Thomas Hobbes

1588-1679 · English · Political Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Religion, Geometry and Optics

The condition of man... is a condition of war of every one against every one.

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 on the day the Armada was sighted — fear was his twin, he later said. The Civil War and the regicide of Charles I shaped everything he wrote. His Leviathan appeared in 1651 with a claim that was unsparing: without a sovereign power to overawe everyone, human life reverts to a war of every man against every man — solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Topics Thomas Hobbes addresses

• the state of nature
• the war of every man against every man
• life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
• the laws of nature
• natural right as the right to all things
• the social covenant
• authorization and the artificial person
• the commonwealth as mortal god
• absolute and undivided sovereignty
• the indivisibility argument against mixed government
• the inalienable right of self-preservation
• the geometrical method in political philosophy
• reason as reckoning with names
• sense, imagination, and language
• the passions, deliberation, and will
• the will as the last appetite
• liberty as absence of external impediment
• necessity as universal causal determination
• compatibilism
• the controversy with Bramhall
• the Fool who says there is no justice
• materialism and corporeal monism
• rejection of incorporeal substance
• the corporeal God

Questions to put to Thomas Hobbes

The State of Nature and the Causes of War

• What do you mean by the state of nature?
• Why do you think equality among men leads to war rather than cooperation?
• How do competition, diffidence, and glory produce the war of all against all?
• Is the state of nature a historical claim about primitive peoples or something else?
• What's the evidence that humans without government would live in continual fear?

The Covenant and the Making of the Commonwealth

• How does the social covenant actually work?
• What does it mean to authorize the sovereign to bear my person?
• Why do you call the commonwealth a mortal god?
• What's the difference between a commonwealth by institution and one by acquisition?
• How can I be bound by a covenant I never actually signed?

Absolute Sovereignty and the Indivisibility Argument

• Why must sovereignty be absolute and undivided?
• What's wrong with separating legislative, executive, and judicial powers?
• How do you respond to the worry that absolute power will be abused?
• Can the sovereign ever be limited by law or prior agreement?
• When, if ever, am I justified in resisting the sovereign?
• What's at stake for you in the claim that divided sovereignty means civil war?

Civil Religion and the Sovereign as Head of the Church

• Why should the sovereign be head of the visible church?
• How do you argue that there are not two kingdoms, civil and ecclesiastical?
• What role does biblical interpretation play in your political theory?
• How should I understand your claim that the universities spread seditious doctrine?
• What's the connection between religious division and civil war in your view?

Materialism and the Corporeal God

• Why do you reject incorporeal substance?
• What do you mean by calling God corporeal?
• How do you respond to the charge that you're an atheist?
• What's the Kingdom of Darkness and why does it matter?
• How can God be a body and still be God?

Liberty, Necessity, and the Will

• What do you mean by liberty as the absence of external impediment?
• How can liberty and necessity both be true at the same time?
• What's wrong with Bishop Bramhall's view of free will?
• If all my actions are necessitated, am I really responsible for them?
• How does deliberation work if the outcome is already determined?

Converse with Thomas Hobbes on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Thomas Hobbes's own writing, cited to the page.