Questions: Hobbesian Absolutism and Sovereign Power

Question 1

A critic argues that Hobbes's social contract theory should allow citizens to overthrow a sovereign who governs unjustly, since the contract is based on rational self-interest. How would Hobbes most likely respond?

• A. He would agree — rational self-interest includes the interest in justice, which unjust sovereigns violate
• B. He would accept revolution only if a clear majority consents to it
• C. He would reject this: granting citizens the authority to judge and override the sovereign recreates the condition where every person acts on their own judgment — the state of nature itself
• D. He would accept it only if the sovereign became ineffective at maintaining order, not merely unjust

Answer: (C)

This is the core of Hobbesian absolutism's internal logic. If citizens retain the right to judge whether the sovereign is just and to act on that judgment, then authority is conditional — and conditional authority is effectively no authority. Two people who disagree about whether the sovereign is just revert to private judgment, which is the state of nature. Hobbes is not indifferent to justice; he thinks even a harsh, unjust sovereign is preferable to the war of all against all. The contract's purpose is security, not justice, and any mechanism for overriding the sovereign on grounds of justice defeats the contract's purpose.

Question 2

What fundamentally distinguishes Hobbes's justification for absolute sovereignty from the divine right of kings theory?

• A. Hobbes allows no exceptions to sovereign authority, while divine-right theory allows revolution against ungodly kings
• B. Hobbes grounds absolute sovereignty in rational self-interest and the need for security, while divine-right theory grounds it in God's authority and traditional lineage
• C. Divine-right theory requires written laws limiting the king, while Hobbes's sovereign is unconstrained by any document
• D. Hobbes allows subjects to choose their sovereign form, while divine-right theory specifies hereditary monarchy

Answer: (B)

This distinction is philosophically significant. Divine-right theorists derived sovereign authority from a transcendent source — God's will, sacred tradition, hereditary descent. Hobbes's argument is entirely immanent and rational: we give up our natural liberty to a sovereign because it is in our rational self-interest to do so, given the horror of the alternative. This means Hobbes's absolutism is, paradoxically, a form of social contract theory — authority derives from (a kind of) consent. The same logical foundation that Locke later used to generate limited government: Hobbes demonstrates it can equally generate unlimited government, depending on which premises you accept about the state of nature.

Question 3

According to Hobbes, if a sovereign directly threatens a subject's life, that subject has no right to resist because they surrendered most rights upon entering the social contract.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is Hobbes's one explicit exception. The social contract's entire purpose is self-preservation — we enter it to escape the constant threat of violent death in the state of nature. If the sovereign directly threatens a subject's life, the contract has failed at its fundamental purpose, and the subject recovers the natural right of self-preservation. This exception is actually logically consistent with Hobbes's framework: you cannot rationally contract away the very thing the contract was designed to protect. Short of direct personal threat to life, however, Hobbes allows no other grounds for resistance.

Question 4

Hobbes argues that absolute sovereign authority is justified because even a harsh or unjust sovereign provides more security than the state of nature would.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the heart of Hobbes's comparative argument. He does not claim sovereigns will always be just or benevolent — he claims that even imperfect, harsh, or occasionally unjust government is preferable to the alternative: a world without government, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. The relevant comparison is not between a good sovereign and a bad one, but between any sovereign and no sovereign. This comparative structure explains why Hobbes rejects revolution even against unjust rulers — the attempt to replace one sovereign with another risks falling back into the state of nature during the transition.

Question 5

Why does Hobbes believe sovereignty must be absolute rather than limited? What is the logical structure of the argument?

Model answer: Hobbes's argument is that the purpose of the social contract is to escape the state of nature — the war of all against all — by creating a power capable of enforcing compliance on everyone. Any limitation on sovereign power creates a domain where the sovereign's authority does not reach. In that domain, individuals retain private judgment about what to do, which is precisely the state of nature. Two competing authorities are effectively no authority at all. Therefore, to actually deliver the security the contract was designed to provide, sovereignty must be undivided, inalienable, and not subject to any higher earthly authority. The argument is not that absolute power is intrinsically good, but that limited power cannot achieve the one thing that makes political authority worth having.

The structure is: (1) the purpose of sovereignty is security, (2) limited sovereignty creates gaps where conflict can re-enter, (3) therefore effective sovereignty must be absolute. This means absolutism follows from the logic of security rather than from any claim about the sovereign's virtue or divine mandate — which is why Locke had to challenge Hobbes's premises about the state of nature and natural rights rather than just the conclusion.