Sample Reading Questions

1: Aristotle says that the state comes before the individual and the family because,
according to nature, the individual and the family need the state in order to be self-
sufficient. He then goes on the prove that and individual is not self-sufficient. However,
he doesn’t prove why the family is not self-sufficient. The family can provide for the
basic needs, except maybe for defense. However, a city has this problem as well,
because a city can always be taken over by a bigger city, but a city that grows too big is
no longer a good city. With all this in mind, doesn’t the family fulfill all the requirements
needed to be self-sufficient, and is therefore the good to be strived towards?

2: Hobbes describes the transferring of a right as a voluntary action. Also, he says that
contracts that one enters into by fear are valid. He gives the example of a ransom in
which one person gains the benefit of living while the other receives the benefit of
money. Can these types of contracts be described as voluntary? If one is faced with the
immediate threat of dying is he or she doesn’t agree to the contract, isn’t that different
from a mutual agreement that stems from a hypothetical ability of each man to kill each
other?

3: Hobbes states in Book XIV: “But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he,
then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of this: for that were to expose himself to
prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace.” If the sovereign to
which the Commonwealth should transfer their rights is a man just as they are, what keeps
the sovereign from abusing power? Furthermore, is subjecting one’s self to a sovereign with
unconditional power not like exposing one’s self to a predator as prey, just as Hobbes states
above to be unreasonable?

4: When discussing the fear that leads to electing those to be in charge I began to wonder
about the police in current society. There is a fear, especially among minority and
younger citizens, that even when doing nothing wrong those in power will punish them.
How would Hobbes explain this in the interest of self-preservation, where those chosen to
protect us so that we can survive are also those who are harming our survival? If those
meant to protect do the opposite, are we really acting in our own best interest by
choosing to have them in power?

5: Rousseau attributes the concept of “free will” to humans based on the belief that
humans alone can deviate from our natural instincts. However, humans do not have
natural instincts in his opinion. If this is true, how then can he determine what “free will”
is for humans given that they are not predisposed to follow their instincts in the same
way as animals as they instincts they have are acquired through imitation. Can it not be
argued that something you are naturally inclined to do is harder to deviate from
compared to something you learn from others? Can this difference truly be considered
“free will”?