Hobbes was the first advocate for the idea of a social contract “holding society” together.
Hobbes translated Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War in part because he saw the work as an excellent example of the limits of democracy.
The Leviathan can be understood by looking at the turmoil of the period in which it was conceived, both political and religious. The work was published during the last year of the English Civil War in 1651.
Hobbes’s work made him an unpopular man on both sides of the class spectrum. The monarchs thought Hobbes put too much power in the hands of the people, while the bourgeois class believed that the work put too much power in the hands of the monarch.
For Hobbes, humans are different from other creatures because of our ability to exhibit various “passions.” For him, these passions have a significant impact on our actions and speech. For example, what he calls “voluntary actions” is no more than an event set in motion through omission due to one of the central “passions” of humans, namely aversion or fear:
“By this it is manifest, that not onely actions that have their beginning from Covetousness, Ambition, Lust, or other Appetites to the thing propounded; but also those that have their beginning from Aversion, or Feare of those consequences that follow the omission, are Voluntary Actions.”
Furthermore, actions are not the only ones affected by these biological impulses. They also shape our speech and thus our interactions with other people:
“The language of Desire, and Aversion, is Imperative; as, Do This, Forbear That; which when the party is obliged to do, or forbear, is Command; otherwise Prayer; or els Counsell. The language of Vaine-Glory, of Indignation, Pitty and Revengefulness, Optative”
For Hobbes, the way to accept arguments is by appealing to the need of humans for “authority,” which should decrease our cognitive effort to accept or reject an idea based on an individual’s previous achievements. He sees this as strictly superior to appealing to the reasoning capability of another.
“From whence we may inferre, that when wee believe any saying whatsoever it be, to be true, from arguments taken, not from the thing it selfe, or from the principles of naturall Reason, but from the Authority, and good opinion wee have, of him that hath sayd it.”
The Greeks understood the need of humans to “appeal to authority,” which is why Aristotle saw it as one of the critical pillars of persuasion in rhetoric, something he called ethos in his treatise.
“If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak, and we believe it not; wee distrust not God therein, but Livy. So that it is evident, that whatsoever we believe, upon no other reason, than what is drawn from authority of men onely, and their writings.”
Hobbes sees humans as continually struggling for the power given our desire to secure our current living conditions forever. Our biological appetite for power seems not to have a clear ending. A prominent example of this is kings who paradoxically appear to have all the ability to seek more through wars (abroad) and laws (domestic).