Wednesday 1 April 2015

Covenants

Singapore hasn't seen as much discourse as the last week or two in a long, long time. I'm glad for it.

I'm surprised (but also maybe not really surprised) though that I haven't quite heard anyone raise the argument of the social contract from Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan as a metaphor for the state. Given the recent squabbling because of the conflation of freedoms with security/safety, it's useful to consider the Hobbesian notion of social contracts or covenants, which can materialize because people are willing to giving up some individual liberty in exchange for some common security.

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