Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher and scientist, was one of the key figures in the political debates of the Enlightenment period. Despite advocating the idea of absolutism of the sovereign, he developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought.
Hobbes was the first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed social contract theory that appeared in his 1651 work Leviathan. In it, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments and creating an objective science of morality.
Hobbes argued that in order to avoid chaos, which he associated with the state of nature, people accede to a social contract and establish a civil society.
One of the most influential tensions in Hobbes’ argument is a relation between the absolute sovereign and the society. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede some rights for the sake of protection. Any power exercised by this authority cannot be resisted because the protector’s sovereign power derives from individuals’ surrendering their own sovereign power for protection.
Hobbes also included a discussion of natural rights in his moral and political philosophy. While he recognized the inalienable rights of the human, he argued that if humans wished to live peacefully, they had to give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations, in order to establish political and civil society.
Explanation:Hobbes was the first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed social contract theory that appeared in his 1651 work Leviathan.
In it, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments and creating an objective science of morality. As Leviathan was written during the English Civil War, much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.
Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a “war of all against all.” In such a state, people fear death and lack both the things necessary to commodious living and the hope of being able to toil to obtain them. So, in order to avoid it, people accede to a social contract and establish a civil society. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede some rights for the sake of protection. Any power exercised by this authority cannot be resisted because the protector’s sovereign power derives from individuals’ surrendering their own sovereign power for protection. The individuals are thereby the authors of all decisions made by the sovereign. There is no doctrine of separation of powers in Hobbes’s discussion. According to Hobbes, the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial, and ecclesiastical powers.
