States, from a free society that enslaves freely, to a country of secured freedoms and free individuals, from Christian beliefs to agnostic values. A Hobbesian reconsideration of the principals in it without the rigidity of religious and social entanglements. The greatest consequence of rigidity, as it is in nature, is that there must be a mechanism that allows for the control of this rigidity-a time to be conservative and uphold the constitution and a time be liberal and amend it. This is not a violation of the constitution, only a