Unity and diversity in a Hobbesian commonwealth

Abstract

Thomas Hobbes is notorious for his arguments in favour of the sovereign’s absolute authority. Throughout various reiterations of his argument, from Elements of Law to Leviathan, Hobbes’s central contention remains the same: in order to be effective at keeping peace and, thus, at securing the foundations for the wellbeing of its subjects, the sovereign should be the only person (be it a group or an individual) that is endowed with absolute authority over everything except the bare lives of his subjects. The sovereign’s will is the law and, thus, it becomes the will of his every subject. In fact, the very essence of the state is in the sovereign endowed with absolute authority; he is commonwealth’s condition sine qua non. His will is the glue that keeps the disjointed individuals together and unites them in a single state. This “reall Unitie of them all” (Hobbes 1651: 87) comes from the subjects submitting their particular, different and conflicting wills to the singular will of the sovereign. Hobbes’s remedy for the dangerous state of (naturally) conflicting individual wills is in the commonwealth, which rests on their externally enforced uniformity.