Similarities Between Thomas Hobbes And Niccolo Machiavelli

Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli, both grappling with regional instability and constant war, arrive at different frameworks for handling man’s inherent propensity for conflict from very similar models of human behavior. Hobbes, watching his fellow countrymen fight each other during the English Civil War, decided that humans perpetually desire more power to secure their well-being and therefore incline toward warfare as a means to achieve this. Machiavelli, similarly accustomed to the restless Italian Peninsula, also labeled man as power-hungry and self-centered, always striving for enough freedom to ensure one’s prosperity. In the absence of the structure and organization provided by a government, a situation dubbed mankind’s ‘natural …show more content…
Both writers agree on the egoistic nature of mankind that leads to the threat of foreign invasion. For Machiavelli, external conflict arises from a proletariat which desires excess and invades neighboring cities. For Hobbes, all conflict comes from mutual desire for the same object, a constant phenomenon across all people. Because these conflicts, regardless of the source, hinder one’s ability for success or potentially survival, mankind’s desire for security in either schema will propel the surrender of some absolute freedom in order to form a larger community, safe from foreign invaders. Despite the similarity between Machiavelli and Hobbes’ respective models of human nature and their reasons for state formation, the subtle difference in mankind’s fundamental goals leads to striking differences in their views of conflict and therefore different frameworks of governance to ensure internal stability and external …show more content…
All voluntary actions, those that require thoughts and imagination to complete, come from the will. But an endeavor must come between the decision of the will and the voluntary act. “This endeavor, when it is toward something which causes it, is called appetite or desire…. And when the endeavor is fromward something, it is generally called aversion” (Leviathan 34). Consequently, ‘good’ is the object of appetite while ‘evil’ is the object of aversion. Corresponding to these, “pleasure… is the appearance, or sense of good” and “displeasures, are some in sense, and called pain” (Leviathan 36). The basic driver of man’s actions can then be reduced to those similar of irrational beasts: striving for pleasure and avoiding pain. These two inherent instincts can be combined into two fundamental priorities: firstly, self-preservation; and secondly, seeking pleasure. Following this, man will follow an endless pursuit of power, the ability for one to obtain some future goods in order to both ensure survival and obtain pleasure. Because all men are inherently equal, this pervasive desire for power will create war in the ‘natural state’. “From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way