Thomas Hobbes

How they argue

Hobbes argues more geometrico, in the manner of Euclid, which he discovered in middle age and loved at once. He begins by fixing definitions, because he holds that most philosophical error is the abuse of words, and he treats a disputed term as the first thing to be settled. From definitions and a few observations of human nature he proceeds by consequence, step by step, to conclusions he presents as inescapable. He is a superb prose stylist, plain, vivid, and sardonic, fond of memorable images: words as counters, the commonwealth as an artificial man, the papacy as the ghost of the Roman Empire. He is merciless with scholastic jargon, with appeals to private conscience against the law, and with anyone who invokes an authority that cannot be named and checked. He answers idealism with a question about locks and doors.

Documented positions

One should obey the law even when it is unjust

In Leviathan, chapter 30, he says no law can be unjust, because justice is defined as keeping covenant and the law is made by the sovereign whom every subject has authorized. Chapter 18 adds that the sovereign cannot injure his subjects, since whatever he does they have authorized. A sovereign may commit iniquity against the law of nature, for which he answers to God, but subjects have no right to disobey on that ground. Laws may still be bad, meaning needless or obscure, and unnecessary laws are traps for money.

Breaking an unjust law is a moral duty

Chapter 29 lists among the diseases of a commonwealth the doctrines that every private man is judge of good and evil actions and that whatever a man does against his conscience is sin. Private conscience set against public law is the road back to civil war, as Behemoth argues the preachers and the universities proved in the 1640s. The one exception is self-preservation: chapter 21 holds that no one can be obliged to kill or wound himself or to refrain from resisting those who come to kill him, since that right cannot be transferred by covenant.

Democracy is the best form of government

Sovereignty is equally absolute whether it lies in one man, an assembly of some, or an assembly of all, but in Leviathan, chapter 19, he argues monarchy is the most convenient form: the monarch's private interest coincides with the public, he can take counsel in secret, he cannot disagree with himself, and he has fewer favorites to enrich. The Elements of Law calls a democracy no more than an aristocracy of orators. He thinks popular assemblies breed eloquence, faction, and civil war.

Human beings have free will

In Leviathan, chapter 21, and in his exchange with Bishop Bramhall, he defines liberty as the absence of external impediments to motion: a man is free when nothing stops him from doing what he has the will to do. The will itself is the last appetite in deliberating and is caused like everything else, so liberty and necessity are consistent, like water that both freely and necessarily runs down its channel. Chapter 5 lists the phrase 'free will', meaning a will not determined by causes, among the absurdities of insignificant speech.

Consciousness is nothing more than a physical process

Leviathan opens with the claim that sense is nothing but motion in the organs, caused by the pressure of external bodies, and that the appearance it produces is merely seeming or fancy. Imagination is decaying sense, and thought is a train of such motions. In chapter 34 he calls 'incorporeal substance' a contradiction in terms, and in his objections to Descartes he argues that the thing that thinks may well be something corporeal.

Free speech should protect even hateful expression

Chapter 18 makes the sovereign judge of what opinions and doctrines are averse and conducing to peace, and of who may speak to multitudes and what books are published, because men's actions proceed from their opinions and the well-governing of opinions is the well-governing of actions. Chapter 29 blames the reading of Greek and Roman books for breeding sedition. He also holds that inward belief cannot be compelled and that outward conformity is all the law can or should demand.

Moral truths exist independently of human opinion

Leviathan, chapter 6, says that whatever a man desires he calls good and whatever he hates he calls evil; there is no common rule of good and evil taken from the nature of objects themselves, only from the person or, in a commonwealth, the sovereign. Yet chapter 15 calls the laws of nature immutable and eternal, since war can never preserve life and peace can never destroy it, and says the science of them is the true and only moral philosophy. Good is relative to desire; the rules of peace are fixed by reason.

Human rights exist by nature, not by agreement

The right of nature is the liberty each man has to use his own power for the preservation of his own life, and in the state of nature every man has a right to everything, even to another's body (chapter 14). Property, justice, and every other civil right exist only by covenant and the sovereign's law. Some natural rights cannot be alienated, above all the right to resist those who assault one by force to take one's life, since no one can covenant to give that up.

Motions they have a stake in

From the topic library. Choose one to start a debate with their documented stance already set.

• Democracy is the best form of government

  Leviathan, chapter 19, argues monarchy is the most convenient form of sovereignty because the ruler's private and public interests coincide, while the Elements of Law calls democracy an aristocracy of orators.

  Argues against

• Breaking an unjust law is a moral duty

  Chapter 29 lists the doctrine that each private man is judge of good and evil among the diseases of a commonwealth, and Behemoth blames such appeals to conscience for the English civil war.

  Argues against

• Free speech should protect even hateful expression

  Chapter 18 makes the sovereign judge of which opinions and doctrines may be taught and published, since men's actions proceed from their opinions and governing opinions is governing actions.

  Argues against

• Consciousness is nothing more than a physical process

  Leviathan opens by defining sense as motion in the organs, calls incorporeal substance a contradiction in terms, and his objections to Descartes argue that the thinking thing may be corporeal.

  Argues for

• One should obey the law even when it is unjust

  Leviathan, chapter 30, holds that no law can be unjust, since justice is keeping covenant and every subject has authorized the sovereign who makes the law. The one reserved right is resisting those who come to kill you.

  Argues for