Hobbism

“Hobbism” became a term of opprobrium, Leviathan was publicly burnt as a seditious document, and Hobbes himself spent many of his later years in fear for his life.

No year had passed since the appearance of Leviathan without some indignant protest against the influence which its trenchant doctrine was calculated to produce upon minds longing above everything for civil repose; but after the Restoration “Hobbism” became a fashionable creed, which it was the duty of every lover of true morality and religion to denounce.

Hobbism turned inside out,—rendered licentious and anarchical instead of constructive.

It is not, however, in this, which is only the old Cyrenaic or Epicurean answer, that the distinctive point of Hobbism lies.

From an ethical point of view Hobbism divides itself naturally into two parts, which by Hobbes’s peculiar political doctrines are combined into a coherent whole, but are not otherwise necessarily connected.