Machiavelli and Hobbes 161a prolific writer and translator, but his major work, Leviathan, or
the Matter, Form and Power o f a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical
and Civil, contains the political philosophy for which he is
famous.
Perhaps the two most important events in his life, which
affected his thinking about the nature of man and the nature of
the state, and his vision of what man is and how he lives in the
state, were his European studies and the English Civil War.
While on the continent he came in contact with the new scientific
theories that were to become the basis for his materialistic
philosophy. The English Civil War was so violent, so unforgiving,
and so cruel that, having witnessed it, he could conceive of no
condition so terrible as anarchy.
Hobbes was a personable and witty man, but with a penchant
for argument. His views brought him into conflict with the
scientific, political, and religious communities, yet he seemed to
find patrons wherever he went. He was an active, productive
man who played tennis well into his seventies, and during his
mid-eighties translated the entire Illiad and Odyssey. He lived
to be ninety-one years old, and it is said that he was still writing
until the year of his death.
To Hobbes, everything in the world is matter, and all matter
is in motion. All sensation is a product of this matter in motion,
and can be explained according to the laws of physics. Since all
of us are the products of this motion and matter, we are deter
mined beings. Free will is an illusion; we choose on the basis of
an idea which is the product of a material cause.
What causes us to choose one thing over another is what he
calls “appetites and aversions.” Objects which attract us, objects
that we move toward, are called appetites. Objects which repel
us, objects which we move away from, are called aversions.
Since we ourselves are objects, each different from another,
good and bad become relative terms. Our appetites we call good,
our aversions we call bad, while, in fact, they are simply
preferences based on the interaction of material forces. All
morality, then, must be subjective.
Among the basic drives that men have which bring them into
contention with one another are diffidence, desire for glory, and
competition. Diffidence is the natural suspicion men have of one
another. The desire for glory, then, coupled with this natural