How Leviathan, the biggest work of Thomas Hobbes,
explains the international politics?
But, first of all, let us ask the question, what is a Leviathan?
Leviathan is a Bible beast,
a beast from the Bible, the biggest book of the Christian tradition.
And Leviathan, his particularity, is that Leviathan is the strongest.
There is nobody, no any other beast which can beat Leviathan,
which is stronger than Leviathan.
And it was important for
Thomas Hobbes to choose exactly this definition for the state.
Because for him, the Leviathan, the state, is the highest authority,
which can be never beaten by the other more strong authority.
So, according to the Thomas Hobbes, achievement of personal security and
domestic security for the creation of a state leads to international insecurity,
which is rooted in the anarchy of the state system.
Leviathans are doomed to fight a war with everyone against everyone,
as people have been doing before, because they feel of insecurity, and eager for
power, wealth, and glory.
So their relationships, which are, fortunately,
not anymore exist on the internal level within the society,
this fight more of everyone against everyone.
They automatically transfer to the relationships between the state.
And according to the Thomas Hobbes,
it is impossible to establish a Leviathan over Leviathans.
States will never give up their sovereignty.
Therefore, anarchy is a normal and eternal state of the international system.
But there is another reason for their eternal anarchy in international systems.
Leviathan over Leviathans, or the war of the government,
cannot be established, because the ordinary people, like me and you,
we give up our rights in order to achieve security and safety to the state.
We cannot give our freedoms to the world government.
We can give our freedoms only to the national government,
which we elect and which we legitimize by our own decision.
We want our security, that's why we create the state.
And if this state, which we create between us,
according to the realist tradition, we'll, together with the other states,
established a certain world government, or the world state.
It will not be any more elected by us,
thus it will not be legitimate in our eyes.
Thus the relationships between the people will come back to the very beginnings,
to the original nature of war of everyone against everyone.
Do we want this situation?
I don't think so.
The work of Thomas Hobbes was inspired by the tragic events,
which has happened in Europe in the first half of the 17th century,
the Thirty-year War, which lasted from 1618 to 1644.
The House of Habsburg was one of the most important royal houses of Europe, and
is best known for being an origin of all the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors
between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian and
Spanish domains and several other countries.
The Habsburg family represented the idea of universalism,
unification of the whole world, at that time, Europe, under one Christian ruler.
The alternative was represented by the emerging national states.
In Germany, but not only the France,
which was a Catholic country, was a national state as well.
So the Thirty-years War was not just a war about the religion.