Leviathan Writ Small: Thomas Hobbes on the Family

Abstract

Though not above an occasional appeal to the “experience of fathers,” Hobbes was not a patriarchalist in his view of the family. Rather, he quite deliberately represented the family as a small Leviathan, and he used it to illustrate the principles of Hobbesian political science. In the family, as in the state, there is a mutual relationship between protection and obedience; sovereignty is undivided, based on necessity, and justified by performance; authority is absolute and derives from consent. In the state of nature, Hobbes views the family in structure and function as a small state. In commonwealth, the family sovereign relinquishes his absolute power over wife, servant, and child, but he is still entitled to obedience and honor for having raised and educated his children. The content of family education consists of the principles of Hobbesian political science, and the children thereby are properly receptive to sovereign power as they leave the family, whether for the university or for independence. Hobbes's conception of the family is derived from the patria potestas of republican Rome, and not from common law. His use of the family is fully integrated with his political theory, and it is designed to reinforce both the theory and practice of Leviathan.

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