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Though Hobbes did not fully reject the value of observational or ‘prudential’ knowledge, he dismissed the view that this was at all scientific or philosophical in nature. [5] To Hobbes, this type of knowledge was based on subjective and diverse experience, and was therefore capable of producing only speculative assumptions. [5]
Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England.Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear."
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).
Locke describes the state of nature and civil society to be opposites of each other, and the need for civil society comes in part from the perpetual existence of the state of nature. [7] This view of the state of nature is partly deduced from Christian belief (unlike Hobbes, whose philosophy is not dependent upon any prior theology).
Thomas Hobbes was an English political philosopher (1588-1679). [20] Hobbes' major focus was not on international relations but he influenced classical realist theory through his descriptions of human nature, theories of the state and anarchy and his focus on politics as a contest for power. [6]
Hobbes is explicit that in the state of nature nothing can be considered just or unjust, and every man must be considered to have a right to all things. [17] The second law of nature is that one ought to be willing to renounce one's right to all things where others are willing to do the same, to quit the state of nature, and to erect a ...
Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual, the natural equality of all men, the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state), the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the ...
In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism beginning from the principle that man in the state of nature, which is to say without a "commonwealth" (a state) is in a state of constant war one with the other and thus in fear of his life and possessions (there being no property nor right without a ...