Political Science 2102A/B Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Consumerism, Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes, Absolute Monarchy
31 Jan 2014
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Hobbes believed that all phenomena in the universe, without exception, can be explained in terms of the motions and interactions of material bodies. He did not believe in the soul, or in the mind as separate from the body, or in any of the other incorporeal and metaphysical entities in which other writers have believed. Instead, he saw human beings as essentially machines, with even their thoughts and emotions operating according to physical laws and chains of cause and effect, action and reaction. As machines, human beings pursue their own self-interest relentlessly, mechanically avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. Hobbes saw the commonwealth, or society, as a similar machine, larger than the human body and artificial but nevertheless operating according to the laws governing motion and collision. In putting together this materialist view of the world, hobbes was influenced by his contemporaries galileo and kepler, who had discovered laws governing planetary motion, thereby discrediting much of the aristotelian worldview.
