Liberty Under Absolutism: Hobbes on Resistance

​April 29, 2026​

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Brief commentary on Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). How and why can rights of resistance coexist with a virtually absolute state?

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​​Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s The Allegory of Good and Bad Government represents two conflicting types of relationships between the ruler and the people. The effects of good government produce a peaceful city with a thriving countryside, an underlying sense of safety, and harmony between citizens and those in power. Bad government, however, motivates fear and violence as tyranny displaces the “common good.” Thomas Hobbes would likely acknowledge the fresco’s lesson that the ability to establish peace is vital for political success. But Hobbes would be less supportive of assumptions that peace can stem from divided judgement, mere civic virtue, or moral agreement. Writing in the aftermath of the English Civil War, Hobbes’s Leviathan also navigates the challenging relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Hobbes discusses the merits of absolute sovereign power, while also navigating the extent to which subjects retain rights of resistance to state authority. ​​​

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Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Allegory of Good and Bad Government 

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Though resistance rights and absolutism appear contradictory, Hobbes’s rights of resistance can coexist with a virtually absolute state because said rights concern private self-preservation. Subjects authorize the sovereign to judge and command because only an undivided authority can liberate individuals from the state of war. However, subjects cannot be understood to have been obliged to submit to their own death. A subject may resist being killed, yet this does not give him the right to limit the sovereign. These claims are able to operate simultaneously because Hobbes narrowly defines liberty as the mere absence of “external impediments” rather than a broader right to challenge authority (122). Subjects remain free to resist direct physical threat, while the sovereign continues to preserve the peace of the commonwealth.

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In Leviathan, Hobbes’s rights of resistance appear where subjects may be required to directly participate in their own destruction. In examining what subjects actually sacrifice when authorizing the sovereign, Hobbes notes that if a subject, “though justly condemned,” is commanded to “kill, wound, or maim himself,” or “not to resist those that assault him,” or “to abstain from the use of food [...] or any other thing without which he cannot live,” the subject has the “liberty to disobey” (126). The emphasis on self-preservation is therefore key to Hobbesian resistance. The phrase “though justly condemned” demonstrates how the sovereign may still legitimately punish a subject, but the subject is simply not obligated to make himself the instrument of that punishment. Hobbes extends this logic to confessions, emphasizing that a subject is “not bound (without assurance of pardon) to confess” a crime as “no man [...] can be obliged by covenant to accuse himself,” characterizing resistance for self-preservation as more than just a physical struggle (126). Again, Hobbes’s treatment of confession is not a defense of a fair legal process but a narrower framework for self-preservation: the sovereign may punish, even unfairly, but the subject is not required to provide evidence that leads to their own death. Thus, rights of resistance do not appear to directly challenge sovereign authority. 

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Hobbes also identifies resistance rights in the context of military service. A subject commanded to fight as a soldier may “in many cases refuse [...] without injustice” if they “[substitute] a sufficient soldier in his place,” thereby not entirely abandoning the commonwealth’s defense (126). Hobbes appears almost empathetic as he argues that fleeing from battle out of fear is not “unjustly, but dishonorably,” suggesting that one’s natural instinct to protect oneself from death is excusable without clashing with political obligation. This type of liberty, too, is limited: subjects who have enlisted voluntarily or receive pay given to soldiers are stripped of the excuse of fear. More importantly, as the commonwealth exists to preserve the subjects, subjects must reciprocate by obliging to military service when “the defense of the commonwealth requires at once the help of all that are able to bear arms” (126). 

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Navigating how far collective resistance can extend is also challenging. Hobbes rejects that everyone has liberty to defend another subject, “guilty or innocent, [...] because such liberty takes away from the sovereign the means of protecting us” and ultimately contradicts the “very essence of government” (126). Nonetheless, a group of subjects all expecting death defending one another collectively is “no new unjust act” (127). The guilty can defend their right to self-preservation as much as the innocent. But once receiving pardon, which Hobbes defines as “nothing but granting peace,” a subject’s claim to collective resistance is no longer justified (99). 

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​​​​​​To further understand the limits of resistance rights, one must also navigate whether subjects are able to transfer rights when they join a political society. Hobbes’s second law of nature suggests that when others are also willing, one must “lay down this right to all things” to achieve “peace and defense of himself” (90). This, however, is not a complete surrender of one’s rights. Hobbes argues that “there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words [...] to have abandoned or transferred,” most notably “the right of resisting them that assault him by force to take away his life” (91). In this regard, if the purpose of a covenant is the preservation of life, then a covenant cannot require a person to give up preservation itself. As a covenant “not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void,” no individual can “lay down his right to save himself from death” (94). Hobbes acknowledges that subjects may be required to discard the broad right to privately judge or act for themselves for the commonwealth’s overall peace, but clearly articulates the necessity for resistant rights against direct threats to life.

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Resistance rights that promote self-preservation initially appear to contradict Hobbes’s model of an absolute state. As hinted earlier, however, self-preservation is precisely why an absolute state where “none of his subjects [...] can be freed from his subjection” is essential (108). The state of nature has “no society” and is fueled by distrust as divided power among all generates private judgement and private reason (89). In response, Hobbes proposes a commonwealth that forms a single public authority. Allowing resistance to become a justification to judge the sovereign’s actions would reverse progress and force subjects to return to the troubling state of nature. Though the distribution of power may seem appealing on the surface, Hobbes characterizes undivided authority as the starting point of a state’s collapse: “a kingdom divided in itself cannot stand” (111). An alternative to a virtually absolute state therefore would not place greater importance on a subject’s liberty but reintroduce the conditions of “war” (88).

 

Moreover, a virtually absolute state can coexist with rights of resistance, as subjects have ultimate ownership over their decision to enter the commonwealth. Given that “every subject is [...] author of all the actions and judgements of the sovereign instituted,” the sovereign’s actions cannot be considered unjust to the subjects. Hobbes illustrates that the sovereign is not merely a distant force of power but operates with the authority it has been given by the subjects themselves. Thus, criticizing the sovereign for wrongdoing would be criticizing what the subject has authorized. This framework explains why resistance rights do not necessarily lead to revolution. Subjects have the ability to disobey when faced with a direct threat to life, but they cannot then leverage this struggle to arrive at a broader claim that the sovereign, for instance, has no authority to punish. 

 

Returning to Hobbes’s definition of liberty supplies further nuance to understanding how resistance rights can be squared with the existence of an absolute state. For Hobbes, liberty “signifies properly the absence of [...] external impediments of motion” (122). Liberty is only violated when an individual is imprisoned or “restrained with walls or chains” (122). Other interpretations of liberty––such as legal immunity, political freedom, or moral independence––are omitted. By offering such a narrow definition of liberty, Hobbes significantly limits the extent to which subjects can respond against the sovereign. Again, granting subjects the right to resist does not mean the subject is free from punishment. Equipped with Hobbes’s boundaries of liberty, subjects therefore “are not to understand that the sovereign power of life and death is either abolished or limited” (124). Subjects may have the liberty to resist for reasons of self-preservation, but the sovereign still has the authority to command, punish, and even execute to protect the commonwealth. 

 

Hobbes’s right of resistance is convincingly compatible with his vision of a virtually absolute state. Subjects retain the right to resist direct threats to their lives. However, what appears to be an expanded understanding of liberty does not actually authorize subjects to judge or limit the sovereign power. Rights of resistance and absolute authority can therefore coexist as they fundamentally function at different levels: the subject has the right to resist direct threats to life, whereas the sovereign maintains undivided authority in public with the responsibility of upholding peace. Hobbes’s commonwealth, just like Lorenzetti’s fresco, ultimately evaluates political order by whether those in power can guarantee a level of peace that makes life worth living.​

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References

Bailey, Andrew, et al. “Thomas Hobbes.” The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought: From Machiavelli to Nietzsche, Broadview Press, Peterborough, 2018, pp. 71–154. 

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