Question

Which statement best explains the role of government according to thomas Hobbes

Answer 1

Answer to look for: The absolute authority of government is essential to ensure safety.

Explanation:

Thomas Hobbes believed people exchange their personal liberty in a chaotic, undisciplined existence  for protection and security under a government.

Hobbes published a famous work called Leviathan in 1651.  The title "Leviathan" comes from a biblical word for a great and mighty beast.  Hobbes believed government is formed by people for the sake of their personal security and stability in society.  In Hobbes view, once the people put a king (or other leader in power), then that leader needs to have supreme power (like a great and mighty beast).    Hobbes' view of the natural state of human beings without a government held that people are too divided and too volatile as individuals -- everyone looking out for his own interests.  So for security, safety, and stability, authority and the power of the law needs to be in the hands of a powerful ruler like a king or queen.  And so people willingly enter a "social contract" in which they live under a government so that they can have stability and security.

Probably the most famous set of lines from Hobbes' Leviathan book describes what he saw as the miserable natural state of human affairs without government -- one in which every individual had freedom, but that meant it was a situation of "war of all against all," or we might say, every man for himself.  Hobbes wrote:

• In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.