Thomas Hobbs and American Indians

Abstract

Stephen M Sachs

Thomas Hobbs, one of the early founders of modern political science whose seminal work, Leviathan, which initiated major shifts in mainstream political theory has been called by one of his biographers," a Bible for Modern Man," had a negative view of Indians, yet they had a tremendous impact upon his thinking and writing. Largely because of what he heard about Natives of the Americas, Hobbs shifted the definition of "nature" in western philosophy from the telos or ultimate end of something to its conditions at its origins. For example, where the nature of an oak tree had previously seen in the ideal oak tree, with Hobbs the nature of the oak tree was now to be found in the acorn. In addition, where previously mainstream theory believed rights were a good that it was up to the sovereign to provide as seemed prudent, with Hobbs for the first time there is the beginning of considering rights as natural, though until Locke, this right was extremely limited. Further, there are certain similarities in some of Hobbs laws of nature and American Indian ways of dealing with others, including those considered potentially dangerous, that raise the question if this similarity arises from Indigenous influence upon Hobbs. An examination of Hobbs experience and thinking in relation to American Indian ways of seeing indicates that the similarity is only partial, and that it relates to differences in independent Hobbesian and Indigenous ways of seeing.

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