Thomas Hobbes (A History of Western Philosophy)

Aside from Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes was a pragmatic political philosopher and even more pragmatic than Machiavelli he was an empiricist who also was mathematical.

Aversion is bad. Attraction is good. There is no objective morality, there is no theoretical way of mending two opposing points of view.

There is no such thing as static happiness but only a happiness that is progressing, that is, one cannot be happy, one can only be in the process of becoming happy

In a state of nature, man seeks to preserve his liberty and seeks the dominion of others they existence of both these instincts in the absence of government puts man in a state of war. This is what makes life nasty brutish and short.

In a state of nature, there is no property or justice, there is only war. Force and fraud are the cardinal virtues in war. and in the second part of the book Hobbes explains how men come together to form a community with a central authority by means of a social contract.

A doctrine that is disruptive to social order or peace cannot be true. Even the worst despotism is better than anarchy.

Russell accuses Hobbes of the oversimplification of assuming that the national interest is what each person desires.

Another criticism is that protecting the absolute power of the sovereign is not the only way to preserve peace – it is possible to preserve peace by power sharing. This may be the only way of avoiding civil war, and this is something that Hobbes should have known about, given England’s recent history at the time.

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Related posts:

1. ST Thomas Aquinas (A History of Western Philosophy)
2. Ancient Philosophy (A History of Western Philosophy)
3. Leibnitz (A History of Western Philosophy)
4. Kant (A History of Western Philosophy)