Hobbes’ political theory was based on fear because he lived afraid for most of his life. He was a tutor to a wealthy English family for which he had an alliance with the English Monarch. Because of his connections with mathematicians and scientists, he developed a strong scientific mind into deductive reasoning (starting with a theory or hypothesis and then proceed to make observations). Known as an empirical scientist, Hobbes used the Scientific Method to further develop his political thoughts.Hobbes was a moral relativist and believed that how we respond to something determines if it is good or bad. Hobbes believed human nature is inherently evil and that people are self-interested and in constant desire.
There is truth to his notion of primitive society and a real fear, even today, one could argue even more so today of tribalism, and The Founders feared tribalism and referred to it accordingly as factions in the Federalist Papers. However, The Founders sided more so with John Locke on how to go about solving this issue. Now Hobbes viewed, as an individualist, is misleading since he believes the power should belong to the state, because for Hobbes there is only state-sovereignty not self-sovereignty. Now this notion becomes increasingly dangerous because if a person is to follow it all the through since a man’s life without the state is war and chaos and the only solution to this is a strongman, in the end it is the state that makes people human and the state that gives people rights, so the state can take them away. The
Nonetheless, there are basic principles that are shared by either. Consider what Hobbes had described in his work about the Leviathan. “...but if there be a common power set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compel performance, it is not void.” (Hobbes 100). In his work he describes an organization that must be in place in order to prevent the unavoidable result of everyone going to war with one another. While this is more of a forced ruling to make everyone abide by the same rules, it will perform its duty all the same.
Regarding human organization Hobbes saw movement as creating enjoyment or displeasure inside of us. He said that man has a natural and sacred moral compass coordinating his actions, and recommends rather that man is yet a heap of interests and that he carries on the premise of goals and revulsions. This quintessentially materialistic and prudential perusing of the human condition is radical in the historical backdrop of
Hobbes was an unusual Christian and presents himself as the first true political philosopher to offer exact knowledge of justice, sovereignty, and citizenship. Hobbes claimed that his systematic political science would build a more stable, peaceful, and productive society. Indeed, he was one of the first to recognize the potential power of religion to strengthen (as well as to undermine) the commonwealth. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan influenced the early modern traditional Christian political theology, and questions about Hobbes’s view on religion persist in his work, even until today. This paper will discuss Hobbes’s central work Leviathan and his perspective on sovereignty and the sovereign’s power in connection with religion (more specifically so, Christianity) found in a close analysis of Book 3 (in particular, in chapter 12).
In addition, Hobbes argues that we are rational. In his idea, we have the capacity to identify our desires as efficiently and maximally as possible, but we do not evaluate our outputs. Our self-interest and rationality, as perspectives of human beings, drives us, according to Hobbes, to sought the willingness of individuals to submit ourselves into a “political authority”. According to him, men´s self-interest and rationality, will give the possibility to accept the authority of a Sovereign in order to be able to live in
Thomas Hobbes has been famous for his philosophies on political and social order. In many of his scholastic works, he maintains the position that in the presence of a higher authority the duty of the rest of mankind is to simply obey. The discourse on this essay will focus on his views expressed in his book The Leviathan. In this book Hobbes’ views are fundamentally entrenched in his description that in a society with no higher authority life would be nasty, short and brutish (? ).This essay will engage in discussion by first laying out the conceptual arguments of anarchy and the human state of nature.
The secondary literature on Hobbes's moral and political philosophy (not to speak of his entire body of work) is vast, appearing across many disciplines and in many languages. There are two major aspects to Hobbes's picture of human nature. As we have seen, and will explore below, what motivates human beings to act is extremely important to Hobbes. The other aspect concerns human powers of judgment and reasoning, about which Hobbes tends to be extremely skeptical. Like many philosophers before him, Hobbes wants to present a more solid and certain account of human morality than is contained in everyday beliefs.
The English Civil War was the backdrop for all his writings. “Hobbes also infers from his mechanistic theory of human nature that humans are necessarily and exclusively self-interested,” (Friend, C). Hobbes State of Nature is where the Hobbesian man is only concerned with his desires to better his own situation and acquiring power, but is also reasonable. Hobbes beliefs were arguably
He put him in a formula that made it more universal, precise and scientific, and subtracted his greatness individuals and groundbreaking concerns. With the emergence of Hobbes, modern ideas on the theory of passion becomes visible and primary. The theories created by the modern thinkers are not in a view of general topic, but rather single factors, for example, Hobbes concentrates on self-preservation while Machiavelli focuses on glory. Hobbes thought of the idea of the 'condition of nature" where people are dreamy from the real and put in the state of nature where all are stripped of the distinctions and are observed to be equivalent. Hobbes perceives a system where there is a sovereign authorized by the individuals to represent them thus observing to their needs compared to the medieval kingdoms that only represented the interests of the rulers.