To start off, as I have a different version of the book than everyone else, the best I can do to direct you to what section I will be talking about is tell you it is in Chapter 18, Section 16: “These rights are indivisible.”
We all know Hobbes wants a Leviathan to rule the commonwealth, and that the commonwealth, having consented to be ruled by the Leviathan, is subject to whatever the Leviathan decides. But what exactly are the duties of the Leviathan, and how does this Leviathan divide his duties amongst his fellow governmental workers?
The short answer: The Leviathan does everything, and he cannot divide these duties.
Hobbes spends the entire chapter up to this point detailing all of the duties of the Leviathan, from the choosing of counsellors and minsters to acting as a judge, from prescribing the rules to describing the propriety entails, and just about anything else you can think of. He is anything but ambiguous, as he could have simply said “The Leviathan does EVERYTHING,” but foresaw the loopholes in that and detailed very meticulously the duties that belong to the Leviathan.
He justifies this inseparability by invoking what is a traditional idiom- “A kingdom divided in itself cannot stand.” He says that the divisions between the King, Lords, and House of Commons created the civil war that was happening at the time. This is convincing now, but it must have been especially convincing at the time to people who were seeking answers for the disintigration of the government at the time.
Through specificity and concrete evidence, Hobbes makes a convincing argument that almost makes me wonder why Obama has so many helpers…
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