For Hobbes, it is the rationality of living within a political state that ultimately justifies both the legitimacy of sovereign authority and the legitimacy of the contractual agreement itself. Hobbes argues that it is rational for individuals existing outside of a political state to divest themselves of their natural right to pursue their rational interests without limit and to bind themselves to the will of a sovereign political authority. According to Hobbes, “A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one, with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part, the right to present the person of them all (that is to say, to be their representative ) every one, as well he that voted for it, as he that voted against it, shall authorize all the actions and judgments, of that man, or assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men” ( Leviathan 2.XVIII.1). At its basis in political theory, Social among the individuals of a political state confers legitimacy on the authority of the state to promulgate, to interpret, and to execute the civil laws to which these individual bind and obligate themselves. Hobbes is generally recognized as the modern father of Social Contract Theory, which was also central to the political and moral theories of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and more recently John Rawls. This short introduction to the Leviathan will focus on following three core topics of Hobbes’s Social Contract Theory, as presented in the Leviathan: the Contractual Agreement, the State of Nature, and Absolute Sovereignty. John Rawls said in his lectures on Hobbes that, “in own view and that of many others, Hobbes’s Leviathan is the greatest single work of political thought in the English language.” Central to his justification for this acclaim is the extraordinary scope of the Leviathan. Frontispiece engraving of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes by Abraham Bosse, 1650.
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