English philosopher. Thomas Hobbes is one of the founders of the modern political philosophy, to which one allots the formula wrongly “man is a wolf to man”, Hobbes is not only one theorist of the right and the social contract for whom, in fact, “the man is a bond for the man”.

Its works of physics, its treaties of the human body precede or accompany its investigations on the foundation by the city and the religion.    

Hobbes was born in 1588, at Westport, city which it left at the fifteen years age to continue his studies in Oxford, where it discovers nominalism and the scholastic. Engaged like tutor of William Cavendish, duke of Newcastle, it accompanies in 1610 its pupil in Italy and France. From 1620, Hobbes works with the chancellor and Francis Bacon philosopher, for whom it expresses little regard, but which enables him to come into contact with the scientific circle: it is familiarized then with philosophy mechanist and carries a great interest to the former philosophers materialists like to physical research on the conservation of the movement. To the defenders of theological orthodoxy, it passes for an impostor and is victim of their attacks in 1624. Thucydide, of which it translates in 1628 the Peloponnesian War, represents for Hobbes a model of knowledge, before it discovers, in 1629, in Paris, the method inspired of Euclide, that it starts to apply in his Treated Court of the first principles.

A new voyage on the continent, in 1631, enables him to meet Mersenne and Galileo. In 1640, whereas bursts the English revolution, Hobbes writes the Elements of the natural and political right. By prudence, it will settle in France, where it attends, until 1651, Mersenne and Gassendi, study the anatomy at Vésale and look further into its knowledge in chemistry. Later, it will bind friendship with William Harvey, who had discovered the blood circulation and which it will share same methodological affinities. In 1660, Stuarts are restored and, although Charles II is not hostile in Hobbes, this one will have to be defended against many charges of treason and atheism. The philosopher dies in Hardwick Hall, on on December 4th, 1679. On July 21st, 1683, the university of Oxford will condemn chives (appeared in 1642) and Léviathan (published in 1651) while reproaching these works for allotting to the civil authority a popular origin and for taking the “conatus” (effort to preserve oneself) like a fundamental law of nature. The students danced around the bûchers where the books condemned in general joy were flarings.

Hobbes proclaims founder of civil philosophy whereas the innovation of its thought bursts in a work of physics: he draws from physics, and more particularly from the science of the human body, what to found the science of the policy to build the knowledge most necessary, that of the State, whose three volumes of the Elements of philosophy treat (Of chives, corpore, homine). The unit of the reflection of Hobbes is born from what the man, as a citizen, is the object of a political philosophy (or theory of the State) and, as natural body, that of a geometry and a physics. It is thus a question of determining a paradox impossible to circumvent: the man is a natural being (Of corpore) which produces antinaturels effects (Of chives).  

If there is a scientific revolution in the thought of Hobbes, it resides in the assertion that all is body, and that all the phenomena are explained by the movements of the bodies. On what is not space or body, there is no legitimate speech. Consequently, the main question to solve is to know how the man, who is a body like all the others, produced effects that no other body produces, and how, in particular, it can constitute a antinature, i.e. the State. “Philosophy is the knowledge, acquired by a correct reasoning, effects or phenomena, according to the causes or the generations which one conceives, and, conversely, their possible generations according to the known effects.” Science, according to Hobbes, is at the same time empiricist (“the feeling is the principle of the knowledge of the principles themselves”) and rational, insofar as it starts with the use of the signs which are the words of the language.  

The mechanics of the spirit
The physics must explain how the external bodies mechanically affect the human body, and how they produce there perceptions and the phenomena which depend on it. According to the theory hobbesienne, the directions are put moving starting from an external excitation, movement transmitted to the brain and in the middle, from where share a movement in opposite direction, whose beginning (conatus) is the feeling. It follows that the things do not have properties: it is the affected subject which undergoes modifications. The same applies to memory, association of the ideas, pleasure and pain. Physics hobbesienne is thus a mechanical theory of perception and spirit.  

The conatus
The central notion of the mechanics of the spirit is the conatus, “movement which takes place through the length of a point and in one moment or not of time”. This infinitesimal movement is an essential data of the policy, because it is a “request or provocation to approach what likes and to withdraw themselves what displeases”. The concept of conatus introduces everywhere the movement, which is communicated to the eye by the light.  

Whereas the animal lives in an eternal present, the time of the man has a beginning, in particular by the conatus, which is the beginning of the feeling. In this beginning the power of artifice is rooted, i.e. the language by which the man maintains a certain relationship with time. The man is thus not defined like the being which speaks or which thinks, but as the body which reaches time (opposite at one perpetual present).

Political philosophy

Whoever observes how he thinks, opine, reasons, etc, will read and know consequently the thoughts and passions of the other men on similar occasions. However, this similarity of the thoughts and individual passions does not appear in the state of nature, which is the reign of the dissimulation, the lie, the pretense and the fight; one can observe it only in the civil statue, where “that which must control a whole nation should not read in itself such or such individual but humanity”.  

The desire of power
The state of nature is affected of a contradiction which makes its development necessary. The starting point is the conatus of autoconservation, whose human specificity is that it is not directed towards the satisfaction of the need or the transformation for nature by work, but towards the desire of the other. In fact, the human desire is not satisfied in the simple reproduction with the vital movement, it is infinite desire of power. Thus, there are a “general inclination” of all humanity, a perpetual desire and without enough acquiring power more and more, desire which ceases only with death. However it is not here about a simple accumulation of objects, because, on the one hand, the desire of power results from the relation to others and that, on the other hand, the power on others is largest of the powers.  

The “true value” of the man
In its relation with the other, each Me individual tends to agree to itself the highest possible value and to subject the other of liking or force. The analysis of the concept of value provides the key of contradiction suitable for the desire of power in the process of the recognition. Indeed, which Hobbes calls the “true value” of a man corresponds neither to the importance which this man attaches to itself, nor with an absolute: it is reduced, like any thing, at its price, “i.e. what one would give to lay out of his power”. For Hobbes, it is not only a question of reducing the value of the man at the cost of the thing, but of showing that its actual value is not that which Ego agrees in its assertion of oneself: it depends entirely on the need and the opinion of the other. One understands, consequently, the need for each individual for increasing his power, and contradiction in which is locked up the desire of power. In fact, the assertion of Ego is constantly subjected taking into consideration others: the more one man extends his power on the others, the more it becomes dependant on them; and more its power increases, plus it becomes fragile. Thus, fear is universalized and no one cannot leave victorious the conflict. The desire of power, the purpose of which is the conservation and the assertion of Ego, endangers this one and leads, at every moment, with a fight to the death. Consequently, whoever supports that it is necessary to remain in the state of nature, where all things are allowed all, itself is contradicted.  

State likely to it civil statue
The opposition between the state of nature and the civil statue is thus not a simple opposition of nature and artifice. Indeed, the first comprises already the artifice of the verbal language, source of all the other artifices, in particular of the State. It is the word which makes it possible to become aware of the contradiction of the desire of power and to leave there by the verbal act the contract. It is legitimate that the men obey the State, provided that this one guarantees the order by exerting an authority and not a domination.  

Nature and function of the State
The State is a “artificial person” of which nature is the representation of the civil order, and the function the protection of the citizens. The reflection undertaken by Hobbes in Léviathan relates on the gasoline of the power of State, and not to the shape of government: Léviathan presents a theory of the power in its pure form. With the state of nature, the man is stripped of any kindness, like the animals delivered to the “law of the jungle”. He reigns there the anarchistic power of the multitude (potentia, in Latin): “Where it is not common power, it is not law, where it is not law, it is not injustice.”  
 The political philosophy of Hobbes exposes how this multitude (potentia) is converted into a power (potestas) by thus filling the requirements of a sedentary ideology. From this process is born more than one consensus or a harmony: a real unit of all in only one and even nobody, whom one calls “republic” (civitas). The multitude is transformed then into people. Consequently, Hobbes can legitimately challenge straight of revolt, because “that which complains about a wrong made by the sovereign feels sorry for of that of which it is itself the author”. Logical prolongation of the theory of the contract, the theory of sovereignty affirms that it is indeed a social pact which institutes the monarch, which means the abandonment of any theory of the divine right.  

Civil authority and religion
The profane history is not explained by the crowned history, but by the power of the sovereign, the intentions of God being known only by the books whose authority depends on the policy. Hobbes refuses any design providentialist of the history by affirming that it is not God who controls the actions of the men to carry them towards the advent of a new world at the end of the history. Thus, the war cannot be thought like one moment of a universal intention of God. Admittedly, a correct interpretation of the Writing can highlight the historical destiny of the kingdom of God, but it is of faith and not reason.  

Léviathan
The only divine gift which can be marked by theology, it is the capacity of the man to use artifices which make of him a single being; thanks to this gift, it is the only being which can build and not to receive this other to be which will save it: Léviathan.  

The Bible, according to Hobbes, does not contain the words of God: it is a word on God. In the tradition of the interpretation and theories of the interpretation of the Writing, Hobbes has the appearance of an extremist, because, for him, the Writing does not draw its authority from itself and, to be reliable, it needs an external authority: “If the Christians do not hold their sovereign for the prophet of God, they are exposed to take their dreams for a prophecy, or to obey foreigners, or another subject.” It is thus necessary to rely on the power of the sovereign.  

Hobbes thus denounces the recourse to the only Writing and the magister of the Church: just as it allots to the sovereign the exclusive right determine the gun and to interpret the Bible, the philosopher grants to the only civil authority the power to translate the true direction of the natural laws.