The Nature of Man - Essay Example

Contrarily, by the theory of his equality and the seed of superiority already existent within everyman becomes the eternal hamartia, which clashes with the very idea of the "common power" that man tries to bind the others into, where each will always try to supersede the other."Warre" is the result of every man trying to hold every other man in awe! The will is not inclined towards any disposition and everybody is life "without security" and depends on his own individual strength, which only makes his life "nasty, brutish and short.". However, Hobbes points out that these acts of passion and desire that override man's nature and make him abuse one another are no sin and are only viewed as wrong when measured against some Law that makes it look so.

Thus, he talks about man's nature pitted against the Law that can only be laid down when it agrees with a man and which then gives man the consciousness of its existence and what it forbids. Therefore, where there is no law or no consciousness of what is forbidden (he takes the example of primitive America ruled by savages) where the notions of justice and injustice have no place because they are not part of any faculty of the mind or the body. He rightfully says, "They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in Solitude (Hobbes 188).

" Thus, the rule that should only be there is that every man must keep whatever he can and how long he can keep it. The two emotions or faculties that can help a man achieve this are Passion and Reason. Passion drives the man's mind towards self-conservation and reason helps him to comply with "convenient" statues or common power that will help him to find peace, which will conserve him and not kill him. Thus, as he describes the natural state of man and the inherent nature that man has driven by his passions and desires has been described as having the natural tendency to fall apart in a warring condition, where the consciousness of right and wrong is absent and which will only result in the extinction of man.

Man and society must embrace each other for arriving at peace. Because war does not always consist of battle but the "will to contend by battle" (Hobbes 186) is also a state of war that holds the fear of death. Thus, when he talks about a "common power" Hobbes also defines it clear that this is the kind of power that must be entered into by men who are at liberty and this is very different from the war that kings make because they already independent and hold the "industry of their subjects" (Hobbes 188).

This is an important point as Hobbes now distinguishes common man at liberty to the Sovereign, who is an independent body. This independent sovereign holds the subject within his "common law" and the liberty of the common man must be suppressed so as to be free from the war of man against man.