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Hobbes and Absolute Sovereignty

e sanctions which held it together were neither eternal nor 'natural. Hobbes was mainly intent on the creation of an impartial, theoretical science of government, “stressing the priority of truth above the delights of rhetoric or the utility of propaganda.” He focuses his attention on basic principles rather than changing institutions or forms of government. Leviathan can therefore be seen as a political creature or persona and that creature can exhibit aristocratic, republican, monarchical ,or even democratic features. Hobbes's first argument in favor of the doctrine of absolute sovereignty is essentially the argument against right reason, described as the vision and the heart of Hobbes's moral and political philosophy. His doctrine of absolute sovereignty is derived primarily from the negation of this doctrine, and almost everything that one can discover in his notion of sovereignty can be found in his negation of this argument. An argument that leads to his conclusion, that it is essential for the sovereign to be absolute, and to possess effective enforcement or coercive powers.Hobbes is principally concerned with the fundamental problem of human life in the commonwealth, and the manner in which conflict arises from those numerous plans, projects, and desires, which lead to the individuals action, and which are usually at variance, one with another. He sets out to establish that, if each individual were to be allowed the liberty to follow his own conscience, then in the presence of a diversity of such consciences, without constraint or discipline, peace and harmony in the commonwealth would be short lived, due to an all pervasive tendency to disagreement, and the associated danger of civil disobedience. The problems, created by living in a civil society, do not merely derive from conflicts of interest or the clash of passions but, according to Hobbes, derive more fundamentally from a diversity of consciences and the unr...

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