Thomas Hobbes Biography

Thomas Hobbes Biography Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, on 5 April 1588. He’s a scientist, English philosopher, and historian, best known for his political philosophy, especially as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan. His father is a short-tempered vicar of a small Wiltshire parish church. In 1604, disgraced after engaging in a brawl at his own church door, he disappeared and abandoned his three children to the care of his brother, a well-to-do glover in Malmesbury. His wealthy uncle sponsored Hobbes' education at Oxford University, where he took a traditional arts degree and in his spare time developed an interest in maps. Thomas Hobbes worked for the wealthy and aristocratic Cavendish family for nearly the whole of his adult life. In 1608, Hobbes became tutor to William Cavendish who will later become the earl of Devonshire. In 1610, Hobbes and Cavendish traveled to Europe together, visiting Italy, Germany, and France. Hobbes obtained another position after Cavendish died but became Cavendish’s son tutor later. During these years, he traveled to Europe two more times, meeting the astronomer Galileo and the philosopher Rene Descartes. Over the course of many decades, Hobbes served the family and their associates as a translator, business representative, political adviser, traveling companion, keeper of accounts and scientific collaborator. Hobbes became connected with the royalist side in conflicts between the king and Parliament which continued until the 1640s and that culminated in the English Civil Wars. Fearing the reaction of the Long Parliament to his writing, Hobbes fled to Paris. Between 1646 and 1648, Hobbes was the mathematics tutor of Charles, Prince of Wales-who will become the future Charles IIwho was also in exile. During this time, Hobbes started publishing philosophical works on the nature of language, humanity, and knowledge. In 1651, Hobbes published his best-known work ‘Leviathan’ or, 'The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil'. In here, he claimed that a man can only get free from that state of violence and fear is to give up his freedom and make a contract to accept central authority. His work didn’t impress the French authorities. He went back to England in the same year. He also produced works in philosophy, mathematics, and physics. In 1660, when Charles II returned to England, he granted him a pension. In the same year, the parliament investigated the Leviathan for atheist tendencies. Hobbes burned many of his paper because of terror to be labeled as a heretic. Charles II helped him but Hobbes can’t publish any more works about politics. He died on 4 December 1679 at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, one of the Cavendish family homes. Thomas Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy Thomas Hobbes was the first philosopher to connect the philosophical commitments to politics. During this time in self-imposed exile from England, Hobbes began publishing philosophical works on the nature of knowledge, language, and humanity. He watched the political developments in his home country from afar. Although social and political turmoil affected Hobbes's life and shaped his thought, it never hampered his intellectual development. He offers a distinctive definition to what man needs in life which is a successful means to a conclusion. Hobbes claims, moreover, that his systematic political science will revolutionize political practice, enabling us to build more stable, peaceful, and productive societies. In order to achieve these results, though, Hobbes must promote a view of the proper scope of politics that is narrower than that of the ancients. He emphasizes several ideas that have become the core to modern politics and political science. He argues that human beings are not naturally social or political, that the state of nature is equivalent to the state of war, and that we must self-consciously create a government that is based on mutual consent and that presupposes fundamental equality among its members. These ideas are most comprehensively set forth in the Leviathan (1651). Hobbes begins his discussion with a description of human passions and speech, our basic motions. Following this, Hobbes develops his account of the state of nature from the claim that human beings are naturally equal. By this he means that each individual possesses the natural right to preserve himself, and furthermore the natural right to claim all things, or seek all power, that he judges necessary to this end. Moreover, Hobbes writes, in the state of nature we are, for practical purposes, equal in physical and mental capacity, since no one is strong or smart enough to defend himself with certainty against the threats that arise from the efforts of other individuals to preserve themselves. According to Hobbes, this rough equality of ability leads each person to have an equal hope of acquiring good things for himself. As individuals strive to accumulate goods, they compete with each other, and consequently create an atmosphere of distrust. These three things—competition, distrust, and the desire for glory—throw humankind into a state of war, which is for Hobbes the natural condition of human life, the situation that exists whenever natural passions are unrestrained. This state of war should be distinguished from wars as we usually experience them, for in the natural state of war every individual faces every other individual as an enemy; it is the “war of every man against every man.” The total absence of collaboration makes us miserable, and renders life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes thinks the state of nature is something we ought to avoid, at any cost except our own self-preservation (which is our “right of nature”). In order to secure self protection and self-preservation, and to avoid misery and pain, man entered Page 2 of 7 into a contract. This idea of self-preservation and self-protection are inherent in man’s nature and in order to achieve this, they voluntarily surrendered all their rights and freedoms to some authority by this contract who must command obedience. As a result of this contract, the mightiest authority is to protect and preserve their lives and property. This led to the emergence of the institution of the ruler or monarch, who shall be the absolute head. Subjects had no rights against the absolute authority or the sovereign and he is to be obeyed in all situations however bad or unworthy he might be. However, Hobbes placed moral obligations on the sovereign who shall be bound by natural law. Hence, it can be deduced that, Hobbes was the supporter of absolutism. In the opinion of Hobbes, law is dependent upon the sanction of the sovereign and the Government without sword are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all. He therefore, reiterated that civil law is the real law because it is commanded and enforced by the sovereign. Thus, he upheld the principle of “Might is always Right”. Hobbes impels subjects to surrender all their rights and vest all liberties in the sovereign for preservation of peace, life and prosperity of the subjects. It is in this way the natural law became a moral guide or directive to the sovereign for preservation of the natural rights of the subjects. For Hobbes all law is dependent upon the sanction of the sovereign. He advocated for an established order. Hence, Individualism, materialism, utilitarianism and absolutions are interwoven in the theory of Hobbes. Essay: People can’t control there own emotions especialy in times of fear. People do stupid things with gus just because they want to be popular in social media or just because they think it is cool. One of example of this, is the name…. He ask his girlfriend to shoot him and try if the bullet will penetrate the book. He posted thid What does Thomas Hobbes Think About Gun Control The debates revolving around the issue of gun control in the United States revolve around the “intent” of our founding fathers. Questions like, “what did the founders mean when they wrote this amendment?” and “why should we care about the founder’s intent when the world has changed so much since 1787?” stand at the forefront of conversation. While the topic of gun control is relatively novel within the United States, the philosophical roots of the debate date back to the 16th century, with the publication of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. In his work Hobbes, the quintessential proponent of absolutism explained that all mankind was born with three rights; life, liberty, and property. He went on to argue that as humankind couldn’t be trusted to self-govern, they should cede their rights to both liberty and property to a tyranny which would, in turn, protect their lives. Thomas Hobbes acknowledges the faults of mankind and their inability to be trusted to selfgovern through his own political theory in Leviathan. Hobbes understands that in order for individuals to protect themselves from the state of war and nature, they must voluntarily submit their rights to join under a sovereign power. Hobbes wrote about this to some degree but in terms of self-defense rather than the tools, in Leviathan. Thomas states, “The right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant [the agreement between individuals to form a government, and the laws enacted thereby] be relinquished.” (Chapter 21, p.114). Taking Hobbes’ theory into account, it seems to support the ownership of firearms throughout the country as a form of self-preservation and selfdefense. While this would seem to make sense to a thinker like Hobbes, especially in his time, statistics today reveal the opposite. A study from the Violence Policy Center shows that only about 3% of criminal gun homicides in 2014 were justified as self-defense. While the idea that these firearms could be used for self-defense is understandable, it is clear that their use in this approach is rare. Rather, these firearms are being used for the opposite – something Hobbes aimed to stop. While Hobbes insists that surrendering our rights to the government is what is necessary in order to maintain our lives and order, what should happen if that no longer is true. Further examination reveals that the current government’s failure to enact laws that protect the citizen from these inherent evils have resulted in the failure of the Commonwealth and possibly a shift back into the state of nature. The government must take steps in legislation to regain the trust of the people and offer the protection they were promised when entering the contract. Some may see these steps as stricter gun laws while others see it as the prohibition of guns altogether. It is important to consider what other forms of self-preservation are left to the people because Hobbes understands that without this availability of self-preservation, the government takes away the lives of citizens. Recent years have shown that law enforcement is not enough to provide this preservation to the people. Therefore, it is up to society to work together and reach towards the correct legislation that will offer the preservation while still protecting the people from themselves. The issue of gun control in the United States is a continuation of these two philosophers’ age-old debate. Those of the Hobbesian school of thought believe that Americans are inherently bad(or that a significant portion of them are) and that to protect their lives, the government must restrict their liberties, by confiscating or prohibiting their property. While technological advances and shifts in society have revealed that firearms may no longer the be the safe, direct method to self-preservation, legal organizations, such as law enforcement, have also proven to not be as reliable as they once were after recent cases of discrimination and mistreatment. This leaves Hobbesian thinkers to once again reexamine the tools available to us in society today to best understand what can be used as self-preservation. Therefore, Hobbes’ work does not give an answer to whether stricter gun control needs to be enforced, but that society together must work to find the best, safest means of self-preservation.