Hobbes publishes Leviathan
Written during the English Civil War, Hobbes's Leviathan argued that in the natural state, life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' — a war of all against all. To escape, individuals tacitly contract with each other to surrender their individual judgment to a single sovereign, whose absolute authority is the only thing preventing a return to the state of nature. The sovereign's power is derived from the governed, not from God. That derivation was the radical move — everything Hobbes did with it (siding with absolute monarchy) was less important than the move itself.
Hobbes was accused of atheism and narrowly avoided being burned as a heretic. His argument justified whoever held power — he dedicated Leviathan to the exiled Charles II but it applied just as easily to Cromwell. That ambiguity made it useful to all sides and enemies of all.
05 · Social Contract
In roughly two centuries, European philosophers worked out a new account of where authority came from. Hobbes said the sovereign's power was granted by a tacit contract individuals signed to escape the war of all against all. Locke said the contract was conditional and revocable, and that the governed retained the right to dissolve any government that broke its terms. Rousseau said legitimate authority was the general will of the people themselves, not any individual monarch. Each argument sharpened the previous one. By 1789 the conclusions had been put on parchment and fired out of muskets on two continents.
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