Thomas Hobbes places his political foundations on the explicit assumption that men are equal in strength and prudence. Strength refers to physical strength, and is equal among men because every individual theoretically has the ability to kill any other individual. Prudence is a kind of crude cause-and-effect reasoning that experience imparts to people, and experience is gained through "time, [and] imparts equally to all men, in those things to which they apply equally" (87). Finally, from these two equalities comes “equality of hope in achieving our goals” (87), which means that people have the same hope or ambition in achieving their goals. Although he builds his philosophy on several fundamental equalities, he still advances arguments against democracy and in favor of monarchy. Monarchy is defined in the usual way, as a government ruled by one man. Democracy is “an assembly of all coming together” (129); in other words it is a popular democracy of the Athenian type, in which anyone with an interest can participate in the government assembly. In considering the possibility of private interests prevailing over public interests, Hobbes's arguments against democracy and for monarchy take into account equality of hopes for achieving one's ends, but his support for monarchy contradicts equality of prudence and his support for government by takeover is inconsistent with equality of force. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Hobbes' support for monarchy is consistent with his idea of ​​equal hope, as he addresses private ambition in both monarchy and democracy. In Hobbes' philosophy, people are equally ambitious; all people have the same hope in achieving their individual goals. Therefore, both the monarch and the members of the democratic assembly will necessarily be anxious to “procure their own private good,” and furthermore they will prefer to satisfy the private good over the public good. A concrete example he raises is the practice of enriching one's flatterers and favorites at public expense, which both monarchs and deputies can do. Therefore, Hobbes equally addresses the possibility of corruption in both forms of government, monarchy and democracy. However, his adherence to monarchy is based on the argument that a monarch's corruption will cause less harm, because “a monarch's private interest is the same as the public interest” (131). After all, he argues, a king can only be rich if his subjects are rich. While this may be rationally true in the long run, a monarch can hardly be trusted to be rational enough to recognize this fact. There is no reason not to expect a monarch to short-sightedly plunder his subjects for his own immediate gain, neglecting long-term stability. Furthermore, Hobbes argues that, in the case of governing assemblies, the public good is not as aligned with the private good of the assembly members. However, this argument seems to be directed more towards the aristocratic form of government, where only a portion of the population can be admitted to the ruling assembly. In a democracy as Hobbes himself defined it, anyone "who wants" can participate in the assembly. In this case the public good is always identical to the private good, since rulers and subjects are in fact the same thing. Furthermore, there can be no favorites or flatterers who seek to ingratiate themselves with the assembly; all men can exercise power directly from within the assembly itself. Furthermore, anyexcessive pursuit of private good is always subject to the control and veto of democratic colleagues. In a democracy private interests are balanced against each other in a way that does not exist in a monarchy. Thus, although Hobbes's arguments are consistent with his assumption that people have "equality of hope in the attainment of... ends," his argument that private and public interests are better aligned in a monarchy fails because of its inconsistency with the structure of democracy as he defines it. Furthermore, favoring monarchy over democracy seems to defy Hobbes's assumption that all men are equal in prudence. For Hobbes, prudence is the process of learning from one's experience: “Sometimes a man desires to know the event of an action; and then thinks of a similar action in the past, and its events one after another; assuming that similar events follow similar actions… This type of thinking is called… Prudence” (22). It therefore seems strange that he would prefer to entrust the state to one person, whose prudence we would have no particular reason to trust, rather than entrust the state to a multitude of different prudences of people added together. After all, if “Prudence is…contracted by Experience” (23), then surely the sum of many people's experiences would be more useful in judging which decisions to make. Hobbes's response to this objection would probably be similar to his argument regarding “Reason,” a higher and more infallible version of Prudence: “No man's Reason is, nor the Reason of a number of men gives certainty; no more than an account is therefore well made, because very many men have unanimously approved it” (32). In other words, just because a lot of people agree with something doesn't mean everything is right. Instead, dissenting parties should choose a “judge” or arbitrator to resolve disputes. In a democratic government you have the opportunity to abide by the majority of the assembly instead of submitting to the judgment of a single arbiter (or monarch). There is no reason to suppose that the arbiter's prudence would be superior in Hobbes's world of equal prudence, so involving a monarch is just as illogical as involving an arbiter. In fact it could be argued that, in fact, the more people who approve an account, the more likely errors are to be corrected and will eventually be fixed. Otherwise there would be no logic in double-checking the accounts. Therefore, in light of equality of prudence, a democracy would appear to be more favorable. There is a loophole through which Hobbes's defense of monarchy can be aligned with his equality of prudence. The definition of Prudence also specifies that men are equal only "in those things to which they apply themselves equally" (87). That is to say, a person who applies himself to governing can be as good at governing as a carpenter who equally applies himself to carpentry is at doing carpentry. Therefore, if Hobbes could have proposed some sort of mechanism by which a monarch would devote himself to leadership and government and thus achieve prudence in it, then it might have made sense to entrust government to a professional ruler rather than to carpenters, bricklayers and people in general. Without such a mechanism, however, entrusting government to a monarch who could be doing anything else betrays Hobbes's principle that people are equal in prudence. Finally, Hobbes's justification of sovereignty by acquisition is actually equivalent to justifying monarchy by force and violates his original principle. of equality of force. Hobbes outlines two ways a community could beestablished: through establishment or through acquisition. If people were truly equal in strength, as Hobbes says, the state of nature and perpetual anarchy would last forever until people realized that their best interest is peace and agreed to come together to establish a government. Support a government established by an assembly in which a “multitude of men agree and make a covenant, each with each, that to any Man or assembly of Men be given, by the majority, the right to present the person of all… each, both those who voted for and those who voted against" (121) would be like supporting democracy. No matter what the final form of the government will be, its establishment came through a democratic assembly and vote. The other option is institution by force, which occurs “when men individually, or many together in a plurality of voices, for fear of death or bonds, authorize all the actions of that Man, or Assembly, who he has their life and liberty in his power” (138). However, it must be noted that in the case of democracy there can be no such thing as a commonwealth by acquisition. In a democracy, all people can participate equally in government, so there cannot be a political distinction between conquering peoples and conquered peoples. If, hypothetically, a democracy conquered another people, and then let the "vanquished" people participate in the democratic assembly, then that people would immediately obtain power and would therefore no longer be vanquished. Only in the case of monarchy or aristocracy can a man or an assembly of men subjugate the non-ruling peoples of a state. Therefore, in justifying the two ways in which commonwealths are created, Hobbes actually draws a line between the monarchy (or aristocracy) acquired by force, and the democracy represented by the democratic process of commonwealth creation. as valid as the democratic process, despite the fact that supporting a monarchy acquired by force violates the principle of equality of force in a way that supporting a commonwealth through institutions might not. Hobbes portrays the commonwealth by acquisition as equally legitimate to the commonwealth by institution, because in both cases the people consent to be governed because they are afraid, either of a particular Man or Assembly, or of each other. However, a person who forcibly extorts the consent of a people to dominate them clearly depends on his strength in a way that the democratic process does not; the would-be monarch and his forces must have greater strength than the people he is trying to conquer. If people truly had equality in strength, then no such achievement would be possible; someone should always be able to assassinate the would-be monarch. On the other hand, the democratic process is consistent with equality of strength since each person's vote is equal as his or her strengths should be. As noted before, supporting monarchy through institution would be equivalent to supporting democracy since institution occurs through a democratic process. Therefore, supporting a monarchy by acquisition violates Hobbes' principle of equality of forces in a way that democracy, or even monarchy by institution, does not. If we allow, as Hobbes suggests, a pact made by force to be as valid as a democratic agreement, then we deny the stated principle of equal force and there would be no limit to the number of legitimate pacts that could be made by coercion of citizens. stronger over weaker. Hobbes advances a number of other arguments for monarchy over democracy, such as that a monarch cannot disagree with himself: 1996.