Thomas Hobbes
Notes
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), English philosopher. Leviathan (1651) argued that in a state of nature, without authority, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", and that rational self-interested individuals would therefore agree to a social contract establishing a sovereign to keep the peace. This is the first fully worked-out account of morality and law as emerging from self-interest and agreement rather than from divine command, and it is the ancestor of my own view. Also an early compatibilist about free will and a thoroughgoing materialist, which got him accused of atheism in his lifetime.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
Also see
- Leviathan
- Morality
- Objective morality
- Compatibilism
- Ship of Theseus
- Recomended Books