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Introduction
Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan stands as one of political philosophy’s most important work in the extension and reaction to Niccolo Machiavelli’s description of a human centred world. ...
Hobbes champions the universalisation of this concept to encompass the common man. ... Hobbes posits this ubiquitous human trait to be responsible for enslaving the human condition to modernistic acquisition.
Hobbes identifies felicitous restlessness as being principally responsible for all conquests and conflict. ... Hobbes? ... Hobbes would gain from this pre-emption and play advocate to the pliable and inconsistent nature of morality. ... Hobbes? ...
Thus, an underlying sense of cynicism and disillusionment with human nature compels Hobbes to frames arguments, rationalising the need for a massive concentration of power to claim dominion over all man through fear and awe. More importantly, I would show how the materialisation of the Sovereign is in effect a distillation of man’s relinquished right to war en masse. This train of thought would lead us to purport that the sense of innate malevolence exuded by the monster in the guise of a Sovereign, is in truth the distillation, regulation and not eradication of felicitous restlessness:
For there is no such thing as perpetuall Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itselfe is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense (Hobbes: 46)
Finally, I would endeavour to posit the implications Hobbes? ...
Metaphysics and Mechanistic Psychology
In Hobbes’s endeavour to rationalise human nature, he dissects and compartmentalises what he perceives to be interdependent components in human thought and emotions. ... ) The rest are derived from that originall (Hobbes: 13).
More importantly, Hobbes states that our sense impressions insulate us from gaining direct access to reality. ... So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is by the motion of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained (Hobbes: 14).
From this early description of man’s perception of the world around him, Hobbes is already foreboding the subjective quality of our thoughts. ... Hobbes then posits the dire necessity to boil man’s behavioural patterns down to a science so as to aid the extrapolation of human behaviour and action. ... This is otherwise known as the gradual fading away of sense impressions from the mind of man. ... So that Imagination and Memory, which for divers consideration hath divers names (Hobbes: 16).
It is then of special importance at this juncture to note the distinct parallels in sense decay, imagination and the nature of memory to which Hobbes would derive his definition of remembrance and prudence. ... (Hobbes: 22), it becomes plausible to attribute to it qualities formative in the definition of memory. ... (Hobbes: 23) is interwoven and dependent on remembrance.
Hobbes argues that prudence is possible to attain through the amassment of experience. ... The negation of any apparent future becomes ominous when Hobbes claims that all things to come and even the expectation of the present are merely the contemplative exertions on the past.
This development of thought delivers a profound impact later on when Hobbes describes the futility in man’s attempt to deliberate on the future. ... The impetus to secure a stable political structure for an indefinite amount of time resonates most soundly in light of an unforeseeable destiny. ... (Hobbes: 45). ... All actions committed are therefore involuntary and by extension one is able to draw the negation of man’s free will and birthright to absolute liberty. ...
Hobbes wanted to show that the human condition is in a ceaseless state of motion resultant of man’s constant reaction to appetites and aversions, desire and fear. ... However, as Hobbes points out, felicity is transient and ‘there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind?(Hobbes: 46). The backbone to felicitous restlessness that Hobbes had endeavoured thus far to rationalise is simply the notion that ‘Life it selfe is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense? (Hobbes: 46)
Man then pursues to prolong this fleeting period of felicity by the means of power. Felicitous restlessness would only result in man’s ‘perpetuall and restlesse desire for power after power that ceaseth only in Death?(Hobbes: 70). ... Therefore, Hobbes argues that a distillation of absolute power is necessary to impede all men from succumbing to the human dimension of felicitous restlessness:
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man (Hobbes: 88).
Approximate Word count = 3570
Approximate Pages = 14.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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