Panyashin A. A., Zakharova O. V.

The ratio of liberal and totalitarian features in Thomas Hobbes’s political and legal doctrine Р. 47 -57.

UDC 1(410)(09)«16»

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2023.79.2.005

 

Abstract. The article looks into the relationship between the liberal and the totalitarian in Thomas Hobbes’s political and legal doctrine. At the beginning of the work, we review assessments of his teaching in foreign and Russian historiography of the 20th–21st cc. Our analysis of the context of the emergence of Hobbes’s doctrine made it possible, to determine that its appearance was the result of a trend towards neutralization of public life and technicalization of public administration, which resulted from testing institutions of the state and society during the upheavals of the Modern Age. Based on the phenomenological approach, inherent in the philosophy of the Stoics, Hobbes’s teaching placed the dimension of an individual into the existence of society and the state, thus starting the trend of subjective relations between authority and its subjects. Our study of the philosopher’s books and teaching made it possible to reveal that in his theory, the power of an absolute monarch is close to a dictatorship that is governed by a sovereign and is close to Caesarism. Thomas Hobbes’s doctrine contains a considerable number of liberal ideas, which are given in form, since the philosopher was well aware of how great their destructive influence on the ruling and absolute totalitarian power center may be. Therefore, restrictions on freedoms stem from the very philosophy and conservative views of this English thinker, which stemmed from the events of the English Revolution of 1641–1660. It is for this reason that Thomas Hobbes sees the dictate of sovereign power as the surest way to overcome the selfish nature of man and the war of all against all.

 

Keywords: Thomas Hobbes, political and legal doctrine, state, liberalism, totalitarianism, state of nature, absolute power, individualism, religious cult, education in a state, dictatorship, negative nature of freedom, private property, rule of law.

 

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