Hellen Keller and Thomas Hobbes

Hellen Keller and Thomas Hobbes

      Hellen Keller was an American deafblind author speaker and political activists, born in June 27 of 1880. She became the first deafblind person to earn a college degree, giving her many opportunities and influence over others. Hellen Keller took advantage of her position and tried to give help as much as she could to the community. In 1964 she earns the Presidential Medal of Freedom and since 1980 the day of her birth is now commemorates as Hellen Keller´s Day. Meanwhile Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher born in 1588, who had an important influence in western political philosophy and contributed in history, geometry, theology, ethics and general philosophy. They were very important characters in our history, and even if they look really different, I believe that Thomas Hobbes can be a great candidate for the philosopher that best explains Hellen Keller way of being.

      One of the reasons I have to believe that Hellen Keller and Thomas Hobbes have very similar philosophies is that both of them believe in equality for everyone. Hellen Keller supported woman´s suffrage, worker´s rights, rights for people with disabilities and fought for equality in general; “The inferiority of women is man-made.” Said Keller. In terms of Hobbes, he expressed this idea on one of his most important works: “The Social Contract Theory”. Here he justifies political principles by appealing to the agreement that would be made among equal, rational and free persons. He believed people were equal because everyone can be subject to domination, and everyone is capable of dominate.

In the political area they seemed to have different ideas, but I can see that they still had the same objective in mind. Hobbes and Keller wanted a fair government that will be able to give and protect the society. Keller supported the socialism because this means that the working class will organize society which will led to politic, social and economic equality, “I believe suffrage will lead to socialism and to me socialism is the ideal cause.” She said. Hobbes believed that there should be a sovereign, but people should only follow it, if it is capable of protecting and providing to the society. For him this bring peace because he believes that human being need to be guided and a sovereign was able to get this. They may have different ideas of how to govern society but they try to get the same outcome.

Hellen Keller was a strong believer in the New Church, but even then she based her beliefs in her own personal experiences, she disagrees with the idea of religion making you good or bad. She knew that we were all different and she learned to respect it. Hobbes saw religion in a very different way, he saw it in a political way, for example: he wasn’t in complete agreement with monarchies because this is supported by the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, which means that god gave to someone special authority over other and he believes that we are understood to be equal to one another, with no single individual, but he also believes that the human being needs to be guided, this just leads him into a conflict during his life between believing or not in a God. At the end we can say that he saw God as a cause of causes. In this topic the only thing that I can see in both of them is that they don’t follow religion blindly, they have their own beliefs and they do believe in God having an important place in the everyday situations. The existence of God just gives them more reasons to believe in equality and thinking of ways to achieve it.

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