Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A note on references
- Introduction
- 1 The standard philosophical interpretation
- 2 Hobbes's compositive reconstruction, phase one: identification of the principle of political obligation
- 3 Compositive reconstruction, phase two: religion and the redescription of transcendent interests
- 4 Hobbes's mechanism for the reproduction of social stability
- 5 Hobbes's resolutive analysis, phase two: part 4 of Leviathan
- 6 Theory in practice: Leviathan and Behemoth
- 7 Hobbes's resolutive analysis, phase one: design and detail
- 8 The treatment of transcendent interests
- 9 Hobbes's absolutism
- Notes
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A note on references
- Introduction
- 1 The standard philosophical interpretation
- 2 Hobbes's compositive reconstruction, phase one: identification of the principle of political obligation
- 3 Compositive reconstruction, phase two: religion and the redescription of transcendent interests
- 4 Hobbes's mechanism for the reproduction of social stability
- 5 Hobbes's resolutive analysis, phase two: part 4 of Leviathan
- 6 Theory in practice: Leviathan and Behemoth
- 7 Hobbes's resolutive analysis, phase one: design and detail
- 8 The treatment of transcendent interests
- 9 Hobbes's absolutism
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The sovereign power is not to be resisted.
–Hobbes (EL 8.6)Hobbes evidently thought he had in his political theory demonstrated both the necessity and the desirability of political absolutism. He took himself to have provided a solid argument for rendering absolute obedience to any existing effective political authority – an argument that could justify such unconditional obedience. The standard philosophical interpreters have typically disagreed with Hobbes's assessment of his success in this endeavor. Given the standard interpreters' accounts of Hobbes's analysis of social disorder, of his conception of human nature, and of his conception of individual rationality, those interpreters have convincingly argued that absolutism simply does not follow from Hobbes's argument. Some have argued that Hobbes failed to establish his claim that the only alternative to political absolutism is anarchy, thus failing to establish the need for political absolutism; and that because there is a more appealing intermediate possibility, he failed also to establish the desirability of absolutism. Others have argued that Hobbes's conception of human nature makes it impossible for him to offer any alternative to anarchy at all, because although it's true that only submission to an absolute state could increase the security of Hobbesian men, they are not sufficiently tractable for it to be possible for them so to submit themselves. So even if Hobbes has shown in some abstract sense the necessity and desirability of political absolutism, the impossibility of it undermines the success of his argument for absolutism.
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- Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's LeviathanThe Power of Mind over Matter, pp. 289 - 321Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
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