Thomas Hobbes

What would happen if tomorrow every law, police officer, and government vanished? Would we cooperate kindly, or would fear and violence take over? Thomas Hobbes asked this unsettling question during one of England’s darkest periods—the English Civil War—and his answer shaped political philosophy for centuries. In his monumental 1651 work Leviathan, Hobbes argues that without strong authority, human life would spiral into anarchy—what he famously called a condition where life is “nasty, brutish, and short.”

For Hobbes, the central human dilemma is how to balance freedom with security. He believed that people, driven by fear of death and love of comfort, would willingly surrender some liberty to a sovereign power in exchange for protection and stability. But—and this is the controversial core of his philosophy—once we grant that power, we must obey it almost absolutely, even if it is imperfect. The alternative, Hobbes warns, is far worse: chaos, civil war, and mutual destruction.

The Historical Backdrop: Living Through Civil War

Hobbes lived through the English Civil War (1642–1651), which tore apart the fabric of his society. King Charles I was executed publicly in 1649, an act Hobbes found horrifying. The conflict wasn’t just political—it represented, to Hobbes, the breakdown of all shared rules and moral order. His personal aversion to violence dated back even further: his father, a clergyman, was disgraced for fighting another vicar. These experiences convinced Hobbes that peace, not liberty, was humanity’s most fundamental need.

Hobbes observed firsthand how easily idealism about freedom and justice can fuel bloodshed. When revolutionaries overthrew kings in the name of liberty, they also unleashed an unpredictable wave of vengeance and disorder. Hobbes’s mission became to construct a political philosophy that would make such horrors unthinkable.

From Divine Right to the Social Contract

For centuries, monarchy had been justified by the Divine Right of Kings—the idea that rulers were appointed by God. But by Hobbes’s time, this theory was losing credibility, especially as faith waned and questioning minds sought rational foundations for authority. Philosophers began proposing “social contract” theories, suggesting that governments derived legitimacy from the consent of the governed, not divine will.

Hobbes agreed in part: people do indeed create governments voluntarily. But he rejected the revolutionary logic embedded in this idea—the notion that citizens could overthrow rulers when dissatisfied. In Hobbes’s eyes, that path led straight back to the state of nature, to endless conflict. His radical move was to merge the social contract with total obedience. We enter into a contract not with the ruler himself, but with each other—to submit our wills to a sovereign so that everyone may live in peace.

The Leviathan: Authority as the Source of Safety

In Leviathan, Hobbes uses the metaphor of a mythical sea creature—a vast, all-encompassing power that both protects and terrifies. This “Leviathan” is the sovereign state, representing the people’s collective will. It must possess absolute authority, because any limit on its power reopens the door to conflict. For Hobbes, freedom without order is meaningless; the lawless individual is not free but doomed to perpetual fear.

This view may feel pessimistic, but Hobbes’s purpose was cautionary, not tyrannical. He believed that even a flawed ruler is preferable to the horror of political collapse. The only legitimate resistance, he allowed, was in self-defense—if the ruler directly threatens your life. Otherwise, obedience, however unpleasant, is rational self-preservation.

Why Hobbes Still Matters

Even centuries later, Hobbes’s ideas resonate in debates about government power, civil disobedience, and the limits of protest. Whenever revolutions or populist movements promise total freedom but end in chaos, Hobbes’s shadow looms. He reminds us that order is the fragile foundation of every other human good. His philosophy poses a haunting challenge: would you rather live under an imperfect government or in a world of perfect freedom and utter insecurity?

Across the chapters that follow, we’ll explore how Hobbes developed this argument step by step: his bleak view of human nature, his reconstruction of the state of nature, the structure of his social contract, and the moral trade-offs he demanded of citizens. You’ll see how his realism—sometimes accused of cynicism—still forces us to confront the oldest and hardest question in politics: how much are we willing to give up to be safe?

Hobbes’s central concept, the state of nature, is his version of the thought experiment: what are humans like without government? His answer is grim. Without laws or shared authority, humans are locked in what he called a “war of every man against every man.” Competition for power, fear of one another, and the desire to dominate would make peaceful living impossible.

Life Without the State

Imagine a world with no police, no courts, and no rule of law—only individuals seeking survival. For Hobbes, this leads inevitably to violence. People may want peace, but the mistrust between them makes cooperation impossible. Each person must strike first to stay safe. In such conditions, there is no industry, no innovation, no comfort—only fear and constant vigilance.

The English Civil War was, to Hobbes, proof that this state of nature is not hypothetical. When law and authority collapse, neighbors become enemies overnight. Hobbes saw this not as an aberration but as the truth of human nature stripped of external control.

Why the State of Nature Feels So Real

Hobbes identified three motives that drive humans into conflict: competition (for gain), diffidence (for safety), and glory (for reputation). Without authority, these impulses amplify one another endlessly. His language remains strikingly modern because we can recognize these motives—in online hostility, corporate rivalry, or international politics.

Unlike later thinkers like John Locke or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who imagined the natural state as potentially peaceful or cooperative, Hobbes believed it was intrinsically violent. Where Rousseau saw noble simplicity, Hobbes saw animal fear. As he put it, humans are equal not in virtue but in vulnerability—a chilling insight into our shared fragility.

“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war.”

Thus, fear becomes the foundation of politics. Hobbes insists that the only way to escape this nightmare is to create a central authority strong enough to terrify us into peace—because, paradoxically, it’s fear that enables safety.

The social contract is Hobbes’s ingenious answer to the problem of chaos. People in the state of nature, terrified of death and suffering, agree among themselves to form a society governed by shared rules. This agreement is not with the ruler directly—it’s a pact between citizens to obey a central authority for the sake of peace.

How the Contract Works

Each individual gives up the natural right to do whatever they please. In return, the sovereign’s laws ensure safety and predictability. This exchange is rational: a constrained life under authority is better than the peril of total freedom. You obey not because the ruler is divine, but because authority serves your self-interest. The legitimacy of power thus arises from human agreement, not heavenly command.

The Binding Nature of the Agreement

Once formed, this contract cannot be revoked at will. If subjects could dissolve it whenever they were unhappy, society would revert to the state of nature. Thus, Hobbes’s contract justifies obedience even to unjust rulers. Only in cases where the ruler threatens your life directly may you legitimately resist.

This model contrasts sharply with the later liberal contract theories of Locke (who emphasized the right to rebel) and Rousseau (who emphasized collective moral will). Hobbes’s hard-edged logic prioritizes stability above all else. To him, even oppressive order is preferable to bloody anarchy.

“He that complaineth of injury from his sovereign, complaineth of that whereof he is the author himself.”

This vision, though austere, offers a sobering reminder: freedom is fragile, and without a social framework to sustain it, it corrodes into fear and violence. For Hobbes, the ultimate act of human reason is not rebellion, but submission—for the sake of survival.

To Hobbes, maintaining peace requires discipline and obedience. Even when rulers act unjustly, citizens must refrain from revolt. The costs of rebellion, as he saw in the Civil War, are unbearably high. His principle is clear: the inconvenience of obedience is worth the avoidance of chaos.

Obedience and Authority

Hobbes defines peace not as the absence of wrongdoing by rulers but as the absence of widespread fear and disorder. The sovereign’s role is to maintain order above all. You obey not out of love or morality but because only authority can curb collective violence. For Hobbes, loyalty is pragmatic, not romantic.

He grants only one exception: if the sovereign tries to kill you personally, self-defense overrides obedience. Otherwise, even high taxes, censorship, or corruption do not justify revolt. This is less a justification for tyranny than a strategy for survival. A bad king, Hobbes says, is unfortunate; a civil war is lethal.

Peace Through Submission

This vision may seem dismal to modern readers who celebrate liberty, but Hobbes believed liberty without order collapses into terror. He urged readers to see authority as a mutual exchange: the ruler provides protection, and subjects provide obedience. Break one side, and the entire system crumbles. In his preface to Leviathan, he wrote of “the mutual relation between protection and obedience,” emphasizing that they cannot be separated.

Through this logic, Hobbes provides a lasting lesson: stability is not guaranteed by justice alone but by the fear of losing all structure. His worldview is a stark mirror reminding us that civilizations rest on brittle foundations of trust and restraint, which must be guarded at all costs.

Hobbes’s political theory remains startlingly relevant today. His warnings echo whenever countries face revolutionary upheaval or when governments collapse into violence. He reminds us that freedom without stability is illusionary, and that power—however flawed—anchors civilization.

The Modern Relevance of Hobbes

From failed states to populist revolts, Hobbes’s fears play out in real time. In places where institutions crumble—Somalia, Syria, or regions torn by insurgency—the state of nature reappears. There, personal security trumps any talk of liberty. Hobbes helps us recognize that law, however imperfect, is humanity’s shield against self-destruction.

Contemporary thinkers like political scientist Francis Fukuyama and realist theorists in international relations (such as Hans Morgenthau) trace much of their reasoning back to Hobbes’s logic: that order precedes freedom, and peace requires fear of authority. Even democratic governments, through police and laws, apply Hobbes’s insight daily—that security is civilization’s first condition.

Learning from Hobbes’s Pessimism

Ultimately, Hobbes forces each person to answer a timeless question: What kind of fear are you willing to live with—the fear of government power, or the fear of other people’s unchecked freedom? His grim realism is less an endorsement of tyranny and more a reminder that human societies are always balancing on the edge between order and chaos. To read Hobbes is to confront an uncomfortable truth: peace demands compromise, and sometimes, obedience is the price of survival.