This Day in History: English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was born on this day in 1588. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In this book he postulated that a world without a strong government would be one of chaos and violence, so people need to give up many of their freedoms in order to prop up a powerful State that would protect them.
"Hobbes labeled the State as Leviathan, 'our mortal God.' Leviathan signifies a government whose power is unbounded, with a right to dictate almost anything and everything to the people under its sway. Hobbes declared that it was forever prohibited for subjects in 'any way to speak evil of their sovereign' regardless of how badly power was abused. Hobbes proclaimed that 'there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the Sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretense of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.' Hobbes championed absolute impunity for rulers: 'No man that hath sovereign power can justly be put to death, or otherwise in any manner by his subjects punished.' Hobbes offered what might be called suicide pact sovereignty: to recognize a government’s existence is to automatically concede the government’s right to destroy everything in its domain."~James Bovard
David Hume wrote that “Hobbes’s politics were fitted only to promote tyranny.” Voltaire condemned Hobbes for making “no distinction between kingship and tyranny … With him force is everything.” Jean Jacques Rousseau condemned Hobbes for viewing humans as “herds of cattle, each of which has a master, who looks after it in order to devour it.”
“The theory of Hobbes is a theory of unadulterated despotism, or it is nothing.”~Charles Tarlton. Tarlton also wrote: "Hobbes was fond of posing the stark alternatives of unlimited authority and the state of nature, to frighten us back into our chains. But if authority is necessarily as he described it, then maybe anarchy (and) disorganization ... are really no worse." ("The despotical doctrine of Hobbes", p. 89)
Leviathan, with its politics and its views on religion led to its being banned, and even burned at Oxford University.
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