Hobbes and Absolute Sovereignty - Essay Example

He criticised several fields and gave argumentative ideas including sovereign governments which this work will be based upon. Sovereign is a state of a people or societies where a group of people or a person has been designated the authority to govern. The sovereign body always has control in religion, finance and military of the society. In this set up, the magistrate does not pledge allegiance to any superior forces or power and he is according to the state orders supreme. The control in the three sections by someone who has not been designated as sovereign in the social sense may as well assume the position of sovereignty.

As stated by Hobbes in Behemoth, he gives a difference between de jure and de facto sovereign. Hobbes, felt that naturally the society cannot be differentiated from state of nature which is always at war. This is a condition whereby people are being forced to be in contact without an authority that is superior. The presence of the sovereign was therefore meant to prevent this state of commotion. The erected sovereign was to be given the subject’s rights and was expected create peace by all means.

The idea of Hobbes was that sovereign which is absolute had limited power specifically by power which was assumed to be greater. This power outlined rights to be forfeited and duties of the sovereign. Hobbies argument was based on the fact that a government irrespective of the state was far much better than the State of Nature. This is because he thought that absolute sovereignty as a form of government was a measure to prevent the coming back of the State of Nature and it could easily make people live peacefully, due to lack of friction in the association with each other.

Hobbes gives a clear conflict between two concepts: an effective sovereign, stable and the need of peace and the denial of the sovereign the advantages listed therein. Hobbes, opinion was as a result of the attitude he had towards the England government which resulted to the civil war. For example they thought that the state could be limited in its ability to raise taxes and at the same time have the government, the government power was to be reserved in a pre-eminent manner. Hobbes outstands to be an absolutist in the view that he gives no room for revolutionary change whatsoever ideologically on the ground.

One can in a violent manner plan to dismiss or overthrow the sovereign with the aim of replacing it with one that is new or change the form state. For absolutism, this is sensible. States exist with the main agenda of preventing and solving misunderstandings, confusions and conflicts, these should be done not by violence but preferably by the state. This is because the state is more organised, there are procedures and rules of conflict resolution rather than spontaneous reaction of the violent groups or individuals.

Hobbes expresses his clear stand on the governments theory in his Originator of science that is Politically Authentic, De Cive 1647 where he argued that he had finally found out a mode of rationalising a roadmap into political characters and that a new mode of science had been created by him. Hobbes studied governments that were civil by paying more attention to its central unit of operation. He compared it to humans being both social and natural and thereafter gave an extensive evaluation their forms and generation.

Hobbes reasoned that