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The Introduction
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Leviathan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature, War, and Civil Society
Power, Common-wealths, and Monarchies
Religion
Fear
Reason, Fact, and Philosophy
Summary
Analysis
Hobbes first considers the thoughts of humankind, both individually and as a whole. Individually, thoughts are a “Representation” or “Apparence” of a body known as an “Object.” An object works on the eyes, ears, or other sense organs and produces different representations. The production of such “apparences” are collectively known as the human senses, and every thought of humankind originates in some way from the sense organs.
As Hobbes intends to describe the ideal common-wealth, he begins with humans—the individual building blocks of a common-wealth. Of Hobbes’s explanation of humans, he begins with human thoughts, the foundation of the people that make up the building blocks of the common-wealth. Hobbes wanted his philosophy to be indisputable, so he begins with the basics and makes one argument before moving on to the next.
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Sense is caused by an “Externall Body, or Object,” pressing upon organs that taste, touch, see, hear, or smell. The object causes pressure on the nerves, which send messages to the brain and heart. Those messages in turn are experienced as sounds, lights and colors, odors, or textures. Qualities such as these are in the objects that cause them, and these objects—or matter—are in constant motion, repeatedly placing pressure on human sense organs. One sees (or senses the object in some other way) an object and knows the object through one’s senses. “Yet still the object is one thing,” Hobbes says, “the image or fancy is another.”
Hobbes refers to multiple philosophers in Leviathan and often discounts their theories. Hobbes uses certain buzz words, such as “fancy” or “representation,” which are often associated with specific philosophers he hopes to discount, like Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle argued that objects contain an essence and that essence can be appreciated even in the absence of the object. Hobbes clearly disagrees, as he claims the “object is one thing,” and the “fancy [the essence] is another.” Hobbes was a materialist, which is a philosophical school that assumes matter is the basic substance of life and that everything, even one’s thoughts and conscience, is a result of the movement and interaction of matter.
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The “Philosophy-schooles” of Aristotle consider the human senses in a different way. For Aristotle, vision is caused by seeing an object, which sends a “visible species (in English) a visible shew, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen,” that is then received by the eye. Hearing is much the same; an “Audible species” is sent to the ear. For something to be understood, Aristotle says an “intelligible species” makes one understand. Hobbes disagrees, and he will amend this theory and all others that are applicable to the Common-wealth.
Here, Hobbes explicitly mentions Aristotle and his understanding of human senses. Aristotle’s view relies on an “apparition,” or ghost of an object, which is at odds with Hobbes’s materialist philosophy. For Hobbes, the senses operate when they come into contact with actual matter and substance, not the ghost or “species” of that matter. As Hobbes lays the groundwork for his philosophy, it is easy to forget that his purpose is to describe the ideal common-wealth, and he often reminds the reader that he is working toward a greater point, as he does here.
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