Summary of Kavka: Hobbesian moral and political theory -- Adam Brown, BYU Political Science

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Kavka: Hobbesian moral and political theory

Disclaimer. Don't rely on these old notes in lieu of reading the literature, but they can jog your memory. As a grad student long ago, my peers and I collaborated to write and exchange summaries of political science research. I posted them to a wiki-style website. "Wikisum" is now dead but archived here. I cannot vouch for these notes' accuracy, nor can I even say who wrote them. If you have more recent summaries to add to this collection, send them my way I guess. Sorry for the ads; they cover the costs of keeping this online.

Kavka. 1986. Hobbesian moral and political theory (pages 96-125). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hobbes's three premises:

the individually rational decision by each actor leads to a "war of all against all"
state of nature is a prisoner's dilemma leading to anarchy and misery
a central political authority (leviathan) must emerge to limit aggression and bring peace, wealth, security (#3 not discussed much here)

State of nature = "a war of all against all": captured in prisoner's dilemma

Assumptions:

We are death-averse
Concerned about reputations
Forward-looking
We have desires that conflict with others' goals
We have roughly equal natural endowments
We're egoistic (concerned about your own survival over others')
Rational planners
BUT: we vary in one respect: we're either dominators (want power for its own sake) or moderates (want power only to protect myself/my stuff)

Examines several objections/criticisms of Hobbes's model.

Research on similar subjects

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Leighley: Group membership and the mobilization of political participation (2 shared tags)
Chong, Citrin, and Conley: When self-interest matters (1 shared tags)
Fehr, Fischbacher, and Kosfeld: Neuroeconomic foundations of trust and social preferences (1 shared tags)
Oye: Explaining cooperation under anarchy (1 shared tags)
Parfit: Reasons and persons (1 shared tags)
Schattschneider: The semisovereign people (1 shared tags)
Sober: Did evolution make us psychological egoists (1 shared tags)

Tags

Kavka, Gregory (author) • Political Theory • Anarchy • Collective Action

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