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Government comprises that set of legal and political institutions that regulates the relationships among members of a society and between the society and its government. Government has the authority to set policies and make decisions for the society, establishing the maintenance of order and achievement of certain societal goals. The type of government, the way authority is distributed, and the functions of government are based on theoretical ideas and principles. The practical development of the concepts of freedom, equality, and rights flows from these ideas and principles. An analysis of the underlying theories reveals how the principles and ideals on which government's polices are based were developed.
The first of the early modern theorists whose work and ideas will be reviewed is Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was an English political philosopher and scientist. Hobbes wrote his main work, Leviathan, while a tutor to the Prince of Wales, who was exiled in Paris at the time. Originally published in 1651, this work was a philosophical study of the replacement of the supremacy of the medieval church by the political absolutism of the state.
In Leviathan, Hobbes addressed the matter, form, and power of a commonwealth from both religious and civil perspectives. Hobbes compared the state with the largest natural living organism, the whale. Using this analogy, he argued that the state, like a whale, required a single controlling intelligence to direct its movement. In the development of this philosophy, Hobbes could have been influenced by two great thinkers of the time. Galileo Galilei was a well known Italian mathematician and astronomer. Rene Descartes was one of the leading rationalist philosophers. Hobbes had met both men in France.
Hobbes lived in a time of great civil disorder and unrest. The medieval church was gradually losing its power to protestantism, the nation-state, a rising merchant class, a...