Hobbes’s Leviathan, Introduction, Chapters I-X

These discussion questions are meant to serve as jumping-off points for wider conversation about the issues and questions raised in the text.

In the early chapters of a book ostensibly concerned with politics, Hobbes spends a great deal of time on physics and psychology. Why do you think he does this? Why is Hobbes trying to establish an account of human nature before turning to politics?
Secondly, and more open-ended: what do you make of Hobbes’s critique of religion as it begins to emerge in these chapters? Why is it, do you think, that Hobbes does not place it all in one place

ANSWER

Hobbes believes that human nature and compulsion to morality was non-existent. He defined right as the need to avoid selfish desire and evil. He did not believe in the soul or an internal conscious calling people to do good and be just but instead explained humanity mechanically operating under the laws of physics such as chains of cause and effect, action and reaction. As a machine, he expected a human being to act selfishly and constantly pursue self-interest while avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. Hobbes established these notions before turning to politics because he also believed that a society or a government was a larger representation of human nature and the human body which operated according to the laws of physics that governed motion and collision. In the same way, a government was expected to do right by its people not because it naturally could but because it constantly had to avoid being unjust.

The first thing that Hobbes saw in religion and in particular, Christian faith is that it would constantly contradict sovereign laws. He offered that sovereign laws must have had priority in comparison to religious laws. However, Hobbes did not place it all in one place because he understood that religion was meant to be understood metaphorically and as an allegorical term and not an absolute law. He believed that at one day, the kingdom of God would be established on earth, but before that, humans must obey sovereign civil laws. Hobbes attempted to marry his philosophy with that of Christianity, but I do not think he achieved that at all. This is because as a concept, Christian laws have been ingrained into sovereign law since the beginning of civilisation. For instance, the United States offers in the constitution and currency notions about God. This makes it not so much of different laws but the same law with two parts constantly borrowing from each other.

References

Hobbes, T. (1965). Leviathan, reprinted from the edition of 1651. Clarendon Press.