Dear Hobbes: Why Should Self-Interested Actors Want a Dictator?

Whenever I read a philosophy text, the first question I ask myself is why I am reading this. With Leviathan, the question was more of “why the f@%k am I reading this $h!t?” Hobbes babbles, he drones, and he generally sounds grumpy. Very grumpy. Had he written Leviathan today, his children would take him to a place where someone could help take care of him. This conclusion assumes he has children in the first place, and thus a wife who loves him for who he is. Is that possible?

But let’s just assume he isn’t a senile meanie, and that humans really are the way Hobbes says they are. Is his dictatorial state the only answer to society’s problems? To this, I offer two observations. First, Hobbes’s humans are too self-interested to peacefully govern as a democracy. As Hobbes sees it, law exists only because the sovereign says it exists. In a government where actors share sovereignty, law becomes individualistic to each member, and the concept of justice less universal. “Where there is no common power,” Hobbes writes, “there is no law; where no law, no injustice (xiii, 13).

Secondly, Hobbes probably used the English Civil War as a model for humanity. Hobbes lived through this war, and wrote Leviathan from exile in Paris. While Hobbes only makes a few passing references to the war, I feel we must keep the historical perspectives in the back of our minds.

What Hobbes does not clarify is why anyone would accept the rule of the sovereign. Hobbes makes clear that the subjects must accept the sovereign’s authority, or else the state will not function well. Hobbes also makes clear that humans will seek a strong state to maintain peace, and thus avoid their fear of death. What Hobbes does not make clear is how a desire for peace overrides a drive for self-interest the subjects may have.

Suppose, for instance, that I am the sovereign of a state with a few million people. I go to war with my neighboring states, mismanage my finances, and plunge my subjects into poverty. Then what? I am still able to maintain internal piece, and my subjects accept my ability to do so. However, I am not maximizing their welfare. Even though they don’t have the right to overthrow me, wouldn’t they be better off killing me and getting someone else? I am not sure Hobbes addresses this.

Is Descartes's Epistemology a bit circular?

First of all, everything I will say next sounds really stupid when I repeat it to myself. Our class discusses what we know and what we don’t know, but does that really matter? When I stand in the middle of a street, and a bus barrels towards me, should I debate its existence? Should I move?
As stupid as Descartes’s philosophy sound, it does establish an intellectual framework I suspect Did Descartes change philosophy? Well, I don’t know enough to say if he did or if he didn’t. What I do believe is that Descartes approaches problems logically: he knows for sure only what he can see in his mind. According to Descartes, he exists because he is sentient and autonomous, and that he is unsure of the existence of anything outside his mind.
I do not question his sense of reality, for it aligns closely with my own. What I do question is his epistemology, especially in fields he feels are obvious to him. For instance, Descartes holds that mathematics is true whether it exists in reality or not. But if mathematics do not exist in actuality, how do its laws work inside his mind?
Descartes’s answer is that there’s something inherent in mathematics that makes it right. How does he know that? He imagines the laws to be so. But what mechanisms inside his mind make this true? Descartes cannot tell us because his philosophy allows him to reference nothing outside his mind, save for what he trusts. If he cannot reference anything outside of his mind, how can he truly know anything?
That’s my primary question with Descartes’s inward-looking philosophy. I have other questions, such as one concerning his proof of God’s existence. However, the above question stands out in my mind, and hopefully, we can have a class to discuss this in.