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In Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, published shortly after the English Civil War, Hobbes argues

that human life in a state of nature would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

The solution was to consent to be ruled by an absolute sovereign.

Such a system would be in our self-interest.

But that leaves open the question where ethics fits into the picture.

Is there a moral reason to obey the sovereign beyond self-preservation?

Are we under any ethical obligations to each other?

Arash Abhizade is a Canadian philosopher and the author of Hobbes and the two faces of ethics.

Arash Abhizade, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you very much for having me.

The topic we're going to focus on today is Thomas Hobbes' Ethics.

Before we get on to the ethics, could you just say very briefly who Thomas Hobbes was?

Thomas Hobbes was a 17th century English philosopher.

He was born actually at the end of the 16th century, but he lived a very long life.

He's very significant because he was actually one of the first systematic philosophers to

write in the English language.

So much of the heritage of English language philosophy can be traced back to Hobbes because

prior to that, people were writing in Latin in Europe when they would write philosophy.

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