View Full Version : Hobbes - achieving highest good
young nut
06-18-2005, 02:53 PM
An interesting argument presented by Hobbes:
The argument he presents is as follows: 1. to live is to be in constant motion, 2. motions are desires, 3. and a highest good would be when all desires are at an end; therefore, since we are in constant motion, there can be no highest good.
Agree or disagree?
young nut
06-19-2005, 07:01 AM
wow, no Hobbes fans out there? What happened to the classics.
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What happened to the classics.
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Burned at the stake of Postmodernism?
-Zeno
" 2. motions are desires "
If I desire a pear hanging on some tree, I will climb a wall and steal it, thus I am in motion.
The 'highest good' is beer. The rest is just footnotes.
-Zeno
Thomas Hobbes is the biggest cynic ever. Guess I can't blame him with the way he grew up.
SpearsBritney
06-19-2005, 03:06 PM
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Thomas Hobbes is the biggest cynic ever. Guess I can't blame him with the way he grew up.
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Cynicism = Realism
It's pretty hard to refute that it's all pretty absurd and pointless in the end.
Cerril
06-19-2005, 03:06 PM
I think we need to be a bit more plain with our philosophy here in what is not supposed to be a 'philosophy to make us feel smart' forum (well...). By which I mean we have a lot of smart people here but not everyone is so thoroughly read in any philosopher or philosophy's technical terms that we can say something like that and expect to get much in the way of understanding.
I think it's alright to accept the first premise, when we stop moving we're dead. The second one is a bit tougher to swallow, not all motion that accompanies life is desire in the sense that most people term it. You can rephrase almost any action in terms of desire (the apple falling from the tree wants to hit the ground), but we can go ahead and cut right to the chase and say that anything living always has desires, and I'll accept it.
The third one is where you really run into trouble. Strictly defining the highest good as the end of all desires is pretty silly, even with a very common-sense view of Good-as-happiness (one which I particularly like). Fulfillment of desires is certainly good, but having is not nearly so good as getting. Even wanting can be given some value. So without desire there can't be good in the first place. It would be better, I think, to say that the highest good would be a balance of having, wanting and getting where none were so strong they drowned out the others.
belloc
06-19-2005, 07:31 PM
[ QUOTE ]
An interesting argument presented by Hobbes:
The argument he presents is as follows: 1. to live is to be in constant motion, 2. motions are desires, 3. and a highest good would be when all desires are at an end; therefore, since we are in constant motion, there can be no highest good.
Agree or disagree?
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Can you give the citation for this argument? Is it from Leviathan? I'd like to have a look at it.
drudman
06-19-2005, 07:55 PM
BAH to metaphysical utterances.
Are we all agreeing that Hobbes is wrong in that all desire does not equal selfishness?
Siegmund
06-19-2005, 08:59 PM
[ QUOTE ]
An interesting argument presented by Hobbes:
The argument he presents is as follows: 1. to live is to be in constant motion, 2. motions are desires, 3. and a highest good would be when all desires are at an end; therefore, since we are in constant motion, there can be no highest good.
Agree or disagree?
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His argument says absolutely nothing about whether there IS a highest good: only that those of us still moving must not have reached it yet.
Perhaps a highest good exists but is unattainable; perhaps those who reach it are somewhere Hobbes can' see them. In another country's philosophy, Nirvana, if I recall, is defined as a state of complete nothingness that takes many lifetimes of desirings to reach before you finally achieve it and are allowed to "jump off the carousel of rebirth".
Disclaimer: I'm not saying this is the only thing I disagree with in Hobbes's argument, or that I am a believer in the alternatives I suggest here - just that this is more than enough to refute his position.
Triumph36
06-19-2005, 10:01 PM
This one's a difficult question because the self-interested side would claim that all desire is inherently selfish - that one desires to do good to others only for the recognition, congratulation, etc. one would receive. Therefore, while the effect is unselfish, the cause is selfish. This argument certainly isn't airtight, but admitting purely selfless desire seems like a difficult task, and contradictory to the nature of desire.
I don't think the question of highest good is very important to Hobbes. Once you read the rest of his philosophy, you know a highest good is ruled out without having to read his argument for why. The question that's more important to me is ruling out a highest good when discussing politics, are there higher and lower goods, and consequently is there a better political order than the one he suggests?
I see politics as an ongoing experiment. I haven't read about Hobbes in a while, but doesn't he suggest an aboslute monarchy?
philopker
06-19-2005, 10:46 PM
I'm not sure what Hobbes meant by desires being motion. Desire motivate us, and thus cause motion in a certain sense, but that doesn't indicate that desires are motions, at least not in any normal sense of the word.
However, desires are often thought of as causing unrest, and for that reason they are sometimes thought to not be a good at all. This is pretty much what Buddhism teaches, and Schopenhauer seemed to identify desire with Will. He would agree that the cessation of desire is the highest good (as would the Buddha), and so long as there is desire no real good, much less the highest good, is attained.
Anyway, unless Hobbes was putting forth something like the above regarding desire, I don't see why the cessation of motion would be the highest good.
Jack
young nut
06-20-2005, 04:27 AM
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
An interesting argument presented by Hobbes:
The argument he presents is as follows: 1. to live is to be in constant motion, 2. motions are desires, 3. and a highest good would be when all desires are at an end; therefore, since we are in constant motion, there can be no highest good.
Agree or disagree?
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Can you give the citation for this argument? Is it from Leviathan? I'd like to have a look at it.
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Yes it is in Leviathan, Chapter 11
AthenianStranger
06-21-2005, 06:37 PM
Respose to point #3:
Hobbes' Leviathan, Chapter 11: "On the difference of Manners":
"...the felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimas (ultimate aim), nor Summum Bonum (greatest good), as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose desires are at an end, than he, whose senses and imaginations are at a stand."
He goes on to say that the object of man's desire is to secure the way to obtain future desires.
In response to Triumph, I say the question of higher and lower goods pertaining to better systems of government is irrelevant. For Hobbes, the commonwealth has a natural, scientific origin in man's self-interested desire, which comes from his fear of death. Commonwealths fulfill that purpose when they protect the lives of their citizens. All other goods are up to individuals to pursue.
This of course is a fundamentally different view of politics than that offered by the "old moral philosophers," i.e. Aristotle, Plato, or anyone before Hobbes.
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