Monday, March 20, 2006
Leviathans I've known (and loved)
Something we talked about in seminar last week: Can corporations be understood using Hobbes's leviathan model?
Easy answer from me: yes. A corporation (if we look at it in a vacuum), is structured much like a leviathan, with people working towards a goal, rewarding good and punishing bad. This seems simple enough.
Many corporations are in competition (or war) to be the biggest, richest and market share holders. You could call the biggest corporation (like Walmart as Jud suggests) the leviathan who asserts power over the others (or even the government and consumers, etc).
However, as Stephen Ogden notes, these corporations have to answer to higher powers, most obviously, the government within which they operate. So according to Ogden, there can be only one Leviathan. I think this problem is easy enough to reconcile.... why don't we just call corporations sub-leviathans? I don't see any reason why we can't just apply the "model" to bodies that work within a leviathan themselves.
As an example, our classroom is a leviathan, with Ogden as the main policy-maker, where students fear punishment for bad papers, poor attendance, etc. But, Ogden must answer to higher powers, such as the English Department, the University, the provincial government, etc ad nauseum. Every entity has a higher power to answer to... unless you are God... even if you don't believe in a God, you have to live within the laws of nature, gravity, thermodynamics, etc. Everybody has to work within a system and there can be no system that encompasses everything... can there?
People that don't follow the rules of the systems, well, they are the ones we call renegades, outcasts, satanists, and they are punished accordingly -- well, sometimes they are.
Easy answer from me: yes. A corporation (if we look at it in a vacuum), is structured much like a leviathan, with people working towards a goal, rewarding good and punishing bad. This seems simple enough.
Many corporations are in competition (or war) to be the biggest, richest and market share holders. You could call the biggest corporation (like Walmart as Jud suggests) the leviathan who asserts power over the others (or even the government and consumers, etc).
However, as Stephen Ogden notes, these corporations have to answer to higher powers, most obviously, the government within which they operate. So according to Ogden, there can be only one Leviathan. I think this problem is easy enough to reconcile.... why don't we just call corporations sub-leviathans? I don't see any reason why we can't just apply the "model" to bodies that work within a leviathan themselves.
As an example, our classroom is a leviathan, with Ogden as the main policy-maker, where students fear punishment for bad papers, poor attendance, etc. But, Ogden must answer to higher powers, such as the English Department, the University, the provincial government, etc ad nauseum. Every entity has a higher power to answer to... unless you are God... even if you don't believe in a God, you have to live within the laws of nature, gravity, thermodynamics, etc. Everybody has to work within a system and there can be no system that encompasses everything... can there?
People that don't follow the rules of the systems, well, they are the ones we call renegades, outcasts, satanists, and they are punished accordingly -- well, sometimes they are.
Comments:
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I think now that the bible is written, man still kills, but has a reason to feel bad about it.
Because rules are instituted by man, does that mean that they are necessarily leviathanesqe? Some rules, one may say, like "don't stick your head out the window of a moving train" may be instituted just for your own protection; not to try to control the way you act.
"Thou shalt not kill" kinda sorta just feels like something people should follow, just because we have society and civilization... symbiosis perhaps. If everybody just went around killing each other (like in Columbia), a lot of things would probably suffer. It's hard to get things done when people just die off...
"Where's that report? Jones was supposed to have it done by now."
"Jones is dead"
Maybe there is no God that handed Charleton Heston the 10 commandments, but it seems like some of the things we do, just because they are right. Or... maybe they are right because they are keeping the leviathan machine running.
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Because rules are instituted by man, does that mean that they are necessarily leviathanesqe? Some rules, one may say, like "don't stick your head out the window of a moving train" may be instituted just for your own protection; not to try to control the way you act.
"Thou shalt not kill" kinda sorta just feels like something people should follow, just because we have society and civilization... symbiosis perhaps. If everybody just went around killing each other (like in Columbia), a lot of things would probably suffer. It's hard to get things done when people just die off...
"Where's that report? Jones was supposed to have it done by now."
"Jones is dead"
Maybe there is no God that handed Charleton Heston the 10 commandments, but it seems like some of the things we do, just because they are right. Or... maybe they are right because they are keeping the leviathan machine running.
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