|
 Building
a home philosophy library
Lyn
May and Steve Deery
The
tenth in a series of articles advising on how to build your own
home philosophy library.
No.
10 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Everyone
has an opinion when it comes to politics, but most are like so much
Swiss cheese. The hallmark of a political theory, however, is one
where its important concepts are coherently conjoined into an account
of a properly structured and functioning community - hard ball if
not hard cheese.
In
Leviathan Hobbes uses basic 'facts' of human nature
to argue for an absolutist government. He thought all behaviour
was explicable by our passions and a capacity to reason. People
always act out of self-interest, ruled as they are by the desire
for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Hobbes, having argued for
a pessimistic theory of human psychology, then considers what life
would be like without any form of government - a state of nature.
He concludes that a state of nature would be a war of all against
all and the life of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short" - a bit like being an philosophy undergraduate .
Having alarmed the reader with this nightmarish vision he offers
his remedy.
Hobbes
argues for an absolutist state. He reasoned that only this kind
of state could provide the peace and security we all desire. An
absolute state has the authority to squash dissenting individuals
or groups as they damage peace and security. This authority is usually
seen as belonging in the hands of one individual (the sovereign),
but this is not essential. What is essential is that authority should
speak with one voice as conflicting dictates undermine the security
of the subjects.
Apart
from some memorable quotes what has Leviathan got to offer
us now? Hobbes grounds any political organisation on the way humanity
is, rather than the divine right of an individual to rule. You may
not agree with his starting point, or his conclusions, but the intention
was a practical outcome.
Leviathan
by Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge University Press) £7.16/$8.95
A
new book will be featured from mid-September 2001.
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