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Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Essay

715 Words3 Pages

Hobbes was an unusual Christian and presents himself as the first true political philosopher to offer exact knowledge of justice, sovereignty, and citizenship. Hobbes claimed that his systematic political science would build a more stable, peaceful, and productive society. Indeed, he was one of the first to recognize the potential power of religion to strengthen (as well as to undermine) the commonwealth. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan influenced the early modern traditional Christian political theology, and questions about Hobbes’s view on religion persist in his work, even until today. This paper will discuss Hobbes’s central work Leviathan and his perspective on sovereignty and the sovereign’s power in connection with religion (more specifically so, Christianity) found in a close analysis of Book 3 (in particular, in chapter 12). We chose these chapter as it offers his most direct discussion of religion and the sovereign power.
Hobbes 's own views of religion are the subject, to some degree, of scholarly debate. He was strongly opposed to scholasticism and Roman Catholicism and trended toward materialism and rationalism in his overall philosophy. Nevertheless, he does argue that his form of political absolutism is well-suited to Christianity, even though many have …show more content…

Hobbes views the commonwealth as being ruled by a sovereign power that is responsible for protecting the security of the commonwealth and granted absolute authority to do so. In the first edition of Leviathan Hobbes portrays the commonwealth as a gigantic human form built out of the bodies of its citizens, and the sovereign as its head; this image represents the metaphor for Hobbes 's perfect government. Religion and civic authority must be united under one source, and the sovereign must be the head of the church in society as he is head of all else according to

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