Thomas Hobbes Fool

The text at hand represents one of Hobbes very interesting arguments between one person that Hobbes calls him in the text “the fool” and Hobbes. The fool is presented as an ethical opponent and antagonist to the ethics of the Hobbes, which later on became a famous case debated in the literature of the early modern philosophy. The fool challenges by making a statement that there is no justice and that it is rational to break a covenant if it is for one’s benefit or if it is beneficial to this person. The irony in this text is that the fool uses Hobbes own arguments about the laws of nature. The fool makes two arguments to support his view. These two arguments, when mixed, represent an intense and hostile conclusion to the premises of the laws

Hobbes starts by describing the fool’s argument as “this specious reasoning is nevertheless false” (Hobbes, 1651). In the argument between Hobbes and his interlocutor, in this case, he describes the argument of the fool by “successful wickedness” (Hobbes, 1651). So, from the start of Hobbes’ answers to the fool’s argument, Hobbes does not want to show to the reader that the fool misinterpreted or misunderstood Hobbes argument. Instead, he insists on making the fool as a misguided interlocutor. So, the first argument of Hobbes to respond to the fool’s argument is that a when a person does something dangerous, and the possible and most likely outcome is that it results in his/her destruction, it is not justified that he/she does it only expecting that something unexpected happens for his/her own good and saves him/her.

“For the manifestation whereof we are to consider; first, that when a man doth a thing, which notwithstanding anything can be foreseen and reckoned on tendeth to his own destruction, howsoever some accident, which he could not expect, arriving may turn it to his benefit; yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done” (Hobbes,