Hobbes Leviathan Analysis

One of the most frequent criticisms of Hobbes’s Leviathan is that the powers of the Sovereign are too sweeping, too potentially tyrannical, for the Commonwealth to be any less terrifying than the State of Nature. (Let us briefly note that Sovereign may refer to one individual who is sovereign or a sovereign body, as dependent upon the Contract formed which created the Sovereign in the first place). Yet, Hobbes was not unwise to this criticism, and indeed, addressed this within the bounds of Leviathan itself. There exist two strong, main arguments as to the differences and the superiority of the Commonwealth over violence and fear: first, the unsuitability of man for organized rule without a Commonwealth, and his grievances of it, and second, …show more content…
Indeed, Hobbes acknowledges that “a man may here object, that the Condition of Subjects is very miserable; as being obnoxious to the lusts, and other irregular passions of [the Sovereign].” Hobbes goes on to say that any unpleasantries and such-like complaints are things every man will attribute as a fault of the manner of Commonwealth he is under and yet “the estate of Man can never be without some incommodity or another” . The greatest complaint Subjects often have of a Sovereign (or more frankly, any sort of ruling power) is a result of man’s natural inclination to magnify his grievances and be unable to see the trouble that lies ahead . The grievance most often magnified is the loss of money and/or property that the Sovereign takes in taxes and other such methods, which the Sovereign uses for the protection and defense of the state.
It seems then, that men would prefer to exist in a state above the state of nature without a Sovereign. However, to live otherwise, to try and rise above the state of nature as a group without a Sovereign is impossible. Hobbes even states that