文档介绍：jocp_1628 64..72
a. p. martinich
THE SOVEREIGN IN THE POLITICAL THOUGHT
OF HANFEIZI AND THOMAS HOBBES
Hanfeizi (c. 280–233 bce), I believe, deserves more credit as a political
theorist than he is usually given credit for. It is not simply that he is
more than a Chinese Machiavellian or a late-modern social
He is a political philosopher. I want to show how his view is similar to
Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the sovereign.
It is easy pare the views of Hobbes and Hanfeizi about
sovereigns because both talk as if the sovereign were always a
monarch. Hanfeizi was writing at a time when feudalism was in
decline and monarchs were ing the norm. And he thought that
monarchy was the right form of government. As for Hobbes, when
he writes about sovereignty in general, it often sounds as if he is
talking about monarchy in particular. While he recognizes that other
forms of government are equally legitimate, his theory works best if
one restricts it to monarchy. For example, he says that the only unity
of monwealth is the unity of the person of the sovereign. The
unity of a monarchy is obviously the unity of the human being who
is the But aristocracy and democracy has parable
unity. It is not in the human beings pose those governments
because they are multiple, and it is not in monwealth
because, according to his own theory, the unity of monweal