Abstract

This chapter examines Thomas Hobbes’s ideas about the concept of the sovereign in politics. It explains that Hobbes believed that there are no meaningful limitations on who can be sovereign and on what sovereigns are entitled to do and suggests that both accounts are fairly radical for their uncompromising insistence on natural equality and political inequality. It also discusses Hobbes’s thoughts about the theory of authorization and the application of the idea of duty to sovereigns in his books Leviathan, Elements of Law, and De Cive.