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The Leviathan is a classic of English literature which is noteworthy of containing a rational construction of natural law as the basis of positive law. In preference to common law; it provides a representative theory of absolute authority. Thomas Hobbes culminates a systematic trilogy on physical bodies, human nature, and body politic. He never departed from the concept of philosophy which he defined as the knowledge acquired by reasoning from the manner of the generation of any thing to the properties or from the properties to some possible way of generation of the same; to be able to produce as far as matter and human force permit, such effects as human life requires. The leviathan expounded the religious doctrine of a holy commonwealth in terms of revelation of divine law. The image depicting Hobbes's leviathan is of a huge man, whose body is composed of thousands of smaller people, all towering above a well ordered city below. This represents an all powerful sovereign who represents the people and is in a sense the embodiment of their being. The natural philosopher, Thomas Hobbes lived during some of the most tumultuous times in European history -- consequently, it is no surprise that his theories were thoroughly pessimistic regarding human nature. In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes asserts that the ideal form of government is composed of an omnipotent Sovereign, whose only innate responsibility to his subjects is to prevent civil war, which Hobbes feels is the natural state in which man would live without government. The Sovereign, he claims, is appointed by the people of a nation as their agent to maintain domestic order.
Man is not naturally good, Hobbes claimed, but naturally a selfish hedonist -- of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. As human motives were, in their natural state, guided by unenlightened self-interest, these could, if left unchecked, have highly destructive consequences. Left unrestrained, humans, propelled by their internal dynamics, would crash against each other. Hobbes tried to envision what society would be like in a state of nature -- before any civil state or rule of law. His conclusion was dispiriting life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, a war of every man against every man. Nonetheless, as all people are equal in a physical not a moral sense, possessing a passionate love of survival and some degree of rationality, Hobbes concluded that a viable, working society would arise as equilibrium between these competing forces. The logic is simple. Any persons right of nature justifies violence against everybody else. Consequently, in the interests of personal survival, people will come around to agreeing that they should renounce their right to use violence. However, this yields up a tense and unstable equilibrium. The moment one party deviates from their promise, all will deviate and war restarts.
To keep society going with peace and confidence, then an artifice -- a Leviathan -- must be worked into the social contract. This Leviathan is the State -- whether in the form of an absolute monarch or a democratic parliament, it does not matter. The important point is that the State will be given a monopoly on violence and absolute authority. In return, the State promises to exercise its absolute power to maintain a state of peace by punishing deviants. Realizing that its power depends wholly on the willingness of the citizens to surrender theirs, the State itself will have an incentive not to abuse it. Of course, there is no guarantee that it wont. But when it does, it must brace itself for the consequences. . Unfortunately, most leaders, particularly African leaders, are misusing the power of the sovereign and do not want to embrace its consequences. The Leviathan states, The first branch of the general rule of reason containeth the first, and Fundamental Law of Nature; which is, to seek Peace, and follow it. The Second, the Right of Nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend our selves'. Encompassed in these two basic rights is Hobbess entire argument for the institution of a sovereign ruler, which is firstly to protect a nations citizens from all other citizens, and secondly to protect the nation from all other nations. If peace cannot be achieved by stagnation, then the duty of the sovereign, and by contract the only duty of the sovereign, is to mobilize his subjects and declare war on any nation that poses a threat to the stability of his own. One of the interesting elements of Hobbess story is that concepts like morality, liberty, justice and property, have no natural, intrinsic or eternal meaning. They are pure social constructions. They are generated and imposed by the Leviathan, through his laws and institutions, to keep war and social disorder at bay. As history has shown, no set of values will last forever but will evolve as circumstances change. Hobbes is particularly keen to note that law itself is completely dependent on power. A law without a credible and powerful authority behind it is just simply not a law in any meaningful sense. Hobbes is thus one of the progenitors of legal positivism, that is, justice is whatever the law says it is. For Hobbes, power legitimates, power is justice. The State -- whatever its form -- is always, by definition, right, as long as it is capable of maintaining civil peace.
Generally regarded as one of the most prominent natural law philosophers of the 17th Century, Hobbes had an enormous impact on subsequent British political, social and economic theory. Naturally, his idea of a social equilibrium between contradictory self-interests is strikingly obvious in the various aspects of economics to the modern day especially in Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism where he expresses the Hobbesian hedonism_ 'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other, the chain of causes and effects are fastened to their throne.' (Bentham,1780).
In concordance to Hobbes's views on the state of nature, the social contract and absolute government, sovereignty is the basis for a stable political regime of law and order and as to the whole doctrine, I see not yet, but the principles of it are true and proper. For I ground the civil right of sovereigns, and both the duty and liberty of subjects, upon the known natural inclinations of mankind, and upon the articles of the law of nature; of which no man, that pretends but reason enough to govern his private family, ought to be ignorant. The leviathan is the most complete expression of Hobbess philosophy. It begins with a clearly materialistic account of human nature and knowledge, a rigidly deterministic account of human volition, and a pessimistic vision of the consequently natural state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each other. It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the authority of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual obedience to even an arbitrary government is necessary in order to forestall the greater evil of an endless state of war. Reference/ Bibliography
„X The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes with an introducton by Herbert W. Schneider
„X Philosophy-The classics byNigel Warburton.
„X Lecture eight notes
„X http//www.thomas-hobbes.com/
„X http//www.philosophypages.com/ph/hobb.htm
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