HOBBESIAN UNDERSTANDING OF WAR AND PEACE, STATE AND SOCIETY

Abstract

Peace and war are perennial themes in international relations, attention paid to both victors and the vanquished. Related to this, in his great work Leviathan, Hobbes develops a theory of rights which has not garnered the attention that it warrants. One particular reason for this concerns the rights Hobbes describes for subjects being regarded as lacking credibility or strength once a sovereign is instituted, due to the absolute power of the sovereign. The rights that subjects hold are considered to be natural rights, which exist in the state of nature and only to be relinquished once the sovereign is in place. The scholarly narrative views Hobbesian subjects, as giving up all their natural rights to the sovereign. Focusing upon the union pact as well as other novel concepts, I use inductive arguments to arrive at the Hobbesian proposition that change from one civil government to another can be made through war, i.e., by passing through the state of nature in which life is nasty, brutish and short.

Keywords

• Hobbes
• Philosophy
• State
• Anarchy

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