Essay #2
Brooke Moore
Phil 205
05/09/15
To compare the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Charles Darwin, I will
first explain the philosophy of Hobbes and then the philosophy of Darwin. I will then
finish the essay with my own explanation of which philosophy makes sense.
Thomas Hobbes formed his philosophy using geometry as the basis and
concluded that human beings are just matter in motion and he likened them to being
machines. According to Hobbes, “Life is just a motion of limbs caused by some
principal part inside the body; so why can’t we say that all automata (engines that
move themselves by springs and wheels as a watch does) have an artificial life? For
what is the heart but a spring? What are the nerves but so many strings? What are
the joints but so many wheels enabling the whole body to move in the way its
designer intended?”1 Under Hobbes’s philosophy, human beings do not have a soul
and our thoughts are just consequences of the appearances of objects. He further
says that “the source of all those appearances is what we call SENSE; for there is no
conception in a man’s mind that wasn’t first – either as a whole, or in parts –
produced through the organs of sense.”2 He believes that the sensible qualities of
objects presses its external motions of matter onto our proper corresponding sense
organs, which is then passed inwards to our brain or heart. From sensing external
objects comes imagination, which he believes is just decaying sense. Hobbes then
goes on to say that when a person’s motion is towards something that is causing this
motion, it is called either an appetite or desire and when the endeavor is way from
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Essay #2
Brooke Moore
Phil 205
05/09/15
something causing the motion it is called an aversion. Hobbes’s depiction of human
nature is expressed through these appetites and aversions and explains his
philosophy and human motivations on this basis. He believes that all appetites and
aversions come to us from our experiences and that they are subject to continual
change. Hobbes defines good and evil as being “whatever is the object of any man’s
appetite or desire is what he calls ‘good’, the object of his hate and aversion he calls
‘evil’ or ‘bad’…”3. Under this definition of good and evil, there is no “standard” and
have different meanings to different people. The only exception to this would be
under a commonwealth where the “leader” would judge what is to be considered