Thomas Hobbes and His Philosophy
English Political Philosopher Famous for Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher and author of the famous political treatise Leviathan (1651) and considered his masterpiece. He also wrote an exposition of his moral and political philosophy in De Cive (The Citizen) based from an earlier work The Elements of Law.
It is for his work as a political thinker that he is best known, although he made important contributions in other fields, including geometry, ballistics and optics.
He spent much of his life in the employment of the third Earl of Devonshire, a patron who shared his interest.
Hobbes Philosophical Approach
Like both Francis Bacon and René Descartes, Hobbes pursued his inquiries by finding and using a new methodology rather than finding out more fact.
Unlike Descartes, his concerns were more political than epistemological, but he borrowed from Descartes, and other contemporaries like Galileo and Newton, the idea that if the natural sciences could be underpinned by axiomatic laws of nature, then this should also be the case for the social sciences. His method was to apply the rule of natural law to the realm of politics.
Hobbes Explains His Political Philosophy in Leviathan
His new political science first appeared in his Elements of Law (1840), a treatise not intended to be published, but rather for use by supporters of King Charles I to justify the king’s actions to a hostile Parliament. Hobbes, a royalist, spent the next 10 years in self-imposed exile in France, and as a serious thinker.
His De Cive, published in Paris in 1642, develops the themes of the Elements, but his thought is exhibited at its best in his masterpiece, the Leviathan, in which he established the foundation of most Western political philosophy through the perspective of the social contract theory.
Hobbes' Notion of Covenant and the Social Contract
According to Hobbes man acts according to certain natural laws. In an analogy reminiscent of Isaac Newton’s first law of motion, that matter will behave in a uniform way unless acted upon, Hobbes believes that the natural state of man is one of war and strife, unless acted upon and governed by the rules of social living.
Without the covenant, Hobbes claims, society would disintegrate and it would be ‘a war of every man, against every man’ and the result would inevitably a life that would be “solitary, poor, brutish and short.”
He advances the notion of a social contract by which people are kept, and keep each other - that every person operates to a natural law of self-preservation. His social contract is premised upon the naturalistic forces that drive human beings.
Out of his concepts follow his apparent belief in materialism by which everything is corporeal. To him, even God is merely matter.
Beyond Materialism, an Element of Free Will
His materialism, however, makes way for some element of free will without invoking the incorporeal soul or mind, for although he made much of the natural state of man, Hobbes had to account how societies came about according to a covenant.
For Hobbes, free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive, but rather compatible notions. In other words, Hobbes says, a human being is free to act, as long as he follows his natural inclinations to survive and multiply.
Although best known as a political philosopher, and one of those who founded materialism, Thomas Hobbes also contributed to other fields including history, physics of gases, and geometry.
Sources:
McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary, 7th Ed. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 2002.
Stokes, Philip. Philosophy, the Great Thinkers. London: Capella, 2007.
Thomas Hobbes, English Philosopher, Leviathan
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