Hobbes Social Contract Essay

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, historian and scientist mostly known politically for his social contract theory which he wrote about in his book Leviathan (1651). (Sorell,2017) In Leviathan, Hobbes establishes a certain doctrine in which he describes the foundation of states as a manner in which to asset mutual assurance in a society amongst all individuals; this later gives rise to his social contract theory.(Harding,2017) In Leviathan Hobbes primarily views government as a mode of ensuring collective security.

One of Hobbes ideas are that every individual should surrender to the strongest political authority available if we want to survive living amongst each other. He justifies this by creating a hypothetical scenario of people living together before a society is established wereby everyone has to rely on their own strength to survive as there are no alliances to rely on and survival is purely based on strength-he refers to this as the State of Nature and to an extent anarchy which according to

He believed that the situation was not entirely bleak because we are intelligent beings who can overcome the State of nature by forming states and creating civil society. Hobbes believed that if each individual shares the same views about acquiring peace and mutual co-operation then they can construct a social contract that will grant them immunity from the State of Nature. A social contract can be broken apart into two phases: the first is that people must mutually agree to establishing a society collectively by acknowledging each other’s right to live equally and the second phase is that they must agree to submit to the authority of an individual or group who will in turn make sure that the first phase of the social contract will be carried out. This is done so that those people who choose to engage in a social contract with one another can