The Contemporary Background of Hobbes' "State of Nature"

Abstract

THE isolation of a thinker from his environment is like a mirage in a desert. He either looms too large or fades into the distance. Never can he be brought into real contact with the observer, for one is on the earth, and the other but an hallucination. From the moment Thomas Hobbes began writing he suggested to his readers that he was of a different mould from themselves. Within his own lifetime his works were regarded as the epitome of all that was anti-social, anti-moral, anti-religious., Hobbism became a term expressive of complete depravation and licentiousness, and was so used well into the i8th century.2 Recent writers on Hobbes have resurrected the horror with which contemporaries clothed the works of this great thinker. They are shocked at views which by isolation have assumed unreal proportions. Hobbes' conception of human nature is one of the chief ideas to rouse their disapproval. Stripped of its contemporary background, it stands out in rude proportions. Replace it in its natural surroundings and a sense of perspective is immediately restored. Whilst Hobbes' mother, frightened at the approach of the Armada, brought forth her celebrated offspring with his twinbrother Fear.4 Arminius in Amsterdam was leading the reaction