Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with Kids

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As the kids got older, philosophy was right on the surface of what they said. One day, Julie asked Hank (then eight) wh at he wanted for lunch, and she gave him two options: a quesadilla or a hamburger left over from the night before. Hank was tortured by the choice—you’d think we’d asked him which parent to save from certain death. It took him a while to decide. This is the only parenting book I would insist everyone read, whether they have kids or not. Hershovitz is a total delight—energetic, compassionate, patient, wise, and very, very funny, even when he is talking about weighty or difficult ideas. I'm grateful to have him as a model for how to talk to my children and how to think alongside them.” —Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers The title of Hobbes's treatise alludes to the Leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job. In contrast to the simply informative titles usually given to works of early modern political philosophy, such as Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France or Hobbes's own earlier work The Elements of Law, Hobbes selected a more poetic name for this more provocative treatise. Reading his impressions reminded me of the first time I stood inside Bosnia while looking over Croatia and realized that despite all the wars which get fought there is no visible line to show you where one side ends and the other begins. We may have maps, Google Earth and GPS systems that insist a line is drawn down the land to ensure ownership but when you’re standing there it doesn’t exist. This amazing new book . . . takes us on a journey through classic and contemporary philosophy powered by questions like ‘What do we have the right to do? When is it okay to do this or that?’ They explore punishment and authority and sex and gender and race and the nature of truth and knowledge and the existence of God and the meaning of life and Scott just does an incredible job.” —Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

Hobbes named Part IV of his book "Kingdom of Darkness". By this Hobbes does not mean Hell (he did not believe in Hell or Purgatory), [16] but the darkness of ignorance as opposed to the light of true knowledge. Hobbes' interpretation is largely unorthodox and so sees much darkness in what he sees as the misinterpretation of Scripture. Some of the best philosophers in the world gather in surprising places—preschools and playgrounds. They debate questions about metaphysics and morality, even though they’ve never heard the words and perhaps can’t even tie their shoes. They’re kids. And as Scott Hershovitz shows in this delightful debut, they’re astoundingly good philosophers. And for the question which may arise sometimes, who it is that the monarch in possession hath designed to the succession and inheritance of his power Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill, ed. by Ian Shapiro (Yale University Press; 2010). The solution, Hobbes argued, was to put some powerful individual or parliament in charge. The individuals in the state of nature would have to enter into a ‘social contract’, an agreement to give up some of their dangerous freedoms for the sake of safety. Without what he called a ‘sovereign’, life would be a kind of hell. This sovereign would be given the right to inflict severe punishment on anyone who stepped out of line. […] Laws are no good if there isn’t someone or something strong enough to make everyone follow them.’However, Hobbes states that there is a summum malum, or greatest evil. This is the fear of violent death. A political community can be oriented around this fear. I don’t know why I was thinking about colors that day in kindergarten. But what I discovered—simply by thinking it through—was a limit on my capacity to read other people’s minds. I could learn a lot about my mother’s beliefs, motivations, and intentions just by watching the way she behaved. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t learn whether red looked to her the way it looked to me. Most parents are easily impressed with the precociousness of their own children. To listen to them gush, each child is a wise philosopher. Hershovitz, director of the Law and Ethics Program at the University of Michigan, believes they’re right. “Every kid—every single one—is a philosopher,” he writes. “They stop when they grow up. Indeed, it may be that part of what it is to grow up is to stop doing philosophy and to start doing something more practical.” The author uses his kids, Rex and Hank, as evidence of children’s instinct for philosophy. The around-the-house scenes and conversations he presents are equal parts hilarious (for years, Hank kept up a facade of not knowing the alphabet to worry his dad) and profound (4-year-old Rex: “I think that, for real, God is pretend, and for pretend, God is real”). When the author is discussing Rex or Hank, good things happen, but Hershovitz’s real goal is to encourage adult readers to maintain their innate ability to philosophize. So, when one of his kids wonders, for example, if he’s dreaming, it leads to an exposition on epistemology. This is where the book falls a bit flat. There’s nothing wrong with the way Hershovitz presents philosophy; his exposition is clear and lively. But the material consists of the same vogue ideas found in most introductory works of philosophy or, these days, on any podcast with a philosophical bent. If you are already familiar with the trolley problem, philosophical zombies, and the simulation argument, you won’t find anything new in their treatment here. In reading about them, you’ll long for Rex and Hank to return. A philosophical conversation with a child is among life’s great pleasures. If you don’t already know this, Hershovitz’s book will be of assistance.

Unsurprisingly, Hobbes concludes that ultimately there is no way to determine this other than the civil power: In Part III Hobbes seeks to investigate the nature of a Christian commonwealth. This immediately raises the question of which scriptures we should trust, and why. If any person may claim supernatural revelation superior to the civil law, then there would be chaos, and Hobbes' fervent desire is to avoid this. Hobbes thus begins by establishing that we cannot infallibly know another's personal word to be divine revelation:Equal parts hilarious (for years, Hank kept up a facade of not knowing the alphabet to worry his dad) and profound (4-year-old Rex: ‘I think that, for real, God is pretend, and for pretend, God is real’) . . . clear and lively . . . A playful yet serious introduction to philosophy.”— Kirkus The sovereign exists because the majority has consented to his rule; the minority have agreed to abide by this arrangement and must then assent to the sovereign's actions. Okay, I can hear you say: Matthews is yet another philosopher with aphilosophical kid. That doesn’t tell us much about kids in general. But Matthews didn’t stop with his kids. He talked to people who weren’t philosophers—and heard many similar stories about their kids. Then he started to visit schools to talk to more kids himself. He’d read stories that raised philosophical questions to the kids—then he’d listen to the debate that ensued. Hobbes describes human psychology without any reference to the summum bonum, or greatest good, as previous thought had done. According to Hobbes, not only is the concept of a summum bonum superfluous, but given the variability of human desires, there could be no such thing. Consequently, any political community that sought to provide the greatest good to its members would find itself driven by competing conceptions of that good with no way to decide among them. The result would be civil war.

Further reading [ edit ] 1904 edition edited by Alfred Rayney Waller Editions of Leviathan [ edit ] Other people might see the world differently than we do, and not just in the metaphorical sense that they might have different opinions aboutcontroversial topics. They might actually see the world differently. If I could pop into your head—see through your eyes, with your brain—I might discover that everything is, from my perspective, topsy-turvy. Stop signs might look blue; the sky might look red. Or perhaps the differences would be more subtle—off by a shade, or a bit more vibrant. But since I can’t pop in, I can’t know what the world looks like to you. I can’t even know what it looks like to the people I know best: my wife and kids.Ian’s mother was confused by his question. She had no idea how to answer. And I suspect most adults would find themselves just as flummoxed. Little kids often question things grown-ups take for granted. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons they make good philosophers. “The adult must cultivate the naiveté that is required for doing philosophy,” Matthews said, but “to the child such naiveté is entirely natural.” Sure she did. You said you wanted a burger and you have a burger.”“No,” Hank said. “She predicted me.” The specter of graduation looms large as Naomi Novik’s groundbreaking, New York Times bestselling trilogy continuesin the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education.

By wryly recounting conversations he has with Rex and Hank during bath time, before bed, on the way to and home from school, Hershovitz sets out to prove that philosophy, like inquisitive, rowdy children, can offer illuminating insights . . . From his perspective, a mind that’s most receptive to complexities and compassion would likely belong to a child, someone, I presume, a lot like the little prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s unforgettable classic. Perhaps Hershovitz is like the fox figure who tells the little prince (and us) his ‘simple secret,’ that ‘it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.’”— Thúy Đinh, NPR In his witty and learned book Nasty, Brutish, and Short, Hershovitz intertwines parenting and philosophy, recounting his spirited arguments with his kids about infinity, morality, and the existence of God, and teaching half a liberal arts curriculum along the way.” —Jordan Ellenberg, New York Times bestselling author of ShapeBecause the covenant forming the commonwealth results from subjects giving to the sovereign the right to act for them, the sovereign cannot possibly breach the covenant; and therefore the subjects can never argue to be freed from the covenant because of the actions of the sovereign. I think I would endure sensory overland in Egypt with its reliance on using noise, and loudly with lots of it, to communicate. I’m better in silence, even dog barks make my spine curl up on itself. I get road rage just driving in DFW, I’m pretty sure I’d be on the news for turning their traffic jams into a session of extreme bumper cars.