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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Whatever this is, it isn’t liberalism

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.610.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What exactly is the basis for democracy? Arguably Iiberalism, the belief that the government serves the people, is the stone on which modern democracy was founded. That notion is so ingrained in the US that we often forget that America could be governed any other way. But political philosopher John Gray believes that liberalism has been waning for a long, long time. He joins Sean to discuss the great liberal thinker Thomas Hobbes and America’s decades-long transition away from liberalism. Host: Sean Illing (@SeanIlling) Guest: John Gray, political philosopher and author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, it's Cam Hayward, defense tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers and host of Not Just Football podcast.

0:04.6

The NFL draft is coming fast.

0:06.5

And over the next few episodes, we're going to be talking about it, diving deep and also bringing the draft party to Pittsburgh for a special live taping to have some fun.

0:13.9

You're not going to want to miss it.

0:15.0

So tune in to our show, Not Just Football, with me, Cam Hayward for our special draft coverage brought to you by Verizon Business.

0:21.0

You can find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.

0:25.2

Support for this show comes from ServiceNow, a company that helps people do more fulfilling

0:29.9

work, the work they actually want to do.

0:32.9

You know what people don't want to do?

0:34.8

Boring, busy work.

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But ServiceNow says that with their AI agents built into

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the ServiceNow platform, you can automate millions of repetitive tasks in every corner of a business,

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IT, HR, customer service, and more. And the company says that means your people can focus on the work

0:52.5

that they want to do. That's putting AI

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agents to work for people. It's your turn. You can get started at servicenow.com slash AI

1:01.0

dash agents. The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

1:13.5

Those are the words of the great and now infamous Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher.

1:21.8

You can find them in his 1651 book, The Leviathan, which is often considered the founding text of modern political philosophy.

1:30.3

Hobbes' big contribution was to challenge the right of kings and religious authorities to rule.

1:38.3

The foundation of political power for him was the consent of the governed. And the only reason to hand over authority

1:46.2

to the state, or anyone else for that matter, was for the protection of the individual. If that

1:53.8

sounds familiar, it's because it is. That's basically the political philosophy that came to dominate

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