The concept of sovereignty is discussed in Hobbesian terms. For Hobbes, “the sovereign” is an office rather than a person, and can be characterized by what we have come to associate with executive power and executive authority. Hobbes’ theories of laws are also addressed and the distinction he makes between “just laws” and “good laws.” The lecture ends with a discussion of Hobbes’ ideas in the context of the modern state.
Hobbes’ most famous metaphor, that of “the state of nature,” is explained. It can be understood as the condition of human life in the absence of authority or anyone to impose rules, laws, and order. The concept of the individual is also discussed on Hobbesian terms, according to which the fundamental characteristics of the human beings are the capacity to exercise will and the ability to choose. Hobbes, as a moralist, concludes that the laws of nature, or “precepts of reason,” forbid us from doing anything destructive in life.
Professor Brownell talks about the situation with world hunger and how it is measured. He reviews the world distribution of hunger, from how many people are affected, to the physiological, psychological, and behavioral consequences of starvation. He reviews how geopolitical issues affect the world food systems in different parts of the world, including climate, war, disease, and refugees.
This is an introduction to the political views of Thomas Hobbes, which are often deemed paradoxical. On the one hand, Hobbes is a stern defender of political absolutism. The Hobbesian doctrine of sovereignty dictates complete monopoly of power within a given territory and over all institutions of civilian or ecclesiastical authority. On the other hand, Hobbes insists on the fundamental equality of human beings.
Professor Brownell talks about the situation with world hunger and how it is measured. He reviews the world distribution of hunger, from how many people are affected, to the physiological, psychological, and behavioral consequences of starvation. He reviews how geopolitical issues affect the world food systems in different parts of the world, including climate, war, disease, and refugees.
The discussion of Machiavelli’s politics continues in the context of his most famous work, The Prince. A reformer of the moral Christian and classical concepts of goodness and evil, Machiavelli proposes his own definitions of virtue and vice, replacing the vocabulary associated with Plato and the biblical sources. He relates virtue, or virtu, to manliness, force, ambition and the desire to achieve success at all costs. Fortune, or fortuna, is a woman, that must be conquered through policies of force, brutality, and audacity.
The lecture begins with an introduction of Machiavelli’s life and the political scene in Renaissance Florence. Professor Smith asserts that Machiavelli can be credited as the founder of the modern state, having reconfigured elements from both the Christian empire and the Roman republic, creating therefore a new form of political organization that is distinctly his own. Machiavelli’s state has universalist ambitions, just like its predecessors, but it has been liberated from Christian and classical conceptions of virtue.
Ashley Gearhardt gives a guest presentation about the relationship between food and addiction, and how emerging clinical research suggests that eating maps onto a model of addiction. Professor Kelly Brownell reviews how culture affects eating, from what’s acceptable to eat to how to eat it. He reviews cultural differences between the American and French food cultures. He then suggests how American values are changing through recent movements which are concerned with the story of food and the features of food before it is consumed.
This final lecture on Aristotle focuses on controlling conflict between factions. Polity as a mixture of the principles of oligarchy and democracy, is the regime that, according to Aristotle, can most successfully control factions and avoid dominance by either extreme. Professor Smith asserts that the idea of the polity anticipates Madison’s call for a government in which powers are separated and kept in check and balance, avoiding therefore the extremes of both tyranny and civil war.
This lecture addresses the complicated relationship between biology and eating. Professor Brownell explores the physiology of taste and eating. Many parts of the body are affected when people eat food, and many biological factors affect what people choose to eat, how much they eat, and the way they regulate their body weight. The experimental methods used to assess how body weight is affected by genes are also reviewed.
