Compare And Contrast De Waal And Hobbes

With my interest and understanding of how John Hobbes viewed man and the world, I had an affinity to respond to the following question, “What is human nature like, according to Hobbes and de Waal? What is their account of the origin of morality?” I will do my best to give the views and accounts of both men, from Hobbes to de Waal, followed by de Waal’s critique and clear acceptance of parts of what Hobbes has written in Leviathan.
Hobbes’ account of human nature, are recognizable by how he described “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Hobbes page 78). However, Hobbes in his writing saw the man or their bodies as simply as machines and cogs working within the commonwealth or society, which essentially was a larger artificial body. Man’s thoughts and emotions were related to a reaction,
Such as from de Waal’s speech and in his writings, “Hobbes explicitly rejected the Aristotelian view by proposing that our ancestors started out autonomous and combative, establishing community life only when the cost of continual strife became unbearable. Social life did not come naturally to us: the step was taken reluctantly, or in the words of Hobbes (1991 [1651]: 120), “by covenant only, which is artificial.” (de Waal page 4) Like I described earlier on how the man entered into a social contract based on protections from death and the submittal to a society standard and rule, de Waal’s concept has man and primate entering into these social contracts subconsciously due to the survival of their species, the strength in numbers. “Like the views of Hobbes, Huxley, and Freud, the thinking is thoroughly dichotomous: we are part nature, part culture, rather than a well-integrated whole. Morality is a thin crust underneath which boil human passions that are invariably antisocial, amoral, and egoistic.” (de Waal page