What Would Hobbes Say?

For starters he would probably say it in English, not in Spanish. I´m finally really starting my Teoria de Politca Moderna class which is totally composed of Chilean students. It´s definitely different then an American class. For one, I think it´s a 100 level class so it´s pretty basic although I think some of the people in it are older then me or at least the same age. I noticed that they talk more in class then Americans would in a college class making it feel kind of like a high school class. Although the students didn´t go as far as being outright disrespectful.

Everyday there is a quiz on the reading which is different too. Usually profesors in the US don´t care if you do the reading and don´t feel the need to test people to see if they are doing the reading, so that´s different. What´s good about the class is that there are no papers and I´ll only be here for one test. I´m taking the class pass/fail so all I need is a C to get the credit for the class.

I missed the classes on Machiavelli (Machiavelo here) but it looks like I´ll get through Hobbes, Locke, Gramsci, and maybe Kant althought the class goes up to Marx. Today we learned about the the historical context of Hobbes, how England was divided between the catholics, protestants, and the anglicans and how that affected the politics and fueled the divide between the King and Parliament.

Hobbes believed that the division of political power created civil war and other problems. Essentially, he was a monarchist who believed in the divine right to rule. Political power according to Hobbes, came from god, channeled through the church to the monarch. Which is contrary to Locke who believed that political power was derived through the people.

Hobbes believed that man was selfish and only worked for himself. Without laws man would be in a constant state of war. Due to man´s selfish nature he needs a strong civil society to control him, hence monarchy.

So what is Hobbes opinion on steriod use in baseball? Well besides that all the players are pursuing their self interests, he´d say that baseball was a dumb game and cricket is a lot better. But he´s English so he can be forgiven if he´s a little biased.

I also talked to a girl in my class named Jasmine. She was really nice and we talked about the wines of the region. Like a good nationalist she was adamant that Chilean wines are better than Argentinean wines.