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Hobbes believes that the morals derived from natural law, however, do not permit individuals to challenge the laws of the sovereign; law of the commonwealth supersedes natural law, and obeying the laws of nature does not make you exempt from disobeying those of the government. [1] Hobbes’s concept of moral obligation thus intertwines with the ...
The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was "anarchic ...
The company of the exiled royalists led Hobbes to produce Leviathan, which set forth his theory of civil government in relation to the political crisis resulting from the war. Hobbes compared the State to a monster ( leviathan ) composed of men, created under pressure of human needs and dissolved by civil strife due to human passions.
Thomas Hobbes, in his seminal work Leviathan, offered the first detailed theory of law as based on sovereign power. As Jean Elizabeth Hampton writes, "law is understood [by Hobbes] to depend on the sovereign's will. No matter what a law's content, no matter how unjust it seems, if it has been commanded by the sovereign, then and only then is it ...
This is one of the earliest formulations of the theory of government known as the social contract. Hobbes objected to the attempt to derive rights from " natural law ", arguing that law ("lex") and right ("jus") though often confused, signify opposites, with law referring to obligations, while rights refer to the absence of obligations.
Hobbes believed that society needed authority in order to thrive. More specifically, he saw it as a fight among humans to wield power. Hobbes accepted the idea of political obligation, stating that government and laws were needed to thrive as a society. Hobbes and Locke agreed on the idea of individual freedom.
The English philosopher's analysis about the state of nature resonates today, but if anything he wasn't pessimistic enough.
Although the idea of high politics has been present in all cultures and epochs, Thomas Hobbes was the first to enunciate that survival (of trade, the laws, societal order) hinges upon a finite number of ingredients; these ingredients were embodied and provided by the state. Interpreting Hobbes, these ingredients are what one can call "high ...