Hobbes on Institutional Sovereignty

A right, or power, institutional sovereignty is said to have addresses protest against the sovereign. Hobbes makes extremely clear that actions of the instituted sovereign are wholly protected. This particularly lucid in the following:

Thirdly, because the major part hath by consenting voices declared a sovereign, he that dissented mu8st now consent with the rest . . . or else be justly destroyed by the rest. For if he voluntarily entered into the congregation of them that were assembled, he sufficiently declared thereby his will . . . to stand there to what the major part should ordain; and therefore, if he refuse to stand thereto, or make protestation . . . he does contrary to the covenant, and therefore unjustly . . . he must submit to their decrees or be left in the condition of war he was in before . . . (112)

For all intents and purposes there can truly be no protest against the sovereign, as regardless of previous position, one covenants with all others who have authorized the sovereign when one seeks to place themselves among those assembled to form a commonwealth. That is, one subverts their predispositions that are counter to the majority’s and aligns with them for the purpose of preserving an agreement that aims for unity and peace, manifested by the institutional sovereign. To protest the sovereign then is to protest the covenant one has entered into as well as the covenant that exists with all others. Furthermore, Hobbes segways into two other rights that can be seen as derivations of this third rThe first stipulates that the sovereign cannot commit an injustice. (113) In essence, this stems from the logic that sovereignty is not established by covenant with the people, but is created out of a covenant between ...

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...s necessary to preside over the commonwealth. However, it is also hoped that when compared with a second kind of sovereignty, one by acquisition, generational elements of fear, legality, and identical claims of right, portray a sovereignty equally equipped for governance as the former. More importantly though, it is hoped that an understanding surfaces that with both there is an actual fear of falling back into a state of war and sovereignty that is absolute, which is evidenced by their shared legal claims of right as well as those that enable power, transcends a difference in name. That is, neither has a greater claim of right in any respect based on unique foundation, as like capacities must be employed if both seek to arrive at the same ends.

Works Cited

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994).