Ads
related to: thomas hobbes leviathan main points
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651 (revised Latin edition 1668).
Thomas Hobbes (/ h ɒ b z / HOBZ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. [4]
Bellum omnium contra omnes, a Latin phrase meaning "the war of all against all", is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651).
Hobbes’s moral philosophy is the fundamental starting point from which his political philosophy is developed. This moral philosophy outlines a general conceptual framework on human nature which is rigorously developed in The Elements of Law, De Cive and Leviathan. [5]
The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent any political order (termed the "state of nature" by Thomas Hobbes). [4] In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience, assuming that 'nature' precludes mutually beneficial social relationships ...
Frontispiece of "Leviathan," by Abraham Bosse, with input from Hobbes. Arguably the most influential theory of human social origins is that of Thomas Hobbes, who in his Leviathan [5] argued that without strong government, society would collapse into Bellum omnium contra omnes — "the war of all against all":
From here, Hobbes developed the way out of the state of nature into political society and government by mutual contracts. According to Hobbes, the state of nature exists at all times among independent countries, over whom there is no law except for those same precepts or laws of nature (Leviathan, Chapters XIII, XXX end).
When Hobbes published the Leviathan in 1651, by contrast, dozens of texts were immediately written in response to it. As Mark Goldie explains: "Leviathan was a monolithic and unavoidable presence for political writers in Restoration England in a way that in the first half of the eighteenth the Two Treatises was not." [21]