Thomas Hobbes and Materialistic Determinism - Assignment Example

Zainab Hassan Al-Majid Alan Sandy Philosophy 7 November Thomas Hobbes and Materialistic Determinism Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 and he died in 1679 he was considered to be one of the largest English philosophers, although today he is more known for his political philosophy presented in the treatise Leviathan. Hobbess views were influenced by the English bourgeois revolution. Due to his proximity to the great events of the time and a desire of peace and security for his fellow citizens, he believed that he should dedicate all his abilities to the problems of society.

The question of a man has always been at the center of Hobbes’ creativity. (Hobbes 56) The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes was an attempt to rethink the traditional philosophical and scientific methods in order to make them as effective and useful as possible. In this respect, materialistic determinism was seen by Hobbes as a reliable way to understand and predict in particular human behavior. Hobbes drew attention to the lack of progress in his philosophical predecessors. Hoping to remedy this unsatisfactory situation, he set himself the task of laying the elements, or seeds from which a pure and true philosophy could grow, provided that it would use the proposed method.

Hobbes believed that using his method, one can avoid the erroneous ideas, (Mintz, 84) emphasis on the importance of methodology in scientific knowledge. In the 17th century, interest to the scientific methods was a characteristic of many philosophers. The specificity of the philosophical views of Hobbes was presented by the method, which derived from the physics of his Italian contemporary Galileo. Geometry and mechanics used by Galileo for the analysis and prediction of phenomena in the physical world, were applied by Hobbes to the study of human activity ( Mintz, 103).

He believed that if one can establish certain facts about human nature, then it is possible to predict a way of behavior of human beings in certain circumstances. Therefore, he was opposed to free will. Nature and the human world are the set of extended bodies. All things and their changes are due to the motion of material elements, which are understood by Hobbes as mechanical movement. In the same way through movement Hobbes explained the spiritual life of humans and animals, which consisted of sensations.

These positions expressed Hobbes’ mechanistic conception. The main argument of Hobbes was based on sensory perception of the activity of both animals and humans and empirical observations that suggested the validity of the use of materialistic determinism (Mintz , 135). Undoubtedly, materialistic determinism has its advantages, since based on the laws of behavior of the living things, one is able to predict their further deeds and actions. Nevertheless, the main potential problem is that it denies the freedom of the will, while the man is primarily a creature endowed with free will that does not allow the theory of Hobbes to be absolutely faultless.

Free will is not subject to mechanical laws. Man is not a machine. One can agree that some of the processes and characteristics of human behavior can be predicted; nevertheless all human behavior and actions cannot be reduced to the mechanistic laws of motion. References Samuel I. Mintz, (1992) The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-century Reactions to the Materialism. New York. Cambridge University Press copyright. Print http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/