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Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Essay

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Thomas Hobbes has been famous for his philosophies on political and social order. In many of his scholastic works, he maintains the position that in the presence of a higher authority the duty of the rest of mankind is to simply obey. The discourse on this essay will focus on his views expressed in his book The Leviathan. In this book Hobbes’ views are fundamentally entrenched in his description that in a society with no higher authority life would be nasty, short and brutish (?).This essay will engage in discussion by first laying out the conceptual arguments of anarchy and the human state of nature. Secondly, it will assess some of the opponent views to repressive government being the sure maintenance of political and social order. Furthermore an assessment of whether the theories of Hobbes are still relevant to the current understanding of International Relations considering the events and processes in this particular stage.
Thomas Hobbes has commonly been classified as a realist because of his pessimistic perception that the fundamental instinct of all mankind is …show more content…

It is also important that there is a kind of reliance that the agreements will be kept. In chapter 17, Hobbes presents a solution for a commonwealth, where people in numbers consent to the single sovereign authority to have complete control over them by repressing some of the freedoms and enforce laws to safeguard order within a state. The Leviathan is described as a single body built up by components of citizens, constructed through agreement to surrender in obedience to this single authority, so as to flee from bringing destruction from one another. However the true liberties as outlined in chapter 21 of the Leviathan are not oppressive and establish the terms in which the authority is absolute only as it instructs its subjects in its proper use. (Carmichael,

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