Nonetheless, we still live in the world that Hobbes addressed head on: a world where human authority is something that requires justification, and is automatically accepted by few a world where social and political inequality also appears questionable and a world where religious authority faces significant dispute. Few have liked his thesis, that the problems of political life mean that a society should accept an unaccountable sovereign as its sole political authority. Directly or indirectly, he has set the terms of debate about the fundamentals of political life right into our own times. Hobbes is the founding father of modern political philosophy. The Laws of Nature and the Social Contract.The Poverty of Human Judgment and our Need for Science.A major theme below will be why the problems he poses cannot be avoided simply by taking a less selfish view of human nature. However, most scholars now accept that Hobbes himself had a much more complex view of human motivation. Does he see human beings as purely self-interested or egoistic? Several passages support such a reading, leading some to think that his political conclusions can be avoided if we adopt a more realistic picture of human nature. One controversy has dominated interpretations of Hobbes. Otherwise what awaits us is a state of nature that closely resembles civil war вЂ“ a situation of universal insecurity, where all have reason to fear violent death and where rewarding human cooperation is all but impossible. He poses stark alternatives: we should give our obedience to an unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide every social and political issue). His main concern is the problem of social and political order: how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. His vision of the world is strikingly original and still relevant to contemporary politics.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is best known for his political thought, and deservedly so. Thomas Hobbes:В Moral and Political Philosophy

The saw is the law