Order Description

Please read the reading that I attached fully and please answer 5 (Five) questions at the bottom with about 120 words each. Please put the answers below the question.

1. Discuss Hobbes's understanding of knowledge: How do we know things? What can we know? What does it mean to know? How does his approach to knowledge shape his treatise on government?

2. What does Hobbes mean when he describes the Leviathan as an "artificial man"? How is this different than the understanding of the state in Aristotle?

3. Hobbes thinks the sovereign is always better under all conditions but is this true? What reasons (if any) does he give us to presume that we are better off under a sovereign, especially since the sovereign will also be a human being with the same tendencies that make it necessary for us to leave the state of nature in order to gain peace.

4. Hobbes says the sovereign cannot oppress us because it is us. It is our agent. What does he mean? Why does he consider it necessary for us to alienate our will to the sovereign completely?

5. Does Hobbes think there is any natural authority in the state of nature? Does anyone have a natural right to power over anyone else? How does Hobbes's perspective compare to that of Aristotle?

6. In Chapter 29 Hobbes describes the things that weaken the commonwealth. Describe some of these things. Do you think Hobbes is right? What are the consequences of excluding them from political society?