Hobbes on the State

A special episode in which David answers some of the audience's questions about the second series of History of Ideas. From how he chooses which writers and works to talk about, to whether Boris Johnson is the ultimate Benthamite and whether the idea of a pleasure machine isn't - ...  Show more

Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices (1984) made the case that the worst of all the vices is cruelty. But that meant we needed to be more tolerant of some other common human failings, including snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy. David explores what she had to say about some of the other ...  Show more

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) reimagined how we could do politics. It redefined many of the ideas that continue to shape modern politics: representation, sovereignty, the state. But in Leviathan these ideas have a strange and puzzling power. David explores what Hobbes was tryi ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued: "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man". F ...  Show more

Why would anyone give up their freedom to become part of an organised state? In this reading from his book Philosophy: The Classics, Nigel Warburton outlines Thomas Hobbes' central arguments from Leviathan. 

Is it possible to have a happy family life and be a Member of Parliament? Matt speaks to MPs and their family members to find out about the pressures of life at Westminster, and whether more needs to be done to modernise.

Plus: A taster of the latest episode of ...