It has been argued that Hobbes believed that men could not by covenant lay themselves under an obligation to obey a human ruler unless they were already obliged under God's law to keep their covenants. Now, since according to Hobbes, the obligation to obey human rulers is always created by covenant, express or tacit, this amounts to saying that the obligation to obey these rulers, which is clearly an obligation in the stronger sense, presupposes an obligation in the same sense to obey God. There are passages in both Leviathan and De Cive which could be cited in support of this arguments, and it is pointless either to affirm or to deny that it was his real opinion; it was presumably his opinion when he expressed or implied it and not when he said what is incompatible with it, and the evidence is that he did both. In any case, the opinion, whether or not Hobbes held it, is false. If obligation is understood as he understood it, there is no need to derive the obligation to obey human rulers from any prior obligation to God. For men to be obliged, in the stronger sense of obligation, to obey a sovereign: that there should be some man or body of men powerful enough to compel obedience to his or their commands, and thoise to whom the commands are addressed should recognize this to be so. And in order that there should be a sovereign, all that is needed is that those subject to him should have sufficient motives for so behaving that he has the power to compel obedience. Thus, to show there can be a sovereign whose subjects are obliged to him, in the stronger sense of obligation, all that we have to show that they are also obliged, in the stronger sense, to obey God; nor indeed that they have any other king of prior obligations.
Casalino Pierluigi, on June 14th 2014
Casalino Pierluigi, on June 14th 2014