Leviathan (second plate) Hobbes

The Pope of the Church of Rome often asserted that he had supreme power as a means of interfering in the internal affairs of nations. So Hobbes, in order to refute this view, spent the same amount of ink and ink to write the second plate of Leviathan. In general, Hobbes quoted scriptures from the Bible to prove that the sovereign did have supreme absolute power.

The only source of this right is the social contract, not God. Therefore, on the issue of church and state, we need only remember the most important three points: First, the Bible can become the moral guide of the people precisely by the authority of the sovereign. Just as there are 1,000 Hamlets in the eyes of 1,000 people, throughout the ages, there have been various interpretations of the Bible, so which interpretation is correct? This criterion of judgment should be in the hands of the sovereign, otherwise everyone will take their own set as a guideline. Some even put the Bible aside and see the illusion as a revelation of God. In this way, the destabilizing factors of social unrest increase the power of interpretation of the Bible, which should be in the hands of the sovereign. This is the best way to morals and to keep the country stable.

Second, the church must be under the control of the state. In the early modern period of the West, the power of the Roman Church was still very large, and it could even influence the political direction of the secular state. To stabilize a country, it is necessary to avoid church interference. So Hobbes said that in the most immediate sense, the church is nothing more than a gathering of believers in a synagogue.

Since, then, in a normal country, all kinds of assemblies must be authorized by the sovereign. The churches of Christians are certainly no exception. In this sense, the Church has no reason to interfere in the politics of the state, but instead submits to the arrangements of the Sovereign. Third, the authority of the sovereign is higher than that of the pope, and Hobbes calls the kingdom ruled by the pope the kingdom of darkness, considering the pope a liar. To make everyone misunderstand the Bible for the sake of worldly gain is like putting a black cloth over the eyes of the soul and becoming obscure. Popes and clergy abused the Bible or concocted rumors of demons and ghosts, or created empty experiences. The purpose of philosophy is to shake the authority of the sovereign, to create a state within a state. So the sovereign should expel the power of the pope in order to bring light to devout Christians.

Finally, let's look at the impact of the book. First of all, during the British Revolution, the newly published Leviathan can be said to be infamous, a very politically incorrect work. Hobbes rejected the prevailing theory of the theocracy of military power, arguing that such a doctrine that could not stand up to scrutiny would make the foundations of the regime unstable.

The correct approach was to adopt, like him, the more popular theory of the social contract of the time, which was very offensive to the conservatives of the time. Leviathan's materialist condemnation of the Church of Rome put Hobbes in the hat of atheism. Second, when the revolution was over and Britain entered a period of democracy, Leviathan's reputation did not get any better.

In this book, Hobbes gave great power to the sovereign, and argued that the monarchy was the best form of government. It was this strong royalist color that made those who embraced the trend of democratization very hostile to Hobbes, believing that he was advocating authoritarian rule in his bones, and even in the 20th century, some scholars denounced Leviathan as totalitarian.

Third, despite the controversy over political positions, Leviathan has a groundbreaking achievement in political science. When Hobbes studied the state, he disassembled and analyzed it like a machine, and was concerned with how to make the machine work well, rather than evaluating the country with moral concepts. This meant that political science was no longer concerned with morality and gradually became a value-neutral discipline, which laid the foundation for positivist political science.

Finally, Leviathan also had an important influence on modern international relations theory. Although Hobbes makes little mention of international relations in this book, the international relations constituted by sovereign states are very much in line with the state of nature he describes. Although human beings enter the state in order to get out of the natural state, they have not yet come out of the natural state in the game between countries.

Inspired by Hobbes, the international relations theorists of the realist school believe that there are no eternal enemies and friends in the international community, only eternal interests, and the defense of national security is supreme, so the struggle between countries will always exist. Leviathan is a landmark work of Western civilization, and his subversion of tradition, his examination of human nature, and his insight into political life have deeply influenced later thinkers. With this work, Hobbes, like Homer and Thucydides, successfully entered the Hall of Fame in human civilization.