NET - Hobbes
1. The English Civil War of the 17th century formed the backdrop to the writings of Thomas
Hobbes. This conflict between the Stuart kings and the supporters of the Parliament had many
strands, with the economic, religious and political dimensions of the struggle all being equally
significant.
Human Nature
2. A human being, for Hobbes, is matter in motion, there being two kinds of motion: vital
motions, like the circulation of blood or, the beating of one’s pulse, and voluntary motions.
Voluntary motions or ‘endeavour’, as Hobbes calls them, are basically of two kinds: either
towards an object (desire/appetite) or away from an object (aversion). Human beings are
nothing but bundles of appetites and aversions, and life consists in satiating one desire after
another. For Hobbes, the cessation of desire is what we call death, and felicity or happiness is
the movement from one fulfilled desire to another.
3. Human beings do not just have passions, they have reason too, but their reason is a mere
slave of their passions, and its role is to devise the most efficient means of achieving these
passions.
4. Reason now merely follows desire. What we call virtuous is simply what we desire.
Individuals desire different things, so there is no one action which can be termed as virtuous.
State of Nature
5. With this conception of human nature, Hobbes presents us with the concept of the state of
nature. The state of nature represents the interaction of human beings with each other in the
absence of any kind of relations of political authority. Given his human beings, Hobbes’s state of
nature represents a state of war. Ceaselessly pursuing their desires, with no agreement on
good and bad, human beings come in conflict with each other. Since the state of nature is a
state of freedom and equality, with everyone having the right to do as he will, and no one being
naturally inferior to anyone else, it adds to the level of hostility, because no one draws back from
pursuing that which they desire.
6. This creates a situation of ever present hostility in which there is no point in undertaking long-
term projects, like cultivating a farm, for instance, since there is no security that one will get to
enjoy the fruits of this agricultural labour. Worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent
death; ; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Many contemporary political
scientists have popularized Hobbes’s concept of the state of nature by asking the question of
whether it can be modelled as a prisoner’s dilemma.
7. Human aggressiveness would be compounded by the fact that nobody in the State o f Nature
could predict what he would have to do to preserve his own life. Hobbes calls the preservation
of life the Right of Nature. Unlike the situation in an ordinary society where human behaviour is
reasonably predictable, nobody in the State of Nature would ever know what to expect of other
men, so the Right of Nature must be unlimited by definition.
8. Each man is free to do what he pleases to preserve himself, but of course this unlimited Right
