Fear became the motor of existence, carving, in the face of nature, the individual. A potentially dangerous external world as representation produced the withdrawal of the individual, a crease that finished up sedimenting previous strata based on trust and submission and on the communion of God’s people, united by their baptism and the birth to faith. Despite his admission of three basic passions arising from internal honor: love, hope, and fear,(1) Hobbes saw fear as the motivation to build up a society, clinging to power, rather than goodness or love, as foundations of Christian society, of an ethical community.
This apprehension included self-awareness and distance from a potentially frightening and dangerous environment and sharpened men’s sensitivity and his self-consciousness; his sense of alienation with everything he touched and saw, within a world populated with individuals like him, with unknown intentions. The absence of a universal canon of righteousness obfuscated the identification of inclinations. Concealment, retraction and convolution were the protection to the awareness of this state of affairs. Fear was the very product of an outlook on human nature that should be avoided, “for nothing but fear can justify the taking away of another’s life”.(2) War was the final result of an original equality combined with a desire sine lime,
…since men by natural passion are divers ways offensive one to another, every man thinking well of himself, and hating to see the same in others, they must needs provoke one another by words, and other signs of contempt and hatred, which are incident to all comparison: till at last they must determine the pre-eminence by strength and force of body.(3)
(1) “From internal honour, consisting in the opinion of power and goodness, arise three passions; love, which hath reference to goodness; and hope, and fear, that relate to power…”Leviathan, II, 31, 9.
(2) Elements of Law II, 19, 2.
(3) Elements of Law I, 14, 4.
