Thomas Hobbes’s Conception of Animality ‘Man is a Wolf to Man’: A Theoretical Study in Selected Plays

Abstract

Abstract Man is a Wolf to Man remains one of the most argumentative political theory coined by Thomas Hobbes to illustrate the bestial status of a man in nature. Contrary to the humanitarian priorities, Hobbes's theory of sovereignty in political and social realms clarifies his references to animal-like human characteristics. It explains the status of animalization lies in man's thoughts and behaviors that may lead to sovereignty. To Hobbes, sovereign politics should be protected and supported even by human's animality in which the absolute obedience to sovereign is the mere protection of the social and political system. However, the absolute obedience, for Hobbes, is the absolute power to establish disciplined governments. Due to “The Social Contract Theory”, Hobbes gives priority to the principle that whatever the state does is just and individuals ought to obey blindly. Social contract theory is connected with norms of moral considerations and political major lines of ruling. Though it is coined by Thomas Hobbes, yet John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau shaped theoretically more elaborations clearly seen or might be adapted during modern phase. Hence, Individualism, materialism, sovereignty, and absolutism are inter-woven in the theory of Hobbes that archived as most political type of argumentative philosophy. Mostly, in literature, morals of Hobbes’s theory were discussed from different points of views. For example, justice is the form and reflection of a well-disciplined soul that indicates consequently the happiness of man’s state. Human’s animality is the particular view of that brutal part in man’s behavior when political and immoral necessity is justified. In Hobbes’s view, human psychology follows subjectivity in considering normative nature of needs such as “love” and “hate” which are taken into consideration through the process of formatting states and individual's life ideologies. So, terms like “good” and “evil” have their precise meaning when then they are adopted by their users and adapted to social contract mechanism. Moral terms, in turn, apply what is set through drama by political references that marked Hobbes’s theory of social contract or his consideration of “Man is a Wolf to Man”.