The Study Of Natural Law In "Leviathan"

Natural law thinking is the basis of Hobbes's political philosophy,researching Hobbes's thinking of natural law will help us gain a deeper and more comprehensive grasp of the political philosophy of Hobbes.The thinking has its own resource and historical background,the research on natural law of Stoic,Cicero,Thomas·Aquinas,Grotius provided the material for Hobbes to formate his own theory of nature law,and from the era in which,Hobbes abstract a central element,fear,of his theory of natural law.17and18 century is the most prevalent period of natural law,the main representative of natural law include Grotius and Spinoza in Netherlands,Hobbes and Locke in Britain,Pufendorf inGermany and Rousseau in France.All of these thinkers have put forward their own political theory,in which Hobbes was especially prominent.Hobbes's natural law thinking is based on the nature of human nature from the start,and the characteristics of the people for profit and avoid loss and self-preservation of is its base,and as the "fear" as the entry point of the theory,Hobbes construct his whole political theory.Which the More importantly is,Hobbes,to a certain extent, break with the traditional theory that the law is only of the God's rational order.He considers that since the purpose of the law is to protect the safety of people,and formulate natural law and comparative law,and statute law because of the protection of secular authority is more effectively than natural law,so to the development of law,the statute law is more important than natural law.That is,in this sense,some scholars believe that Hobbes is the forerunner of 19th century's positivism law.Secondly,Hobbes first proposed the relationship between the freedom and the rights,which has become the basis and characteristic of his whole political science theory, which is also based on Hobbes's theory of natural law,and this precisely descripts the importance of his theory of natural law.The first part of this thesis has studied the ideological sources,the background of the times of Hobbes's thinking of natural law and his masterpiece,"Leviathan".By tracing the beginning of the ideas of natural,the author analysis the source of Hobbes's thinking of natural law and the historical background,and then,the author describes the content of Leviathan comprehensively.In the second part of the article,the author follow the Hobbes's logic of the theory in "Leviathan",starting from the original text,the author made a more comprehensive re-care and consideration of Hobbes's natural law theory,aimed at that,by the adoption of this care,the readers can understand the importance and the position of natural law in the Hobbes whole theory.The third part of article from four aspects,the evaluation on the Hobbes's theory of natural law of domestic and foreign scholars;Hobbes build a new model of natural law;Hobbes can be as the 19th century leader in positivism legal theory,and the theroy influence to Locke and Rousseau,discript ed the important place of Hobbes's theory of natural law.