To truly understand Hobbes' famous quote, “Hell is truth seen too late,” we must first familiarize ourselves with his philosophical ideas. Thomas Hobbes was a philosopher of the 17th century who is perhaps best known for his theories on politics and social contracts.
His last words were said to have been "A great leap in the dark", uttered in his final conscious moments. His body was interred in St John the Baptist's Church, Ault Hucknall, in Derbyshire.
What is Hobbes' famous quote about the state of nature?
Thomas Hobbes
In this state, every person has a natural right to do anything one thinks necessary for preserving one's own life, and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Leviathan, Chapters XIII–XIV).
His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. He poses stark alternatives: we should give our obedience to an unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide every social and political issue).
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English political philosopher. His 1651 book, Leviathan, established the theory of the "social contract," which establishes the idea that man benefits from a common rule of law.
Hobbes is famous for his early and elaborate development of what has come to be known as “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons.
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. Life was nasty, brutish and short. Many of us recall these famous words from Thomas Hobbes' political treatise, Leviathan (1651). Fewer of us remember the context in which he described this state of humanity.
To truly understand Hobbes' famous quote, “Hell is truth seen too late,” we must first familiarize ourselves with his philosophical ideas. Thomas Hobbes was a philosopher of the 17th century who is perhaps best known for his theories on politics and social contracts.
Why did Thomas Hobbes say life is nasty, brutish, and short?
Hobbes argues that life without a government, in a “state of nature,” would be “nasty, poor, solitary, brutish, and short” as a result of violent competition for resources.
According to Hobbes, the only way to escape civil war and to maintain a state of peace in a commonwealth is to institute an impartial and absolute sovereign power that is the final authority on all political issues. Hobbes believes his own political philosophy scientifically proves such a conclusion.
However, Hobbes states that there is a summum malum, or greatest evil. This is the fear of violent death. A political community can be oriented around this fear. Since there is no summum bonum, the natural state of man is not to be found in a political community that pursues the greatest good.
In Leviathan, written in 1651, Hobbes argued that men, by nature, are selfish. What drives us is fear of death and hunger for gain. This grim understanding of what we are was why we a strong ruler was needed. Without a 'Leviathan' to keep the peace, society would collapse into chaos.
Bellum omnium contra omnes, a Latin phrase meaning "the war of all against all", is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651).
What is Hobbes' famous quote about life in the state of nature?
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) famously leaned in the latter direction. He argued in his book Leviathan that, without government, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
He thought that everything which exists is made of matter, and denied the existence of immaterial souls. Many assumed this meant he also denied the existence of God. Hobbes believed that like everything else that exists, God was material. These were deeply unorthodox religious views at the time.
Hobbes believes that a monarchy is the best form of government . '... the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. ' Hobbes is describing the state of nature here. He believes that without a sovereign government, life is not really worth living and people are no better than beasts.
Hobbes sums up his view of freedom as non-obstruction in the famous defini- tion that follows his introduction of the analogy with water: 'a Free-man is he that in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do is not hindered to do what he has a will to' (L: 136).
Leviathan, Hobbes's most important work and one of the most influential philosophical texts produced during the seventeenth century, was written partly as a response to the fear Hobbes experienced during the political turmoil of the English Civil Wars.
In the 17th century, inspired by Puritan discourse of original sin, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) claimed that children were savages, even evil, and that the role of adults – teachers or parents (read mothers!) – was to discipline and shape them and thereby rescue them from sin.
Definitions of Hobbes. noun. English materialist and political philosopher who advocated absolute sovereignty as the only kind of government that could resolve problems caused by the selfishness of human beings (1588-1679) synonyms: Thomas Hobbes. philosopher.
Hobbes warned against the church meddling with the king's government. He feared religion could become a source of civil war. He thought that the church should be a department of the king's government. That way the king could closely control all religious affairs.
Thomas Hobbes' teachings gave rise to the concept of the divine right of kings within Western society. In defense of his king against the attacks of the papacy, Hobbes held that the authority of the king is the authority of God; it cannot be questioned; there can be no appeal to a higher power.
