Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes

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In his Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes outlined his views on law, the individual and the state. It is the first and foremost pieces on social contract theory. Hobbes explains the emergence of a sovereign, as “an embodiment of people’s individual and collective will to live in conditions of security, peace and some minimal prosperity” .
He takes off with a hypothetical scenario that he refers to as “the state of nature”, wherein he analyzes the condition of individuals before the emergence of states. In such a state society is deemed to be chaotic and all men are considered equal and all have a right to act so as to survive , In such a state of nature he refers to human life as being “nasty, solitary, brutish and short”. He states three laws of nature that man must adhere to in such a state of nature and states that without observance of the laws of nature there will be continuous struggle arising from the conflict of individual judgments as to how best to survive. It is only by ceding will to a Leviathan is order created, based on mutual relation between protection and obedience. Hobbes refers to such a covenant as the “social contract”, whereby the individuals taking part promise to transfer their rights to govern themselves to some sovereign. The Contract is not made between the individuals and that sovereign. Indeed, the “sovereign has an absolute power to govern; there is no point at which he may be considered as subject to those who made the Contract among themselves” . Further, it is important to note that Hobbes has in mind, when referring to the sovereign, a ‘person’ or ‘an assembly of persons’ . For Hobbes law is the command of the sovereign and without a sovereign, law and social contract will cease to exist and he believe...

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...is issue. As discussed earlier, his command theory of law mainly claims that the normativity of law is entirely a matter of law’s coerciveness. His theory has been superseded views such as those of Hart. Hart took pains to distinguish, as well as relate, law’s coercive- ness and its normativity. “Both the distinction and the relationship are expressed in the locution “norms backed by sanctions”: law’s normativity in this view must be understood independently of and in contrast to its coerciveness. Normativity is a matter of voluntary obedience; it invokes and relies on people’s disposition, whose nature and sources may vary, to follow legal rules. Coercion and normativity are portrayed as two separate but complementary strategies that the law employs to secure the individual conduct that it desires. The idea of a norm backed by a sanction is not unique to law”.

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