by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: January 22, 2009   Last Updated: May 25, 2009

Writing on the topic 'Thomas Hobbes vs. John Locke: Who is the True Liberal'was an opportunity I had not expected today. The question is something like 'Joseph Stalin vs. Josiah Royce: Who was the True Conservative'-nyet on that one-we shall try again.

Writing on the liberalism of Thomas Hobbes is like writing on the liberalism of Adolph Hitler. Right-that's a good one. Hitler was from Austria and his idea of liberalism was to liberate the German people from rule by others. He moved for absolute state power in a corporatist paradigm derived from state socialism and the ideas of his friend and fellow dictator Benito Mussolini. If one can write something good about Thomas Hobbes, it is that he supported nationalist independence, although under an absolute state monarch , instead of imperial theocratic subjegation of the people of England from abroad.

Thomas Hobbes was the modern era father of the political concepts of absolute power. He wrote all of his political ideas in his wonderful little book named 'The Leviathan'. The Leviathan is a concept borrowed from the Bible of a great beast. Hobbes believed that the state should be a great beast to control and overpower all others. For Hobbes man was nothing outside of his role in the state. Locke was called by Bertrand Russell 'The Apostle of the Revolution of 1688'-it was a liberal revolution against the inherited power of kings.

The concept of absolute state power is absolutely devastating to the concept of civil liberties and personal freedom. Hobbes and many other might borrow a concept from St. Paul that religious laws exist mostly for those that are not saved and who do not have the laws of God written on their hearts and minds. Civil liberties in a similar relation exist for those with a state ruling over them or for them in democracy, as civil liberties are the reciprocal of civil restraints. For Hobbes civil liberties are largely illusory as the state has absolute power and should.

Hobbes influential idea was said by Russel to be in part a response to the historical precedent of absolute religious power that had existed since perhaps the time of Gregory the Great until the nationalism of Europe broke apart the domination of the Catholic power and principle of absolute ecclesiastical power. Frederick the Great's antipathy toward Rome increased support for an eventual protestant and statist schism from the Catholic power.

What is more repressive; absolute state power or absolute ecclesiastical power?

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