Comment on Rationality Quotes Thread October 2015

Richard_Kennaway
Sun, 18 Oct 2015 10:30:14 GMT

Whatever the practice of sovereignty may have been from place to place and from time to time, Hobbes is setting out a normative view of what constitutes legitimate sovereignty. He is plainly saying exactly what he is saying in the quoted fragment, viz. that obedience to a sovereign authority is undertaken in return for its protection, the agreement being void where the protection is wanting. As opposed, for example, to the theory of the king being set by God over his people, against whom rebellion is necessarily a sin, whatever the king's character and conduct; or the theory that all are masterless and owe obedience to none, for (Hobbes says) the result is a continual war of all against all in which none have the liberty which (he argues) it is the function of a sovereign authority to protect..

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