He attempted to map out human behavior with the regularity of mathematics. In doing so, he rejected the philosophy of Aristotle as insufficiently realistic, and, following Machiavelli, suggested instead that human passions were the chief motivator for human conduct. And the chief passion, Hobbes believed, was the passion for saving your own skin. Forget the polis; forget the community. No longer was the goal of human life to fulfill the ends of reason—it was to prevent your own death, as shown by the so-called state of nature, in which men harmed one another so far as their self-interest
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