Within the book Leviathan, Hobbes argues that an absolute common power is best for the people. He begins this argument by creating an analogy for an absolute power. This analogy, called “Leviathan,” represents a powerful government or “commonwealth” with all the necessary parts to be an absolute power. Hobbes says the great Leviathan is “but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was intended.”
This analogy of the Leviathan, or “artificial man” as he also calls it, leads Hobbes to question what human nature looks like absent political restraints. To accomplish this, he begins his study by examining the nature of an individual human being. By doing so, Hobbes seeks to understand the fundamentals of human nature so that he can better understand the necessary composition of an absolute common power and how this common power can affect the lives of individuals.
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Their lives being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Hobbes helps justify his claim of this natural state of humans by giving examples of how people act despite the presence of laws and public officers. Examples include traveling armed and in the company of others, locking doors at night, and locking chests inside the home. This suggests that the condition would degenerate farther in the absence of a common power. When men live without a common power to “keep them all in awe,” they are in a condition called war and “such a war is everyone for