Hobbes and the Myth of "Final War"

Abstract

In Chapter XXX of Leviathan we come upon following sentence: And when all world is overcharged with inhabitants, then of all is war; which provideth for every man, by victory, or death.' It is upon this terrible, almost Shakespearian sentence, that I would like to make a short comment. Hobbes also reproduces sentence in Latin version of his masterpiece with a slight, not decisive, difference: he writes that war will break out when the whole earth will not be sufficient to nourish all its inhabitants.2 Here lack of food is mentioned as immediate cause of war, but we may easily assume that such a failure of earth to feed everyone is consequence of overpopulation. How are we to interpret Hobbes's parallel statements? Which type of war is he envisaging as last remedy of all problems of mankind? Is it a war like any other, often a partial and temporary solution to certain immediate political and military problems, or final war of humanity, brought about by expansion of human race over whole world, to point of eliminating possibility of space and nutrition for all? We might think that Hobbes's isolated statement is nothing more than a cynical aside. However, we must consider that for him overpopulation seems to be only fact which makes peace effectively impossible. In Epistle Dedicatory to second edition of De Cive, issued in 1647, four years before publication of Leviathan, he writes that if it were possible to know of human actions with same accuracy with which we know the nature of quantity in geometrical figure, i.e., with precision of geometry, then avarice and ambition would be eliminated from men's hearts, since their power over them depends merely on false opinions men have about right and wrong. In consequence of such a victory of reason, mankind should enjoy such an immortal peace, that unless it were for habitation, on supposition that earth