Word: hobbesian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Harvard students' true Hobbesian nature has unabashedly emerged. It's an anarchic war of all against all. The war is played out at the Xerox machines of Lamont (The Spring 1997, Vol II, never seen it, wink, wink!), the sparse printing facilities in house computer labs (I brought that paper from my own room, damm it,) and in study group strife (if he doesn't send out his reading summaries over e-mail by midnight, tonight, I am going to send out my assailants...
Harvard students' true Hobbesian nature has unabashedly emerged. It's an anarchic war of all against all. The war is played out at the Xerox machines of Lamont (The Spring 1997, Vol II, never seen it, wink, wink!), the sparse printing facilities in house computer labs (I brought that paper from my own room, damm it,) and in study group strife (if he doesn't send out his reading summaries over e-mail by midnight, tonight, I am going to send out my assailants...
Where is justice? The answer, one that Americans instinctively resist, is that there is no justice. The international arena is a Hobbesian state of nature, a world of ad hoc rulemaking where anarchy is tempered only by the rule of the bully. It must be so. In any social system--whether of individuals or nation-states--where there is no enforcer, there can be no real...
...testimony about the most intimate matters, we will soon have a government that can get to anyone. Everyone has something embarrassing to hide. When we aren't all dealing with a President we're ready to string up, this unfettered intrusion may be what haunts us most. What a Hobbesian choice: lie and face prison or tell the truth and face public humiliation. The perjury follows, even though the act--reprehensible though it might be--did not flow from official duty. No one should lie, but Big Brother shouldn't ask. This all comes by way of a prosecutor...
...reject all rights of the community, one must reject all influence of the community. To do this implies a very specific, a very Hobbesian, view of human nature. One must think that men are naturally isolated, individual spirits frolicking only with their families and closest friends; we only assent to government to seek peace and stability of life. This outlook considers human society and sociability as purely conventional creations based on utility...