Thomas Hobbes and His Political Philosophy

2. They all have errors that tormented sedition, anarchy and civil war.
The distinction between virtue and vice, which is thought to be grounded in
nature rather than in positive law.
Conduct the affairs must be in accord with the standard outside the confines of
civil law.
Justifies the distinction between monarchy and tyranny and allows citizens to
pass judgment on whether the sovereign was fit to rule, which encourages civil
disobedience and justified tyrannicide.
Contends that the doctrine of soul – and with it the conscience – encourages
the belief that divine punishments of civil authorities.

4. Recognized that if man is subject to the laws of mechanical motion, the
manner of man’s thinking must coincide with the principles of mechanics and
the laws of physics.
Elaborate the mechanical psychology of man. Define his terms and from
these terms he derives their consequences.

5. Hobbes concludes that sense
experience is deceptive and
subjective because the image of an
object is merely the consequence
of motions of the material world
and resides within the perceiver.
Crucial for his political
science because it allows him
to claim there are no
standards of justice or the
good by which we can judge
the conduct of government.
There can be nothing
good in this world, but
only that which is
pleasurable or painful,
which also turns out to
be subjective.
The qualities of an object, such as
the “good” and the “useful,” also
must be subjective because they
reside not in the thing but in the
individual.
Knowledge is not possible through sense experience. What is required is
a method to overcome the unreliability of senses.

6. The desires of the body both
guide and prompt mental
discourse.
Whenever desire arises, it causes
the thought of the means to
satisfy the desire and further, the
thoughts respecting the means to
Reasoned speech reveals the
satisfy our desire.
Due to material necessity
advantageous, the harmful,
people seek by reason the
and also the just and the
cause and the means that
unjust, the foundations of
The desires of the body as
will satisfy their desires.
political life.
articulated by passion, are
primary and establish the ends of
man, while the task for reason is
to satisfy their desires.
Man’s ability is the power to
locate the origin of his desire
and the means to satisfy it.
Reason is instrumental “for the thoughts are to the desires
as scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the
things desired.”

7. Science stands or falls according to the precision of its definition because
imprecise definitions are an abuse of speech.
Science is necessary to overcome the deceptiveness of sense of experience and is linked
by Hobbes to “right definitions of names” or what is called nominalism.
Physics is the basis for understanding man and nature. It reduces all of nature to the
constituent elements of matter and motion.
The gulf between the image and the perceived object means that sense experience is
deceptive and subjective. To overcome the obstacle, man must invent speech and science,
which Hobbes calls the art of the correct use of names.

8. POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE
OF HOBBES’ NOTION OF DELIBERATION
Denies the possibility of
making qualitative
distinctions between good
and bad, not to mention
the distinctions between
the just and the unjust and
between prudence and
expediency.
By limiting human
deliberation to a calculus
of quantities of pleasure
and pain, Hobbesenian
deliberation denies that
individuals are capable of
making moral distinctions,
leaving the way for the
sovereign power to define
authoritatively the moral
terms that make political
life possible.
Hobbes argues, all
pleasures, desires, hopes
and fears are motions, the
law of inertia govern them.
Consequently, man’s
motion is a restless search
to acquire power or
command over those things
conducive to a contended
life.

9. Equality of men in terms of
strength, mind, and
vulnerability to death means
that there is no natural claim
to political rule.
Competition,
diffidence and
glory.
An agreement or covenant
among men that they will
transfer their natural right to
preserve themselves from
sovereign entity.
SOCIAL
CONTRACT
THEORY
Through political
association, the
danger and
insecurity that
exist in the state
of nature will
somehow be
lessened.
Implies that individuals have
an equal right or claim to
consent to a government that
would secure their rights.

10. The original condition of man is a state of war of all against
all.
In such a state, there can be no civilization – just the continual fear and the
persistent danger of violent death.
The natural concern of man in the state of nature is self-preservation.
There can be no appeal in such a state to justice because there can be
nothing unjust if self-preservation is the highest end.
Natural right is that every man must preserve itself.
Consequence notion of natural right, which in effect is a natural
liberty, is that the natural state of man cannot be anything other
than a state of war. From here, Hobbes derives the laws of
nature that point to the necessity to seek peace and establish
the social compact – the state.

11. The passions that incline
men to peace are fear of
death, desire of such
things as are necessary
to commodious living,
and hope by their
industry to obtain them.
The fear of violent death and its
more rational expression, the
desire for self-preservation, begin
the mental discourse whereby
man’s reasons seeks the means to
satisfy the desire.
Presents a man with a grave problem that he
must of necessity solve. The solution consists
partly in the
To end the mutual slaughter passions and partly in man’s reason.
Manipulating human
and secure our natural right,
nature for the sake of
one must choose to give up
political order, security
the unrestricted right to the
and peace.
means.

12. GOVERNMENT
Doctrine of natural right culminates
in the teaching that the sovereign
secure universal agreement to the
lawful, just and true.
The “the political geometer”; but
unlike actual geometers, the
sovereign does not only rely on
good-natured scientific inquiry to
secure agreement.
Questions of justice, right and wrong are
to be determined by the civil authority.
Must be the supreme arbitrator and
authority of what is good and evil, just
and the unjust, and the power to be fully
obeyed.
Hobbes’ teaching culminates an absolute
sovereign or absolute government.
Government determines the meaning of
justice through its law, or what we call
today legal positivism.

13. ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY
Not the representative of the wills of the citizen, but a separate will authorized to
secure the natural right of the citizens.
Not subject to or limited by the covenant because it was not party to the covenant
– it was the outcome of the covenant.
All legislation of the sovereign can be viewed as self-legislation.
No citizen can rightfully resist the will of the sovereign or judge the actions of the
sovereign because the sovereign has been empowered to accomplish what the
individuals fought for in the state of nature; peace and security.
To accuse the sovereign of any crime or injury is to accuse oneself of wrongdoing.
Obedience therefore is exchanged for protection.
Security of the citizenry rests in the comforting knowledge that any man who
seeks to harm another has more to fear from the sovereign that he can
contemplate benefitting from any crime.

14. LIBERTY
Right to determine the kinds of property rights individuals can possess and how
things are to be exchanged resides with the absolute sovereignty.
Absence of external impediments of motion which can be applied to both rational
and irrational creatures and inanimate objects.
Freedom from, rather than a freedom for the sake of, something such as virtue.
Civil laws can thus be viewed as artificial chains that by their nature are weak and
hold only while men fear breaking them. The other source of liberty then depends
on the silence of laws.
Because laws cannot cover every human endeavor, individuals are left free to buy
and sell those things that can be lawfully bought and sold; contract with others;
choose where they live, their own diet, and their own trade; and bring up their
children as they see fit.
Within the confines of the commonwealth the individual is largely left free to do
as he pleases. But he is not free to disturb and disrupt the concord of society.

15. SUBJECT
If there are inalienable rights, is there some standard by which we can judge the conduct of
sovereign or the government?
Could we say that there is a right for revolution or even grounds for civil disobedience?
When subjects complain about their government and when they accuse the sovereign
of being a tyrant, Hobbes accuses them of merely saying that the government does
not satisfy their personal preferences.
Distinctions of good and bad regime are false because they merely reflect the
subjective preferences of individual subjects.
To call a monarch a tyrant, an aristocrat, an oligarch, a democrat, or an anarchist is
meaningless because all subjects, including the sovereign, benefit from the peace and
security of the government.
The distinctions lose their meaning, reflecting merely the subjective feelings of the
disgruntled and disaffected.