15. The liberty of subjects consists not in being exempt from the laws of the city, or that they who have the supreme power cannot make what laws they have a mind to. But because all the motions and actions of subjects are never circumscribed by laws, nor can be, by reason of their variety; it is necessary that there be infinite cases which are neither commanded nor prohibited, but every man may either do them or not do them as he lists himself. In these, each man is said to enjoy his liberty, and in this sense, liberty is to be understood in this place, namely, for that part of natural right which is granted and left to subjects by the civil laws. As water enclosed on all hands with banks stands still and corrupts; having no bounds, it spreads too largely, and the more passages it finds the more freely it takes its current; so subjects, if they might do nothing without the commands of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy, if all, they would be dispersed; and the more is left undetermined by the laws, the more liberty they enjoy. Both extremes are faulty; for laws were not invented to take away, but to direct men's actions; even as nature ordained the banks, not to stay, but to guide the course of the stream. The measure of this liberty is to be taken from the subjects' and the city's good. — Hobbes, The Citizen, Chapter 13, section 15
Taking a page out of monotheism, people don't mind the concentration of power in one individual, so long as said individual is not just good but all-good. — Agent Smith
Taking a page out of monotheism, people don't mind the concentration of power in one individual, so long as said individual is not just good but all-good.
— Agent Smith
That is precisely not true in regard to seeing the realm of a single universal realm as above any organized by men. — Paine
It's important to keep in mind that God is, as of yet, fiction! — Agent Smith
Hobbes does not base the need for the 'concentration of power' upon the evident virtue of a ruler but upon the fear of violence and a desire for peace between individuals. — Paine
Hobbes describes the idea of God as a fiction to be equivalent to saying the natural world has no causes. — Paine
That makes the unqualified nature of your reference to the idea a misrepresentation of the topic. — Paine
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