Hobbes,
like Francis Bacon was a nominalist. He regarded scholasticism as a collection of
absurdities. Hobbes felt so certain of his own originality that he
claimed that there was no civil philosophy before the publication of his De Cive. His nominalism was clearly expressed in his own words : "Of names, some are proper and singular to one thing only,… for the things named are every one of them
individual and singular." He made a sharp distinction between the realm of reason and
that of revelation. He explained that God declared his laws in three ways, "by
dictates of natural reason, by revelation, and by the voice of some
man, to whom by the operation of miracles, he procureth credit with the rest."
For Hobbes, the significant
part of philosophy was its scientific approach. Reasoning is an instrumental aspect of any
science. It is a kind of reckoning as when logicians add together, "two names
to make an affirmation and two affirmations to make a syllogism; and many
syllogisms to make a demonstration; and from the sum, or conclusions
of a syllogism, they subtract one proposition to find the other."
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Hobbes began the examination of human animal by saying that there were no conceptions in a man’s mind which do not have their origins "in that which we call SENSE". Memory is of sense – impressions : imagination is decaying sense. Man is able to name things, which distinguishes him from a beast. The ability to name things enables man to transfer his train of thought, into words. He is thus able to communicate his experiences to others. Hobbes further said that humans not only live, but also will. What men will to do is a product of their imagination. This voluntary motion is called ‘endeavor’. Endeavor towards a thing is appetite and against a thing is aversion. Both appetite and aversion are types of motion. Under the influence of Galileo, Hobbes thought of motion as the final reality.
Hobbes thus, based his philosophy on human nature. Most of his philosophy is covered in his most famous work Leviathan. In his brief introduction to Leviathan, Hobbes described the state as an organism similar to a large person. He represented the functions of the state as parallel to the functions of the human body. He described human nature, as humans create a state. According to Hobbes, every action performed by us, is self–serving in nature. He went on to say that when we donate to charity, we in fact, satisfy our ego. In other words, we involve in psychological egoism. |
After discussing
psychological egoism, Hobbes conjectured how selfish people would behave in a state of
nature, prior to the formation of any government. Human beings are both physically and
mentally equal. Hobbes continued that our situation in nature, naturally make us prone to
quarrel. There are three natural causes of quarrel among people : competition for limited
supply of material possessions, distrust of one another, and glory in so far as people
remain hostile to preserve their powerful reputation. Hobbes then concluded that the
natural condition of humans was a state a perpetual war of all against all, where there
was no morality and all lived in constant fear. "In such condition, there is no place
for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the
earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no
commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much
force; no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no
society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the
life of people, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Humans have three
motivations for ending the state of war : the fear of death, the desire to have an
adequate living, and the hope to attain that through one’s own labor. Until the state
of war ends, each person has a right to everything, including another person’s life
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