The Fear of Death and the Longing for Immortality

Hobbes and Thucydides on Human Nature and the Problem of Anarchy

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3533595
AutoresPeter J Ahrensdorf (Davidson College, autor de correspondencia)
Año2000
Volumen94
Número3
Páginas579-593
Fecha de publicación2000-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2585832
OpenAlexW2148241502
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas24
Referencias citadas48

Recent challenges to the modern secular state invite us to reexamine the arguments made by its theoretical founders, especially Hobbes. Hobbes argues that the desire for security is the most reliable and rational desire of our nature, and the state based on satisfying that desire is fully in harmony with human nature and therefore fully capable of solving the problem of anarchy. I will examine his argument that anarchy, although in some sense the natural human condition, can be overcome once and for all through political institutions that ensure the rational fear of death will control humans' destabilizing hopes and longings for immortality. I then turn to Thucydides, the classical thinker whom Hobbes admired most and who seems closest to Hobbes in outlook, and consider his more somber thesis: Because human hopes for immortality are more powerful than the fear of violent death, anarchy will return over and over again

Argument (complex analysis · Art · Epistemology · Harmony (color · Immortality · Natural (archaeology · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · Theology · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification