The National Governments & The Community of Nations

At the time when government was formed, Hobbes maintained that the people gave up their sovereignty absolutely and permanently. The sovereign, however, did not participate directly in the agreement made by the people to transfer their sovereignty because that might limit the sovereign’s efforts to ensure the peace and stability. For example, Hobbes argued that a ruthless sovereign might actually promote order because the people would be motivated by fear to obey the laws of the sovereign. Hobbes further argued that because the transfer of sovereignty was permanent, the right to revolt against the sovereign was nonexistent. In fact, any attempt to reform a government through disobedience (revolution) would be an injustice that would produce more harm than good. Better to suffer the excesses of an unjust king than to overthrow him and be left with anarchy.

The arguments Hobbes presented in Leviathan were radically original perspectives on the nature of man and the origins of government. Being in the employ of the English monarchy, at least one motive behind Hobbes’ writings was a desire to create a plausible defense of the monarchy. In defending the monarchy, however, Hobbes ultimately defended the absolute authority of the sovereign, monarch or not. It was an argument neither the people nor the king was comfortable with.

In his defense, Hobbes was fighting against insurmountable forces which would continue to weaken the monarchy until it was finally reduced to the figurehead role it occupies today. Even as he was writing Leviathan, the rising merchant class was growing ever wearier of the monarchy’s abuses of power. Indeed, it was precisely because the monarchy was already losing its credibility that Hobbes was commissioned to write Leviathan.

By defending the monarchy in the manner he did, Hobbes unwittingly laid the groundwork for just the kind of popular revolts he decried in Leviathan. By claiming that individuals in the state of nature were the original source of sovereignty, and not God or kings, Hobbes created a doctrine on which others base compelling arguments for natural rights, popular government, and revolution. One such man was John Locke.

John Locke (1632–1704), in his Second Treatise of Civil Government, declared that Hobbes’ description of life before government was only half right. While the state of nature might be a state of war, Locke argued that it could just as easily be characterized by “peace, goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation.” While agreeing with Hobbes that individuals in the state of nature would naturally and rationally come together to form a government, granting that government the powers that they naturally possessed, Locke argued that the contract people entered into with each other and the leaders of their new government was not permanent, because the people did not unconditionally surrender their sovereignty to their leaders. Rather, Locke argued, individuals would grant authority to a government so long as it provided for the common good — protection from the dangers of the state of nature.