Human volition is nothing but the determination of the will by the strongest present desire.
Thus, each of us is motivated to act in such ways as we believe likely to relieve our discomfort, to preserve and promote our own well-being.Įverything we choose to do is strictly determined by this natural inclination to relieve the physical pressures that impinge upon our bodies. Specific desires and appetites arise in the human body and are experienced as discomforts or pains which must be overcome. Human action is similarly to be explained on Hobbes's view. Sensation, for example, involves a series of mechanical processes operating within the human nervous system, by means of which the sensible features of material things produce ideas in the brains of the human beings who perceive them. Human beings are physical objects, according to Hobbes, sophisticated machines all of whose functions and activities can be described and explained in purely mechanistic terms.Įven thought itself, therefore, must be understood as an instance of the physical operation of the human body. Thus, Hobbes defended a strictly materialist view of the world. The chief purpose of scientific investigation, then, is to develop a geometrical account of the motion of bodies, which will reveal the genuine basis of their causal interactions and the regularity of the natural world. The movements of physical objects will turn out to be sufficient to explain everything in the universe. His Leviathan effectively developed a vocabulary for philosophy in the English languageīy using Anglicized versions of the technical terms employed by Greek and Latin authors.Ĭareful use of words to signify common ideas in the mind, Hobbes maintained, avoids the difficulties to which human reasoning is most obviously prone and makes it possible to articulate a clear conception of reality.įor Hobbes, that conception is bound to be a mechanistic one: Even more than Bacon, Thomas Hobbes illustrated the transition from medieval to modern thinking in Britain.
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