what is leviathan hypothesis

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Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan: A Classic of Political Philosophy

Thomas Hobbes ranks among the top modern political philosophers. Contrary to the thought of his generation, he advocated for strict governmental control.

Wrought with the pressure of a transforming political climate, Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy rocketed him to fame after he penned his work Leviathan .  He wrote in a generation moulded by the political violence not only of the Thirty Years’ War on the European continent, but also of the English Civil War on his home turf. The religious-political violence of this era ultimately shaped modern statecraft and political theory as we know it today.  And yet, though the proceeding generation was unabashedly opposed to authority (bringing a few revolutions to fruition with them), Thomas Hobbes was different.

The Thirty Years’ War

The decades preceding the publication of Leviathan are those that influenced it. Since the era of Martin Luther , significant tension between Protestants and Catholics rippled through northern and central Europe.

These tensions ultimately boiled over and manifested in the Thirty Years War, which raged from 1618 to 1648. Protestants and Catholics violently clashed; the ideological differences between the two branches of Christianity being both modesty and control.

Catholicism adhered to a structured hierarchy of society that was dominated by the Pope in Rome. Protestantism upheld a more introspective means of worship focused on the relationship between the individual and the divine. Fundamentally, the conflict came down to control. Whether Catholic or Protestant, the Thirty Years’ War birthed modern state operations as we know it today.

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That is where Thomas Hobbes comes in. Having spent his formative years surrounded by conflict (both continental during his time in France and domestic at home in England) Thomas Hobbes decided to write a philosophical treatise about governmental control.

His work would go on to inspire and influence—both in agreement and refutation—dozens of fellow political theorists, both contemporary and later on.

The State of Nature

Arguably, the most influential idea that came from Hobbes’ pen was that of the State of Nature . Hobbes held a cynical opinion about human nature, claiming that human beings are naturally solipsistic and dangerous. Famously, Thomas Hobbes was a very paranoid, fearful, and careful man.

In support of his point, Thomas Hobbes cited his fictional State of Nature—a hypothetical time and place devoid of political establishment or social construct. In the State of Nature, every human being exists as a hunter-gatherer as animals do. In this state, Hobbes argues, people will stop at nothing to sustain their own survival: it was, quite literally, every man for himself.

Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that life in the State of Nature would be “ solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short .”   Above anything, Hobbes feared death; his entire political axiom stemmed from doing everything in one’s power to prevent an untimely death before the “Maker” would have it by nature.

Because the State of Nature is so dangerous and frightening, among many other adjectives, Hobbes claimed that we had to make a covenant .  The covenant is a promise humankind made with God where, in exchange for complete and total protection and sheltering, humankind would give up (some of) its natural rights: an eye for an eye. The political equivalent of this covenant between humans and God became the relationship between citizen and ruler.

God and Government

In his notion of the covenant, Thomas Hobbes merges the role of the secular king with the role of the sacerdotal God, blurring the lines between monarch and divine. In fact, he advocates that the secular king always has the best intentions for his people in mind, while no other authority can adequately perform in that way.

While religious folk pray to God for protection, Hobbes turns to his secular king for protection from his greatest fear; while religious folk look for answers from this God to live well, Hobbes interprets political manifestations from the king (the law) as a means to living well. For Hobbes, the monarch’s very word is law, and all should submit to it in order to live long and live well.

For Thomas Hobbes, politics should orient itself against early death. Any action a monarch can take is for his best interests and it is within Hobbes’ philosophy to submit without question. Looking at historical examples, Hobbes would argue that the political ideas of monstrosities such as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin were ultimately for the best interests of their people, were he alive during their tenures.

Hobbes, Philosophy and Religion

In his philosophy, Thomas Hobbes was a stalwart materialist . As such, he gave no power whatsoever to idealistic philosophies invented in the mind—if it did not exist for one to perceive empirically, it simply does not exist at all. Though logically sound, this thinking could easily lead one into trouble in the Catholic-dominated seventeenth century.

Hobbes affixed the simple definition “ matter in motion ” to his perception of the universe.  Every facet of life is simply different masses of matter riding the flux of time and space which is sustained by an “Unmoved Mover.” This, coupled with his materialist philosophy, is closely related to Aristotelian thought.

Seeing as the Hobbesian philosophical positions are often political in nature, it becomes the responsibility of the ruler to protect the people—the covenant. Hobbes was much more fearful of physical suffering inflicted on his body over spiritual suffering inflicted on his soul: the authority of the ruler quite literally eclipses the authority of God. Religious and secular authority becomes conflated.  In his philosophy Hobbes affixes a material body (the King) to God—simultaneously denying God in the Christian sense.

This was considered outright and inherently blasphemous. As a result, Leviathan was banned in England and Thomas Hobbes was almost tried by the Church—much like his contemporary and friend Galileo Galilei —were it not for direct protection from the King of England (Hobbes’ former pupil). A neat metaphor for Hobbes’ idea for a king, isn’t it?

The Legacy of Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes expounded a political philosophy unique for its time. In an era where swaths of the European continent revolted against oppressive authority , Hobbes advocated for submission. The true virtue of his thought is simply longevity and safety; doing whatever is necessary (including foregoing natural rights) in order to obtain these.

Hobbes lived a long life even by modern standards, passing away after bladder issues and a stroke at the age of 91. Was his longevity due to his fearful, paranoid, and careful nature? More importantly, is a longer, safer life with diminished political rights worth living?

The English Civil War: The British Chapter of Religious Violence

By Alexander Standjofski BA in History & Political Theory w/ pre and post-Christian Ideology Alexander holds a BA in history and political theory from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He has studied the historical narrative of the western world as well as pre and post-Christian political thought and ideology spanning from 500 BCE to 1800 CE.

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Leviathan after 350 Years

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This book brings together chapters that discuss Hobbes's masterpiece after three and a half centuries. The contributors address three different themes. The first is the place of Leviathan within Hobbes's output as a political philosopher. What does Leviathan add to The Elements of Law (1640) and De Cive (1642; 1647)? What is the relation between the English Leviathan and the Latin version of the book (1668)? Does Leviathan deserve its pre-eminence? The second theme concerns the connections between Hobbes's psychology and Hobbes's politics. The chapters discuss Hobbes's curious views on the significance of laughter, evidence that he connected life in the state with passionlessness; the ways in which such things as fear for one's life entitle subjects to rebel; and the question of how the sovereign's personal passions are to be squared with his personifying a multitude. The third theme is Hobbes's views on the Bible and the Church: chapters examine the tensions between any allowance for ecclesiastical and (differently) biblical authority on the one hand, and political authority on the other.

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The Political Economy of Leviathan

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• Ronald Findlay &
• John D. Wilson  

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The theory of the state is something that most economists have been content to leave to the political scientists. When the state does appear in economic analysis it usually does so in one or the other of the following roles. One is as a benign and omniscient authority that obligingly imposes taxes, bounties or other measures at just the right level to offset some ‘distortion’ in the price mechanism, owing say to externalities of one sort or another, so as to assure Pareto-efficiency of market outcomes. This aspect of the state in economics is particularly pronounced in what may be called the Pigou—Meade tradition in welfare economics, which has dominated the modern developments of public finance and international trade. The other, dramatically opposed role of the state in standard economic analysis, is as the culpable or innocent tool of malevolent special interests, that instead of correcting distortions à la Pigou and Meade is the very source of them, e.g. minimum wage or usury laws, rent control, tariffs and so on. Conservative economists denounce these interventions on both equity and efficiency grounds, while liberals are apt to be apologetic, sympathising with real or alleged distributional objectives but usually pointing out that alternative (not always feasible) measures could be used that would achieve these goals at a lower cost in efficiency.

Findlay’s work on this paper was mostly done while visiting the Institute for International Economic Studies in Stockholm. We would like to thank participants in seminars at Stockholm and the University of Maryland for very helpful comments.

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Tel Aviv University, Israel

Assaf Razin ( Professor of Economics ) & Efraim Sadka ( Professor of Economics ) ( Professor of Economics ) &  ( Professor of Economics )

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© 1987 Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka

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Findlay, R., Wilson, J.D. (1987). The Political Economy of Leviathan. In: Razin, A., Sadka, E. (eds) Economic Policy in Theory and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18584-9_8

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Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House

Gary W. Cox , Mathew McCubbins

The second edition of Legislative Leviathan provides an incisive new look at the inner workings of the House of Representatives in the post-World War II era. Re-evaluating the role of parties and committees, Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins view parties in the House - especially majority parties - as a species of 'legislative cartel'. These cartels seize the power, theoretically resident in the House, to make rules governing the structure and process of legislation. Most of the cartel's efforts are focused on securing control of the legislative agenda for its members. The first edition of this book had significant influence on the study of American politics and is essential reading for students of Congress, the presidency, and the political party system.