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Who Is Thomas Hobbes Leviathan?

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In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes articulates the justifications upon which any sovereign governs. He compares the commonwealth (civil society) to a Leviathan, a sea monster said in the Bible to have been created by god to temper human pride. In the famous illustration presented on the cover of the 1968 edition, the ‘Leviathan’ is depicted as an ‘artificial man’ (7), responsible for maintaining “peace and unity” (60). The Leviathan is depicted to be made of its citizens and their sovereign. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes successfully explains how we can escape a state of war because relinquishing the rights of nature would constitute an escape from the state of war into a new society, the commonwealth.
Hobbes begins by considering human …show more content…

“Competition” occurs when there is a scarcity of a good which people seek to gain (77). “Diffidence” refers to the feeling of mistrust among people causing them to seek protection or hurt someone before that person hurts them (77). “Glory” is the comparative search for affirmation and refers to when a person enters a disagreement to increase their reputation (77). These causes of disagreement are what lead to war. In this way, the state of nature is also the state of war or the “the war of all against all” (120). The state of war is a situation in which violence does not happen all the time, but could happen at any time without the control of an authority to keep people “in awe” (fear) (141). Hobbes defines the state of war as a situation in which the “will to battle is sufficiently known” (168). In this situation, there will be “continual fear and danger of a violent death” (78). Overall, life in the state of nature is “nasty, brutish, and short” …show more content…

However, I think that although there may be instances when people are compassionate or act in a way opposed to the view of Hobbes, the people would have the freedom to act based on their self-interest and there would still be “fear and danger” (78). Natural equality combined with peoples’ desire for the same things ensures that people will be in conflict unless something is done to change the environment (state of war) in which human nature is fully expressed

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