David Gilboa

In chapter XV of Leviathan, Hobbes states that the third law of nature is "that men perform their covenants made". Following this statement, Hobbes has an imaginary person called "the fool" make an objection to the third law of nature, by claiming that covenant-keeping may turn out to be an irrational action. In his reply to the fool, Hobbes insists that covenant-keeping is a rational action, but his arguments are not clear. In two recent outstanding works on Hobbes’ moral and political thought, Gregory Kavka and Jean Hampton independently attempt to reconstruct Hobbes’ reply to the fool. In this paper, I criticise the arguments of both Kavka and Hampton, but, nevertheless, I argue that it is correct for Hobbes to insist that covenant-keeping is a rational action

In the current debate about same-sex marriage, the great majority of writers belong to one of two camps: either completely in favor of same-sex marriage or completely against it. No effort is typically made to treat different dimensions of the problem differently. My approach, however, is to distinguish between two dimensions of the problem—between the right to marry a person of the same sex on the one hand, and the right to obtain public recognition of such marriage, on the other hand. It turns out, then, that the best solution to the problem of samesex marriage may actually fall between the opposing camps, between unqualified rejection and unqualified recognition of same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage ceremonies ought to be lawful, hence tolerated, but same-sex marriage need not be recognized; the benefits and protections of the marriage license may be denied to same-sex couples without discriminating against them. If sound, the argument of this paper as a whole demonstrates that, in the matter of same-sex marriage, a liberal democratic society, by virtue of the scope and flexibility of its institutions, is capable of reconciling majority rule and tradition with the demands of justice

Distinguishing between centrally-planned and private enterprise economies, and using a classification of political systems into authoritarian and polyarchal, I seek to explain why a polyarchal political system never existed alongside a centrally-planned economy. I start by exploring the basic features which distinguish centrally-planned from private enterprise economies. Then, I study the explanation Charles E. Lindblom has proposed, followed by an examination of the approach which Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek independently advanced. I find the approach of Hayek and Friedman more enlightening than Lindblom's, but the insights found in their approach need to be reformulated in a way that avoids particular problems each of them has encountered. ;This I attempt in what I call "the balance-of-powers theory," where I argue that political freedom and polyarchy seem to require two economic conditions. First, there has to be a system of private enterprise, with a central role for the profit-seeking entrepreneur who exercises property rights over productive resources. This condition can explain why polyarchy and central planning fail to coexist, for if polyarchy presupposes a system of private enterprise, then polyarchy would not exist in a state that has a centrally-planned economy. The second condition is that there has to exist a limitation on the range of inequality in the control over the means of production. This condition can explain why private enterprise does not insure the existence of polyarchy, as it follows from it that a polyarchal political system would not exist in a state in which extreme inequality characterizes the private enterprise system

Unimpressed by the exhortations of previous generations, our modern society accepts premarital sex. Advisably? In an attempt to answer this question, I shall make three related points, drawing on findings from evolutionary psychology and bargaining theory. First, premarital sex is potentially exploitative. Second, to allow premarital sex is not merely to extend a certain freedom, but indirectly to compel women to practice premarital sex, hence effectively to foster their exploitation. Third, some of the measures taken to combat the sexual exploitation of single women can make matters worse, as the implementation of these measures tends to increase rather than decrease the level of the exploitation.