Latest / American Political History
An Empire of Reason - The Social Contract
Every government claims the right to do what no private person may — to tax, to jail, to send men to die. By what right? For most of history the answer was God’s will or the king’s sword. Then a handful of thinkers gave a different and dangerous answer: consent. This episode takes down the most consequential political idea of the modern age — the social contract — in the words of the men who built it.
Hobbes runs the experiment first and recoils: the state of nature is a war of all against all, and the only escape is to surrender everything to an absolute sovereign, a mortal god who can never…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.