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Unit 6: Thomas Hobbes

failed to protect the individual, the individual had the right to resist the sovereign. If resistance Notes
was successful, the sovereign ceased to be a sovereign, and individuals would return to a state of
nature where there would be no sovereign power to acknowledge. They would be free to obey a
de facto new monarch.
The right of resistance could be invoked only when the right of self-preservation got threatened.
Hobbes was categorical that human actions were influenced by considerations of safety and not
narrow gains, thus ruling out the modern interpretation of some (like Gauthier and Hampton)
that Hobbes was interested in calculating utilities.
The minority could not resist the sovereign on the grounds that it was the majority who had chosen
the sovereign. Nor could there be resistance to tyrannical rule of the sovereign, for punishment of
unjust rulers was to be left to God. Resistance was justified only when the sovereign sought to
destroy the individual directly, and not when he tried to destroy others. The right of personality
or self-preservation, according to Cassirer (1946), was a universal right in Hobbes’ philosophy. As
long as the sovereign existed, he enjoyed absolute, undivided, inalienable powers with just one
limitation, namely the right to preserve individuals. For Hobbes, a sovereign was one who could
remain and act as a sovereign.
Political Obligation
Hobbes offered a number of reasons as to why the sovereign was to be obeyed. First, there was a
purely prudential consideration that if individuals disobeyed the sovereign they would be punished.
Second, there was a moral consideration that they must honour their contracts, provided others
did so as instructed by the first three laws of nature. The Leviathan ensured that all parties adhered
to the terms of the covenant. Third, there was a political consideration that the sovereign was their
duly authorized representative, created consensually by the citizens authorizing him to act on
their behalf. Last, Hobbes offered a religious argument when he asserted that the civil law and the
law of nature was one, and that both were to be obeyed, since they implied God’s commands.
Strauss (1936) saw Hobbes’ obligation as physical, for the sovereign by virtue of his overwhelming
power and authority could ultimately command his subjects to obey him. The subjects on their
part obeyed the sovereign out of fear of punishment. Taylor (1938) argued that the Hobbesian
theory of political obligation was not logically linked to the psychological nature of man that he
presented, but instead arose from the laws of nature that he offered. Taylor insisted that the laws
of nature were not mere “pieces of advice about the prudent pursuit of self interest” but were
moral laws which dictated duties, and were obligatory because they were commanded by God.
Taylor contended that Hobbes’ civil philosophy had to be understood in the sense of two contrasting
and disconnected subsystems: theistic deontology, and an egoistic psychology.
Oakeshott (1975) thought it would be a mistake to interpret Hobbes’ obligation as primarily based
on individual self-interest. On the contrary, he viewed it as a mixed obligation consisting of
physical, rational and moral obligations. Since civil society was a complex system of authority and
power, each element had its own appropriate obligation. There was a moral obligation to obey the
authorized will of the sovereign, which was not based on self-interest. Moral obligation arose
from obedience to the sovereign authority, whose basis was the consent of the governed. There
was a physical obligation that was derived from the fact that the sovereign represented power,
compelling the individual to eventually obey or face the consequences of disobedience. Last, there
was a rational obligation based on self-interest, as” the individual desired peace and order. “Each of
these obligations provides a separate motive for observing the order of the commonwealth and
each is necessary for the preservation of that order”.
Warrender (1957) believed that Hobbes’ political obligation could not be derived from the postulates
of human psychology, but from the body of natural laws with an independent authority which
Hobbes understood as the will or command of God. The laws of nature played a crucial and

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