Hobbes Leviathan

Hobbes' Leviathan research papers argue that civil peace and social unity are best achieved by the establishment of a commonwealth through social contract. In this contract, each member of society agrees to give up their natural rights and transfers them to someone else, on the condition that everyone involved in the contract does the same. Hobbes' commonwealth is then given absolute authority to govern the people, with the purpose of preserving peace and preventing civil war. In his introduction, Thomas Hobbes portrays this commonwealth as one giant human form made up of the bodies of its citizens, with the sovereign as its head. The term "Leviathan", is taken from that of a biblical sea monster, a metaphor used by Hobbes to describe what he believes the role of government to be.

It is my estimation that, which of these two views each individual chooses to believe is the most effective, depends greatly on their own perspective of the world around them. One need only to look at the backgrounds of the man that wrote this piece to see that he were coming from a different mindset than many of his contemporaries, a difference that is crystal clear in comparing others to Hobbes. Hobbes, literally from the moment he was born, lived in fear. He was delivered prematurely by his terrified mother, who upon hearing that the Spanish Armada had set sail to attack England, went into early labor. Leviathan itself was written in the midst of the English Civil Wars, a time during which Hobbes feared persecution for his support of King Charles I. John Locke, on the other hand, wrote his Two Treatises of Government some 40 years after the publication of Hobbes' Leviathan, and the Treatises were written with the specific aim to defend the "Glorious Revolution" that had overthrown King James II, a revolution of which Locke was an enthusiastic supporter. So, it is important that these two works are considered in the context in which they were written.