Hobbes and His Pessimistic View of the Humankind - Essay Example

 Hobbes was a philosopher of English, who had a pessimistic view of the human kind. He saw humans as creatures that would undertake any measure to better their situations. Besides, he asserted that individuals should not be allowed to make decisions thus the state should have an authority figure that would provide leadership and direction. Hobbes had a political view that people do not have any rights thus should concede all their privileges to the government in exchange for life. This essay seeks to determine whether adopting Hobbes argument of submitting our will to the Sovereign to secure peace and the enforcement of covenants is a moral action.

Moral actions are right acts initiated by a human being. Therefore, accepting Hobbes argument for following rules so as to avoid punishment is not acting morally due to various reasons and among them is the fact that the action does not spring from our will. That is because it is an action that people perform mechanically since it is not out of their will. Besides, the action is only performed to avoid the punishment instead of being carried out to yield positive results. The reason is that the morality of an action depends on the intention of the doer rather than controlling its results.

Moreover, for an action to be regarded as moral there should be no self-interest behind it thus submitting to the Sovereign so as to maintain peace is not acting morally. If the action were motivated by the fear of God and not of political rule, the action would be considered as a moral act. It is because people would be performing it in to safeguard the ethics defined in the Bible instead of gaining from it.