Hobbes’ Leviathan: Analysis Of Its Impact On The Framing Of Our Democracy

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of man? What comprises a commonwealth that can successfully govern man? These are the pivotal questions presented in Hobbes’ Leviathan.
According to Hobbes, man is a creation of God not dissimilar to that of man manufacturing watches. Both have moving parts; a spring or heart to keep them alive, strings or nerves to hold them together, and wheels or joints to give motion to the whole body. But it is more than just this that Hobbes says makes up man. Man has, or at least should have sense, imagination, speech, and reason. Sense is an instrument for conception in man’s mind. Without the senses, man cannot see the “Representation or Appearance of quality” (85). Imagination is the remembering of things once perceived by the senses, and the ability to compound different memories into one, as with compounding the sight of a man and a horse into that of a Centaur. Speech by far is “The most noble and profitable of all inventions”, for speech is the means “Whereby men register ...

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live without a common power to keep them in awe, they are in that condition we call warre; and such a warre, as is of every man against every man” (185). Hobbes argues this state of constant war is the nature of man, not simply because one person is stronger than another, but because men are for the most part created equally. It is this equality among men that creates a similarity of needs and desires. When two individuals want the same thing, they are in competition with each other. Taken to the extreme they become enemies and engage in warfare. The same holds true for one man’s wanting another’s status, possessions, belongings, etc.. The nature of man though, is not comprised ...

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