Clearly, for Hobbes to defend much(prenominal)(prenominal) a situation, he must not allow possibilities for challenging the sovereign at the head of the Leviathan, for such challenges will chip away at the unlimited agent of the sovereign and will allow the possibility of the state of nature, war, chaos, etc., to flinch back in. The oversimplification noted by Russell primarily comes in the form of ignoring elements which would complicate Hobbes' register of ideal political science. Hobbes has described what he sees as a social contract which creates the perfect disposal and society, and he deliberately or unconsciously selects matters which keep the picture simple and ignores factors which would confuse or complicate that sociopolitical Eden. He chooses a monarchy over a government by assembly scarcely because a single leader will not mislay as many conflicts and self- rice beers as a group of leadership. However, as Russell points out, this oversimplified choice between a single monarch and a group of leaders in an assembly ignores a trio and better choice:
What Hobbes is doing with such oversimplification is focusing only on the question of revolution in devising his government. The dangers of government corruption and abuse of power in politics, economics, and the exercise of free thought and intellectual discovery, make a broader and less simplified context necessary: "These are reasons for not thinking only of the risk of anarchy, but as well as of the danger of injustice and ossification that is bound up with omnipotence in government" (556).
Throughout the Leviathan, Hobbes never considers the possible effect of semimonthly elections in curbing the tendency of assemblies to sacrifice the public interest to the private interest of their members (552).
Other aspects of Hobbes' design for society and government which Russell names as oversimplified are
Certainly, the intervening centuries have taught us like a shot that commonwealth of a much much limited and hardheaded sort is not only possible but farthest more desirable than the dictatorial sovereign favored and defended by Hobbes. Hobbes oversimplified his portrait of democracy in order to reject it, suggesting that democracy required citizen involvement at every stage of political decision, an involvement that would effectively paralyze the government. However, we have witnessed far more limited and reasonable citizen involvement along democratic lines since Hobbes' time. We have seen that this limited democracy is indeed a means of preventing or reducing corruption, self-interest and abuses of power by the various leaders of the government.
Russell grants that Hobbes' positing of the State as alternative to chaos is a " sound" argument (556). The oversimplification enters the picture when Hobbes draws such a raw wide line between order and chaos, between peace treaty and anarchy, and argues as necessary the depositing of all power in the manpower of the sovereign. As Russell po
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