ABSTRACT
Thomas Hobbes is best known for the social contract theory, the idea that political legitimacy derives from a mutual contract or promise. Hobbes sought an account of the moral obligation to keep promises that did not depend on teleological metaphysics and that could be defended consistently with the worldview of the emerging empirical sciences. He had a mechanical picture of human action. As a materialist, he believed that everything that exists is but "matter in motion". Human behavior is no exception. It is bodily motion that is caused by other bodily motions. Hobbes defined a "law of nature" as "a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved".
