Leviathan
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| Leviathan - by Thomas Hobbes |
Both the conclusions and methodology of "Leviathan" are shocking to the modern reader. Writing in the seventeenth century, Hobbes attacked medieval political philosophy and religion. However, unlike the enlightenment philosophers, he did not base his arguments on the classical authors of Greece and Rome. Instead, he made it clear that he considered them to be as much in the wrong as medieval scholastics.
Thus starting from zero, Hobbes then developed the doctrine that every nation or commonwealth requires an undivided sovereign. To the contemporary reader, Hobbes is arguing that we would all be best living in a totalitarian regime.
In Hobbes's view, men are evil wishing by instinct to dominate and exploit their fellow men. Hence every commonwealth needs to be ruled by a strong sovereign to protect the members of the commonwealth from each other. The sovereign can be a single person, an aristocracy or a democracy. The single-person system is best as it allows the most complete concentration of power.
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