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Life is but a motion of limbs. For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? [14] The preface of Thomas Hobbe's Leviathan, read from Hobbes' Latin version, with English subtitles
Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England.Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear."
The novel's protagonist, Roy Complain, lives in a culturally primitive tribe on a massive generation ship, which has descended into an uncivilized state. The ship is overgrown by vegetation, and the inhabitants have clustered into warring tribes. In Roy's tribe, curiosity is discouraged, and life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
In this state, every person has a natural right to do anything one thinks necessary for preserving one's own life, and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Leviathan, Chapters XIII–XIV).
According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was "anarchic" (without leadership or the concept of sovereignty).
Leviathan (Hobbes book)#Part I: Of Man To a section : This is a redirect from a topic that does not have its own page to a section of a page on the subject. For redirects to embedded anchors on a page, use {{ R to anchor }} instead .
Every relationship milestone deserves its moment in the sun. Maybe you’re experiencing new love for the first time—or for the first time in decades—and, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, feel like ...
The reader is forced to consider the extent to which such an environment suffocates all hope of virtue, self-development and decency. We see that despite the best efforts of Father Sturt and Dicky himself, the boy is dragged back from hope of a respectable future into a life of crime that is nasty, brutish and short.