Hobbes built his picture of man backwards from the political structure he wanted

Evidence

It would be a grave injustice to Hobbes and his dignity as a philosopher to consider this picture of man an attempt at psychological realism or philosophical truth. The fact is that Hobbes is interested in neither, but concerned exclusively with the political structure itself, and he depicts the features of man according to the needs of the Leviathan. For argument’s and conviction’s sake, he presents his political outline as though he started from a realistic insight into man, a being that “desires power after power,” and as though he proceeded from this insight to a plan for a body politic best fitted for this power-thirsty animal. The actual process, i.e., the only process in which his concept of man makes sense and goes beyond the obvious banality of an assumed human wickedness, is precisely the opposite. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 385

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the interpretive key that Hobbes’ anthropology is constructed to fit the Leviathan, not derived from observation — a transferable critical move.
• XREF: Precisely the kind of genealogy-of-concept reversal Arendt applies to race-thinking and bureaucracy elsewhere; connects to how later chapters unmask pretext-reasoning.