Interpretation and Criticism of Hobbes's "Leviathan".

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Interpretation and Criticism of Hobbes’s “Leviathan”.

Hobbes covers possibly the most important and most debated topics in the field of philosophy in ‘Leviathan’, morality and politics. Here, we will concentrate on the concepts of morality explored in ‘Leviathan’ by focusing on specific passages from the book, each of which refers theoretically to man in, what Hobbes termed ‘the state of nature’; that is, viewing man as one amongst many animals, without the moral and political constraints of an organised society or state.

1). “But whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire, that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate, and Aversion, Evill; And of his Contempt, Vile, and Inconsiderable.  For these words of Good, Evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and absolutely so…” (Leviathan, Ch.6, p.120).

In this passage, Hobbes makes clear his definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.  Put simply, rather than believing that man is drawn naturally to what is good and away from what is evil, Hobbes turns this position around and asserts that, conversely, man decides what is good if it is what he is physically drawn to, and evil if it is what he, as Hobbes put it, has an ‘aversion’ to.  Thus, for Hobbes, no notions of what is good or evil, or of what is right or wrong, can exist outwith humanity, as such notions are dependent upon the desires and aversions of the individual that is using them.

It would be easy, then, to mistake Hobbes’ theory as being one based upon simple subjectivism, but this is not the case.  While there are certainly elements in this theory identifiable with subjectivism, it would be wrong to assert that Hobbes’s position is purely a subjectivist one.  This can be attributed to Hobbes’s use of moral concepts (good, evil, etc.), as secondary qualities, i.e., a quality that has a perceived effect on humans, unlike primary qualities that exist regardless of external opinion.  For Hobbes, when we desire an object, we perceive it to be good and act accordingly, however, the fact that it is something perceivably good within that object itself that causes us to act means that we are not just acting as a matter of subjective opinion, but in response to the qualities of goodness we see in the object.  

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Despite a lack of clarity in Hobbes’s position in terms of the subjective/objective notion, it is clear that Hobbes’s account of how we come to consider things good is refreshingly outspoken - unlike many of his predecessors,  Hobbes believed that “faith was not knowledge” (Forsyth and Keens-Soper, 1988, p.126) and sought to find a realistic basis for moral judgement that was not based on the objective rules set by intangible religious deities.  As a materialist (that is, one who believes that everything has a material/physical cause or explanation), Hobbes was not satisfied by theological reasoning and the notion of ...

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