That’s the bottom line of any social contract-based political theory; and it concerns the hypothetical transfer of the appropriate rights (mostly those having to do with protecting oneself, to include one’s property) to another, which transfer creates obligation to the sovereign.
As stated, Hobbes’ was an extreme version. Ms Balibar puts it thus:
. . . there are essential reasons why Hobbes would absolutely refuse the notion of “self-ownership” as a political notion – since it would establish competing authorities and obligations5 – and therefore also as a philosophical or anthropological one.
We see it was Locke therefore, not Hobbes, who had allowed for what we recognize today as factional and confrontantional politics, along with the remote possibility of overthrowing the government, in the event the government (for one reason or another) doesn't deliver. No wonder it was Locke rather than Hobbes, who had become the presumptive father of the liberal theory: it stands to reason that even the ruling class, not unlike the nobility of old, would like to reserve for itself the ultimate right to depose the sovereign (if and when need be).
But popular opinion be damned, and general sentiment and all appearances to the contrary, too, each of which being a poor index of the underlying reality. Hobbes may have been a purist compared to Locke, but he did capture better than anyone the tenor of our times: it’s all about statism, the heart of the liberal theory! By way of consolation, let me state that our conservative brethren are in the same boat, too.
In retrospect, if Locke's version of liberalism was lukewarm, something we can vaguely imagine we could live with, Hobbes's was hardcore.
Article comments
1 - jamminsue
Good job, Roger. I never thought of Hobbes as liberal, but you have convinced me here....I always thought Locke basically re-wrote Hobbes in more polite language.
2 - roger nowosielski
Well, Locke did as a matter of fact; made it more palatable. But I'm more than convinced that Hobbes laid out the foundations.
3 - jamminsue
Yes, I agree that Hobbes laid it out. He was not the original, but definitley did organize the ideas in a scientific manner.
Hobbes wanted to take Political Theory and turn it into a science, which before him, it was not.
4 - roger nowosielski
Exactly!