Thomas Hobbes

1) His Biography and Main Works:

The father of Thomas Hobbes, also Thomas Hobbes, served as the vicar of Charlton and Westport, two Wiltshire communities near Malmesbury. Francis Hobbes, a prosperous merchant without a family, was Thomas Hobbes Senior’s older brother. When Thomas was four years old, he started attending school at Westport Church. But when he was seven years old, his father and another vicar got into a fight outside the church. After trading blows, Hobbes’ father fled. After that, it’s unclear what part his mother played in his development, but it’s clear that he was raised by his uncle Francis.

Hobbes began attending Mr. Evan’s school in Malmesbury when he was eight years old. Later, he attended Robert Latimer’s private school in Westport. By this time, he was a skilled reader and mathematician. At this school, Hobbes first displayed his brilliance, and by the time he graduated at the age of fourteen, he had already translated Euripides’ Medea from Greek into Latin iambics. According to Aubrey, Hobbes was occasionally playful as a young child, but he was also occasionally reclusive and depressed.

In 1603, after graduating from Robert Latimer’s school, he enrolled in Magdalen Hall in Oxford, where his uncle Francis continued to provide for him financially. At the time, a study of Aristotle dominated the curriculum at Oxford, and Hobbes quickly discovered that his beliefs diverged significantly from what was being taught. After earning a B.A. in 1608, he was recommended by Sir James Hussey, Principal of Magdalen Hall, and was hired as William Cavendish’s tutor. William Cavendish would eventually become the Second Earl of Devonshire. Hobbes didn’t do much in the way of academic work for around two years, preferring to be Cavendish’s friend instead, who was just marginally younger than he was.

In 1610 Hobbes went with Cavendish on a European tour and they visited France, Germany, and Italy. On this trip, he picked up some French and Italian, but more importantly, it rekindled his enthusiasm for learning, and he made the decision to pursue a career in classics. Hobbes resumed his studies in Greek and Latin after his return. He had advanced from serving as Cavendish’s tutor to serving as his secretary, and with less responsibilities came more time for studying. After his father passed away in 1626, William Cavendish received the title of Earl of Devonshire, but two years later William passed away, costing Hobbes a friend and his secretary position. The Cavendish family no longer required Hobbes’ services at this time because William Cavendish’s son was only eleven years old.

From 1628 to 1631, Hobbes served as the young Sir Gervase Clinton of Nottinghamshire’s tutor. He released his translation of Thucydides around this time, in 1629, after working on it for a number of years. We haven’t yet discussed Hobbes’ interest in either philosophy or mathematics, which is maybe even more astonishing. In actuality, Hobbes wasn’t very interested in mathematics until he was nearly forty years old. From 1629 until 1631, he travelled to the continent once more with his new student. He was called upon once more by the Cavendish family in 1631, and after returning from Paris, he was appointed tutor to the third Earl of Devonshire, a position he held from 1631 until 1642.

He returned to the continent during this time and spent 1634 to 1637 there. He encountered Galileo, Mersenne, Gassendi, and Roberval while travelling in Europe, where he developed an enthusiasm for the mechanical cosmos and started to formulate his philosophical position that everything is in motion. In reality, at the time, his opinions seemed to be in line with the most recent scientific theories. Hobbes continued to work on The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic in England in 1637, although it wasn’t released until later.

Hobbes fled to safety when the Civil War broke out in 1640 because he feared for his life and was a well-known Royalist. From 1640 on, he resided in Paris, where he once more maintained contact with Mersenne’s academic community. He penned his criticisms of Descartes’ Meditations there, and in 1642 he released De Cive (Concerning Citizenship), which featured his theories regarding the interaction of the church and the state. He then concentrated on optics, one of his favourite subjects. After publishing an updated and expanded edition of De Cive in 1647, Hobbes’ previous book The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic was published without his consent three years later, in 1650. Humane Nature and De Corpore Politico were its two titles.

Between 1646 and 1648, Hobbes taught the Prince of Wales mathematics. He stayed on the continent up until 1651, the year that Leviathan, his most well-known work, was published, and then, in the latter part of that year, he came back to England. In actuality, he was now having some issues with all political parties. With Charles I dead, it appeared that the Royalists in England had lost the battle for supremacy.

The Leviathan’s last chapters had passages that gave the impression that Hobbes was attempting to make peace with the English government, which infuriated the Royalists. Hobbes was actually sticking to his stance in these passages, which was that one only exhibited allegiance to a ruler as long as that ruler could offer safety. In addition to criticising the Catholic Church, Hobbes’ situation in Paris was somewhat precarious.

The best work of Hobbes’, Leviathan, presented his ideas in a very concise manner. He made the case that in order to live in peace and security, people must organise themselves into communities for defence. People must establish a government with the authority to create and uphold the laws required to protect the community because there will always be those members of the community who cannot be trusted. Hobbes contends that moral behaviour is rational since it is the sensible way for individuals to act. Although Hobbes was a Christian, many people believed that his arguments disproved the notion that God is the source of morality because he claims that morality follows from reason alone. Hobbes’ venomous criticisms of the university system were another element of the work that led some to criticise it.

Prior to this, Hobbes was widely regarded as endorsing a mechanical scientific philosophy that was similar to those who would establish the Royal Society. In fact, he had claimed that since everything of our knowledge and understanding is derived from our senses and all objects that our senses may see are material, we can only have a material perspective on the world.

He advocated a method to experience evaluation using language and mathematics, which he said would result in a fully mechanical knowledge of the universe. Mathematical certainty would result in accurate and unarguable findings about society and about man. His claim that everything was made of material things was taken to be a denial of the existence of the immaterial soul and intellect.

One of Hobbes’ three books on philosophy, De Corpore, was published in 1655. De Cive, which he had already published, would be released in 1658. De Corpore included a lot of mathematical information; in fact, Chapters 12 to 20 are totally devoted to the subject. Hobbes believed that mathematics was a crucial component of knowledge, but he also believed that his own materialistic perspective was revolutionising the field. With this work, he sought out to reform mathematics. Given that Hobbes views mathematics as the study of amount and that quantities are the measures of three-dimensional objects, his method is unquestionably consistently materialistic and denies abstract concepts.

Hobbes asserted that algebraic symbols were unreliable for use in mathematical arguments because they could signify a variety of concepts, including lines, surfaces, and volumes. Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics, which Hobbes published in 1656 at the University of Oxford, was his response to Wallis and others’ criticism of De Corpore.

Hobbes criticised the “new” mathematical analysis techniques in 1660. He assailed Boyle and others responsible for establishing the Royal Society in Dialogus Physicus, sive de Natura Aeris (1661), which, curiously enough, never elected Hobbes as a Fellow (it is probably that since he was perceived as an atheist entry would have been impossible). Wallis responded with persuasive mathematical justifications along with unjustified accusations of betrayal. With Mr. Hobbes considered in His Loyalty, Religion, Reputation, and Manners (1622), Hobbes concluded their discussion on disloyalty. Hobbes could win debates when his morality was contested, but Wallis had a distinct advantage over Hobbes when it came to mathematics since Wallis had a much deeper understanding of the subject.

To the very end of his life, Hobbes defended his mathematical writings. In spite of the fact that by 1670 almost everyone had realised that he was mathematically incompetent due to his blunders, he continued to write defence pieces even though it is doubtful that anyone read them. When he passed away, he was 91 years old, which was old for someone in that time. After finishing the Iliad and Odyssey in English verse at the age of 87, he left London, where he had lived for many years, and spent the remainder of his days with the Cavendish family, with whom he had maintained a strong relationship throughout his life. Just before he passed away at age 91, he was finishing up another book about squaring the circle.

2) Leviathan:

Leviathan makes a persuasive case that creating a commonwealth through a social contract is the greatest way to promote social harmony and civil peace. Hobbes’ ideal commonwealth is governed by a sovereign power with complete ability to assure the common defence and responsibility for maintaining the commonwealth’s security. Hobbes refers to this commonwealth as a “artificial person” and a body politic that resembles a human body in his introduction.

The commonwealth is depicted as a massive human form made of the bodies of its citizens, with the sovereign serving as its head, in the frontispiece of the first edition of Leviathan, which Hobbes assisted in creating. Hobbes refers to this figure as the “Leviathan,” which is a word that means “sea monster” in Hebrew and the name of a gigantic sea creature that appears in the Bible. This image serves as the appropriate metaphor for Hobbes’ ideal government. His argument that the Leviathan is essential for maintaining the status quo and averting civil conflict is made in his text.

“Of Man,” “Of Common-wealth,” “Of a Christian Common-wealth,” and “Of the Kingdome of Darknesse” are the four books that make up Leviathan. The whole text’s philosophical structure is found in Book I, whereas the subsequent books only develop the points made in the first few chapters. Hobbes claims that every facet of human nature may be inferred from materialist principles by first analysing the fundamental motions of matter in his first book.

Hobbes argues that human nature, also referred to as the “state of nature,” is naturally violent and filled with fear. The “war of every man against every man” that occurs in nature is characterised by people’s unceasing desire to obliterate one another. Because of how awful this situation is, people naturally crave peace, and building the Leviathan through social contract is the best method to do so.

The construction of the Leviathan is described in Book II, along with the rights of rulers and their people, and the commonwealth’s governmental structure is envisioned. Book III examines how Christian teaching squares with Hobbesian philosophy and the Leviathan’s religious structure. In Book IV, the author challenges erroneous religious ideas and makes the case that a secure Christian commonwealth can only be attained through the political establishment of the Leviathanic state.

The philosophical approach used by Hobbes in Leviathan is modelled after a geometric proof that is built on known definitions and basic principles, and in which each phase of the argument draws inferences from the step before it. After meeting Galileo during his extensive travels through Europe in the 1630s, Hobbes decided to develop a philosophical approach akin to the geometric argument. Hobbes attempted to develop a comparable unassailable philosophy in his authoring of Leviathan, noting that the conclusions drawn from geometry are indisputable since each of its constituent steps is indisputable in itself.

4) Human Nature in Hobbes:

Physics, which explores natural bodies, comes after the first instalment of Hobbes’ trilogy, which examines human bodies. What is sometimes referred to as Hobbes’ “philosophy of mind” or “psychology” is the point of intersection between physics and the study of human nature. Because the motion of material bodies on our sense organs, which is the subject matter of physics, creates a variety of motions in the human mind, moral philosophy is a branch of physics. Although moral philosophy is formally a branch of physics, it can also be thought of as the origin of political philosophy because it establishes the fundamental ethical concepts that lead to social conclusions. The political thesis of Leviathan clearly demonstrates Hobbes’ scientific methods.

Hobbes divides the commonwealth into its essential “parts,” i.e., humans, and then further divides persons into their “parts,” i.e., mental processes, in accordance with the method of resolution. Therefore, Hobbes’ political argument in Leviathan starts with his ideas on the nature of the mind and psychology of people. After analysing people as individuals, he reconstructs the commonwealth by setting them in nature, an idealised state that existed before political society was established.

Hobbes thinks he has uncovered the root causes of commonwealths by examining the actions, or “motions,” of people in this regulated setting. Hobbes employs the compositive technique to conceptually reconstruct the commonwealth while simultaneously attempting to prove his political assertions in accordance with the geometry paradigm by outlining essential characteristics of human nature and then drawing inferences from them. It should be observed that Hobbes does not always apply a scientific technique to political issues with consistency or rigour.

Hobbes asserts that the essential approach for comprehending his political views is self-inspection, for instance, in the Introduction to Leviathan. In this instance, his political science’s guiding principles can be discovered by merely reflecting on one’s experiences rather than by using concepts from physics. De Cive, the second book in Hobbes’ trilogy, was allegedly released first since it was based on its own set of empirical premises. Furthermore, Hobbes doesn’t strictly follow a pattern of drawing inferences from definitions and fundamental truths throughout Leviathan; rather, he makes extensive use of rhetorical tactics, particularly in the early chapters. Such devices most likely show that Hobbes intended for this work to have political consequences for a larger readership.

5) Main Themes in his Writings:

The Materialist View of Human Nature:

Hobbes thought that the motions and interactions of material bodies could account for every phenomenon in the cosmos, without exception. He did not hold the same beliefs as other writers on the soul, the mind’s ability to exist independently of the body, or any other incorporeal or metaphysical beings. Instead, he viewed people as being more like machines that follow physical rules, chains of cause and effect, and action and reaction, even in their ideas and feelings.

Humans ceaselessly pursue their own self-interest as machines, seeking pleasure at the expense of pain. Hobbes compared the commonwealth, or society, to an artificial machine that is larger than the human body and functions in accordance with the principles of motion and collision.

Hobbes was influenced by his contemporaries Galileo and Kepler, who had found rules governing planetary motion, thereby invalidating much of the Aristotelian worldview, in developing this materialist theory of the world. Hobbes aimed to construct comparable laws of motion to describe human conduct, but he was more impressed by the mathematical accuracy of Galileo and Kepler than by their use of empirical evidence and observation. Hobbes aimed to derive his laws of motion by deductive reasoning, similar to how mathematical proofs are made.

It’s important to keep in mind that Hobbes was not in a position to show how mechanical and physical processes can fully account for all aspects of human experience. That project would have required a level of scientific knowledge well beyond what was available in the seventeenth century. Even while the majority of people would want to believe that science would someday be able to fully define human experience in terms of physical phenomena, this is still far from being possible. In the absence of such a complete defence, Hobbes’ literary representation of the human person as a machine is more of a metaphor than a logical demonstration.

The Inadequacy of Observation as a Foundation of Knowledge:

According to Hobbes, the main goal of philosophy is to establish a totalizing system of truth that is demonstrably true everywhere and is based on a set of guiding principles. Because every person is capable of perceiving the universe in a unique way, he rejects using observation of nature to determine the truth. In his rejection of inductive reasoning, he makes the case that the findings of fabricated tests conducted by a select few scientists can never be uniformly demonstrated outside of the lab.

Hobbes maintains that geometry is the field of knowledge that most closely resembles the logic that should serve as the cornerstone of real philosophy. He advocates a philosophy built on initial principles that are generally accepted and serve as the cornerstone for all assertions that follow.

Fear as the Determining Factor in Human Life:

According to Hobbes, the guiding force behind all human behaviour is the ongoing mediation between the emotions of fear and hope. Every person always carries one of two emotions: hope or dread. The worst element of being in nature, according to Hobbes, is the “continual fear and danger of violent death”, which is stated in a famous passage from Leviathan. According to Hobbes, in the natural state, humans have an innate desire for as much power and “good” as possible, and there are no laws prohibiting them from inflicting injury or murder on others in order to fulfil their goals.

As a result, mankind constantly live in dread of one another, and nature is a continual state of war. Men are driven to follow the fundamental rule of nature and work toward peace by this fear combined with their rational powers. Only by coming together to create a social contract, in which men agree to be ruled in a commonwealth under a single supreme power, can peace be achieved.

Fear preserves the tranquil order of the civil commonwealth while causing the chaos that is inherent in the natural world. Fear is used to enforce the contract that establishes the commonwealth as well as to forge it. The inherent dread of such injury motivates subjects to uphold the contract and submit to the sovereign’s will since the sovereign at the head of the commonwealth has the authority to physically punish anybody who violates the contract.

Good and Evil as Appetite and Aversion:

Hobbes held that moral concepts are absent from man’s natural state. Because of this, he uses the simple definitions of good and evil to describe human nature, at least in its most basic form. These concepts serve as the foundation for Hobbes’ explanations of a range of feelings and actions. For instance, fear is the realisation that some evident good may not be reachable, whereas hope is the potential of achieving some apparent good.

Hobbes acknowledges that this description is only valid if we think of mankind as being free from social and legal restraints. General guidelines for what constitutes good or bad behaviour don’t exist in the natural world, where people’s appetites and desires are the main sources of morality. According to Hobbes, moral judgements about good and evil cannot exist unless they are enacted by the supreme power of a society. This viewpoint significantly contributes to Hobbes’ support for an absolute and authoritarian type of governance.

Absolute Monarchy as the Best Form of Government:

Hobbes argued that the only type of governance that can ensure peace is the monarchy, which he believed to be the finest. He doesn’t specify which kind of supreme sovereign power is the finest in society in some of his earlier works; he simply states that there must be one. But Hobbes makes a clear case for absolutist monarchy as the only legitimate form of government in Leviathan. In general, Hobbes aims to outline the rational foundations that may be used to build a civic society that would be impervious to internal conflict.

He outlines ways to reduce conflict, disagreement, and factionalism in society as a result, whether it be between the state and the church, between competing governments, or between many competing ideologies. According to Hobbes, any such struggle results in civil war. According to him, any type of organised governance is better than civil conflict. In order to preserve the public peace, he thus argues for all members of society to subject to one absolute, centralised authority.

According to Hobbes’ theory, the maintenance of peace in all spheres depends on submission to the sovereign. The sovereign has the authority to establish first principles, manage the government, make all laws, control the church, and decide on cases involving philosophy. According to Hobbes, this is the only surefire way to preserve a civil, peaceful polity and stop society from erupting into civil conflict.

6) His Legacy:

Despite making significant contributions to political thought, Hobbes’ pro-monarchy beliefs and mistrust of human nature are hotly debated. Hobbes’ assertion that people are inherently evil ignores the nuanced nature of people. It has been noted that even newborn babies exhibit empathy and reciprocity. Hobbes also dismisses the concept that morality may be influenced by the circumstances of a person’s upbringing.

Democracts blame Hobbes for promoting absolutism by using the social contract, a popular justification for democracy. He nevertheless established the first concepts of consent and suffrage for contemporary democracies. These Hobbes criticisms are particularly widespread in John Locke’s philosophy, whose take on the social contract theory adopts a positive conception of human nature. According to Locke, disputes happen when one person’s acts violate another person’s rights, even though humans do have morality and rights in the natural world. People therefore require governments in order to safeguard their rights, not to defend themselves against one another.

Because they established the foundation for our current understanding of the social compact and civil society, Hobbes and Locke are frequently studied in comparison. A pillar of Western philosophy is Thomas Hobbes’ social contract theory, particularly the notion of the state of nature. It signifies a philosophical shift away from the idea of kings having a divine right to rule in favour of the social consensus as the basis for political authority.