03 Hobbes and the Social Contract
Explore Hobbes’s argument that people authorize a powerful common authority to secure peace, while retaining an interest in self-preservation.
Hobbes’s starting point
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) developed one of the earliest influential modern social-contract theories in Leviathan (1651). Writing amid political conflict and civil war in England, he asked why people should accept political authority. His answer begins with the insecurity people face without a common government.
The
In the , there is no common government capable of making and enforcing laws. People are roughly equal in their ability to threaten one another: even someone physically weaker may use cooperation, strategy, or surprise to kill someone stronger. This equality makes people vulnerable and gives them reason to fear one another.
Fear is intensified when people compete for scarce goods, distrust one another, or seek status. Without a shared authority to settle disputes, each person must judge threats and protect themselves.
Why insecurity becomes a
The is not necessarily a condition of constant fighting. It is a continuing condition in which people have no reliable assurance that others will keep the peace. Insecurity makes peaceful cooperation fragile, even when people are not always violent.
Hobbes famously describes life in such conditions as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The phrase expresses the insecurity and vulnerability of life without a common judge and protector.
Reason and the
gives people a reason to seek peace. Hobbes calls the rational rules guiding that effort the . The first is to seek peace when peace is attainable. The second is to be willing, when others are willing too, to give up the unrestricted liberty to do whatever one judges necessary for survival.
People should keep agreements, but an agreement is insecure if no power can deter those who break it. Promises alone therefore cannot reliably establish peace.
The
To address the weakness of promises, individuals covenant with one another to authorize a common power to act on their behalf. They agree to accept the decisions of a person or assembly as the decisions of the political community. This mutual authorization establishes the and forms a .
The covenant is among the people. The is authorized by it, rather than being a party who promises the subjects particular terms in return.
For example, people sharing a road may fear that others will attack or seize their goods. A promise to behave peacefully may not be enough if each person has reason to prepare for betrayal. By authorizing a common authority to make and enforce rules, they can rely less on private force and more on public protection.
and political authority
Hobbes argues for undivided and effectively absolute . A needs enough power to make and enforce laws, resolve disputes, and defend the community. Authority divided among competing bodies, or subject to rival final judgments, risks paralysis or renewed conflict.
The may be a monarch or an assembly. Hobbes’s central concern is not which form governs, but whether there is a final authority able to maintain peace. Common enforcement makes security, cooperation, and stable law possible.
Protection, obedience, and individual liberty
In return for common protection, people give up much of the liberty they had in the . Civil law can define justice and injustice in public life, where there was no common judge to settle disagreements.
However, Hobbes does not claim that people lose every liberty. A person cannot genuinely surrender the basic liberty to resist direct threats to their own life. More broadly, political obligation depends on protection: when the can no longer protect a person, that person’s reason for obedience may cease.
These limits create a lasting tension in Hobbes’s theory between the ’s extensive authority and the individual’s continuing interest in .
The case for strong authority
Hobbes begins with people who are vulnerable, distrustful, and without a reliable common judge. Reason points toward peace, but promises alone cannot secure it. People therefore authorize a to make and enforce common rules.
His central claim is that strong, undivided political authority is justified because it protects people from the insecurity and violence that can arise when everyone must rely on private judgment and force.