Analysis Of The Leviathan By Thomas Hobbes

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Humans are social creatures. We are motivated when other humans praise us or reward us. In other words, we have an appetite for love. Conversely, we feel fear when other humans threaten to take away our rights. We are motivated to change our circumstances to avoid this feeling of fear. In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes examines how humans forge social contracts in order to build societies that will protect themselves from fear.
Hobbes theorizes what humanity would be like in the state of nature, “where every man is enemy to every man”. The state of nature is also a state of war because without the security that comes from the mutual exchange of human rights, every human is essentially living in fear of everyone else. There would be no laws to …show more content…

There would be no laws to force people to actually carry out agreements, and there would be very little mutual human co-operation. Therefore, some humans would struggle to survive without the option to form mutual contracts with other humans. Conversely, there would also be no laws to stop humans that desire power and resources from acting violently towards other humans. Hobbes then says that “in such a condition, there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth”1. If there were no laws to govern contracts, there would be nothing to stop any human from stealing goods produced by an industry. Therefore, the goods would be “uncertain” because there would be no way to securely carry out sales or trades. Selling a product requires the mutual exchange of rights because two parties are giving up different objects in order to obtain the other party’s object. Therefore, if there were no benefits to creating …show more content…

Likewise, enhancing culture by producing art, music, or writing would not be practical in a state of nature, because the lack of security and compensation would make perusing such a field unsafe. Without law, there would be no viable way to publish a person’s work. Instead of sharing with others, humans would merely live to fear death. Therefore, Hobbes concludes the passage by saying that the state of nature would lead to “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”1. Without the contracts that bond a society, humans would fear other humans. They would always be at risk to the “danger of violent death”1 as humans would act violently towards other humans to achieve their desires. So, in a state of nature, a human would likely maintain a solitary lifestyle to avoid conflict with other humans. A human would also live a “poor, nasty, [and] brutish”1 lifestyle without seeking the help of other people who have their own strengths. Also, without the influence of culture, a human may struggle to assign themselves an identity or a goal to pursue. Life

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