THE HOBBESIAN TURN

The Hobbesian Trap

“So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffi dence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles...”(Hobbes [15],...

Intergenerational Justice in the Hobbesian State of Nature

We analyse the issue of justice in the allocation of resources across generations. Our starting point is that if all generations have a claim to natural resources, then each generation should be entitled to exercise veto power on the unpalatable choices of the other generations. We analyse this situation as one of bargaining à la Rubinstein, Safra and Thomson [15], which incorporates a notion o...

To the Framingham data, turn, turn, turn.

The Hobbesian Trap ∗ Sandeep Baliga Northwestern University Tomas Sjöström

“So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffi dence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles...”(Hobbes [14],...

A Hobbesian Derivation of the Principle of Universalization

In this article, I derive a weak version of Kant’s categorical imperative within an informal gametheoretic framework. More specifically, I argue that Hobbesian agents would choose what I call the weak principle of universalization, if they had to decide on a rule of conflict resolution in an idealized but empirically defensible hypothetical decision situation. The discussion clarifies (i) the r...