In Leviathan, Hobbes presents the first coherent ideas of a sovereign and introduces the idea that within a state each individual surrenders their own freedoms so that they can all be governed by one unilateral set of laws mediating their competing interests, one focal point. This is the only way to provide peace and coexistence, the aim of any society. Hobbes saw the English Civil War and the competing sources of authority, the Monarchy, the Universities, the Church, as part of the reason peace had broken down in 17th-century England. Complete consolidation of power in an ‘artificial person’, an office of state, can save its subjects from his famous ‘state of nature’, where each man, or group, contends with all others under the constant threat of conflict and life is harsh, bloody and grim. For Hobbes, a country without a set of binding rules would not exist in a state of innocence but instead exist in a state of insecurity.

Leviathan breaks with the Aristotelian conception of government – instead of a government focused on justice, Eudaimonia, or self-perfection, Hobbes’ sovereign exists to mitigate fear. It is a scared state that speaks to our tendencies to dominate one another. We are competitive and proud, and we live in fear of one another in the name and pursuit of peace. For Hobbes, ‘the state of nature still exists wherever authority breaks down’. If we could place these ideas in a modern context, perhaps consider how much CCTV surveillance we have, or consider the mass of regulation protecting our day-to-day transactions with one another, we would see that we all trade part of our freedom in exchange for the opportunity not to look over our shoulder walking down the street. This ceding of authority all traces back to the notion of a sovereign. Hobbes’ contention that no man has a natural right to impose his will over another because justice is relative also lead him to advocate for religious toleration and the kind of relativism that brought an end to the Thirty Years’ Religious War in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Implicitly, these enshrined democratic rights were not to be imposed upon, except by the body to which every citizen has surrendered authority – equality under the laws. What those laws demand is quite a different question.