Question

Passage Explication Two – Hobbes’ Leviathan Your assignment is to choose one of the following passages excerpted from Hobbes’s Leviathan, and to explain its context, meaning and reasoning. You are expected to present this passage as though to an intelligent but ignorant reader. Your paper should be 400-500words. It should be written as a word document, in 12’ font, single-spaced and on a single page. Do not provide a cover page. Information at the top of the page should consist only of the course code (“PHI105”), your name, and the prompt number (e.g. “Prompt #2”). Your paper will be evaluated based on its clarity, comprehensiveness, and accuracy. So, papers that accurately represent Hobbes’s ideas, provide sufficient background so that the reader knows the relevance of the claim to Hobbes’s project, and do so in a way that is more or less error free and easy to follow, will receive an A-range grade. Papers that fail to some degree at one of these tasks but succeed at the others will receive a B-range grade, and papers that fail in more than one of these areas will receive a C-range grade or lower. 1. “[B]ecause the condition of man … is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another’s body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live” (128).

Answer 1

Hobbes states that every man, from the moment that they are born, are born into a state of war, which is an innate characteristic of the species of homo sapiens, as the famous axiom goes, homo homini lupus.

He tries to propound that every man is in a constant state of Flux with another man, and this constant state of conflict is due to the resources which are available, but in scarcity and thus the race begins, for survive.

And as every man is equal in nature and rights, it is for them to fight for their survive with the other men, in order to preserve their existence by the aid of utilization and acquiring of these very resources.

And these moments, as there exists no one to allocate or distribute these resources, there needs to be a third party who can do so rightly.