Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651
"Without a common power to keep everyone in check, human life would be a war of all against all — so rational self-interested individuals agree to surrender some of their freedom to an absolute sovereign in exchange for security and order, and that agreement, not divine right, is the true basis of political authority."
Hobbes starts from a thought experiment: the state of nature, a hypothetical condition with no government, no laws, no enforceable agreements. Since people are roughly equal in their capacity to harm one another and resources are scarce, he argues this condition inevitably collapses into a war of every man against every man, making life, in his famous phrase, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Escaping this isn't a matter of morality — it's a matter of rational self-interest, since everyone is better off under any stable authority than under permanent mutual threat.
The way out is the social contract: individuals collectively and rationally agree to give up their individual right to use force however they see fit, transferring it to a sovereign, for Hobbes ideally an absolute one, whose job is to keep the peace and enforce agreements. Crucially, Hobbes's sovereign derives authority from this transfer of power by the people, not from divine right, a radical claim for 1651, but once granted, the sovereign's authority is meant to be nearly total, since Hobbes believed any split or limitation on that power reopens the door to the very chaos the contract was meant to escape.
According to Hobbes, why do rational individuals agree to submit to a sovereign authority?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- Leviathan (full text)Project Gutenberg
- Hobbes's Moral and Political PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A Theory of Justice
"A just society's rules are the ones rational people would agree to from behind a veil of ignorance — not knowing their own future race, class, talents, or position in that society — which Rawls argues would lead them to prioritize basic liberties for all and structure inequality so it benefits society's worst-off members."