Abstract
This master’s thesis attempts to clarify Hobbes’s civil science, with respect to the meaning of “Absolute sovereignty” and “Civil liberty”. In the history of political thought, Thomas Hobbes was positioned to absolutism, thus saddled with a bad reputation. However, when we have a better understanding of Hobbes’s thought, especially for his theory of natural law, we will be able to find the meaning of absolute sovereign, although “absolutely”, but not “unlimited”. The purposes of the sovereign power is national security, but things are outside of national security, the sovereign will have to be limited. Although Hobbes transformed the traditional natural law theory in a certain extent, then the natural law will be converted presiding absolute sovereign basis; but the sovereign still to comply with the natural law himself. In absolute sovereign governance, citizens still have freedom, and to maintain a large number of rights. People build the commonwealth, their purposes are to enjoy the blameless civil liberties. When a commonwealth have built, citizens would no longer have full natural rights, the law of silence where the real civil liberties; including the right of self-preservation, the right to pursue a content life. When sovereign invade the rights of citizens, the sovereign will break the “protection – obedience” relationship between the commonwealth and its citizens. In other words, sovereign contrary to the law of nature, the commonwealth will run deviations from normal operation, so that make it sick, and leading to the death of the commonwealth. Finally, the purpose of this thesis is to draw the line between absolute sovereignty and civil liberty, even if the sovereign has the absolute sovereignty can do everything he want, but still something he can’t do.