I'm just starting the section called OF MAN. Hobbes talks about the "body politic," using the metaphor of a human body to represent the Commonwealth. "Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal." (pg. 7 of the Oxford edition). He goes on to identify the parts of the "artificial man." The sovereignty he sees as the soul, the magistrates and other officers as the joints, etc. Thus, Hobbes appeals to a sense of order which was being sought during this time of great political unrest when he wrote
Leviathan.
Anyway, this metaphor of the body politic reminds me of the Great Chain of Being, a concept that was probably well known during this time. The basis for the
Chain comes from the Greeks who supposed that existence is better than non-existence and over time this idea evolved into a hierarchal chain of being—God, the Supreme being, at the very top, on down to humans and animals and, finally, to lifeless matter, such as rocks and dirt (the nearly non-existent). Christians, of course, latched on to the idea to justify their own political hierarchy and gave humans a special place somewhere in the middle of this hierarchal chain, above the animals, but below angels.
Everything has a place on the Great Chain of Being. For example, in the animal kingdom the lion is more noble than the dog, the dog more noble than the chicken, and so on. Among metals, gold was noblest and stood highest. Under the human hierarchy, the king is noblest and stood highest.
Similarly, it was supposed that the man stands at the head of the family, the woman and children under him. Just as a king ruled his subjects, the parent ruled the child, and the sun governed the planets.
So, you can definitely see vestiges of the Great Chain in Hobbes'
Leviathan.
By the way, it may help to think of
Leviathan as a scientific text at a time when the science wasn't very advanced. But I think Hobbes' instincts about the nature of Man and our state of war is mostly compatible with modern science. I'm seeing some amazing parallels to Dawkins'
The Selfish Gene here. For example, Hobbes will go into the idea that even in our warlike state, we give special consideration to relatives. We now have a better understanding, or at least some plausible theories (gene-centrism and kin selection), that explains this apparent altruism. So I think Hobbes was right about a lot of things, even if he was right for the wrong reasons. Of course, he was right for the right reasons too. In Chapter I, he talks about the propensity of objects to stay in motion, anticipating Newton's laws of motions. "When a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it." (pg. 10).
One last random comment. Hobbes uses the term "fancy" to mean
sensing something, not wanting it. This was tripping me up at first. All of our perceptions are derived from the senses and that process is internal. Thus, when we see, or smell, or hear an object, we
fancy it. It is the person's internal experience of an external object.