Hobbes begins his discussion with a description of human passions and speech, our basic motions.

This choice, however, follows upon our passions and our speech, especially our calling “good” the object of our desires, and pleasure the appearance of it. In order to achieve the exact knowledge for which he aims, Hobbes must limit his scientific claims to the implications that can be deduced from this decision to institute a political order, or “commonwealth.” His political science proper therefore constitutes only the section of the Leviathan that concerns the “consequences” that follow from this choice, namely, the rights and duties of the sovereign and of the subjects that are necessary to maintain this basic political agreement.

Indeed, he argues that reading Aristotle serves no purpose but to justify the ambitions of rebellious young men.īecause we can know completely and with certainty only what we make and control, Hobbes gives an account of political order that portrays it as a self-conscious construction, an artifice we craft to remove ourselves from a pre-political state of nature. Hobbes aims rather to elaborate a definitive and unambiguous science of the political good. Hobbes is dissatisfied with the wisdom Aristotle claims to gain from considering multiple opinions about the good, remarking that hundreds of years of philosophical conversation have made no discernible progress on this question. Hobbes’s claim to found the first true political science should be understood against the background of the political thinkers he seeks to supplant, chiefly Aristotle. These ideas are most comprehensively set forth in the Leviathan (1651), which text serves as the basis for this introduction to Hobbes’s thought. He argues that human beings are not naturally social or political, that the state of nature is a state of war, and that we must self-consciously create a government that is based on mutual consent and that presupposes a fundamental equality among its members. Hobbes emphasizes several ideas that have become central to modern politics and modern political science. By focusing political energies on the preservation of life and its comforts, Hobbes helps to institute the proposal made earlier by Machiavelli: that politics should satisfy certain basic, morally neutral needs rather than aim to organize us around contentious principles. In order to achieve these results, though, Hobbes must promote a view of the proper scope of politics that is narrower than that of the ancients. Hobbes claims, moreover, that his systematic political science will revolutionize political practice, enabling us to build more stable, peaceful, and productive societies. Thomas Hobbes presents himself as the first true political philosopher, the first to offer exact knowledge of justice, sovereignty, and citizenship.

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