Thomas Hobbes in AP US Government

Hobbes as a contrast to the framers

A common assumption is that Hobbes belongs on the same team as Locke and Montesquieu as a source of American democratic ideals. He doesn't, at least not in the way they do. Hobbes thought the people should give up their freedom to a sovereign and generally had no right to rebel against it, and he preferred that sovereign to be a monarch.

That is close to the opposite of limited government, the ideal that no government may hold absolute power. Hobbes and the framers both took the need for government seriously, and both worried about what happens when there's no order. Where they split is the answer. Hobbes gave one sovereign unlimited power, and the Constitution refuses to give any part of government that kind of power.

That contrast is how Hobbes earns his place in AP Gov. He explains one argument for why people form governments, and comparing his answer with the Constitution's makes it easier to see why the framers limited and divided power.

The state of nature and the course's Somalia example

Hobbes wrote during and right after the English Civil War, and the violence around him shaped his view. In Leviathan he described the state of nature as a "war of every man against every man," where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." With no authority to enforce rules, nobody can trust anybody, so nobody can farm, trade, or build anything lasting.

The course pairs Hobbes with Somalia as a modern illustration. After Somalia's central government collapsed in 1991, the country went years without an effective national government, and armed factions competed for control. A failed state like that is the closest real-world picture of what Hobbes meant by life without a sovereign.

If a question shows you a scenario where government has broken down and asks what that reveals about the purpose of government, you're being asked to reason like Hobbes. Order and security come first, and the social contract is the price people pay for them.

Hobbes and Madison: a similar fear of human nature, opposite fixes

Federalist No. 51 and Leviathan start from the same worry, that people can't be trusted with unchecked freedom or unchecked power. In Unit 1, Foundations of American Democracy, under Topic 1.2, Types of Democracy, that shared worry is how Hobbes connects to the bigger question of how much power and participation a representative government should give ordinary people. He works as an extreme that the Constitution's design stands against.

Madison was also suspicious of human nature. In Federalist No. 51 he wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Hobbes's response to flawed humans was to concentrate power in one sovereign. Madison's was to split power up through separation of powers and checks and balances, so ambition could counteract ambition.

The same distrust shows up in the filtered models of representative democracy. The elite democracy model limits direct participation, which you can see in the original indirect election of senators and in the Electoral College. Still, elite democracy is a form of representative government with consent and elections. Don't label Hobbes an elite democrat, since he didn't argue for democracy at all. He's better used to illustrate the kind of worry about disorder and faction that shaped the case for filtered participation.

Telling Hobbes from Locke and using him in written answers

An excerpt about a state of nature and a social contract could point to Hobbes or Locke, and picking the wrong one is an easy mistake because both thinkers use those ideas. The difference is what the contract is for:

• Hobbes: people are dangerous to each other, so they give power to a strong sovereign to keep order, with no general right of revolution.
• Locke: people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property, government exists to protect them, and people may replace a government that violates them.

The Declaration of Independence follows Locke, not Hobbes. If a passage stresses fear, chaos, and obedience, think Hobbes. If it stresses rights and consent that can be withdrawn, think Locke.

In the multiple-choice section, a text-based stimulus could ask you to identify Hobbes's ideas or connect them to the social contract, for example with a short excerpt about life without government. In Concept Application, a scenario about a collapsing government could be explained with his reasoning. In the Argument Essay, Hobbes isn't a foundational document, so he can't be your required evidence. He can strengthen your reasoning, though. For example, if you argue the Constitution was right to divide power, explain that Federalist No. 51 shares a distrust of human nature similar to Hobbes's but answers it with checks instead of a single ruler.