There is no government, no authority whatsoever. Every being is born equal and share the right to do anything for their survival. His political theory was based off his idea that all humans are naturally evil and selfish. Hobbes said that this equality leads to war. “...a war of every man against every man.”
Hobbes believed if there was no government every man will fight against one another for power. To stop the fighting the people form a government to make peace. “To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust” (doc 2). This quote is saying that without laws or any form of government people will fight each other. And
“In 1651, Hobbes wrote one of the most influential philosophical treatises in human history, Leviathan or the Matter Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. Like his rival, John Locke, Hobbes posited that in a state of nature men and women were free to pursue and defend their own interests, which resulted in a state of war in which “the life of man” was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. ”(“Philosopher who influenced the Founding Fathers and the First Principles,”
Both writers describe man as being intrinsically equal in this state, with Hobbes stating that “nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind…. the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable” (183). In a similar fashion, in his Two Treatises of Government, Locke depicts the state of nature as, “a state also of Equality, whererin all the Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another…” (269). Regardless, however, both men describe the danger of living in this crude condition, perhaps due to this very equality that exists. In the eyes of Hobbes, the state of nature is the equivalent of a state of war, building on the premise that, “if any two men desire the same thin, which neverthelesse they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies” (158).
In the condition of nature, where man is put at war against man, no security is conceivable and life is brimming with terror. In any case, two common interests empower individuals to get away from the condition of nature; Hobbes’ refers to them as trepidation and reason (pg.108). Angst makes man need to get away from the condition of nature; logic demonstrates to him a method to get away. Reason gives the laws that Hobbes creates, which constitute the establishment for peace.
Hobbes believed that natural state of humans was violent and therefore needed order and control to ensure a just and equal society (Robinson 2016, 4). However Hobbes believed that a sovereign could maintain power without deceit and manipulation. Hobbes believed in the social contract which is when people could have a moral understanding about right and wrong to avoid the chaotic violent human nature. Hobbes believed in the idea of utilitarianism which would “maximize the most good and minimize the pain” (Robinson 201, 4). This would ensure that the sovereign was doing things for the right reasons and not to better himself but to better society as a
In his most well-known work Leviathan, Hobbes dictates that all humans are similar, they have same objective and adopt the same means of obtaining it. When he talks about the reasons why people want to create a legal state, he refers to the basic nature and behavior of humans. He mentions state of nature which is hypothetical condition of no-government. In the state of nature, every man would have whatever he could obtain by whatever means and property would be one’s own only as long as one could keep it. There is no restriction, no morality, no law in the state of nature, and people are consistently engaged in the “war of every man against every man”.
Man in nature is asocial. Rousseau, who writes later than Hobbes, doesn’t even appear to take issue with Hobbes’s statement that man is relatively equal to his fellows, and “the
Hobbes viewed state of nature as a state of war. According to Hobbes, in a state of nature, there is no right to property because no one affords another that right. He stated that property and possessions would inevitably cause men to become enemies. Hobbes believes that people have equal physical and mental ability to harm, and that people will do so for three reasons - competition, difference, and glory. " so that in the state of nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel, first, competition; secondly, difference; thirdly, glory" (Hobbes 2008, p.85).
Once this happens, competition results in a bloody war. For Hobbes, human beings are not gregarious creatures, we cannot think for the greater good - we only acknowledge our own interests. When we perceive another person as a threat, we do what we can in order to diminish them. It is in our nature to stop at nothing in order to get what we desire, even if this means harming another person, particularly in
Hobbes law of nature states that each individual has the right to preserve his or her own life from any threats that might arise when interacting with other people, because when we are dealing with threats, we do not want to simply let the threats overtake and harm us. Consequently, Hobbes believed that there is a Right of Nature, which is the right to do things that are necessary in order to achieve the law of nature. To put it in different terms, we have the right to do what we have to in order to achieve the end goal of fully defending ourselves. Both the right of nature and the law of nature tie into individuals’ social contract because when individuals break their contract, it is likely that one of them will need to retaliate.
In England, there was relative peace, though lack of liberty (which is not as important, Hobbes argues, as protection from violent death), under the monarch but once the people of England lost their obedience to the king, they lost their state of peace and comfort as well. It seems nearly impossible that this war would not have affected Hobbes’ political philosophy. Assuming the events which Hobbes lived through affected his writings it would go against the practice of scientific study to not acknowledge this background in Leviathan. Instead, he feels compelled to insist on the validity of this system of a powerful Sovereign because, he states, men will naturally come to the state of war unless they under the rule of the Sovereign. When Hobbes writes “The skill of making and maintaining commonwealths consisteth in certain rules, as doth arithmetic and geometry, not (as tennis-play) on practice…” (Leviathan chapter 20, section 19) it discounts all the variables that occur in the real world, where, unlike arithmetic and geometry, commonwealths exists.
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, who was best known for his work in political philosophy. Hobbes theory rests his beliefs on human and social nature, comparing and relating moral properties such as goodness and badness to natural properties like desire and pleasure also known as an ‘ethical naturalist’. His novel ‘Leviathan’ discovered and explored the ideas of the social contract theory. So before understanding Hobbes weather analogy, we must first understand what he means when he mentions his concept about the ‘war of all against all’.
Summary Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) theory of social contract, which states that we need moral, legal rules because we want to escape the state of nature which is solitary, poor, brutal, nasty, and short. In this state, a man can kill others, and there are limited resources. This can soon lead to a state of war in which we are constantly disposed to harm others to achieve our goals. So, in this state of war if a person was to possess a beautiful house or property, and had all the comforts, luxuries, and amenities to lead a wonderful life; others could come and harm him and deprive him of his fruit of labor, life, and liberty. Therefore, the state of nature is that of fear, violence, and distrust.
Thus, both philosophers consider equality the natural human orientation, but establish equality on radically different terms: Hobbes’s is chaotic and Rousseau’s harmonious. These assumptions inform their considerations of inequality (or lack thereof) within a legitimate
