Hobbes' Leviathan

Hobbes

In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that all humans are like machines in the way that humans are made of completely of matter. He takes the materialist thinking a step further by claiming human psychology is mechanistic as well. Because of the mechanistic psychology of humans they are in a way predestined to be in a state of war without a common power to set down rules in which all subjects abide by. Hobbes argues this from a purely mechanistic viewpoint.

Hobbes describes the Universe as a “plenum” made completely and only of matter. Nothing exists in the universe that is not matter. He expands this materialist view of the universe further by depicting a material bodies knocking into each other and shows the passage of motion from matter to matter. Challenging vitalism, Hobbes claims that matter cannot move itself but rather “when a thing is in motion, it is eternally be in motion” (2.2) unless another body of matter interferes with it. This continuance o...