THOMAS HOBBES

 

Thomas Hobbes was born in England in the year 1588. Those were the times when the whole of England was trembling with the news that the Spanish armada was about to attack them. 

The name of his father was also Thomas Hobbes. He was a Vicar in a church but was crude and was always ready to quarrel or fight. One day he fought with someone and ran away from home. 

Thomas Hobbes joined school at the age of 4 and later joined the Oxford University at the age of 15. He did not like Oxford and considered it to be a den of drunkards and rowdies and resented it. He completed his education when he was 24 and started teaching to the son of Henry Cavendish the famous scientist. He met Galileo, Descartes and others. He used to write down the dictations of Bacon.  

In the meantime it appeared that there was likely to be a civil war in England. He felt that he may come to trouble due to his political opinions and ran away to Paris. He stayed at Paris for 11 years as a refugee. In the meantime King Charles was beheaded in England and Cromwell came to power. During that period Hobbes wrote his famous book the “Leviathan”. The political and philosophical ideas expressed in that book angered the expatriate English living in Paris as well as the French theologians. He then ran away to England.  

After sometime Charles II became King in 1660. Hobbes was the tutor of Charles II in his exile at France. With that in mind Charles II gave refuge to his earlier guru. However, his feud with the church continued and it branded him as an atheist. 

Hobbes lived up to a very old age. He is tall, and is of iron will. He was playing tennis in his 75^th year and was singing songs. He was a master in both Greek and Latin. At the age of 84 he wrote his autobiography. In his 86^th year he translated Homers Iliad and Odyssey into English. He was writing when he was 90 years old and finally died in his 91^st year.  

Philosophically Hobbes was a Materialist and Utilitarian. As per his Epistemology he is an Empiricist. He never criticized religion intensely. He believed in a God. But he said that God as not the creator of the Universe and said that we can never know him by logic and therefore Philosophy should not hypothesize on the concept of God.     

The most important book written by Hobbes was the “Leviathan” published in 1651. This is his philosophical treatise on politics. It defines as to what is the State? Why and how it was formed? Which is the best form of Government? He has dealt with all these in his Leviathan. Leviathan means a whale. In the modern age this is seen to be the first political treatise and it influenced many later philosophers and their philosophies. Yet today its value is only historical. 

Hobbes said, whatever is there in this world is only matter. Whatever we see or perceive is only motion. Matter and motion together is the total reality. Even man is a combination of atoms that are moving. 

There is no first cause for motion and it is eternal. There is no empty space and all the space is filled with matter. The space between the matter is filled with ether. 

How do we acquire knowledge? Motion itself is the reason for knowledge. All knowledge acquired by us is only through our sense organs. 

The colors we see, the sounds we hear, the feel we have with touch, the smells we have with the nose and the taste through our tongue are not the qualities of the external things. The sensations we get are the impressions made by the external things on our sense organs. Therefore the qualities of the external things we perceive do not intrinsically belong to them, but they are merely the impression made on our senses. Therefore the world that is seen with our senses and the actual world is different.     

Every living thing craves for pleasure and rejects pain. Our body loves some things whereas it dislikes some. Therefore it seeks those things that give pleasure and avoids things that don’t. This is the Mechanical materialism on which Hobbes built his philosophical edifice. 

As self-pleasure is the most sought by humans, man naturally becomes selfish. All humans have equal freedom and mostly have equal strength and mental ability. 

However, there are also differences between different humans. Because the goal of humans is happiness to self they compete with each other for riches and respect. In this fight the better human wins. However, this leads to strife for the vanquished. Even the victor is not safe from an even more powerful person than him. Thus, there is always insecurity and strife among humans and no one feels safe. In the process, what humans looked for in the first place; happiness is totally lost. 

But then, what to do in order to get a secure life? Every individual has to curtail his freedom and rights and accommodate others. 

Now how to regulate that freedom additionally given to others? It may be misused by the person to whom it is given. So they need to give it to a person who can protect the group. That person to whom this additional power is given becomes the headman and later the king. This is a Social Contract. He is supposed to discipline the group.