Thomas Hobbes places his political foundations on the explicit assumption that men are equal in strength and prudence. Strength refers to bodily strength, and it is equal between men because each individual theoretically has the ability to kill any other individual. Prudence is a kind of crude cause-and-effect reasoning that experience bestows on people, and experience is acquired "in the course of time, [and] agrees equally with all men, in those things to which they also apply” (87). Finally, from these two equalities he derives “equality of hope in the attainment of our ends” (87), meaning that people have equal hope or ambition to achieve their goals. Although he bases his philosophy on several fundamental equalities, he still makes arguments against democracy and for monarchy. He defines monarchy in the usual way, as a government headed by one man. Democracy is “an assembly of all who will come together” (129); in other words, it is a popular democracy of the Athenian type, in which anyone interested can participate in the ruling assembly. Considering the possibility of private interests outweighing public interests, Hobbes's arguments against democracy and in favor of monarchy take into account the equal hope of achieving one's goals, but his support for monarchy contradicts equality of prudence and its support of government by acquisition is incompatible with equality. by force. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay Hobbes' support for monarchy is consistent with his idea of ​​equal hope, as he addresses private ambition in monarchy and democracy. In Hobbes's philosophy, people are equally ambitious; all people have the same hope of achieving their individual goals. Thus, the monarch and the democratic deputies will necessarily be concerned with “procuring their own private good” and will furthermore prefer to satisfy the private good rather than the public good. A concrete example he cites is the practice of enriching one's flatterers and favorites at state expense, something both monarchs and deputies can do. Thus, Hobbes also addresses the possibility of corruption in both forms of government, monarchy and democracy. However, his embrace of monarchy is based on the argument that a monarch's corruption will cause less damage, because "a monarch's private interest is the same as that of the public interest" (131). After all, he asserts, a king can only be rich if his subjects are. While this may be rationally true in the long run, a monarch can hardly be trusted to be rational enough to recognize this fact. There is no reason not to expect a monarch to short-sightedly plunder his subjects for his own immediate gain, neglecting long-term stability. Furthermore, Hobbes argues that in the case of governing assemblies, the public good is not as aligned with the private good of the members of the assembly. However, this argument seems to be geared more towards the aristocratic form of government, where only a portion of the population can be admitted to the ruling assembly. In a democracy as Hobbes himself defined it, anyone “who wishes” can participate in the assembly. In this case, the public good is always the same as the private good, because the rulers and the subjects are in fact one and the same person. Furthermore, there cannot be favorites or flatterers who try to curry favor with the assembly; all men can exercise power directly within the assemblyherself. Furthermore, any excessive pursuit of the private good is always subject to the control and veto of fellow Democrats. In a democracy, private interests balance each other in a way that does not exist in a monarchy. Thus, although Hobbes's arguments are consistent with his assumption that people have "equal hope in the achievement of...Ends", his argument that private and public interests are better aligned in a monarchy fails by because of its inconsistency with the structure of democracy as he defines it. Furthermore, favoring monarchy over democracy seems to defy Hobbes's assumption that all men are equal in matters of prudence. For Hobbes, prudence is the process of learning from one's experience: “Sometimes a man desires to know the event of an action; then he thinks of a similar past action and its events one after the other; assuming that similar events will follow similar actions… What kind of thoughts are called… Caution” (22). It therefore seems strange that he would prefer to entrust the Republic to one person, whose prudence we have no particular reason to trust, rather than entrust the Republic to a multitude of diverse prudences summed up together. After all, if “prudence is…contracted from experience” (23), then surely the addition of the experiences of many people would be more useful in judging the decisions to be made. Hobbes's response to this objection would probably be akin to his argument regarding "Reason", a higher and more infallible version of Prudence: "No one has Reason, nor the Reason of a number of men does not make certainty; no more than a story is therefore well done, because a large number of men have unanimously approved it” (32). In other words, just because a lot of people agree with something doesn't mean it's right. Instead, a “judge” or arbitrator should be chosen by the dissenting parties to settle disputes. In a democratic government, everyone has the opportunity to conform to the majority of the assembly instead of submitting to the judgment of a single arbiter (or monarch). There is no reason to suppose that the prudence of the arbiter would be superior in Hobbes' world of equal prudence, so appealing to a monarch is as illogical as appealing to an arbiter. It could actually be argued that, in fact, the more people approve of an account, the more likely errors are to be corrected, and the more likely it is to be correct in the end. Otherwise, there would be no logic in auditing the accounts. Thus, in light of equal prudence, a democracy would seem to be more favorable. There is a loophole through which Hobbes's defense of monarchy can be aligned with his equal prudence. The definition of Prudence also states that men are equal only in “those things to which they apply themselves equally” (87). That is to say, a person who applies himself to leadership can be as good at leading as a carpenter who also applies himself to carpentry is to carpentry. So, if Hobbes could have proposed some sort of mechanism by which a monarch would apply himself to leadership and power and thereby gain prudence, then it might make sense to entrust power to a professional ruler rather than to carpenters, masons and people from all over the world. general. However, without such a mechanism, handing over governance to a monarch who could be busy doing other things betrays Hobbes's principle that people are equal in prudence. Finally, Hobbes' justification of sovereignty by acquisition actually amounts to justifying monarchy by force and violates its original principle. of equality of force. Hobbes describes twoways of establishing a Commonwealth: either by institution or by acquisition. If people were truly equal in strength, as Hobbes says, the state of nature and perpetual anarchy would last forever until people realize that their best interest is peace and agree to come together to institute a government. Approving a government established by an assembly where a “multitude of men agree and undertake, each, with each, that any man or assembly of men receive, by the majority, the right to present the person of all… everyone, both those who voted for and those who voted against” (121) would amount to approving democracy. Whatever the final form of government, its establishment would be through a democratic assembly and vote. The other option is establishment by force, that is to say "when men alone, or several together by plurality of votes, for fear of death or bonds, authorize all the actions of that man, or of this assembly, which has its life and liberty in its power” (138). However, it must be noted that there cannot be a Commonwealth by acquisition in the case of Democracy. In a democracy, all people can participate equally in government, so there can be no political distinction between the conquerors and the vanquished. If, hypothetically, a democracy were to conquer another people, and then let the "vanquished" people participate in the democratic assembly, then those people would immediately gain power and would therefore no longer be the vanquished. Only in the case of monarchy or aristocracy can one man or assembly of men subjugate the non-governing peoples of a Commonwealth. Thus, in justifying the two ways in which Commonwealths are created, Hobbes is actually drawing a line between monarchy (or aristocracy) acquired by force and democracy represented by the democratic process of creating the Commonwealth. In Hobbes's world, monarchy is at least as good as the democratic process, even if supporting a monarchy acquired by force violates the principle of equality of power in a way that supporting a Commonwealth by force could not. 'institution. Hobbes describes the Commonwealth by acquisition as just as legitimate as the Commonwealth by institution, because in both cases the people consent to be governed because they are afraid, either of a particular man or assembly, or of some of others. However, whether a person forcibly extracts the consent of a people to dominate them clearly depends on their strength, unlike the democratic process; the future monarch and his forces must have greater strength than the people he is trying to conquer. If people were truly equal in strength, then such conquest should not be possible; someone should always be able to assassinate the future monarch. On the other hand, the democratic process is compatible with equality of forces since each person's vote is equal to what their strengths are supposed to be. As stated previously, supporting the monarchy through the institution would be equivalent to supporting democracy since the institution goes through a democratic process. Thus, supporting a monarchy by acquisition violates Hobbes' principle of equal force, unlike democracy, or even monarchy by institution. If we admit, as Hobbes suggests, that a commonwealth entered into by force is as good as a democratic agreement, then we deny the stated principle of equal force and there would be no limit to the number of legitimate pacts which could be concluded by state coercion. stronger than the weaker. Hobbes makes a number of other arguments in favor of monarchy over democracy, such as that a: 1996.