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Full Idea
While Hobbes had held that the people were the final source of political authority, he had argued that in entering the social contract they gave up their sovereignty by transferring all power to an absolute ruler.
Gist of Idea
Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler
Source
report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5
Book Ref
Oksala,Johanna: 'Political Philosophy' [Hodder and Stoughton 2013], p.62
A Reaction
Later the idea of 'inalienable' rights crept in. If you volunteer for exploitation or slavery, that still doesn't justify them. Sadism is presumably not justified by masochism.
Related Idea
Idea 20567 Rousseau insists that popular sovereignty needs a means of expressing consent [Rousseau, by Oksala]
| 20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
| 19930 | Sovereignty must include the power to make people submit to it [Spinoza] |
| 19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
| 20567 | Rousseau insists that popular sovereignty needs a means of expressing consent [Rousseau, by Oksala] |
| 19801 | Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, which can never be delegated [Rousseau] |
| 19805 | Just as people control their limbs, the general-will state has total control of its members [Rousseau] |
| 19818 | Political laws are fundamental, as they firmly organise the state - but they could still be changed [Rousseau] |
| 19848 | The sovereignty does not appoint the leaders [Rousseau] |
| 23046 | States only have full authority if they heed the claims of human fellowship [Green,TH] |
| 23418 | Liberal state legitimacy is based on a belief in justice, not in some conception of the good life [Kymlicka] |
| 20086 | Nowadays sovereignty (once the basis of a state) has become relative [Reybrouck] |
| 20608 | Unjust institutions may be seen as just; are they legitimate if just but seen as unjust? [Tuckness/Wolf] |