Questions: Hobbesian Sovereignty

Question 1

A group of citizens argues that the sovereign has violated the social contract by imposing unjust laws and therefore subjects are released from their obligation to obey. How would Hobbes respond?

• A. Hobbes would agree — a sovereign who violates the contract forfeits authority
• B. Hobbes would deny this is possible, because the sovereign is not a party to the contract and therefore cannot violate it
• C. Hobbes would say subjects may appeal to a higher court to judge whether the contract was violated
• D. Hobbes would agree only if the unjust laws threaten the physical survival of the citizens

Answer: (B)

The crucial structural feature of Hobbes's social contract is that the sovereign is NOT a party to it — the contract is an agreement among subjects to obey whoever they institute as sovereign. Since the sovereign never made any promises to the subjects, there is no covenant for the sovereign to breach. Subjects cannot accuse the sovereign of violating terms that the sovereign never accepted. This is why the argument in option A is, for Hobbes, literally incoherent within his framework — not just wrong, but based on a misunderstanding of who the contract is between.

Question 2

Hobbes argues for absolute monarchy as the only legitimate form of government.

• A. True — Hobbes thought kings had a divine right to rule
• B. False — Hobbes argues for absolute and undivided sovereignty, which can take the form of monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy
• C. True — the English Civil War proved democracy was unstable
• D. False — Hobbes actually preferred a parliamentary system with checks on the monarch

Answer: (B)

Hobbes's argument is for absolutism, not monarchy specifically. What matters is that sovereign power be undivided and unchallengeable — whether it is held by one person, a small council, or a democratic assembly. A democratic assembly with unlimited authority satisfies Hobbes's criteria just as well as a king. Hobbes does express a *preference* for monarchy (he thought it less prone to faction), but his philosophical argument requires only that the sovereign be singular and absolute. This is a common misconception: people conflate Hobbes's personal views with the logical structure of his argument.

Question 3

According to Hobbes, subjects under a legitimate sovereign retain absolutely no rights — they have surrendered everything.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

False. Hobbes makes one exception: subjects retain the right to resist when the sovereign directly threatens their life. You cannot covenant away the right to self-preservation, because that right is the entire motivation for making the contract in the first place. Surrendering the right to protect yourself from imminent death would be irrational — no person would agree to it, and Hobbes's contract is grounded in rational self-interest. This is not a general right of rebellion (you cannot rebel because the sovereign is oppressive or unjust), but a natural necessity that persists even under absolute authority.

Question 4

Hobbes argues for absolute sovereignty not because the sovereign is virtuous, but because any sovereign is preferable to no sovereign.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

True, and this is one of the most striking features of Hobbes's argument. He does not require the sovereign to be just, benevolent, or even competent — only that a sovereign exist. The state of nature is so catastrophic (permanent war, no security, no property, no justice) that virtually any political order is better than none. An oppressive sovereign still provides the minimum condition for civilized life: predictable enforcement of rules. This makes Hobbes's theory simultaneously consent-based (authority derives from rational agreement) and ruthlessly pragmatic (the agreement's content is driven by fear, not idealism).

Question 5

Why does Hobbes conclude that divided sovereignty — such as a system with checks and balances between different branches of government — is self-defeating rather than a safeguard against tyranny?

Model answer: Hobbes argues that divided sovereignty reproduces the conflict of the state of nature inside the political order. If two authorities (say, a monarch and a parliament) each claim ultimate power over some domain, disputes about jurisdiction have no final arbiter — and a dispute with no final arbiter is simply the state of nature in miniature. The whole point of instituting a sovereign was to create a single authority whose judgments are final, ending the endless conflict of competing wills. Splitting authority between branches means that when the branches disagree, there is no higher power to resolve the dispute peacefully — making civil war not just possible but structurally guaranteed.

Hobbes wrote Leviathan during and after the English Civil War, which he viewed as the direct result of divided authority between king and parliament. His argument is not merely theoretical — he saw it as historical confirmation that splitting sovereign power invites the catastrophe it is meant to prevent. This shapes his view that constitutional checks and balances, however appealing in theory, recreate the state of nature at the level of institutions. Subsequent political philosophers (Locke, Montesquieu) would directly challenge this conclusion, arguing that unchecked power is the greater danger.