Hobbes' Leviathan: The Monster That Keeps Us Safe › Legacy and Connections

Hobbes' influence on subsequent political thought is immense, though often through opposition. John Locke wrote his *Two Treatises of Government* partly to refute Hobbes, arguing that the state of nature was not war but inconvenience, that natural rights limit sovereign power, and that governments violating these rights may be legitimately resisted. The entire liberal tradition can be read as an attempt to preserve Hobbes' insight about the necessity of political authority while rejecting his conclusion about its absoluteness. Jean-Jacques Rousseau took a different approach. He argued that Hobbes had described humanity corrupted by civilization, not natural humanity. The competitive, fearful, isolated individuals of Hobbes' state of nature are products of social development, not its starting point. True human nature is gentle and sociable. The problem is the presence of inequality and dependence, rather than the absence of Leviathan. Carl Schmitt, the controversial twentieth-century theorist, embraced Hobbes' darkest implications. Politics, Schmitt argued, is fundamentally about the distinction between friend and enemy. The sovereign is whoever decides the exception, who suspends normal rules in emergencies. Liberal constitutionalism is an illusion; beneath it lies the Hobbesian reality of power and decision. Schmitt's reading remains influential, though his association with Nazism has rightly made many wary of his conclusions. Contemporary political realism in international relations draws heavily on Hobbes. Thinkers like Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz analyze international politics as a state of nature where states pursue power and security without overarching authority. The "anarchic" international system produces conflict regardless of states' internal character. Peace is a temporary equilibrium of power, not a stable condition. Even critics of Hobbes work within frameworks he established. The social contract tradition (from Locke through Rousseau to Rawls) accepts that political legitimacy must be grounded in some form of agreement or consent, even while rejecting Hobbes' specific conclusions. The question "why should I obey the state?" remains central to political philosophy. Hobbes' answer (because the alternative is worse) remains one of the most powerful on offer.