نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسنده English
In Western political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is regarded as the pioneer of applying geometrical method and reasoning to political and anthropological discourse. Influenced by the Galilean worldview, he articulated a mechanistic account of human nature, conceptualizing man as a material entity governed by the natural laws of motion and causality. This study analyzes the anthropological foundations of Hobbesian thought, which are grounded in mechanistic-ontological premises. The primary objective is to demonstrate how Hobbes’s conception of the human being as a machine-like entity shapes his ethical system—a system that reduces morality from the realm of intrinsic and internal values to conventional social contracts driven by the fear of death and the endeavor for self-preservation. The findings indicate that, despite its emphasis on social order, Hobbes’s thought reduces morality to a positive, conventional construct dependent upon sovereign power; consequently, moral obligation does not emanate from within the human agent, but is subordinated to the will of the political authority. The corollary of such a system is the emergence of moral relativism, the instrumentalization of reason for survival, and the neglect of transcendent and spiritual dimensions of humanity. Therefore, within the Hobbesian ethical framework, man remains at the level of a sophisticated machine, alienated from spiritual perfection and non-physical values.
کلیدواژهها English
