Absolute Sovereignty
- Theory
- Absolute Sovereignty
- Jurist
- Thomas Hobbes
- Description
In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that in the state of nature life is a "war of all against all", leaving existence "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." To escape this, people surrender their rights through a social contract to an absolute, undivided sovereign whose authority must be unlimited — for divided or limited sovereignty invites disorder and civil war.