Hobbes And Psychological Egoism

Exploring the relationship between Hobbes and psychological egoism is of profound theoretical and practical significance to the study of Hobbes’ moral psychology and his political philosophy.There are few researches on Hobbes’ moral psychology in China,especially the relationship between Hobbes and psychological egoism.This paper will study the important concepts in Hobbes’ theory one by one,as well as the different interpretations of these concepts by Chinese and foreign scholars,and sort out and summarize the concepts in combination with the works of Hobbes,in order to explain the relationship between Hobbes and egoism,and prove that Hobbes holds a tautological egoism.On this basis,this article will prove that debate about Hobbes hold what kind of self-interest is actually about Hobbes’ theory of human nature and a debate Hobbes mechanical materialism views,so only keep concept of Hobbes’ s theory of human nature and mechanical materialism analysis,have a plenty of what is likely to prove Hobbes selfinterest.The introduction emphasizes the necessity of studying the relationship between Hobbes and egoism and the main viewpoints of scholars at home and abroad.Through sorting out the viewpoints of Chinese and foreign scholars,Hobbes’ psychology can be roughly divided into psychological egoism and tautological egoism.The introduction will also explain the main issues discussed in this paper,as well as their general views.In addition,the paper also introduces the research ideas and methods.The second chapter discusses Hobbes’ theory of human nature through the concepts of passion,reason and struggle.In Hobbes’ conception of passion,there is no denial of the desire to be kind to others.In Hobbes’ concept of rationality,Hobbes thought that a person should have right reason,and right reason contains two meanings,one is right,the other is right,in Hobbes’ concept,the actor must do something both right and right.The third chapter mainly analyzes Hobbes’ mechanical materialism.Gert thinks that Hobbes’ mechanism does not contain the theory of motivation,while psychological egoism is the theory of motivation,so it is impossible to derive psychological egoism from Hobbes’ mechanical materialism.Chapter four mainly introduces the concept of tautological egoism,and through the analysis of the concepts of "natural person and civilized person" and "self-preservation",it comes to the conclusion that Hobbes holds the view of tautological egoism.The fifth chapter is a brief summary of the whole paper,which further illustrates that Hobbes has a tautological egoism rather than a psychological egoist.