To Hobbes, that means sovereigns are not subject to civil law or criticism of their actions, except in cases when honest counsel is requested by the ruler.
Having willingly subjected themselves to a sovereign ruler, subjects must accept any and all behavior by the sovereign as if it is their own. Owing to Hobbes’s strong antipathy toward civil war and all other states of barbarism into which he believes humans fall without central authority, the author finds no justifiable pretext under which the sovereign covenant, once established, may be broken through rebellion.
After all, he argues, an individual cannot obey two masters. Of the three, Hobbes prefers monarchies because assemblies are more likely to divide themselves into rival factions, jeopardizing the total obedience subjects owe under the sovereign covenant. Commonwealths may be one of three types: monarchies, in which one individual possesses absolute sovereign power democracies, in which a representative assembly shares that power or aristocracies, in which power is held by an assembly that only represents a small portion of the citizenry. In Part 2, “Of the Commonwealth,” Hobbes examines different types of sovereignty while identifying qualities that must be shared across all commonwealths to ensure their survival. To break that covenant, either through civil disobedience or outright rebellion, is to violate natural law, Hobbes argues. This covenant also requires total obedience from each subject. In such commonwealths, a covenant is forged between ruler and subject in which subjects surrender certain liberties-like the freedom to kill one another-in exchange for protection and order under the civil laws that are established and upheld by a sovereign ruler or assembly. For Hobbes, the best and only way to do so is to live in a commonwealth, a kingdom or nation-state led by an undivided central authority figure. Given that natural law allows for each individual’s self-preservation, humans face no choice but to find a way to live peaceably among one another. In the book’s most famous passage, Hobbes writes that under these conditions life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (76). In the absence of a central authority figure, there is nothing to restrain humans from existing in a state of perpetual war with one another in which resources, honor, and glory are all fought over in an endless cycle of violence. In Part 1, “Of Man,” Hobbes writes that humankind is governed first and foremost by natural laws dictating that each individual prioritize self-preservation above all else.
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