Power In Hobbe's Leviathan

6 Pages 1416 Words

An analysis of power in Hobbes’ Leviathan

In Leviathan, one of the main themes that Hobbes discusses is the pursuit of power. It is this pursuit of power that makes people do the things that they do, according to Hobbes. Hobbes writes about the reasons why we crave power, how we do it, and the only way he sees to control it. In a few of his arguments there seem to be paradoxes in his philosophy. It is the purpose of this paper to briefly explore these ideas.
We will be analyzing two different aspects of power which Hobbes discussed: the search for power by all human beings (he refers to them as “men”; important?) and the power held by the government, which Hobbes called the Sovereign. According to Hobbes, it is the natural tendency of humans to provide for oneself above all others and to not do anything, “…that is destructive of his life or taketh away the means of preserving the same…” (Chapter XIV, paragraph 3). He also writes that war is the natural condition of humans. “The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them”(Chapter XIII, paragraph 14). In other words, peace would arise only out of our ‘natural’ tendency to do the action most advantageous to ourselves. The most advantageous action, however, might be war, in which case there would be no peace (Chapter XIV, paragraph 1). This concept is known as egois!
m, and it is the opposite of altruism. This seems like somewhat of a paradox or a breakdown in Hobbe’s theory, since war would definitely be hazardous to one’s health, and yet it is supposedly our natural condition. Hobbes describes his view of human nature as “…a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”(Chapter XI, paragraph 2). When analyzing why Hobbes
believes that man constantly wants an ever increasing amount of power,...