Thomas Hobbes

Quick Facts

• Name: Thomas Hobbes
• Lived: 1588-1679
• Place: England; spent important years in exile in France
• Context: English Civil War, royalism, early modern science
• Main fields: political philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, law, religion
• Main labels: materialism, social contract theory, political realism
• Major works: Leviathan, De Cive, The Elements of Law, Behemoth
• Famous for: the state of nature, social covenant, absolute sovereignty, and the war of all against all

The Big Question

How can people live together in peace when they fear one another, disagree about right and wrong, and have no accepted judge above them?

Hobbes's answer is stark: peace needs a common power strong enough to make law, settle disputes, and stop private violence. The problem is not that every person is cruel. The problem is that fear can make first strikes, threats, and distrust look rational.

In One Minute

Thomas Hobbes taught that politics begins with security. Human beings want food, comfort, honor, safety, and some control over the future. They also fear death. Because people are close enough in strength and cleverness to harm one another, no one is naturally safe.

The state of nature is his thought experiment for life without a public authority. There is no trusted lawgiver, judge, or police power. His solution is the social covenant: people authorize a sovereign, meaning one person or assembly that can act in their name. The sovereign makes public law and has the final say.

What They Taught

Hobbes wanted philosophy to explain the world through bodies and motion. His materialism says that reality is made of material things, not immaterial forms or separate spiritual substances. His mechanism explains events by motion, pressure, impact, and cause and effect. This includes the mind. Sensation begins when bodies affect our sense organs. Imagination is a weaker leftover of sensation. Desire moves toward what seems good. Fear moves away from expected harm.

That psychology drives his politics. Hobbes starts with vulnerable people who want food, shelter, honor, comfort, safety, and "power," meaning present means for getting future goods. Money, allies, weapons, reputation, skills, and offices are all power in this sense.

The state of nature is Hobbes's model of life without a common authority. It is not necessarily a historical period. In that condition, each person has a right of nature: the liberty to use his own power for self-preservation. Equality makes this dangerous. Hobbes does not mean equal talent or virtue. He means people are equal enough to threaten one another. A strong person can still be killed by surprise, weapons, or allies.

Three causes of conflict follow. Competition makes people fight for gain. Diffidence, meaning distrust, makes them fight for safety. Glory makes them fight for reputation. Even a defensive person may attack first if he thinks someone else will attack later. Hobbes calls the result a state of war. War here does not mean constant battle. It means a condition where violence can break out and no public power can stop it.

The laws of nature are rules reason discovers for preserving life. The first is to seek peace when peace is possible. The second is to give up unlimited liberty if others do the same. The third is to keep covenants. But promises are fragile when breaking them brings profit and no punishment.

The social covenant creates the commonwealth. People agree with one another to authorize a sovereign. Authorization means they treat the sovereign's public acts as done in their name. Hobbes defends very strong sovereignty because a weak sovereign cannot keep peace. If one institution commands the army, another claims final law, and another claims final religious authority, people can choose the authority that supports their faction.

Civil law is public command backed by sovereign authority. It makes property, crime, punishment, courts, offices, and public rights stable. Religion belongs to the same problem. If a church can tell subjects to disobey civil law in God's name, the commonwealth splits. Hobbes wants public religion under civil authority. His view still has one narrow limit: no one gives up the right of self-preservation, and obligation weakens when protection fails.

Key Ideas With Examples

• Materialism: only material things are real. Example: thought depends on bodily processes.
• Mechanism: events are explained by causes and motion. Example: fear is a response to expected harm.
• State of nature: life without a common power able to make and enforce law. Example: two families claim the same well, and no judge exists.
• Right of nature: each person's liberty to use whatever power he thinks necessary for survival. Example: in a shipwreck, someone grabs floating wood.
• Law of nature: a rule reason gives for preserving life and seeking peace. Example: trust collapses when promises mean nothing.
• Covenant: an agreement that transfers or limits rights. Example: people give up private revenge and authorize courts.
• Sovereign: the final public authority. Example: if two armies and two courts both claim final authority, subjects do not know whose command counts.
• Authorization: treating another person's public act as your act. Example: citizens may dislike a law, but it still counts as the act of the commonwealth.
• Liberty and necessity: freedom means not being blocked from doing what you will, while your will still has causes. Example: a river flows freely when nothing blocks it, though gravity determines its path.
• War of all against all: not constant fighting, but a condition where everyone has reason to fear everyone else. Example: a town with no trusted law is dangerous before every dispute turns violent.

Major Works

• The Elements of Law (written 1640; published 1650): Hobbes's early route from human nature to law, covenant, and political authority.
• De Cive (1642): A shorter political statement on liberty, authority, law, religion, and the citizen's duty to obey.
• Leviathan (1651): Hobbes's major synthesis of psychology, state of nature, covenant, sovereign authority, civil law, and church-state conflict.
• Behemoth (written in the 1660s; published after his death): Hobbes's history of the English Civil War and divided authority.
• De Corpore (1655) and De Homine (1658): Works on body, method, language, physiology, optics, and human nature.

Why It Matters

Hobbes matters because he makes political order a problem that has to be explained, not assumed. He asks what law, property, trust, and rights amount to when there is no power able to enforce them.

He also changes political legitimacy. Government is not justified mainly by custom, divine right, or natural hierarchy. It is justified as an artificial solution to a human problem: vulnerable people need peace, and peace needs enforceable authority.

His argument still matters whenever people ask what the state is for. Is security the first political good? How much power should government have in an emergency? Can rights survive without enforcement? When does obedience end?

Proponents, Critics, and Opponents

Hobbes inherits some of the political realism associated with Niccolo Machiavelli: fear, force, ambition, and instability are central political facts. He also worked in the scientific atmosphere shaped by Francis Bacon.

He contrasts sharply with Rene Descartes. Both belong to a world fascinated by method and mechanism, but Hobbes rejects Descartes's immaterial mind. For Hobbes, thinking depends on body.

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau both inherit Hobbes's contract problem and reject his solution. Locke gives natural rights stronger force against government. Rousseau argues that legitimate law must express citizens as a people, not mere submission for safety.

Baruch Spinoza shares Hobbes's naturalism and his interest in power, fear, and religion, but moves toward a different account of freedom and a less absolutist politics. Religious critics objected that Hobbes put church authority too far under the state. Republican and liberal critics object that his sovereign leaves subjects too exposed to abuse.

Many later thinkers still use Hobbes, even when they dislike him. Legal positivists can admire his clear distinction between public law and private morality. Political realists can admire his refusal to build politics on wishful thinking. Democratic, anarchist, feminist, and rights-based critics press the same worry: Hobbes explains why authority is needed, but gives too much power to the authority that is supposed to protect us.

Related Pages

• Niccolo Machiavelli
• Rene Descartes
• Francis Bacon
• John Locke
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Baruch Spinoza
• Leviathan
• De Cive
• Elements of Law