Leviathan

Though hardly the first philosopher to propose that social contracts exist between sovereign and subject, Hobbes was perhaps the most influential on modern Western thought. The notion that justice and injustice stem from unspoken agreements between governments and people dates as far back as ancient Greece with the writings of Plato. Yet by the 17th century, most European nation-states operated under the precept that monarchs receive their authority from God and not the consent of the governed. Hobbes’s challenge to this theory of the divine right of kings was thus an important intellectual turning point in the centuries-long shift from spiritually mandated sovereignty to monarchs who govern by unspoken consent and, finally, the spread of democracies across the Western world.

For Hobbes, this need for a social contract follows directly from the precept that, absent a strong central authority figure, humankind exists in a state of natural barbarism. Thus, the only way humanity’s basest urges and liberties can be curtailed is under a sovereign ruler whom people fear more than they fear each other. Under the conditions of this contract—which Hobbes usually refers to as a covenant—the sovereign ruler or assembly protects subjects both from themselves and from outside invaders, and in return subjects pledge absolute obedience. This, Hobbes suggests, is preferable to the system of divine right under which the only contract is the one between God and sovereign. That is because humans, aside from what they read in scripture, are not usually privy to God’s specific commands unless they are prophets.

Similar to his state of nature theory, Hobbes’s view on social contracts would be challenged by later philosophers, particularly Rousseau. In his 1762 treatise The Social Contract, Rousseau argues that it is the sovereign who should fear the subjects, not the other way around. Unlike Hobbes, who believes that under no circumstances may a subject break the social contract through rebellion, Rousseau believes that at any time the general will may divest the sovereign ruler of his power, should the subjects conclude that the sovereign no longer serves the public good. Moreover, Rousseau rejects Hobbes’s contention that a contract between sovereign and subject is reached implicitly by virtue of the latter accepting the former’s protection. On the contrary, Rousseau argues that citizens must explicitly select their sovereign ruler by combining their individual wills through, for example, a national election.

All modern democracies exist on the basis of a social contract, one that is periodically renewed through national elections. So while the United States, for example, is a far cry from the dictatorial commonwealths envisioned by Hobbes, it can be argued that modern democracies are shaped at least in part by his philosophy.

In Hobbes’s time, a debate raged across Europe over the relationship between temporal or secular authority and spiritual authority. The debate usually fell along the lines of two camps, both of which concluded from a reasonable interpretation of scripture that temporal authority—meaning a king of a queen—lords over civil matters of earthly law and governance while spiritual authority—meaning the pope, vicars, and bishops—lords over religious matters, filed under the dominion of the kingdom of heaven. Where the two camps differ is that the Gelasian camp—generally Catholics—argued that temporal authority is subordinate to temporal authority, while others—generally Protestants—argued that the two forms of authority should be kept separate. This conflict came to a head in 1534, when Henry VIII, angry that the pope would not agree to his annulment from Catherine of Aragorn, formally broke ties with the Catholic Church.

Given Hobbes’s view that a human cannot serve two masters, separating temporal authority and spiritual authority is not enough and will necessarily lead to conflict and even civil war. Therefore, he takes the Protestant view even further and argues that spiritual authority is subordinate to civil authority. Or, put another way, there is no spiritual authority except that which is granted by the sovereign to a clergy member, up to and including the pope. Even in the 17th century, as the Protestant Reformation swept over Europe, this was a controversial notion. Despite Hobbes’s seemingly sincere religious beliefs, he was repeatedly accused of atheism after Leviathan’s publication, mostly by Catholics but also by Protestants.

It can be difficult for readers to reconcile Hobbes’s belief in God and Jesus as the savior of the humankind with his subordination of spiritual authority to temporal authority. The author anticipates these arguments by citing dozens of lines from scripture that he believes support his position. Whether he succeeds in reconciling these two seemingly opposing ideas is up to the reader, though many scholars today and in Hobbes’s time find his attempts inadequate or poorly reasoned.