Thomas Hobbes Biography And View On Justice

Thomas Hobbes

Introduction

Thomas Hobbes sees human from a mechanistic view that life is simply the motions of the organism believes that a state of nature in human kind will eventually become a state of war of all against all. He attempted to justify the absolute power of the sovereign on the basis of a hypothetical social contract in which individuals seek to protect themselves from one another by agreeing to obey the sovereign in all matters. The key element in Hobbes’s view on human nature was the importance of desires. He believes Law is the regulation over human kind`s essential selfishness. His works are considered important statements of the nascent ideas of liberalism as well as of the longstanding assumptions of absolutism characteristic of the times.

Thomas Hobbes’s Life

Thomas Hobbes, born in April 5, 1588, is an English philosopher who are now consider as a pioneer of modern political principles. His works has strongly influence all of subsequent English moral and political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes’s writing focus on aesthetics, free will and determinism. His most famous work is Leviathan, and a trilogy De Cive: Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, De Corpore Politico: Human Nature, and De Home: On Man. He even entered into some mathematical controversies by claiming that he had squared the circle. He was secretary to Francis Bacon, visited Galileo and engaged in disputes with Descartes. Thomas Hobbes lived through the English civil war which shaped his explicit materialistic view on human nature and monarchic political domination. Combining his background and his personality, it makes him both a notorious and a respected political theorist. Thomas Hobbes died at December 4, 1679.

Positi...

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...ill is unjust, and shall be punished.

Conclusion

In a state of nature, men are equal in their self-seeking Fear of violent death is the principal motive which causes men to create a state by contracting to surrender their natural rights and to submit to the absolute authority of a sovereign. Although the power of the sovereign derived originally from the people, a challenge to the doctrine of the divine right of kings, the sovereign's power is absolute and not subject to the law. Temporal power is also always superior to ecclesiastical power. Though Hobbes favoured a monarchy as the most efficient form of sovereignty, his theory could apply equally well to king or parliament. His political philosophy led to investigations by other political theorists, such as Locke, Spinoza, and Rousseau, who formulated their own radically different theories of the social contract.