Michael: Alright Kevin, quick—sum up your knowledge of 17th-century political philosophy in one sentence. Kevin: Easy. It's a bunch of guys in wigs arguing that the only thing worse than being ruled by a tyrant is being stabbed by your neighbor over a loaf of bread. Michael: That is… shockingly accurate. Especially for the book we're tackling today. It’s a beast of a text, both in size and in reputation: Leviathan or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, written by Thomas Hobbes. Kevin: Just the title sounds heavy. You can feel the parchment dust from here. So, why this book? Why are we diving into something so old and, let's be honest, intimidating? Michael: Because it's one of the most provocative and influential books ever written about power and society. And you have to remember the context. Hobbes published this in 1651, right in the middle of the bloody English Civil War. He literally saw his country tearing itself apart, so his obsession with creating a system for absolute order wasn't just an academic exercise. It was a desperate attempt to answer a terrifying question. Kevin: What question is that? Michael: How do you stop humans from destroying each other? Kevin: Okay, that's a big one. So he's basically trying to write the instruction manual to prevent societal collapse. Where does a philosopher even start with a problem that massive? Michael: That's the genius of it. He doesn't start with governments or kings. He starts with you. With me. With the fundamental mechanics of a single human being.

Kevin: The mechanics? What do you mean? Like, our biology? Michael: Exactly. But in a way that feels incredibly modern, almost like a computer scientist designing a robot. For Hobbes, a human being is just a body in motion. Everything, and he means everything, begins with what he calls "sense." An external object—say, a tree—presses on your eye. That pressure creates a motion that travels to your brain. What you perceive as "seeing the tree" is just your brain's reaction to that physical motion. Kevin: Huh. So our entire experience of the world is just… physical cause and effect? Bumps and shoves on our sense organs? Michael: Precisely. And it gets even more interesting. He asks, what happens after the tree is gone? The motion inside you doesn't just stop. It continues, but it gets weaker over time. He has this amazing line: "Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense." Kevin: Wait, so a memory is just a blurry, fading JPEG of the original experience? A leftover ripple in the machine? Michael: That's a perfect analogy. And a dream? That's just the random noise of those decaying senses bumping into each other while you sleep. There's no magic, no soul in the traditional sense. It's all just physics. He was a radical materialist, which got him into a lot of trouble and led many to accuse him of being an atheist. Kevin: I can see why. It's a pretty bleak, mechanical view of humanity. Where does things like morality or desire fit into this machine? Michael: That's the next layer. All these internal motions create two fundamental drives. He calls them "appetite" and "aversion." Appetite is a motion towards something you want. Aversion is a motion away from something you don't. That’s it. Those are the two master programs running the human machine. Kevin: So "good" and "evil" don't really exist in Hobbes's world? Michael: Not in any absolute sense. He says, "whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil." If you desire it, it's "good" for you. If you hate it, it's "evil" for you. End of story. It's the ultimate subjective morality. Kevin: Wow. So we're all just individual machines programmed to chase our own "goods" and run from our own "evils." That sounds like a recipe for chaos. Michael: And that is exactly his point. Because there's one more crucial piece of programming. Hobbes argues that our core desire, the one that never, ever stops, is the desire for power. Not necessarily in an evil, world-domination way, but power as in the "present means to obtain some future apparent good." It’s the ability to get what you want and keep yourself safe. Kevin: So, money, reputation, friends, strength… all that is just a form of power to help us get more of the things we have an appetite for. Michael: Yes, and here’s the killer quote: he describes this as "a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death." It never ends. The moment you get one thing, you're already worried about securing it and getting the next thing. Kevin: That sounds eerily like the modern world. The endless chase for the next promotion, the next milestone, the next thousand followers on social media. It’s a perpetual motion machine of wanting. Michael: It is. And now, put all these machines together in one place. Everyone is rationally pursuing their own self-interest. Everyone is seeking more power to secure their future. But resources are limited. What happens? Kevin: A massive, ugly traffic jam of everyone trying to get what they want. People start crashing into each other. Michael: Worse. It becomes a war. Not a formal war with armies, but a "war of every man against every man." This is his most famous concept: the State of Nature. In this state, without any overarching power to keep people in check, there is no industry, no culture, no knowledge, no society. There is only, as he puts it, "continual fear, and danger of violent death." Kevin: And life in this state? Michael: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." He argues this isn't because people are inherently evil. It's the logical outcome of a world full of rational, self-interested machines competing for survival. You might be a perfectly nice person, but if you know your neighbor might kill you for your food, it's only rational to consider killing him first. Kevin: Wow. So we're just selfish robots doomed to fight each other? That's… profoundly depressing. It makes you want to just give up on humanity. Michael: It is depressing! But for Hobbes, this diagnosis is the essential first step. You have to stare into that abyss and understand the problem in its most severe form. Because only then can you appreciate the scale of the solution required. Kevin: And I'm guessing his solution isn't just "let's all be nicer to each other." Michael: Not even close. Because Hobbes's diagnosis is so extreme, his prescription is equally extreme. This is where he builds his monster.

Kevin: A monster? That doesn't sound like a solution. That sounds like a bigger problem. Michael: Well, the book is named Leviathan after a biblical sea monster, so he's not hiding it. He says the only way out of the State of Nature, the only way to stop the war of all against all, is for everyone to come together and make a deal. A contract. Kevin: The social contract. I've heard of that. But his version sounds like it has some serious teeth. Michael: It has fangs, claws, and the power of a tidal wave. Here's the deal he proposes, and it's a breathtakingly audacious one. Every single person must agree to give up their natural right to do whatever they want for their own preservation. You give up your right to govern yourself, your right to violence, your right to everything. Kevin: Okay, you give it up… to whom? Michael: To one single entity. It could be one man (a monarch) or an assembly of men (a parliament), but the power must be absolute and undivided. This new entity is the Sovereign, the Leviathan. You authorize all of its actions as if they were your own. You promise total obedience. Kevin: Hold on. Total obedience? So you're saying if the Sovereign decides to take my house, I just have to say, "Okay, you're the boss"? Michael: According to Hobbes, yes. Because you made a covenant. You gave the Sovereign the authority to do whatever it deems necessary to maintain peace and security. And your neighbor did the same. Now, neither of you has to live in fear of the other, because there is a massive, terrifying power that will crush anyone who steps out of line. He has another classic line for this: "Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all." Kevin: So the Leviathan is basically the ultimate enforcer. It's the biggest predator in the jungle, so all the smaller predators fall in line. Michael: A perfect way to put it. He calls it a "mortal god." It's an artificial person created by all of us, with the sole purpose of saving us from ourselves. Its power isn't a gift from God in the old divine-right sense; it's a power we grant it out of sheer, desperate self-interest. Kevin: But this sounds like a recipe for tyranny! What stops this all-powerful Leviathan from becoming a monster that just oppresses everyone for its own benefit? Isn't that just trading the horror of chaos for the horror of oppression? Michael: That is the million-dollar question, and Hobbes's answer is chillingly pragmatic. He would say: yes, the Sovereign could be unjust. It could take your property. It could be cruel. But even the worst possible sovereign is better than the alternative. Kevin: How could he possibly justify that? Michael: Because the alternative is the State of Nature. The alternative is the constant, gnawing fear of being murdered in your sleep by your neighbor. For Hobbes, any injustice you suffer at the hands of the sovereign is a small price to pay for not living in that state of perpetual war. The greatest evil is not tyranny; it's chaos. It's the dissolution of society itself. Kevin: So, a life that might be unfair but is at least predictable and safe is better than a life of total freedom that is also totally insecure. Michael: Exactly. He argues that the sovereign can't technically be "unjust" to its subjects anyway, because the subjects have authorized all of its actions in advance. When the sovereign acts, it's acting as your representative. To complain about the sovereign's actions is like your hand complaining about what your brain told it to do. Kevin: That is a wild and deeply unsettling thought. It makes sense on a purely logical level, but my modern, democratic brain is screaming in protest. It feels like such a terrible trade. Michael: And that's why the book is still so controversial and widely read today. It's praised for its intellectual rigor but also criticized for its bleak view of humanity and its justification for authoritarianism. Readers are incredibly polarized by it. Some see it as a brilliant blueprint for stability, others as a defense of dictatorship. Kevin: I can see both sides. He paints such a convincing picture of the horror of chaos that his extreme solution almost starts to sound… reasonable. Almost. Michael: And that's the trap he sets for the reader. He forces you to confront your own priorities. What do you truly value more: absolute freedom or absolute security?

Kevin: So when you boil it all down, the entire book is this incredibly tight, logical chain. It starts with this simple, almost crude, view of humans as desire-machines… Michael: …which inevitably leads to a state of war and chaos… Kevin: …which then forces us into a social contract where we create this all-powerful Leviathan to keep us from tearing each other apart. It’s a terrifying but coherent journey from A to B to C. Michael: It really is. And the core trade-off he presents is the one we're still grappling with today, in every society on earth: freedom versus security. Hobbes's radical position is that you can't have both. You have to choose. And he thinks any rational person, when truly faced with the alternative, would choose security every single time. Kevin: It really forces you to ask what you're truly afraid of. Are you more afraid of a tyrannical government, or are you more afraid of your fellow citizens in a world with no rules? Hobbes's answer is crystal clear. He's terrified of his neighbors. Michael: And given that he was living through a brutal civil war, you can understand why. He saw firsthand what happens when the central authority collapses. His work isn't an abstract thought experiment; it's a visceral reaction to the world crumbling around him. Kevin: And that makes his ideas feel so much more urgent, even now. We live in such a polarized time, with so much anger and division. It feels like the social fabric is fraying. Michael: It does. And it makes you wonder, in our own world, how much freedom would we be willing to trade for a guarantee of peace and order? It's a question Hobbes asked almost 400 years ago, and we're still wrestling with it every single day. Kevin: A heavy thought to end on, but a necessary one. It’s a book that doesn't give you easy answers, but it forces you to ask the most important questions. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.