Without a pause, I’m lowering my level
Reductio ad absurdum and slippery slope: Two sides of the same coin? (…)
The overall argument of Hobbes’s Leviathan is a classic example that arguably lends itself to analysis via both of the two argument forms. The general outline of Hobbes’s argument is as follows: to prove that government is necessary, Hobbes assumes the opposite—suppose that we have a state of no government, what he calls a “state of nature.” Hobbes then argues that this situation entails absurdities, or consequences that no reasonable person would find tolerable. In Hobbes’s words, it would be a “constant state of war, of one with all.” (…)
Hobbes’s argument again seems clearly to be understandable as possessing the form of a reductio ad absurdum. (…)
If Hobbes is making a nominalist argument, wherein the conclusions reached are reached through conceptual analysis, one might well be prepared to concede that the argument is of the reductio ad absurdum form. But if, on the other hand, the argument is conceived to be making claims about the actual world and events that would/will/might happen therein, the argument can only be conceived of as offering an account of a slippery slope, and, in fact, one in which the slip could be stopped.
