Page 103 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 6: Thomas Hobbes

not circumscribe the power of the sovereign by placing it under divine and natural laws. In fact, Notes
the Leviathan was not even subject to civil laws, being the sole source of these laws. The sovereign
was bound by these laws as long as they were not repealed. Hobbes defined the law as a command
of the sovereign, a viewpoint adopted by Bentham and John Austin (1790-1859) in their descriptions
of sovereignty. Since a law was the command of the sovereign, it could be wrong, unjust or
immoral. The sovereign not only administered the law, but also enforced it. Voltaire, like Hobbes,
favoured an absolute undivided sovereign power, which, however, would not be despotic. Since
he, like Locke, was a passionate defender of liberty, he felt that a strong, centralized monarchy,
totally modern and unhindered by medievalism, would ensure a good, just and progressive
government.
Hobbes’ theory of sovereignty was a precursor of Austin’s theory. The sovereign enjoyed absolute
powers only because the individuals had totally surrendered their powers. Hobbes conceptualized
an absolute sovereign power only because of his thorough-going individualism. The absolute
sovereign represented the individuals, and was constituted by them for providing order and
security, and averting the worst of all evils, civil war.
Hobbes, unlike Bodin, was able to create order and stability by subordinating non-political
associations, including the Church and universities. He did not recognize any pre-political order
of society based on kinship, religion and other associations, which normally contributed to
sociability in the individual. He was quite unsympathetic towards customs, traditions and other
moralities that existed outside the purview of the sovereign law. On this basis, he proclaimed that
law was not derived from the social institutions of a people, but was the command of the sovereign.
This was because he ruled out private beliefs, which he considered to be the source of all seditions
and dissensions. He also ruled out divisions and multiplicity of authority for that was an anathema
to a stable political order. Authority was either unitary or nothing. He also made the sovereign
above the law, thereby giving a death-blow to one of the most cherished legal doctrines of the
medieval period.
The sovereign had the right and the duty to govern and conduct policy, protect civil society from
dissolution, limit or restrict freedom of expression, opinions and doctrines, control subjects’
property, resolve all conflicts through the right of judicature (of hearing and deciding all
controversies), make war and peace with other nations, choose ministers, counsellors, magistrates,
officers both in peace and war, confer honours and privileges, determine artificial religion and the
forms of its worship, and prevent access to subversive literature. The subjects had no appeal
against the will of the sovereign. Hobbes was against the division of sovereign authority as
advocated by the parliamentarians in the England of his time. The subjects would never have the
right to change the form of their government, because they were bound to obey a particular
sovereign, and acknowledge his public acts as their own. As the individuals entered into a contract
with one another and not with the sovereign power, they could never be freed from the subjection
of the sovereign. The sovereign’s subjects had a duty and an obligation to obey the sovereign,
since the sovereign was the result of their social contract.
Justice for Hobbes was whatever free, rational and equal individuals agreed to leave out. He did
not say much about what constitutes a just distribution of goods. As long as the distribution was
the result of a freely entered agreement, the outcome was just. He asserted ‘laws are the rules of
just and unjust; nothing being reputed unjust, that is not contrary to some law”. Just and unjust
have meaning in relation to law and the law was the command of the sovereign.
Hobbes was the first to comprehend the nature of public power as a permanent, sovereign, rightful,
and authorized representative to exercise powers “giving life and motion to society and the body
politic”. Sovereignty characterized the position rather than the person who wielded it. The sovereign
will united all in one voice, “one will”, and in the process ensured unity. The state, in Hobbes’
theory, became the dominant institution in political and social life. The state changed the miserable,

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