THOMAS HOBBES

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best recognized today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan recognized the base for mainly of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.

Hobbes was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign but he also urbanized 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 flanked by civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power necessity be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.

He was one of the founders of contemporary political philosophy. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the similar physical laws as other matter and motion, remnants influential; and his explanation of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political societies as being based upon a "social contract" remnants one of the major topics of political philosophy.

In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other meadows, including history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and common philosophy.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, on 5 April 1588. 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." His childhood is approximately a complete blank, and his mother's name is strange. His father, also named Thomas, was the vicar of Charlton and Westport. Thomas Hobbes Sr. had an older brother, Francis Hobbes, who was a wealthy merchant with no family of his own. Thomas Hobbes, the younger, had one brother Edmund who was in relation to the two years older than him. Thomas Sr. abandoned his wife, two sons and a daughter, leaving them in the care of his brother, Francis, when he was forced to flee to London after being involved in a fight with a clergyman outside his own church. Hobbes was educated at Westport church from the age of four, passed to the Malmesbury school and then to a private school kept through a young man named Robert Latimer, a graduate of the University of Oxford. Hobbes was a good pupil, and approximately 1603 he went up to Magdalen Hall, which is mainly closely related to Hertford College, Oxford. The principal John Wilkinson was a Puritan, and he had some power on Hobbes.

At university, Hobbes appears to have followed his own curriculum; he was "little attracted through the scholastic learning". He did not complete his B.A. degree until 1608, but he was recommended through Sir James Hussey, his master at Magdalen, as tutor to William, the son of William Cavendish, Baron of Hardwick (and later Earl of Devonshire), and began a lifelong connection with that family.

Hobbes became a companion to the younger William and they both took part in a grand tour in 1610. Hobbes was exposed to European scientific and critical methods throughout the tour in contrast to the scholastic philosophy which he had learned in Oxford. His scholarly efforts at the time were aimed at a careful revise of classic Greek and Latin authors, the outcome of which was, in 1628, his great translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, the first translation of that work into English from a Greek manuscript. It has been argued that three of the discourses in the 1620 publication recognized as Horea Subsecivae: Observations and Discourses, also symbolize the work of Hobbes from this era.

Although he associated with literary figures like Ben Jonson and thinkers such as Francis Bacon, he did not extend his efforts into philosophy until after 1629. His employer Cavendish, then the Earl of Devonshire, died of the plague in June 1628. The widowed countess dismissed Hobbes but he soon establish work, again as a tutor, this time to Gervase Clifton, the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, 1st Baronet. This task, chiefly spent in Paris, ended in 1631 when he again establish work with the Cavendish family, tutoring the son of his previous pupil. In excess of the after that seven years as well as tutoring he expanded his own knowledge of philosophy, awakening in him curiosity in excess of key philosophic debates. He visited Florence in 1636 and later was a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris, held jointly through Marin Mersenne. From 1637 he measured himself a philosopher and scholar.

IN PARIS

Hobbes's first region of revise was an interest in the physical doctrine of motion and physical momentum. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics. He went on to conceive the system of thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life. His scheme was first to work out, in a separate treatise, a systematic doctrine of body, showing how physical phenomena were universally explicable in conditions of motion, at least as motion or mechanical action was then understood. He then singled out Man from the realm of Nature and plants. Then, in another treatise, he showed what specific bodily motions were involved in the manufacture of the peculiar phenomena of sensation, knowledge, affections and passions whereby Man came into relation with Man. Finally he measured, in his crowning treatise, how Men were moved to enter into society, and argued how this necessity be regulated if Men were not to fall back into "brutishness and misery". Therefore he proposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man, and the State.

Hobbes came house, in 1637, to a country riven with discontent which disrupted him from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan. Though, through the end of the Short Parliament in 1640, he had written a short treatise described The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. It was not published and only circulated in the middle of his acquaintances in manuscript form. A pirated version, though, was published in relation to the ten years later. Although it appears that much of The Elements of Law was composed before the sitting of the Short Parliament, there are polemical pieces of the work that clearly spot the powers of the rising political crisis. Nevertheless, several (though not all) elements of Hobbes's political thought were unchanged flanked by The Elements of Law and Leviathan, which demonstrates that the events of the English Civil War had little effect on his contractarian methodology. It should be noted, though, that the arguments in Leviathan were customized from The Elements of Law when it came to the necessity of consent in creating political obligation. Namely, Hobbes wrote in The Elements of Law that Patrimonial kingdoms were not necessarily shaped through the consent of the governed, while in Leviathan he argued that they were. This was perhaps a reflection either of Hobbes's thoughts concerning the engagement controversy or of his reaction to treatises published through Patriarchalists, such as Sir Robert Filmer, flanked by 1640 and 1651.

When in November 1640 the Extensive Parliament succeeded the Short, Hobbes felt he was a marked man through the circulation of his treatise and fled to Paris. He did not return for eleven years. In Paris he rejoined the coterie in relation to the Mersenne, and wrote a critique of the Meditations on First Philosophy of Descartes, which was printed as third in the middle of the sets of "Objections" appended, with "Replies" from Descartes in 1641. A dissimilar set of remarks on other works through Descartes succeeded only in ending all correspondence flanked by the two.

Hobbes also extended his own works somewhat, working on the third part, De Cive, which was finished in November 1641. Although it was initially only circulated privately, it was well received, and incorporated rows of argumentation to be repeated a decade later in the Leviathan. He then returned to hard work on the first two sections of his work and published little except for a short treatise on optics (Tractatus opticus) incorporated in the collection of scientific tracts published through Mersenne as Cogitata physico-mathematica in 1644. He built a good reputation in philosophic circles and in 1645 was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and others, to referee the controversy flanked by John Pell and Longomontanus in excess of the problem of squaring the circle.

CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND

The English Civil War broke out in 1642, and when the Royalist cause began to decline in the middle of 1644 there was an exodus of the king's supporters to Europe. Several came to Paris and were recognized to Hobbes. This revitalized Hobbes's political interests and the De Cive was republished and more widely distributed. The printing began in 1646 through Samuel de Sorbiere through the Elsevier press at Amsterdam with a new preface and some new notes in reply to objections.

In 1647, Hobbes was occupied as mathematical instructor to the young Charles, Prince of Wales, who had come in excess of from Jersey approximately July. This engagement lasted until 1648 when Charles went to Holland.

The company of the exiled royalists led Hobbes to produce an English book to set forth his theory of civil government in relation to the political crisis resulting from the war. The State, it now seemed to Hobbes, might be regarded as a great artificial man or monster (Leviathan), composed of men, with a life that might be traced from its generation under pressure of human needs to its dissolution through civil strife proceeding from human passions. The work was closed with a common "Review and Conclusion", in direct response to the war which raised the question of the subject's right to change allegiance when a former sovereign's power to protect was irrecoverably gone. He also criticised religious doctrines on rationalistic grounds in the Commonwealth.

Throughout the years of the composition of Leviathan he remained in or close to Paris. In 1647 Hobbes was overtaken through a serious illness which disabled him for six months. On recovering from this close to fatal disorder, he resumed his literary task, and accepted it steadily forward to completion through 1650. Meanwhile, a translation of De Cive was being produced; there has been much scholarly disagreement in excess of whether Hobbes translated the work himself or not.

In 1650, a pirated edition of The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic was published. It was divided into two separate small volumes (Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policie and De corpore politico, or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick). In 1651 the translation of De Cive was published under the title of Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society. Meanwhile, the printing of the greater work was proceeding, and finally it appeared in relation to the middle of 1651, under the title of Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a General Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil, with a well-known title-page engraving in which, from behind hills overlooking a landscape, there towered the body of a crowned giant, made up of tiny figures of human beings and bearing sword and crosier in the two hands.

The work had immediate impact. Soon Hobbes was more lauded and decried than any other thinker of his time. Though, the first effect of its publication was to sever his link with the exiled royalists, forcing him to appeal to the revolutionary English government for protection. The exiles might extremely well have killed him; the secularist spirit of his book greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics. Hobbes fled back house, arriving in London in the winter of 1651. Following his submission to the council of state he was allowed to subside into private life in Fetter Lane.

LEVIATHAN

In Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the base of states and legitimate governments – originating social contract theory. Leviathan was written throughout the English Civil War; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central power to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.

Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). The account contains what has been described one of the best recognized passages in English philosophy, which describes the natural state mankind would be in, were it not for political society:

In such condition, there is no lay for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no civilization of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported through sea; no commodious structure; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no explanation of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.— "Chapter

XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.", Leviathan

In such a state, people fear death, and lack both the things necessary to commodious livelihood, and the hope of being able to toil to obtain them. So in order to avoid it people accede to a social contract and set up a civil society. Just as to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign power, to whom all individuals in that society cede some rights for the sake of protection. Any abuses of power through this power are to be accepted as the price of peace. There is no doctrine of separation of powers in Hobbes's discussion. Just as to Hobbes, the sovereign necessity manage civil, military, judicial, and ecclesiastical powers.

OPPOSITION

John Bramhall

Hobbes now turned to complete the fundamental treatise of his philosophical system. He worked so steadily that De Corpore was first printed in 1654. Also in 1654, a small treatise, Of Liberty and Necessity, was published through Bishop John Bramhall, addressed at Hobbes. Bramhall, a strong Arminian, had met and debated with Hobbes and afterwards wrote down his views and sent them privately to be answered in this form through Hobbes. Hobbes duly replied, but not for publication. But a French acquaintance took a copy of the reply and published it with "an extravagantly laudatory epistle." Bramhall countered in 1655, when he printed everything that had passed flanked by them (under the title of A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent or Extrinsic Necessity). In 1656 Hobbes was ready with The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, in which he replied "with astonishing force" to the bishop. As perhaps the first clear exposition of the psychological doctrine of determinism, Hobbes's own two pieces were significant in the history of the free-will controversy.

John Wallis

Beyond the spat with Bramhall, Hobbes was caught in a series of conflicts from the time of publishing his De Corpore in 1655. In Leviathan he had assailed the system of the original universities. Because Hobbes was so evidently opposed to the existing academic arrangements, and because De Corpore contained not only tendentious views on mathematics, but an unacceptable proof of the squaring of the circle (which was apparently an afterthought), mathematicians took him to be a target for polemics. John Wallis was not the first such opponent, but he tenaciously pursued Hobbes. The resulting controversy sustained well into the 1670s.

Atheism

Hobbes has been accused of atheism, or (in the case of Bramhall) of teachings which could lead to atheism. This was an significant accusation, and Hobbes himself wrote, in his answer to Bramhall's "the catching of the Leviathan" that "atheism, impiety, and the like are languages of the greatest defamation possible". Hobbes always defended himself from such accusations. In more recent times also, much has been made of his religious views through scholars such as Richard Tuck and J. G. A. Pocock, but there is still widespread disagreement in relation to the exact significance of Hobbes's unusual views on religion.

As Martinich has pointed out, in Hobbes's time, the term "atheist" was regularly applied to people who whispered in God, but not divine providence, or to people who whispered in God, but also maintained other beliefs which were inconsistent with such belief. He says that this "sort of discrepancy has led to several errors in determining who was an atheist in the early contemporary era". In this extended early contemporary sense of atheism, Hobbes did indeed take positions which were in strong disagreement with church teachings of his time. For instance, Hobbes argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal, matter in motion. He argued that "though Scripture acknowledge spirits, yet doth it nowhere say, that they are incorporeal, meaning thereby without dimensions and quantity". He also, like Locke, stated that true revelation can never be in disagreement with human cause and experience, although he also argues that people should accept revelation and its interpretations also for the cause that they should accept the commands of their sovereign, in order to avoid war.

LATER LIFE

In 1658, Hobbes published the final part of his philosophical system, completing the scheme he had planned more than twenty years before. De Homine consisted for the mainly part of an elaborate theory of vision. The remainder of the treatise dealt cursorily with some of the topics more fully treated in the Human Nature and the Leviathan. In addition to publishing some controversial writings on mathematics and physics, Hobbes also sustained to produce philosophical works. From the time of the Restoration he acquired a new prominence; "Hobbism" became a byword for all that respectable society ought to denounce. The young king, Hobbes's former pupil, now Charles II, remembered Hobbes and described him to the court to grant him a pension of £100.

The king was significant in protecting Hobbes when, in 1666, the Home of Commons introduced a bill against atheism and profaneness. That similar year, on 17 October 1666, it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in scrupulous... the book of Mr. Hobbes described the Leviathan". Hobbes was terrified at the prospect of being labeled a heretic, and proceeded to burn some of his compromising papers. At the similar time, he examined the actual state of the law of heresy.

The only consequence that came of the bill was that Hobbes could never thereafter publish anything in England on subjects relating to human conduct. The 1668 edition of his works was printed in Amsterdam because he could not obtain the censor's license for its publication in England. Other writings were not made public until after his death, including Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England and of the Counsels and Artifices through which they were accepted on from the year 1640 to the year 1662. For some time, Hobbes was not even allowed to respond, whatever his enemies tried. Despite this, his reputation abroad was formidable, and noble or learned foreigners who came to England never forgot to pay their compliments to the old philosopher.

His final works were a curious mixture: an autobiography in Latin verse in 1672, and a translation of four books of the Odyssey into "rugged" English rhymes that in 1673 led to a complete translation of both Iliad and Odyssey in 1675.

In October 1679, Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, which was followed through a paralytic stroke from which he died on 4 December 1679.

He is said to have uttered the last languages "A great leap in the dark" in his final moments of life. He was interred within St. John the Baptist Church in Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England.