...Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who was born April 5,1588 and died December 4,1679. He attended Oxford University where he studied classics. He was a tutor by profession and also traveled around Europe to meet scientists and to study different forms of government. Thomas Hobbes was the first great figure in modern moral philosophy. He became interested in why people allowed themselves to be ruled and what type of government would be best for England. Hobbes had a pessimistic view of people. His view was that humans were mean creatures who would do anything to better their positions. Also that people could not be trusted to make decisions on their own and a country needed an authority figure to provide direction and leadership. Therefore, he believed in monarchy- a government that gave all power to a king or queen. He said that democracy would never work because people were only interested in promoting their own self-interests. Despite this doubt of democracy, he believed that a contrasting group of representatives presenting the problems of the common person would prevent a king from being unfair and cruel. Hobbes originates the phrase 'Voice of the people' meaning one person could be chosen to represent a group with similar views. Legitimacy of government Hobbes was a dedicated materialist. The views that got him in trouble were related to this, as Hobbes claimed to believe in God...
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...The Works of Thomas Hobbes The moral and political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is very different from those of the ancients, specifically Aristotle. As a thinker during the Scientific Revolution, his picture of morality is framed in science. And while science is usually thought of to have no opinion about questions of right and wrong, Hobbes would argue otherwise. He wanted to move moral and political philosophy into the realm of science, where answers can—and should— come from science and reason, and away from the monopoly over human values held by religious texts. Furthermore, he called for a powerful, civil authority to combat what he called “the state of nature (Leviathan).” It may seem normal to define morality and science as entirely separate from each other, that is, to say that science can help explain why we may value certain things, but it can never determine what we should value. However, Hobbes sees an overlap between facts and values and attempts to use empirical answers to help figure out philosophical problems. This idea of applying facts to issues of good and evil rests upon the notion that questions such as “What is truly worth living for?...Or even dying for?” “What is morality?” and “What is a ‘good’ life?” have answers. Hobbes would say that they do, and with good reason. Questions like “What food is healthy?” or “What exercises are best?” are much like moral questions because it is difficult to find an exact answer due to the many different, correct...
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...were they? (Type here→) Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, and was very involved in his politics. Where were they from? (Type here→) He was from London, England When did they live? (Type here→) He was born April 5th, 1588 and died on December 4th, 1679. Thesis statement: Tie in the name of your historical figure plus the SPEC words (social, political, economic, & cultural). (Type here→) Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher that affected England politically, socially, economically, and culturally. Topic sentence (social) (Type here→) He had moral ideas that were based off of natural authority that rules us. Claim #1 (Type here→) Citizens do not have the...
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...According to Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan, “The question who is the better man, has no place in the condition of meer Nature;…”(Hobbes XV.211). Hobbes established in his book that all men are equal in Nature; this is the ninth law and very important part of his political philosophy. Hobbes also reveals that his philosophy is significantly different than the writings of Aristotle. He challenges Aristotle’s views of the inequality of men, the good, and evil that controls man’s life. Hobbes would find that day’s society would view his ideal of the “ultimate government” as being liberal and not a complete representation of the United States’ ruling system. First of all, Thomas Hobbes’ ninth law of nature states that all men are created...
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...The Purpose of Government What is the Purpose of Government? Ronald Reagan said “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” This quote follows the fundamental principles of a Social Contract as described by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Though the two Enlightenment thinkers had some contradicting views they came to the same conclusion. Government is created by the people, for the people. Thomas Hobbes was the first person to explore the idea of a social contract between citizens and their government. Hobbes was an influential Enlightenment thinker who believed that people are naturally selfish and violent and that life without government is “nasty, brutish, and short.” He argued that people...
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...Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes were 17th and 18th century philosophers with contrasting theories about human nature. Rousseau published first part of his Discourse on Inequality arguing that men in a state of nature are free and equal. In their theories, both Hobbes and Rousseau’s appeal to the state of nature are quite different. This paper will discuss how Rousseau’s understanding of fear of death of human nature differs from Hobbes’s understanding. Hobbes believes that man is always in the fear of being killed in a painful way because everyone is an enemy of each other. Hobbes says life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 76). The fear of a short life that ends badly should be the glue that holds society together....
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...Thomas Hobbes's political thinking and worldview are surprisingly original and still remarkable in contemporary politics. Their main concern is the problem of social and political order how human beings can live together in peace and avoid danger and fear of civil conflict. Hobbes has a negative anthropological view of man. He thinks that man in his state of nature is governed simply by the desire to fulfill his desires, man has a right to everything that is reserved, his inclination to his own desires never culminates because they follow one another. For him ethics does not exist, the reason is only a means to get the maximum benefits possible, to calculate advantages and/or disadvantages. The only end of man is self-preservation, he flees from what threatens him, the man comes into the world to survive and to satisfy what is needed for this conservation....
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...Comparing Thomas Hobbes and John Locke’s views concerning what life is like in a state of nature, we can see that the two-theorist’s share opposite views in making an assumption of what the state of nature is like. Thomas Hobbes’ views include pessimistic views of nature and how its effects can influence man to selfishly consider what he would need to do to secure his safety while John Locke presents a natural concept that assumes there is a universal thought of good that man is aware of. Attempting to justify the role of government or justice by understanding the state of nature can be somewhat accurate and can be considered for such purposes, but may fail to answer some aspects of society overall and leave other things unanswered. In regards...
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...Thomas Hobbes believed that humans were naturally driven by fear, greed, violence, and self-interest. Humans were led by extreme individualism. This was dangerous as it led to the inability to co-exist peacefully. Hobbes argued that it was dangerous to allow society to be free and that in order to be secure, society had to relinquish their individual liberties. As a result, he suggested a government in which society would give up their freedoms to an individual who would then be responsible for its security. In essence, Hobbes wished for a dictatorship. John Locke believed that individuals were rational, intelligent, and reasonable. If given the ability to think for themselves, they would be able to distinguish right from wrong. As a society,...
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...Writing Assignment 2 Why does Hobbes think that, without the state, life would be ‘nasty, brutish, and short? Assumptions about politics do change tremendously over the course of history. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) worried by the happenings is England during the English Civil War, thought human beings started to behave as if in a state of nature, a state of war. In his work Leviathan he illustrated how unpleasant life would be like in state of nature and without an operating state hoping to convince his readers of the benefits of a government. The book greatly promotes the essentiality of a strong central authority to avoid the revolting disagreement and civil war. This paper will illustrate Hobbes’s contribution to the principles of liberal...
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...Hobbes looked at society not as a unit but as many individuals, he goes on to say that the single largest fear is that of a violent death which would come about from another individual. In order to avoid this, individuals will try to further their self-preservation through three methods: diffidence, competition and glory. Whereby diffidence leads to man avoiding man, the prime source of a violent death. Competition over essential resources in order to preserve ones body and glory where one will show off their strength and intellect in order to try and scare off other individuals. Hobbes says these methods rather than avoid violence, actually lead to increased violence and the individuals in such a society are trapped in a worsening spiral of...
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...In Hobbes’s Leviathan, he examines man’s relationship with one another in a state of war. Hobbes claims that naturally humans are in a state of “kill or be killed”, pushed to hurt each other by their need for self preservation. But this idea that men are controlled by their fears in a state of nature provides a cynical and faulty view of man. Hobbes fails to take man’s capacity to love into account in his philosophy. Because of this, Hobbes’s belief about man’s state of nature is faulty and untrue. When Hobbes examines man’s behavior, he claims that man is controlled by a need for power. Hobbes argues that each action committed by a man is his attempt to become more powerful. He claims that all of man’s desires “may be be be reduced to the...
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...In Chapters sixteen through twenty-four, Hobbes mainly talks about two main subjects, the commonwealth and sovereignties. Hobbes defines both for us, and explains their rules and conditions. Something I found interesting was in chapter eighteen, where Hobbes is explaining the right of sovereigns. On page 115, he quotes, “a kingdom divided in itself cannot stand,” a reference he is making, that is actually found in the Bible. Since Hobbes wrote this before the United States of America was founded, it is fair to say that this idea was onset by either Hobbes or the Bible, in our current country ideals. This concept is even recited in the United States pledge, “…and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, INDIVISABLE, with...
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...“Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of spirit, compassion, love, and understanding.” Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Materialist Thomas Hobbes once stated that “human beings are in effect just complicated machines”, I disagree with that because unlike machines, humans are having a lot of factors to them that make them unpredictable whereas even the most complicated ones have predictable behaviors,. While humans behave as per their consciousness, machines just perform as they are taught and the most obvious reason is human emotion. This essay will be further expanding on ideas which will be contradicting Thomas Hobbes theory of human machines. “Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.” Roger Ebert The main thing that makes humans, unlike machines is our emotions, unlike machines emotions are the very core of our being even though our brain makes chemicals that allow us to feel emotions, but that does not define what emotions are. Emotions are what make us weak and also make us strong. A mother’s love for their child can make her cry when they have to live apart for a prolonged period. Again, even the weakest of the weak might rise to the occasion and give a valiant fight with the strongest mass to save his beloved from any form of harm. A machine no matter how complicated cannot use emotions the way a human does, if it to be to keep a memory or even shape their being therefore...
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...HOBBES Thomas Hobbes argues that the “State of Nature” is the condition where we are forced into contact with each other in the absence of a superior authority. Where we would imagine that people might fare best in such a state, also where each decides for themselves on how to act, and judge. Unfortunately, people cannot be trusted always to follow their will. Hobbes describes this situation as “the condition of mere nature” a state of perfectly private judgment upon any reasonable suspicion. Also, where there is no agency with recognized authority to resolve arguments and the power to implement its decisions. If this were the state, then life of a man would be nasty, disagreeable, violent, short, and solitary. If this is the State of Nature, then people have the strong reasons to avoid it. Hobbes felt that society naturally correspondent to a State of Nature, and that this State of Nature is a State of War, a war of “all against all”. In order to avoid living in a State of Nature, and therefore avoiding a State of War, which can only be done by submitting some mutually recognized public authority. Therefore a sovereign had to be erected; the sovereign would be given the rights of all their subjects and be able to enforce peace. Hobbes vision of an absolute sovereign is a sovereign with unlimited power, because if the power of sovereign were limited, then it would have to be limited by an even higher power. He also divided the power of the sovereign, and the rights that were...
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