Thomas Hobbes
- Created by: Xanthe
- Created on: 09-04-19 11:37
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- Thomas Hobbes
- 1588-1679
- one of England's most important political thinkers
- also linked with the liberal principle of government by consent and the philosophical artefact of a 'state of nature'
- State of nature used to a different effect by John Locke
- Leviathan 1651
- sceptical view of human nature
- Life would be 'solitary, nasty, brutish and short'
- 'natural chaos' stemmed from the absence of any formal authority, which could enforce an unquestioned code of right and wrong
- In its absence, Hobbes noted, mankind in the state of nature was left to form his own version of acceptable conduct
- Because each man's version of right and wrong were likely to be different, this would lead only to uncertainty and war
- The State
- to accomplish its side it would have to be autocratic
- dispersed power would lead to the same conflicts present in the state of nature
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