Thomas Hobbes´ Influence on Modern Day Politics

Why as individuals do we surrender certain liberties to a higher sovereign power that possess control over us? Thomas Hobbes was a political philosopher who is considered one of the fathers of liberal thought and the modern liberal state. His famous political work, Leviathan, suggests that for our own preservation, we form into commonwealths under rulers to escape from the "miserable condition of war" . We combined into these large groups of social interaction because individually, we cannot survive the brutish conditions present in war and the state of nature. When analyzing commonwealths, the question arises as to which form of government the commonwealth represents; one that is ruled by a single ruler, in Machiavelli's terms a principality, one ruled by many individuals, a republic, or a form of commonwealth, which is neither? When looking at the concept of commonwealth, it can be said that although Hobbes was a founder in modern liberal thought, his concept of the leviathan as a sovereign power, which we submit to for protection, resembles that of a principality more so than that of a republic or another form of commonwealth.

Throughout the work, Hobbes incorporates several concepts, such as inalienable rights in the state of nature, self-interest and civil rights, which show support for a republican form of government. One of his major points throughout his famous work comes in the first section of the work, of man, which introduces the concept of inalienable rights. Hobbes begins by describing the state nature as one which is in a continual state of war, where the life of man is "poor, nasty, brutish, and short" . However, even in this state of war, several rights of nature are suggested, rights which everyone in the sta...

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... principality. The Leviathan does not seem to be a form of ruling body other than the possibility of the three commonwealths which Hobbes suggested, that being a monarchy, representing a principality, or a democracy and aristocracy, which both could be considered to represent a republic. It should be stated that although Hobbes seemed to prefer a monarchy to a democracy or aristocracy, he did not reject them as forms of a commonwealth; he simply presented his views, suggesting that a monarchy was the best form of a ruling body at the time. While democracies have become the dominant political system in today's world, the influence of Thomas Hobbes cannot be forgotten, as his work helped to shape modern day politics.

Works Cited

Hobbes, Thomas, and E. M. Curley. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1994.