On The State-Church Conflict In Leviathan

An effort has been done in this paper to make a more systematic interpretation of Leviathan from the perspective of the conflicts between the "church" and "state". The so-called church-state conflict was the various theoretical debates and practical struggle about the debate between church and the secular regime about who have the highest authority for the society. The dispute began from the late Hellenistic, throughout the Middle Ages until modern times. Hobbes was to make a historic answer for this issue in his Leviathan. Although his main target is the manifestations of church-state relations in England during the Civil War and before and after a period of time, his analysis and interpretation, as well as the building of a huge political philosophical system on the basis of constructed has hit the man with the world's most profound essence, creating a field of political science and a new era of human society from ancient to modern transformation of a key ring. Therefore, for all human beings it must be the property of great spiritual importance at all times.First, he systematically analyzed and sorted out the history and origins of Political Theory disputes generated from mechanical materialism and Humanitarian perspective and made a profound definition of it. Here in Hobbs, political and religious dispute is the inevitable result of the development of human nature, and it will further develop as people themselves keep developing and get a real solution. Religion will eventually return to its private world, rational and secular regime will become the sole sovereign authoritative; secondly, his exposed the so-called church authority's false and deceptive with historical criticism and textual analysis. The so-called religious right in the Bible can be found, but is based on the responsibility and obligation of the Church and the clergy, therefore, they can not get beyond the top of secular power. Instead, they are still part of the national subjects, obedience to authority and the law of sovereign country. The medieval church of priests and philosophers under the leadership of the Pope has been misinterpreted the intent of Bible. While they introduced pagan superstitions, the basic spirit of Christianity materialized and became vulgar because of that, in order to fool the congregation and to reap profits; on the other hand they put ancient Greek spiritualism philosophy into the Christian faith, and on this basis, a fictional spiritual world, so that the church became representative on the nothingness of human spiritual world. And this is the "dark kingdom" theoretical model; and finally, the expression in Leviathan's Ideological at least influenced the subsequent relevant thinkers and social fields from two basic aspects. One is the positive side. In Leviathan, Hobbes, with mechanics and geometry approach and all the details of the system and extremely thorough analysis, showed us the whole process of human nature and society formed which is the experience in the field of political philosophy and Modern Philosophy knowledge. Although he did not point out a direction generally accepted as latecomers in specific aspects of politics, but he did build a standardized methodology system for them to find another direction to. In this sense, we can say that Hobbes created the modern political Philosophy. The second is the negative side. Hobbes, in Leviathan, reflected he was not a pure modern thinker, because he did not implement the rational construction methods throughout the book. In a lot of spaces, he analyzed the Holy Bible history, the content of the text and the Christian doctrine from classical and historical perspective which was also critical. But this interpretation of the texts and history of modern criticism had finally played an important role in removing barriers of traditions, so then the rational construction work could be successfully carried out on the basis of a more reasonable system of the ideas.In this paper, the above contents were showed in five chapters. Each of these chapters reflects certain part of Hobbes' related ideas such as the political and religious controversy in the origin, theoretical content, as well as its historical connotation, its impact on later political philosophy. The first chapter mainly involves the historical background of Hobbes' political philosophy:the largest and most immediate impact of the Reformation and the English Civil War during which he were writing Leviathan. As to the original theory of it, two early leaders of the reformation, Luther and Calvin, England's representative thinker Hooker and contemporary Grotius and Selden were mainly discussed. The second chapter discusses the church-state conflict in Leviathan in three dimensions:metaphysical, human nature and the operation of state apparatus. The very unique "dark kingdom" and its relationship with Leviathan will be discussed in the third chapter. Including the meaning and background of dark kingdom, relationship between the Kingdom of the dark and the kingdom of God described in the Bible. Compared to the Roman Catholic Church known as the dark kingdom, why Leviathan has the legal authority? And what were the substantive differences of methodology used by Leviathan and the dark kingdom as to protecting the peace and prosperity of human society? The fourth chapter tries to deepen and expand the theme of the church-state conflict. Ideas of this chapter mainly come from the perspectives of the rationalism, the Enlightenment Thoughts arise in modern time and the challenges it was facing, the religious spirit of tolerance emerged and developed in the western world, and the possible hidden dangers existed in Leviathan's approach to deal with the faith-ration struggle. The fifth chapter is mainly for the discussing of the impact of Leviathan on political philosophy and religious thoughts of the future generations. Finally, a prospect will be made in the development of the contemporary intellectual influenced by the thoughts in Leviathan, so will the assessment of such influence and development.