What Drives Man Toward Greed?

Abstract

Man’s desire knows no bounds. Man will never and can never be satisfied. Man’s existence is defined by his greed. Man is in essence a greedy being. This is the view of the sixteenth century thinker Thomas Hobbes as laid out in his seminal work The Leviathan. This paper will argue that large numbers of human beings in modern liberal democracies have become greedy for two reasons. Firstly we have a concept of success that has become difficult or even impossible to satisfy and secondly the failure to achieve this success leads to a lack of esteem which often morphs into envy and unhappiness.