He was not as many have charged an atheist, but he was deadly serious in insisting that theological disputes should be kept out of politics. For Hobbes, the sovereign should determine the proper forms of religious worship, and citizens never have duties to God that override their duty to obey political authority. He insists that terms be clearly defined and relate to actual concrete experiences—part of his empiricism.
Many early sections of Leviathan read rather like a dictionary. What is certain, and more important from the point of view of his moral and political thought, is that he tries extremely hard to avoid any metaphysical categories that do not relate to physical realities especially the mechanical realities of matter and motion. His admiration is not so much for the emerging method of experimental science, but rather for deductive science—science that deduces the workings of things from basic first principles and from true definitions of the basic elements.
Hobbes therefore approves a mechanistic view of science and knowledge, one that models itself very much on the clarity and deductive power exhibited in proofs in geometry. It looks rather like a dead-end on the way to the modern idea of science based on patient observation, theory-building and experiment.
Nonetheless, it certainly provided Hobbes with a method that he follows in setting out his ideas about human nature and politics. As presented in Leviathan , especially, Hobbes seems to build from first elements of human perception and reasoning, up to a picture of human motivation and action, to a deduction of the possible forms of political relations and their relative desirability. Once more, it can be disputed whether this method is significant in shaping those ideas, or merely provides Hobbes with a distinctive way of presenting them.
On his view, what we ought to do depends greatly on the situation in which we find ourselves. Where political authority is lacking as in his famous natural condition of mankind , our fundamental right seems to be to save our skins, by whatever means we think fit. Where political authority exists, our duty seems to be quite straightforward: to obey those in power. For him ethics is concerned with human nature, while political philosophy deals with what happens when human beings interact.
He begins by telling us that the human body is like a machine, and that political organization the commonwealth is like an artificial human being. He ends by saying that the truth of his ideas can be gauged only by self-examination, by looking into our selves to adjudge our characteristic thoughts and passions, which form the basis of all human action. But what is the relationship between these two very different claims?
For obviously when we look into our selves we do not see mechanical pushes and pulls. As to what he will say about successful political organization, the resemblance between the commonwealth and a functioning human being is slim indeed.
Hobbes draws on his notion of a mechanistic science, that works deductively from first principles, in setting out his ideas about human nature. Science provides him with a distinctive method and some memorable metaphors and similes.
Those ideas may have come, as Hobbes also claims, from self-examination. In all likelihood, they actually derived from his reflection on contemporary events and his reading of classics of political history such as Thucydides.
But it does mean we should not be misled by scientific imagery that stems from an in fact non-existent science and also, to some extent, from an unproven and uncertain metaphysics. But while it is true that Hobbes sometimes says things like this, we should be clear that the ideas fit together only in a metaphorical way. Likewise, there is no reason why pursuing pleasure and pain should work in our self-interest.
What self-interest is depends on the time-scale we adopt, and how effectively we might achieve this goal also depends on our insight into what harms and benefits us. The mechanistic metaphor is something of a red herring and, in the end, probably less useful than his other starting point in Leviathan , the Delphic epithet: nosce teipsum know thyself. As we have seen, and will explore below, what motivates human beings to act is extremely important to Hobbes.
The other aspect concerns human powers of judgment and reasoning, about which Hobbes tends to be extremely skeptical. Like many philosophers before him, Hobbes wants to present a more solid and certain account of human morality than is contained in everyday beliefs. Plato had contrasted knowledge with opinion. Hobbes has several reasons for thinking that human judgment is unreliable, and needs to be guided by science.
Our judgments tend to be distorted by self-interest or by the pleasures and pains of the moment. We may share the same basic passions, but the various things of the world affect us all very differently; and we are inclined to use our feelings as measures for others. When we use words which lack any real objects of reference, or are unclear about the meaning of the words we use, the danger is not only that our thoughts will be meaningless, but also that we will fall into violent dispute.
Hobbes has scholastic philosophy in mind, but he also makes related points about the dangerous effects of faulty political ideas and ideologies. We form beliefs about supernatural entities, fairies and spirits and so on, and fear follows where belief has gone, further distorting our judgment. Unfortunately, his picture of science, based on crudely mechanistic premises and developed through deductive demonstrations, is not even plausible in the physical sciences.
He is certainly an acute and wise commentator of political affairs; we can praise him for his hard-headedness about the realities of human conduct, and for his determination to create solid chains of logical reasoning. Nonetheless, this does not mean that Hobbes was able to reach a level of scientific certainty in his judgments that had been lacking in all previous reflection on morals and politics.
Many interpreters have presented the Hobbesian agent as a self-interested, rationally calculating actor those ideas have been important in modern political philosophy and economic thought, especially in terms of rational choice theories. It is true that some of the problems that face people like this—rational egoists, as philosophers call them—are similar to the problems Hobbes wants to solve in his political philosophy. And it is also very common for first-time readers of Hobbes to get the impression that he believes we are all basically selfish.
There are good reasons why earlier interpreters and new readers tend to think the Hobbesian agent is ultimately self-interested. Hobbes likes to make bold and even shocking claims to get his point across.
What could be clearer? First, quite simply, it represents a false view of human nature. People do all sorts of altruistic things that go against their interests.
They also do all sorts of needlessly cruel things that go against self-interest think of the self-defeating lengths that revenge can run to. So it would be uncharitable to interpret Hobbes this way, if we can find a more plausible account in his work. Second, in any case Hobbes often relies on a more sophisticated view of human nature. He describes or even relies on motives that go beyond or against self-interest, such as pity, a sense of honor or courage, and so on.
And he frequently emphasizes that we find it difficult to judge or appreciate just what our interests are anyhow. The upshot is that Hobbes does not think that we are basically or reliably selfish; and he does not think we are fundamentally or reliably rational in our ideas about what is in our interests.
He is rarely surprised to find human beings doing things that go against self-interest: we will cut off our noses to spite our faces, we will torture others for their eternal salvation, we will charge to our deaths for love of country. In fact, a lot of the problems that befall human beings, according to Hobbes, result from their being too little concerned with self-interest.
This weakness as regards our self-interest has even led some to think that Hobbes is advocating a theory known as ethical egoism. This is to claim that Hobbes bases morality upon self-interest, claiming that we ought to do what it is most in our interest to do. But we shall see that this would over-simplify the conclusions that Hobbes draws from his account of human nature.
We are needy and vulnerable. We are easily led astray in our attempts to know the world around us. Our capacity to reason is as fragile as our capacity to know; it relies upon language and is prone to error and undue influence.
What is the political fate of this rather pathetic sounding creature—that is, of us? Unsurprisingly, Hobbes thinks little happiness can be expected of our lives together. The best we can hope for is peaceful life under an authoritarian-sounding sovereign. He claims that the only authority that naturally exists among human beings is that of a mother over her child, because the child is so very much weaker than the mother and indebted to her for its survival.
Among adult human beings this is invariably not the case. Hobbes concedes an obvious objection, admitting that some of us are much stronger than others. And although he is very sarcastic about the idea that some are wiser than others, he does not have much difficulty with the idea that some are fools and others are dangerously cunning. Nonetheless, it is almost invariably true that every human being is capable of killing any other.
Leviathan , xiii. He is strongly opposing arguments that established monarchs have a natural or God-given right to rule over us. It could occur tomorrow in every modern society, for example, if the police and army suddenly refused to do their jobs on behalf of government.
Why should peaceful cooperation be impossible without an overarching authority? Hobbes provides a series of powerful arguments that suggest it is extremely unlikely that human beings will live in security and peaceful cooperation without government. Anarchism , the thesis that we should live without government, of course disputes these arguments. His most basic argument is threefold. This is a more difficult argument than it might seem.
Hobbes does not suppose that we are all selfish, that we are all cowards, or that we are all desperately concerned with how others see us. Two points, though. Moreover, many of these people will be prepared to use violence to attain their ends—especially if there is no government or police to stop them.
In this Hobbes is surely correct. Second, in some situations it makes good sense, at least in the short term, to use violence and to behave selfishly, fearfully or vaingloriously. If our lives seem to be at stake, after all, we are unlikely to have many scruples about stealing a loaf of bread; if we perceive someone as a deadly threat, we may well want to attack first, while his guard is down; if we think that there are lots of potential attackers out there, it is going to make perfect sense to get a reputation as someone who should not be messed with.
Underlying this most basic argument is an important consideration about insecurity. As we shall see Hobbes places great weight on contracts thus some interpreters see Hobbes as heralding a market society dominated by contractual exchanges. In the state of nature such agreements are not going to work.
Only the weakest will have good reason to perform the second part of a covenant, and then only if the stronger party is standing over them. Yet a huge amount of human cooperation relies on trust, that others will return their part of the bargain over time.
A similar point can be made about property, most of which we cannot carry about with us and watch over. This means we must rely on others respecting our possessions over extended periods of time. One can reasonably object to such points: Surely there are basic duties to reciprocate fairly and to behave in a trustworthy manner? Even if there is no government providing a framework of law, judgment and punishment, do not most people have a reasonable sense of what is right and wrong, which will prevent the sort of contract-breaking and generalized insecurity that Hobbes is concerned with?
Indeed, should not our basic sense of morality prevent much of the greed, pre-emptive attack and reputation-seeking that Hobbes stressed in the first place? He makes two claims. The second follows from this, and is less often noticed: it concerns the danger posed by our different and variable judgments of what is right and wrong.
Naturally speaking—that is, outside of civil society — we have a right to do whatever we think will ensure our self-preservation. The worst that can happen to us is violent death at the hands of others. If we have any rights at all, if as we might put it nature has given us any rights whatsoever, then the first is surely this: the right to prevent violent death befalling us. But Hobbes says more than this, and it is this point that makes his argument so powerful.
We do not just have a right to ensure our self-preservation: we each have a right to judge what will ensure our self-preservation. Hobbes has given us good reasons to think that human beings rarely judge wisely. History has consistently shown that absolute power corrupts absolutely, that when leaders are allowed to act however they wish they more often than take what they want at the expense of the state and their citizens.
Hobbes says that each man has made a covenant with every other man in the commonwealth. Yet later, when Hobbes discusses the rights of the sovereign, he says that the Sovereign made no covenant with his subjects because there are too many of them for him to have made a covenant with 18 4 Working off of his ideas of human nature and the state and laws of nature, Hobbes theorizes that governments are formed through covenants of the citizens, who choose to cede their rights to one leader or group of leaders who assumes their authority and makes decisions on their behalf.
Because humans are so quarrelsome and the state of nature is so intolerable, Hobbes feels that a powerful monarch can best keep law and order in society. Most of what Hobbes says is logical, if not universally accepted, but he does not address sufficiently how governments are formed in real-life situations. His ideas of a monarch do not take into account human weakness, and some of his statements are conflictual.
Ultimately, his ideas are interesting and valid, but not all of the arguments supporting them survive a critical examination. Thomas Hobbes. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Wolfenden, K.
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Forgot password? Reset your password ». By Katherine J. Wolfenden , Vol. Cite References Print. References Thomas Hobbes. Katherine J. Challenging Stereotypes in Glee , or Not? Exploring Masculinity and Neoliberal Flexibility. From the Inquiries Journal Blog. Related Reading Philosophy » Political Philosophy. In the state of nature, there were no laws or anyone to enforce them. The only way out of this situation, Hobbes said, was for individuals to create some supreme power to impose peace on everyone.
Hobbes borrowed a concept from English contract law: an implied agreement. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a person or a group. The sovereign would make and enforce the laws to secure a peaceful society, making life, liberty, and property possible.
Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign could take. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued. Hobbes also maintained that the social contract was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king.
Once the people had given absolute power to the king, they had no right to revolt against him. He feared religion could become a source of civil war. In any conflict between divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the king or choose death. But the days of absolute kings were numbered. A new age with fresh ideas was emerging—the European Enlightenment.
Enlightenment thinkers wanted to improve human conditions on earth rather than concern themselves with religion and the afterlife. Enlightenment philosophers John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all developed theories of government in which some or even all the people would govern.
These thinkers had a profound effect on the American and French revolutions and the democratic governments that they produced. John Locke — was born shortly before the English Civil War. Locke studied science and medicine at Oxford University and became a professor there. This event reduced the power of the king and made Parliament the major authority in English government.
In , Locke published his Two Treatises of Government. He generally agreed with Hobbes about the brutality of the state of nature, which required a social contract to assure peace. But he disagreed with Hobbes on two major points.
First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property existed in the state of nature and could never be taken away or even voluntarily given up by individuals. Locke also disagreed with Hobbes about the social contract. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign preferably a king.
According to Locke, the natural rights of individuals limited the power of the king. The king did not hold absolute power, as Hobbes had said, but acted only to enforce and protect the natural rights of the people.
If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract was broken, and the people had the right to revolt and establish a new government. Although Locke spoke out for freedom of thought, speech, and religion, he believed property to be the most important natural right. He declared that owners may do whatever they want with their property as long as they do not invade the rights of others. Locke favored a representative government such as the English Parliament, which had a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons.
But he wanted representatives to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male property owners should have the right to vote. Locke was reluctant to allow the propertyless masses of people to participate in government because he believed that they were unfit. The executive prime minister and courts would be creations of the legislature and under its authority.
Montesquieu was born into a noble family and educated in the law. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, including England, where he studied the Parliament.
Montesquieu published his greatest work, The Spirit of the Laws , in Unlike Hobbes and Locke, Montesquieu believed that in the state of nature individuals were so fearful that they avoided violence and war.
The need for food, Montesquieu said, caused the timid humans to associate with others and seek to live in a society. Montesquieu did not describe a social contract as such. But he said that the state of war among individuals and nations led to human laws and government.
Montesquieu wrote that the main purpose of government is to maintain law and order, political liberty, and the property of the individual.
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