This study will examine Bertrand Russell's critique of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The study will focus specifically on Russell's claim that Hobbes is guilty of oversimplification in defining and defending his notions of government, the social contract, and human freedom. The study will also consider these matters in the context of modern thought.
Russell writes that Hobbes sees the government, or the "Leviathan," as a rightfully powerful entity which arises out of sacred roots: "The sovereignty is an artificial soul. The pacts and covenants by which 'Leviathan' is first created take the place of God's fiat when He said 'Let Us make man'" (548). To Hobbes, the Leviathan is a natural and necessary outcome of man's terrible war-ridden condition in the brutish state of nature. All that flows from Hobbes in terms of defining and defending the great power of the Leviathan flows from his belief that such a terrible state of war, force and fraud (550) must be avoided at all costs. Men, says Hobbes, "escape from these evils [in the state of nature] by combining into communities each subject to a central authority. This is represented as happening by means of a social contract" (550).
This social contract is the basis for government and for the great power of the Leviathan. Human beings agree to give up certain rights in order to escape from the state of constant war in nature. These rights accrue to the government, to the Leviathan, which becomes, in effect, "a mortal God" (551). The sovereign is the head of the government and can be an individual or a group, but it is the entity which exercises the "unlimited" powers of the government (551). Again, the point of this arrangement or contract is not to have a great power ruling over the people, but rather to have a power which makes decisions and takes actions designed to create and maintain order among beings who would otherwise be in a state of constant war, chaos and insecurity.
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