An Analysis Of Hobbes's Legal Thought

As one of the great minds in 17th century, Hobbes and his great legal thoughts are considered as undiputable in Europe and even in the whole world. His innovative thoughts, started from the theory of human nature and based on natural rights and state, demonstrate the inevitability of the occurence of social contract and existence of country, In consequence, the statism, the core of his view of law, is formed. Meanwhile, Hobbes had found a different way of research by immitating the research method of natural science. He had successfully created an legal approach of strict logic, which integrated natural science, political philosophy and citizen science. In addtion, Hobbes received extreme amount of controversy with the majority considering him as the representative of natural laws in earlier modern times, and the others insisting that he is the father of the potivism of laws. Not all of these points of views are comprehensive and precise enough to grasp Hobbes' minds of laws. The innovative significance and dual character of his view of laws is the motivation of this article.This article is divided into three parts. After introducing the research purpose, materials and approaches, chapter 1, introduces the social background, fundamentals of natural science and origin of mind, from which the conclusion comes, indicating that Hobbes' innovation, precisly speaking, was not commited in an academic atmosphere. Instead, it was a reflect of his philosophic and political thoughts from social reality of Britain and Europe at that time. Meanwhile, Hobbes inherited from some of the views of western humanistic thoughts and machiavelli, and found a convincing way for his citizen science. In the following chapter, chapter 2, the contents of Hobbes' view of laws are organized and the demostration of the process of transform of his thoughts from natural law to positive law is presented. Started from the theory of human nature, the natural rights, natural state and finally country are occured consequently, which reveals core of Hobbes' thoughts: state sovereignty has the most priority. The last chapter gives comments on Hobbes' view of laws, indicating that his view of law has dual character. On the one hand, it elaborated the national situation that human lived by utilising natural law of earlier modern time. On the other hand, to add a full point on this absence of political authority, he provided evidence and insurance via legal positivism for the view that state sverrignty has the most priority. It is reasonable to say that Hobbes is the founder of natural laws in earlier modern times and also the pioneer of legal positivism.Hobbes is a giant created by times. Although he did not make it perfect for his view of law, he serves as a link between the past and the future, and his contribution is unique and replicatedless.