Leviathan

I support a very big part of Thomas Hobbes' idea of human nature and the need of the formation of Common-Wealth (Leviathan). Actually on the lecture about Thomas Hobbes' theory I saw my reasons and explanations to a lot of things happening in the world, even in church (in general). Although most of the time my illustration of thoughts are rejected by people (again, church people particularly), now I know I am not the only one having that in mind, I am not the originator. Eventually being pessimistic to human nature is not a wrong theory, in Christianity speaking, when you consider about the original sin. However there are two main things I differ from TH: I am not a materialist and I believe human nature contains both Good and Bad (note that it's capital G and B).

So what about Thomas Hobbes? Thomas Hobbes believes our voluntary motions are consequences of our endeavours, and all our endeavours are towards something. The things we want, we desire, are appetites; and the things we try to be away from are our aversions. There are something that we are neutral on, that's contemns. Basically this means for everything results in a motion ( i.e. we act), it is base on appetites and aversions, in other words what oneself wants and oneself doesn't want. There is no Good or Bad, but different conceptions of good and bad for everyone -- one sees his appetites are good, and his aversions are bad.

Undeniably, I do think very much about people's actions are just base on their appetites and aversion. The difference is I also believe, some people will show real sympathy, pity and charity etc. to others. Not just knowing that oneself could suffer what another is currently suffering, or seeing another's misfortune a possible misfortune of oneself. Like your family and your real friends, but these all require certain level of relationship and love. The more the love is in the relationship between one and another, the more possible non-egoistic actions would carry out. That is, the Good in human I was talking about.

Thomas Hobbes continued on elaborating what power is. He stated power is the present ability to obtain some future good. Powers are the exercises of people achieving their appetites and getting rid of their aversions. Obviously here the conflicts appear because of the sameness and differences in people's love and hate. There is never a way we can satisfy everybody because people always have conflicts in their interests and most of the time what one wants is on consumption of someone else. All sorts of powers involve power over other people. All of us have natural powers and may or may not have some sort of instrumental powers. Since natural powers are more or less equal in everybody (TH thought!), so instrumental powers are the main differences between people, like wealth, reputation, people, etc.

Isn't this what people trying to do? How many politicians becomes a politician purely because of real concern about people and would like to bring these people what they want (instead of what he wants to happen in the world)? Wealth, reputation, people, are the tools people in the world use to get what themselves want most of the time. How often do you see people use their power to help someone else to get their good without any fulfillment to their own good? Again, I do not deny the existence of Good in people, but just not that often. I hope it's not in Poisson distribution.

What if there is no restrains on power execution? That's the State of Nature TH is talking about, and he believes no civilised life is possible under this situation. I concur. Imagine all of us are fighting for something , using all sorts of mean, all of us would be too busy to protect our stuff and getting what we want. How could us ever develop and improve? That's why when playing Civilization, you can't proceed too far with Anarchy. Ah, just have to love Civilization.

So, that's why we need Common-Wealth. As a society there is a need of something that can protect most people appetites and aversions (I think it's just another application of Generalisation -- on "what most people want and don't want"). People give up some of their power, given that everyone in the society has to do the same, and authorise somebody (or group of people) the power, given that person (or the group) is ensuring peace and safety in the society. Well, you may think this does not sound good, but I think this is one of the best we, human beings, can ever come up with.