During the Time Men Live Without a Common Power to Keep Them All in Awe, They Are in That Condition Which Is Called Warre; and Such a Warre, as Is of Every Man, Against Every Man (Hobbes, Leviathan). How Does Hobbes' View of the ‘Condition of Ma...

Cromwell also gave lots of power to the Puritans and allowed them to end all ‘wicked behaviour’ and ban popular holidays. An example of these two things are no-one was allowed to play football or work on a Sunday and he banned celebrating Christmas. Cromwell’s responsibility for the execution of the king could be seen as villainous as well because he signed a death warrant against King Charles who believed in the divine rights of Kings. So it was against God’s judgement too.

With these natural causes of quarrel, Hobbes concludes that the natural condition of humans is a state of perpetual war of all against all, where no morality exists, and everyone lives in constant fear (p.45). He believes that humans have three motivations for ending this state of war: the fear of death, the desire to have an adequate living and the hope to attain this through one’s labor (p.47). These beliefs become valid because of the use of his examples. One example suggests that people are barbaric to each other. With the absence of international law, strong countries prey on the weakness of weak countries. I believe that his views of moral behavior are very true. Like Hobbes said, people are out for their well-being. If I were to do a favor for someone, I may think I am helping someone out, which I am, but I am probably doing the favor because it is going to make me feel better. It is going to benefit my well being. Hobbes is a famous philosopher whose views were very controversial. But the fact that he lived in a time when the monarchy was the “divine right of kings” (p.42), makes his views valid today. With a different government and new laws, his views appear to be true.

Thomas Hobbes believes that humans are naturally unkind. In the module, it portrays his views of man as, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". He argues that without a monarchy, social-conflict and disorder will surely ensue. Hobbes’ genuinely thinks that the role of government is to save man from their natural ways of war and conflict with one another.

By contrast, by the 1930’s and 1940’s many historians thought Cromwell was a cruel military dictator. This was because in the 1930s and 1940s most scholars saw him as a treacherous dictator, along the lines of Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. In recent decades nearly all the scholars have been favourable. During his lifetime, some areas painted him as a fraud encouraged by power — for example, The Machiavellian Cromwell and The Juglers Discovered, both part of an attack on Cromwell by the Levellers after 1647; present him as a Machiavellian figure. After his death and public humiliation there were many accusations and a few encouraging descriptions, such as John Spittlehouse 's A Warning Piece Discharged which compared him to Moses, rescuing the English by taking them securely through the Red Sea of the civil wars.[8] The great royalist historian Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1667) acknowledged that Cromwell "will be looked ahead by posterity as a brave bad man". Clarendon argued that Cromwell 's rise to power had been helped not only by his Great Spirit and energy, but also by his brutality. The nobility was particularly argumentative to Cromwell, in large part because of his well-built request to the ordinary yeoman.

Oliver Cromwell is – and has always been – one of the most controversial characters in British and Irish history. There are few people in Great Britain and Ireland today who have not yet heard of Oliver Cromwell and either loathe him or see him as a hero. Yet, the world is not black and white and so is the truth about Cromwell. In order to understand his role in both countries as a whole, one has to look at the perspective of both nations, Cromwell’s beliefs and his motives.

Thomas Hobbes describes his views on human nature and his ideal government in Leviathan. He believes human nature is antagonistic, and condemns man to a life of violence and misery without strong government. In contrast to animals, who are able to live together in a society without a coercive power, Hobbes believes that men are unable to coexist peacefully without a greater authority because they are confrontational by nature. “In the nature of man”, Hobbes says “there are three principal causes of quarrel: first, competition; secondly, diffidence, thirdly, glory” and then he goes on to list man’s primary aims for each being gain, safety and reputation (Hobbes, Leviathan, 13, 6).

This is precisely the kind of brutal clarity that helps in his construction and use of the U.K.'s burgeoning state-hood as we know it in the modern sense: "the modern world in which every action of a leader is shaped for public consumption" (Brennan 32). The nation is but a mass of potential chaos, a multiplicity which only reaches its potential as a political, unitary force when it is summoned for battle. Henry's use of his soldiers for instance, and stress on unity (their shared experience and camaraderie of Act ....), leads to the illusory notion that there is a possibility of "nobility" for those who earn it (Brennan

His ambition overtook him and he crushed us underfoot and all that would oppose him he had removed." A man named Edmund Ludlow wrote this quote in 1698, Ludlow had fought alongside Cromwell but disagreed with him taking control of the country in 1654. This quote is not biased as Source A shows that Ludlow had no problems with Cromwell at first, but then later found himself disagreeing with Cromwell's actions. This goes to show how Cromwell turned own his own people by turning on his own words, and beliefs.

Thomas Hobbes was a divisive figure in his day and remains so up to today. Hobbes’s masterpiece, Leviathan, offended his contemporary thinkers with the implications of his view of human nature and his theology. From this pessimistic view of the natural state of man, Hobbes derives a social contract in order to avoid civil war and violence among men. Hobbes views his work as laying out the moral framework for a stable state. In reality, Hobbes was misconstruing a social contract that greatly benefited the state based on a misunderstanding of civil society and the nature and morality of man.

Hobbes suggests three causes of the nature of man. First, competition; Second, Diffidence; third, glory. Human exercise violence first to gain their desire, and secondly to defend their gains, and lastly for one’s own reputation. On the ground that we are all in a state of war, Hobbes states, “In such conditions, there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain…no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, NO SOCIETY, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death…” (Leviathan, XIII). Therefore, the idea of justice or injustice cannot have a place in our society where there is no power.

In his text, Leviathan, Hobbes argues that the generation of all states ,regardless of what type of state, comes from the need to escape a common fear among all men. In other words, there is generally no great difference between one type of state from the other in terms of the ends that such states seek to achieve. The generation of all states, ,principalities or republics, comes from the common fear of what Hobbes dubs “the state of nature” (54). The state of nature is essentially life in an anarchic society without a government where every man is free to act upon his own desires, passions, appetites, and aversions without a law to regulate them (43). Life , is thus, a “war of every man against every man” because the law that prevails is one of self-preservation, survival, and maximization of self-interests (54).

Amidst the bloodshed of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes realizes the chaotic state of humanity, which gravitates towards the greatest evil. Hobbes’ underlying premises of human nature–equality, egotism, and competition–result in a universal war among men in their natural state. In order to escape anarchy, Hobbes employs an absolute sovereignty. The people willingly enter a social contract with one another, relinquishing their rights to the sovereign. For Hobbes, only the omnipotent sovereign or “Leviathan” will ensure mankind’s safety and security. The following essay will, firstly, examine Hobbes’ pessimistic premises of human nature (equality, egotism, and competition), in contrast with John Locke’s charitable views of humanity;

In the reading, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes discusses what human existence is in the state of nature and the state of war. As it is described, the state of nature refers to how men were made equal in the faculties of the body and mind. To quote, “As though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself, as well as he.” Here, Hobbes is explaining his opinion on the meaning of the “state of nature” explaining that even though one may have a strength compared to another, it all is balanced out in the end. Each of us have our individual flaws and strength that constitute our character. Hobbes also notes, how humans inherently have a state of greed and savagery. The state of war in human existence is also examined in this article. Hobbes states, “And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way

According to the view Thomas Hobbes presents within the selected passaged in the Leviathan, we live in a narcissistic society where man’s condition is primarily driven by ego and where the achievement of personal goals is deemed paramount. Within the State of Nature that is, outside of civil society we have a right to all things ‘even to one another’s body’, and there would be no agreed authority to ensure the moral grounds of our decisions. Therefore since there are no restrictions and no shared authority; man is naturally un-guarded and prone to conflict and each individual is deemed a potential threat to our resources.

In Hobbes book Leviathan, he makes the natural man out to be a self obsessed monster who is only interested in his own self preservation. This would intern leave the state of nature to be consumed with war, “...because the condition of man is conditions of war of everyone against everyone”. With out the constrain of government Hobbes states “So that in the state of nature man will find three principal causes of quarrel: first, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory” (Leviathan, 76). These principles would then leave men in the state of nature, with a life that Hobbes describes as “solitary, poor nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan, 76). Over all Hobbes view on the state of nature is a materialistic world where without an “absolute sovereign” the life of man would be nothing more then the “state of war”.