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Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

Hobbes argued that without a sovereign authority, human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” — that the natural condition of humanity is a war of all against all, and that peace requires the establishment of an absolute sovereign to whom individuals surrender their natural freedom in exchange for security. Leviathan (1651) is the systematic statement: a mechanistic account of human nature (humans are self-interested, driven by desire and aversion), a theory of the state of nature (without government, rational self-interest produces conflict), and a theory of sovereignty (the social contract establishes an authority that cannot be challenged without destroying the peace it provides). The argument is secular — Hobbes derives the necessity of sovereignty from human nature and rational calculation, not from divine right. Locke modified the social contract by making it conditional (government must protect rights or forfeit legitimacy); Hume rejected the contract framework altogether (no historical society was ever founded on a contract).

Life

Born 5 April 1588 in Westport (now part of Malmesbury), Wiltshire, England — reportedly prematurely, when his mother was frightened by news of the approaching Spanish Armada. Hobbes later said: “Fear and I were born twins.” Educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (BA, 1608). Became tutor to the Cavendish family, a position that gave him access to intellectual circles across Europe. Travelled extensively; met Galileo in Florence (1636) and engaged with Descartes’ circle in Paris.

Fled England for Paris (1640) as the political crisis leading to the Civil War intensified. Wrote Leviathan in exile (published 1651). The book offended both Royalists (because it grounded sovereignty in contract rather than divine right) and Parliamentarians (because it defended absolute sovereignty). Hobbes returned to England in 1651 and made his peace with the Commonwealth. After the Restoration, Charles II — who had been Hobbes’s pupil in mathematics during the Paris exile — provided him with a pension. Hobbes continued publishing into his eighties; he translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey at eighty-six. Died 4 December 1679 at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, at ninety-one.

Leviathan

Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (1651) develops the argument in four parts:

Human nature. Humans are material beings — the mind is the motion of matter in the brain. All voluntary action is motivated by desire (for what we think will benefit us) or aversion (to what we think will harm us). There is no summum bonum (highest good); there is only a restless pursuit of “power after power, that ceaseth only in death.” The account is mechanistic and egoistic: all human behaviour is self-interested, and the appearance of altruism is reducible to self-interest properly understood.

The state of nature. Without a common authority, the equality of human physical and intellectual powers means that no one is secure. Anyone can be killed by anyone else (through strength, cunning, or alliance). In this condition, rational self-interest produces a “war of all against all” — not constant fighting but a constant readiness for it, in which no productive activity (industry, agriculture, art, knowledge) is possible. The state of nature is not a historical claim (Hobbes does not argue that it actually existed); it is a thought experiment showing what life would be like without political authority.

The social contract. To escape the state of nature, individuals agree to surrender their natural freedom to a sovereign — a person or assembly authorised to act on behalf of all. The contract is not between the people and the sovereign (the sovereign is not a party to the contract and therefore cannot violate it); it is among the people themselves, each agreeing with each to obey the sovereign. The authority is absolute: a sovereign whose power can be challenged is not sovereign, and the peace unravels.

Where Hobbes stops

The absolute-sovereignty argument was challenged immediately and has been contested ever since. Locke argued that government is conditional on protecting natural rights, and that the people retain the right to resist a government that violates the contract. The Lockean revision — sovereignty constrained by rights — became the foundation of liberal constitutionalism. Whether Hobbes’s absolute sovereignty is a logical consequence of his premises (if any challenge to the sovereign risks the state of nature, then no challenge can be permitted) or an overreaction to the English Civil War (Hobbes wrote from the experience of political breakdown and may have generalised too far) depends on the reading.

The egoistic psychology — all human action is self-interested — has been challenged by both moral philosophers and evolutionary biologists. If humans are capable of genuine altruism (as Hamilton’s inclusive fitness theory, Trivers’ reciprocal altruism, and the cultural-evolution literature suggest), then the state of nature is not necessarily a war of all against all — cooperation can arise without a sovereign, through kinship, reciprocity, and cultural norms. Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid (1902) made this argument from the naturalist’s perspective; contemporary work on the evolution of cooperation (Sober and Wilson (D. S.), Ostrom) provides formal and empirical support.

The mechanistic materialism — the mind as the motion of matter — was radical in the seventeenth century and remains the default framework of neuroscience. Whether Hobbes’s mechanism can accommodate consciousness, intentionality, and moral responsibility (rather than merely postulating them away) is the same question that faces contemporary materialism.

Key works

De Cive (On the Citizen, 1642) — the first statement of the political theory
Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (Andrew Crooke, 1651) — the systematic treatment
De Corpore (On the Body, 1655) — the mechanistic physics and metaphysics