Course 10 of 18
Power & the State
Why governments exist, when authority is legitimate, and when it fails.
What this course covers
Power & the State works through why governments exist, when authority is legitimate, and when it fails. across 3 lessons. Each opens with a short teaching passage, then tests whether the idea actually landed — and explains every answer rather than just marking it.
The lessons are sequenced, not a menu. The State of Nature comes first because life before government is what the rest of the course assumes; by the end you reach Rousseau & the General Will.
How it starts
Thomas Hobbes asked what life would be like with no government at all. His answer: a 'state of nature' where everyone competes for everything, a war of all against all. To escape this fear, people agree to hand power to a sovereign, the Leviathan, trading some freedom for the security of peace.
“The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Who you will be reading
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau are the thinkers this course leans on. Each has a profile with their full set of passages in thinkr's library.