Hobbes’ Leviathan Research Papers

The main idea of Hobbes’ Leviathan is that public peace and social unity should be attained by the establishment of a commonwealth through social contract. In this contract, each member of society agrees to refuse from their natural rights and gives them to someone else, on the condition that everyone engaged in the contract does the same. Commonwealth is then granted absolute authority to rule the people, with the aim of maintaining peace and averting civil war. In the introduction of Leviathan this commonwealth is depicted as one mammoth human form consisting of the bodies of its citizens, with the supreme ruler as its head. The term Leviathan was borrowed by Hobbes from the Bible, where it is used as the name of a sea monster. The writer uses it as a metaphor to describe his idea of the government’s role. Hobbes, literally from his birth, lived in fear. His mother delivered him was prematurely because she went into early labor terrified by the news that the Spanish Armada had set sail to attack England. As for “Leviathan”, it was written in the center of the English Civil Wars, a period of time when Hobbes supported King Charles I and feared persecution. Then again, forty years after the Hobbes’ Leviathan was published, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government were written with the specific purpose to show support for the “Glorious Revolution” that had overturned King James II, a revolution of which Locke was a zealous defender.