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Atomized Subjects Prevent Factions
- Hobbes individualizes political subjects to prevent strong communal attachments from challenging sovereign power.
- He rejects medieval concentric authorities, seeing robust communal ties as launching pads for faction and disorder.
Make Sovereignty Indivisible
- Design sovereignty as indivisible to prevent competing authorities and civil war, Hobbes insists.
- Consolidating final authority into one sovereign stabilizes the commonwealth by removing rival claims.
Sovereign Defines Right And Wrong
- Hobbes treats private judgment about right and wrong as a source of sedition that undermines sovereign authority.
- Hence the sovereign claims normative power to define right, limiting subjects' moral autonomy.