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. 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.

I missed the first day of that philosophy class, because my people—Jews, not philosophers—celebrate the New Year at a more or less random time each fall. But I went to the second class, and by the second hour I was hooked. The professor, Clark Wolf, asked each of us what mattered, and as he went around the room, he scratched our answers on the board alongside our names and the names of famous philosophers who had said something similar. When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately or by mediation of another man, to whom He had formerly spoken by Himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately may be understood by those well enough to whom He hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another is hard, if not impossible, to know. For if a man pretend to me that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce to oblige me to believe it.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 Hershovitz has two young sons, Rex and Hank. From the time they could talk, he noticed that they raised philosophical questions and were determined to answer them. They re-created ancient arguments. And they advanced entirely new ones. That’s not unusual, Hershovitz says. Every kid is a philosopher. Hobbes's Moral and Political Philosophy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2018. (Retrieved 11 March 2009) As to the question who shall appoint the successor of a monarch that hath the sovereign authority... we are to consider that either he that is in possession has right to dispose of the succession, or else that right is again in the dissolved multitude. ... Therefore it is manifest that by the institution of monarchy, the disposing of the successor is always left to the judgement and will of the present possessor. Further reading [ edit ] 1904 edition edited by Alfred Rayney Waller Editions of Leviathan [ edit ]

Leviathan, Critical edition by Noel Malcolm in three volumes: 1. Editorial Introduction; 2 and 3. The English and Latin Texts, Oxford University Press, 2012 (Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes). Gottlieb, Anthony (2016). The dream of enlightenment: The rise of modern philosophy. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. p.41. ISBN 9780871404435. This considered, the kingdom of darkness... is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light... [17] My view was confirmed when I discovered the work of Gareth Matthews, a philosopher who dedicated most of his career to kids. He passed away in 2011, when Rex was just one. I never met him, but I wish I’d gotten the chance, because Matthews knew more about kids’ philosophical abilities than anyone else. He therefore to whom God hath not supernaturally revealed that they are His, nor that those that published them were sent by Him, is not obliged to obey them by any authority but his whose commands have already the force of laws; that is to say, by any other authority than that of the Commonwealth, residing in the sovereign, who only has the legislative power.Some of the best philosophers in the world can be found in the most unlikely places: in preschools and playgrounds. They gather to debate questions about metaphysics and morality, even though they've never heard the words, and can't tie their shoelaces. As Scott Hershovitz shows in this delightful book, kids are astoundingly good philosophers. And, if we let ourselves pause to think along with them, we might discover that we are, too. I am a philosopher. And no one has ever needed me. I rushed to the bathroom. “Hank, Hank! I’m a philosopher. What do you need?”

He looked puzzled. “You are not a philosopher,” he said sharply. “Hank, I am a philosopher. That’s my job. What’s bothering you?” He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. People are skeptical when I say that kids peer through that window. Sure, you came up with the shifted color spectrum, they say. But you turned out to be a philosopher. That’s not a normal thing for a kid to do. I might have believed them if I didn’t have kids myself. I’ve got two boys: Hank, whom you’ve already met, and Rex, who’s a few years older. By the time Rex was three, he was saying things that implicated philosophical issues, even if he didn’t yet see them himself. 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. Chapter XLVI: Lastly, for the errors brought in from false or uncertain history, what is all the legend of fictitious miracles in the lives of the saints; and all the histories of apparitions and ghosts alleged by the doctors of the Roman Church, to make good their doctrines of hell and purgatory, the power of exorcism, and other doctrines which have no warrant, neither in reason nor Scripture; as also all those traditions which they call the unwritten word of God; but old wives' fables?

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