ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that politics is about any matter ‘important enough’ for people “to expend resources to affect the disposition of that matter”. As Chris Brown suggests, Bernard Williams took security to be the most important of politicians' concerns; William himself called his stance ‘Hobbesian’. Chris goes on to say: “The first, unavoidable, political question is that of securing order, and the ‘basic legitimation demand’ is that order be secured in a way that is acceptable to all. Security comes in the first instance from the “securing of order”. Thomas Hobbes presupposed rational agents who surrender their autonomy; legitimacy is a compelling fiction. Clearly Williams has unduly simplified a complicated issue. Then he made things worse by adopting an unduly narrow, albeit Hobbesian, solution to the problem of meeting most important concerns.
