Seth M. answered • 07/27/19
Professor of Philosophy with many years of Teaching Experience
Thomas Hobbes believed that man is naturally selfish and in a kind of perpetual war with all other men for resources, power, etc. Hobbes believed that the way to solve this problem -- for man to live in relative peace with his fellow men -- was for them to together agree to appoint a ruler to dominate all of them.
This ruler is the state or "leviathan."
Right or wrong, the reality is that Hobbes' idea has been shown to work... sometimes. There are many examples in history in which smaller groups were prevented from warring with each other due to all being under the control of a greater power (e.g., USA, USSR, etc.). And, when that greater power dissolves, the smaller groups often end up simply resuming whatever battles they had decades prior.
That being said, this doesn't mean that Hobbes' solution is a moral one. The Leviathan can easily be tyrannical, which is obviously a problem.
