Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan (1651)


Links to the text:  Project Gutenberg version;  Oregon State University digital version; 
Chapters to read for class:  Part 1:  The Introduction;  Chs. 1, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15; and Part 1 - Chs. 17, 18, 21, and 29


Thomas Hobbes (1588-167) was born in the midst of the Spanish Armada’s appearance off the coast of Southern England. This legend was indicative of Hobbes’ nationalism and his fealty to sovereign power and to the state became a key feature of his philosophical writing.  A royalist who had to go into hiding and exile during the Cromwellian period, he wrote and published in 1651 his major study of state power, Leviathan, while living in Holland in exile.  

As a royalist, Hobbes was skeptical about the outcome of the English Civil War and thought his country was falling apart and declining back into a primitive state of nature (Jonathan Wolff, 2006, p. 7).  To counter this he opens his work with a substantial discussion of the state of nature and man’s relation to nature.  Hobbes argues that without a state, we are returned to live in a dangerous and an absolute state of nature, without any protection of government or implied laws of civil society.  After carefully delineating the natural skills and ability of human traits and abilities, Hobbes argues that through human society physical differences and superiority of individual abilities are mitigated.  In order to restore society in the wake of the English Civil War, Hobbes’ Leviathan offers a rationale for the power of the sovereign.  Although he was empathetic to monarchy, in the text Hobbes left his preference for monarchy or a republic ambiguous. His emphasis on the duties and role of the Commonwealth allows him to bridge the possibility of either a monarchy or a republic, while stressing the responsibilities of the state, regardless of form, to provide for the commonwealth.

In an age of mechanics and studies of the laws of motion as influenced by Galileo and others, Hobbes argued that elements of society, like physical objects in motion can only be put to rest or have their motion stopped by a counter force.  We live in perpetual motion unless some force halts this movement.  That counterforce would be the state, which is the protector against man’s desire to compete and secure for his own self the limited resources found in nature.  Hobbes denies there is a morality in the state of nature.  Hobbes then argues for a collective rationality, the consent of the state to govern humans as the means to inscribe authority and an observance of the laws of nature and laws imposed by the state.    


Suggested questions for consideration in your essay:

  1. Does Hobbes' theory of a state of nature and a law of nature deny the capacity or choice of moral judgment and actions by human beings?  
  2. Do Hobbes' Laws of Nature lack a basis for establishing their realization? In other words how do we establish and discuss any laws of nature?    
  3. Should we distinguish between individual and collective rationality?  

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