Comparing Plato and Hobbes - Essay Example

Comparison-Contrast Essay Comparing Plato and Hobbes Hobbes has been steady in beginning the scientific creation of his Leviathan with quite a fair foundation, one that has a Machiavellian touch with respect to the view of a man.  He has been ably supportive in portraying a world of equal and anti-social men who are all running after some pre-set cravings and desires. It is a complete scene of disorder and chaos, as has been shown by him where all the men are literally fighting over inadequate resources and women running after each other.

Indeed this might have been enough for him for calculating potential oppressors such as Machiavelli and the like, it eventually terrified Hobbes and he thus started on a mission to create a world which consisted of safety as one of the highest priority tenets. This is true that Hobbes is the creator of the present times’ suburbia. For Hobbes, the safety of the suburban housing developments that shows a number of TV programs on a ten-minute delay is the best that any of us can wish for. He has been at the center of quenching any hopes, there are, with respect to old moral philosophers for which much has already been written in the books.

The greatest good for Hobbes, then, is safety, and he stops at nothing short than to achieve it. Hobbes’ View of Justice The fact that Hobbes does not believe in any greatest good or utmost aim is significant to his conception of justice because this specifically rules out any possibility of a natural form of justice at all. Religion thus for that matter is a creation of man and God has become no less than immaterial to any future conversation concerned with justice. Without God, and without some greater, natural good, justice becomes something invented by man.

 Hobbes leaves us with a conception of justice which involves nothing more than minding the laws that are possessed with the sovereign. Hobbes has assumed that man would rather choose to leave the state of nature, where there is no justice or for that matter any kind of injustice and thus build an agreement with the sovereign whereby this will form the basis for the ultimate creation of justice itself. As stated down by Hobbes, one must agree to accept justice as simply keeping one’s agreements; this is specifically because there is nothing more and in essence nothing better than God.

 Hobbes has factually rejected the notion of justice attached with the haughty philosophers but he has quite a few things in common with that of Plato, who has also set out to create a Leviathan or to a certain extent a particular metropolis, in The Republic of Plato. Plato’s View of Justice Plato, like Hobbes, uses The Republic of Plato to create a city, a sort of Leviathan-type whose purpose is in essence drastically different. Plato is a philosopher in the truest sense of the word as he has studied nature and has sought out truth.

Hobbes bases his Leviathan to triumph over nature but on the other hand Plato has created his city to find the very same. Hobbes views nature as something to overcome and he wants to cover over everything as well as raise 24-hour strip malls. Plato views the city as being something pretty natural as he has a much higher regard for man’s true nature, and the only way to find true justice is to look towards the just city, even if that city may be somewhere up in the skies. Plato simply questions the laws and justice of the city whereby he suggests that justice is something more than a human creation thereby breaking the fundamental law related with Hobbes’ Leviathan.

It should be noted that The Republic of Plato is a conversation in which Plato never actually said anything. He has given us a line up full of dynamic characters that each brings an exclusive view of justice to all and sundry. BIBLIOGRAPHY Cornford, Francis MacDonald The Republic Of Plato. Translated By Francis MacDonald Cornford. Oxford University Press, 1941 Hobbes Leviathan Edited Edwin Curley. Hackett Publishing Company, 1994 Word Count: 664