POL200Y5 Chapter Notes -Legal Personality, Wield, Thomas Hobbes
22 Apr 2014
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The permanent uncertainty and lack of trust that characterizes hobbes state of nature: contracts and tax payments; in a contract the performance of each party is divided in time. One person performs first and then as time passes another party performs. In between this time though the situation may alter and the second person may not want to abide. Its rational to want to have some institution or mechanism capable of making sure that everyone pays his or her taxes. I"m happy to do so as long as i know that everyone else is doing so as well: the sovereign makes it safe and rational to obey the laws of nature. Those who pay taxes and abide by the contract, while the leviathan is in place, put themselves at mercy to those who don"t. Hobbes speaks of the sovereign in legal or contraction terms. Plato the fact the philosophers possess power isn"t some artificial creation, it"s a reflection of nature.
