In the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes emphasizes about the account of an unchangeable human nature, with his prescription for a system in which a supreme sovereign rules with absolute power given up by all subjects to a person or persons that would then govern all. “Right is layd aside, either by simply Renouncing it; or by transferring it to another. By simply renouncing; when he cares not to whom the benefit thereofredoundeth. By transferring; when he intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person or persons. And when a man hath in either manner abandoned or granted away his right; then is he said to be obliged, or bound, not to hinder those to whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he ought, and it is duty, not to make void that voluntary act of his own: and that such hindrance is injustice, and injury, as being sine jure; the right being before renounced or transferred”(Hobbes, 191). Hobbes, here tries to clarify how we collectively as a whole create the power that rules and governs over us, it does not come from God but from every one of us by laying/giving up our rights all equally to that person or persons. We are the artificer of the state, creator of our society and not society or politics creating us. Why does Hobbes believe we have to lay down our rights to this one body?
Hobbes believes this is the best form of government because men are equall in nature, men are not good or bad, men just wants to survive and to survive, will do anything; Natural Right. Hobbes believed that the life of man in a state of nature is“solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish and short… Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he”(Hobbes, 186; 183). And to Hobbes, this is a problem. Why? Because men are self-centered, selfish, driven by a perpetual andrestless desire for the same things such as power and other things needed to survive, he argued that man's fundamental concern is with self-preservation. “And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.And from hence it comes to pass that where an invader hath no more to fear than another man's single power, if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united to dispossess and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life or liberty. And the invader again is in the like danger of another” (Hobbes, 184). In the pursuit of these desires, men have to fight one another (competition) become enemies which leads to warre of all against all, in which the constant threat of violent death will loom over every man. Why warre? Because at this time, before everyman gave up one right or the other, men lived without a common power; i.e. no rules, regulations or law to keep men in awe “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man” (Hobbes, 185).
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