2. THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)
Thomas Hobbes was born in London
in 1588.
He received his college education at
Oxford University in England, where he
studied classics.
He was one of the founders of modern
political philosophy.
Hobbes traveled to other European
countries several times to meet with
scientists and to study different forms of
government.
During his time outside of England,
Hobbes became interested in why people
allowed themselves to be ruled and what
would be the best form of government for
England.
3. Hobbes believed that humans were basically selfish creatures
who would do anything to better their position.
Left to themselves, he thought, people would act on their evil
impulses.
According to Hobbes, people therefore should not be trusted to
make decisions on their own. In addition, Hobbes felt that nations,
like people, were selfishly motivated. To Hobbes, each country
was in a constant battle for power and wealth.
4. Governments were created, according to Hobbes, to protect people from
their own selfishness and evil. The best government was one that had
the great power of a leviathan, or sea monster.
Hobbes believed in the rule of a king because he felt a country needed
an authority figure to provide direction and leadership.
Because the people were only interested in promoting their own self-
interests, Hobbes believed democracy - allowing citizens to vote for
government leaders - would never work.
5. In nature, people were cruel, greedy and selfish. They would fight, rob, and
oppress one another.
To escape this people would enter into a social contract: they would give up their
freedom in return for the safety and order of an organized society.
Therefore, Hobbes believed that a powerful government like an absolute
monarchy was best for society – it would impose order and compel obedience. It
would also be able to suppress rebellion.
Hobbes has been used to justify absolute power in government.
His view of human nature was negative, or pessimistic. Life without laws and
controls would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
6. Hobbes wrote, "All mankind [is in] a perpetual and restless desire for power...
that [stops] only in death." Consequently, giving power to the individual would
create a dangerous situation that would start a "war of every man against every
man" and make life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.“
Despite his distrust of democracy, Hobbes believed that a diverse group of
representatives presenting the problems of the common person would,
hopefully, prevent a king from being cruel and unfair.
During Hobbes' lifetime, business began to have a big influence on government.
Those who could contribute money to the government were given great status,
and business interests were very powerful.
7. LEVIATHAN
Leviathan was written during the English
Civil War; much of the book is occupied
with demonstrating the necessity of a
strong central authority to avoid the evil of
discord and civil war.
In it, he argued that people were
naturally wicked and could not be trusted
to govern. Therefore, Hobbes believed that
an absolute monarchy - a government that
gave all power to a king or queen - was
best.
8. Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the
passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government,
a condition which he calls the state of nature.
In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in
the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" .
The description contains what has been called one of the best known
passages in English philosophy, which describes the natural state
mankind would be in, were it not for political community.
9. HOBBES QUOTATION
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the
judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.
10. "For the laws of nature (as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in
sum, doing to others as we would be done to) of themselves, without the
terror of some power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our
natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge and the like.
"Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is that whatsoever a man
does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependent on the
presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's
conscience and his judgment are the same thing, and as the judgments,
so also the conscience may be erroneous.
"Leisure is the mother of philosophy."
11. "Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the
money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a
Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.“
.in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and
restless desire of power after power, that ceased only in death.
"Man gives indifferent names to one and the same thing from the difference of
their own passions; as they that approve a private opinion call it opinion; but they
that dislike it, heresy: and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.“
"In these four things, opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotions
towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consistent
the natural seed of religion; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments,
and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that
those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.“
12. "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they
are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against
every man.
"To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that
nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have
there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law,
no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues.
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and
danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short.“
"Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the
conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify
our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines
of men, are different."
13. "The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or
some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions.“
"Corporations are may lesser commonwealths in the bowels of a greater,
like worms in the entrails of a natural man.“
"Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with
mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin;
cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter.“
"I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark."
14. Those who could contribute money to the government were given great
status, and business interests were very powerful.
In order to offset the growing power of business, Hobbes believed that
an individual could be heard in government by authorizing a
representative to speak on their behalf.
In fact, Hobbes came up with the phrase "voice of the people," which
meant that one person could be chosen to represent a group with similar
views. However, this "voice" was merely heard and not necessarily
listened to - final decisions lay with the king.
15. JOHN BRAM HALL
Hobbes now turned to complete the fundamental treatise of his philosophical
system.
He worked so steadily that De Corpore was first printed in 1654. Also in 1654, a
small treatise, Of Liberty and Necessity, was published by Bishop John Bram
hall addressed at Hobbes. Bram hall, a strong Armenian had met and debated
with Hobbes and afterwards wrote down his views and sent them privately to be
answered in this form by Hobbes.
Hobbes duly replied, but not for publication. But a French acquaintance took a
copy of the reply and published it with "an extravagantly laudatory epistle." Bram
hall countered in 1655, when he printed everything that had passed between
them (under the title of A Defense of the True Liberty of Human Actions from
Antecedent or Extrinsic Necessity).
in 1656 Hobbes was ready with The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity
and Chance, in which he replied "with astonishing force" to the bishop. As
perhaps the first clear exposition of the psychological doctrine of determinism,
Hobbes's own two pieces were important in the history of the free-
will controversy. The bishop returned to the charge in 1658 with Castigations of
Mr. Hobbes's Animadversions, and also included a bulky appendix entitled The
Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale.
16. JOHN WALLIS
Beyond the spat with Bram hall, Hobbes was caught in a series of
conflicts from the time of publishing his De Corpore in 1655. In
Leviathan he had assailed the system of the original universities.
Because Hobbes was so evidently opposed to the existing academic
arrangements, and because De Corpore contained not only tendentious
views on mathematics, but an unacceptable proof of the squaring of the
circle (which was apparently an afterthought), mathematicians took him
to be a target for polemics. John Wallis was not the first such opponent,
but he tenaciously pursued Hobbes. The resulting controversy continued
well into the 1670s.
17. ATHEISM
Hobbes has been accused of atheism or (in the case of Bram hall) of
teachings which could lead to atheism. This was an important
accusation, and Hobbes himself wrote, in his answer to Bram hall's "the
catching of the Leviathan" that "atheism, impiety, and the like are words
of the greatest defamation possible".
Hobbes always defended himself from such accusations. In more
recent times also, much has been made of his religious views by
scholars such as Richard Tuck and J.G.A Pocock, but there is still
widespread disagreement about the exact significance of Hobbes's
unusual views on religion.
18. As Martinich (1995,) has pointed out, in Hobbes's time, the term "atheist" was
frequently applied to people who believed in God, but not divine providence, or
to people who believed in God, but also maintained other beliefs which were
inconsistent with such belief. He says that this "sort of discrepancy has led to
many errors in determining who was an atheist in the early modern period".
In this extended early modern sense of atheism, Hobbes did indeed take
positions which were in strong disagreement with church teachings of his time.
For example, Hobbes argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal
substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God,
heaven, and hell are corporeal, matter in motion.
19. He argued that "though Scripture acknowledge spirits, yet doth it
nowhere say, that they are incorporeal, meaning thereby without
dimensions and quantity".(In this view, Hobbes claimed to be
following Tertullian, whose views were not condemned in the Nicene
creed.) He also, like Locke, stated that true revelation can never be in
disagreement with human reason and experience, although he also
argues that people should accept revelation and its interpretations also
for the reason that they should accept the commands of their sovereign,
in order to avoid war.
