Thomas Hobbes Political Thought Background Thomas Hobbes was
Thomas Hobbes Political Thought
Background • Thomas Hobbes was born in April 1588 and lived till 1679. He was born at Westport near, Malmesbury, England, and received education in Oxford. He was widely travelled, due to the nature of his job as tutor to Earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish. His most famous work is The Leviathan
• He was in exile in Paris in 1640 and spent the civil war years in the company of leading French thinkers and the English Court in exile
His works • Apart from The Leviathan (1651), he published De Cive (The Citizen) in 1642, The Element of Law in 1650, De Corpore (Concerning Body) in 1655, and De Homine (Concerning Man) in 1658.
• The first comment that needs to be made about the work of Thomas Hobbes is that his works developed over time- over a decade- involving a complex composition process. The Leviathan is the third and final publication, preceded by The Element of Law, Natural and Politic, and De Cive. These works are collectively referred to as “the three treatises. ” So The Element of Law grew to become De Cive and De Cive grew to become The Leviathan, with Hobbes expanding certain sections and arguments in subsequent work.
• Certain ideas which shifted may have been due to changing political circumstances and Hobbes’ attempt to protect himself. • The Leviathan is a unified treatise. However, it reflects the changing times and Hobbes changing interests and preoccupation
• Today, his work is studied for the account of human nature and the logic of the social contract presented in it. He presents a work which assumes that human nature is anti-social and his work shows how cooperative living can be achieved. At the core of the study of Hobbes’ political thought is the question: How can self-interested individuals be brought to cooperate when they would be better off free-riding on the contributions of others?
• Diverse interests in the works of Thomas Hobbes has led to diverse interpretations. However, this can be summarised in two dimensions: One, those who are trying to capture what Hobbes says exactly and the other is concerned with reconstruction of and improvement of the logic of Hobbes positions. These different interpretations are possible because Hobbes works permit such angles to understanding his works
• The three works of Thomas Hobbes pursued the same set of arguments
• Hobbes is referred to as the father of totalitarianism because he preferred absolute monarchy. This is because two of his works- De Cive and Leviathan “read like grammars of obedience. ” He describes the relation between citizen and sovereign in severe terms. However, truth is that even in his days his position was not taken serious for it was seen as an atheistic doctrine which presented a bleak portrait of human nature. Likewise, his championing of absolute monarchy was a minority position in the 17 th century and is no longer persuasive.
• According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics, Thomas Hobbes may be described as “one of the greatest of all political philosophers, the most brilliant and profound ever to have written in English”
Influence on him • There was a great influence of Geometry, which he studied in the works of Galileo, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, on Hobbes political thought. This is because he was impressed by the precision of science and the certainty of scientific knowledge as a result of the method of science. Thus, “he hope that if political philosophy could be formulate with logical precision, people would be more likely to achieve agreement among themselves and thereby arrive what Hobbes longed for most of
• A second influence on Thomas Hobbes is his belief that man is by nature selfish. • Added to this is the English Civil War that took place between 1642 and 1649 and which led to the beheading of King Charles I. The interregnum period from 1649 to 1660 made him develop his idea of a state of nature because of the highly dysfunctional nature of English government during the period.
His Main Point in his Political Thought • To Hobbes men are rational and desire above all their own preservation. This made them to perpetually and restlessly look for power which ultimately leads to a condition of “war of every man against every man”- that is war of all against all in the state of nature. But then this state of nature is one in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Realising the condition of the state of nature men entered into a social contract in which “each conditionally hands over his arms to a third party if each other will do the same. ” The Third party to whom arms are surrendered is the Sovereign. The Sovereign is authorised through the social contract to do anything except ask the subject to commit suicide.
The State of Nature • The state of nature describes how men lived before the formation of civil society. • The state of nature is the condition of people before there was any state or civil society. • All humans are equal in the state of nature and equally have the right to whatever they considered necessary for their survival • Because of the equality people are capable of hurting each other.
• In the state of nature, there was the war of all against all; a war of “every man against every man” • In the state of nature, “life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. ”
• At the root of the condition in the state of nature is the selfish nature of man. • It was a state in which people lived in constant death of violent death.
Social Contract • Rationality/Reason made man to figure out that peace and order may be secured if people adopt the principle of “do unto others what you want them to do unto you” • However, men may be tempted to break their words inn their desire for power and glory. This is why there is the need to have a higher authority known as the sovereign
• The duty of the authority is to ensure peace and security of life and property • The sovereign is to be obeyed without questioning • The sovereign can only be changes if he fails to maintain order and peace
LAW • For Thomas Hobbes, law begins only when there is a sovereign. In other words, it is with the emergence of civil authority that law began. This contradicts the position of St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance. • The law is defined by him as the “command of the sovereign”
• Although people had the knowledge of the natural law in the state of nature but because there was no enforcement, it is only when the sovereign had been established that is there a legal order, to which there is enforcement of law. • for Hobbes, there is no unjust law. One reason why this is so is because the people in establishing the sovereign make the law through the sovereign. Whatever the people agree to cannot be unjust.
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