Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Essay

Hobbes’ central aim in his Leviathan is to provide an explanation of why the state exists, but most importantly why it is justified in telling us what to do. To answer these questions, he imagines a world without political institutions, therefore in a state of nature. In chapter thirteen, he describes how this state of nature leads to a state of “every man against every man” (Hobbes, 1651: 84). Indeed, Hobbes’ thesis first provides the assumption that all men are equal, in the sense they have all equal ability and hope in attaining their ends. Given the scarcity of resources, from this equality of endowments men inevitably are led to compete against each other. Therefore, a condition of general diffidence emerges, in which men are brought, …show more content…
Indeed, one might argue that men are actually able to make both short-term and long-term planning. This ties in with Kavka’s argument that, actually, people in the state of nature are not in a one-time Prisoner’s Dilemma situation, but they are in a “multiparty Prisoner’s Dilemma” (Kavka,1983: 302). This means that the player is likely to be involved in a series of games in the future, thus the result of a game at present might affect the outcome of another future game. For example, if two players were to ‘keep an alliance’ in the state of nature, and they knew that they would have to engage again with the other person in the future, they would not fail to cooperate, as they know that in the long run they could have benefited from higher payoffs. Consequently, a multiplay prisoner’s dilemma might open up the “possibility of cooperative moves being rational” (Kavka, 1983: 300). Furthermore, it would appear that men are not always involved in high-risk situations, in which one could suffer crucial losses, but also in lower-risk scenarios. Here it may be logical for men to cooperate at first, as a way of educating the other player to be cooperative in the future (Hampton,