Book: De Cive

Overview
De Cive (1642) sets out Thomas Hobbes's foundational account of political order, human motivation, and the necessity of sovereign power. Written in Latin as the first installment of a trilogy, it proceeds from an account of individual nature to the justification for creating a commonwealth capable of securing peace and preventing mutual destruction. Argumentation is tightly focused on the practical problem of how to move from human insecurity to enduring public order.

Human Nature and the State of Nature
Hobbes describes human beings as driven primarily by appetites, aversions, and the desire for self-preservation. Intelligence and strength vary little enough among people that competition, diffidence, and glory generate constant grounds for conflict. Without a common power to restrain these tendencies, life becomes a condition of perpetual insecurity.
The state of nature is characterized by the absence of common authority, which leads to a situation of "war of every man against every man" where rights are unlimited and life is exposed to violence. Fear of violent death and the continual risk to subsistence compel rational agents to seek a way out of this condition.

The Social Contract and the Foundation of Society
To escape the state of nature, individuals consent, explicitly or tacitly, to a mutual covenant that creates political society. This social contract consists in the mutual transfer of rights to a single authority empowered to protect the peace. The rationale is instrumental: people give up certain freedoms in return for security and the predictable performance of social obligations.
Hobbes insists that the basis of obligation is the necessity of keeping covenants that make peace possible. Justice and injustice have no application outside society; only after the covenant produces civil laws do notions of right and wrong obtain meaning.

Sovereignty and Absolute Authority
The sovereign created by the contract must possess sufficient power to prevent a return to anarchy. Hobbes argues that sovereignty must be unitary, indivisible, and absolute in its domain over lawmaking, adjudication, defense, and the use of force. Limitations on sovereign power, he contends, risk fragmentation of authority and a slide back toward conflict.
Because the very point of political authority is the maintenance of security and order, the sovereign's decisions define legal rights and obligations. Subjects retain a residual natural right to self-preservation, but once they authorize a sovereign, their civil liberties are constrained by the requirements of peace.

Religion, Politics, and Civil Peace
Religion receives special attention as a potent source of political discord. Hobbes treats theological claims through the lens of political consequence, arguing that disputes about doctrine and ecclesiastical authority must be subordinated to civil jurisdiction to avoid factional violence. He criticizes external religious authorities whose claims undermine the sovereign's capacity to secure consensus.
Religious belief is addressed as part of human psychology and social practice: beliefs that threaten public peace must be regulated by temporal power. The sovereign's control over public worship and doctrine is defended as a preventive measure against the sectarian conflicts that plagued Europe.

Legacy and Importance
De Cive consolidates Hobbes's core thesis that peace and security require centralized authority grounded in human vulnerability and rational calculation. It supplies key concepts later amplified in Leviathan, especially the emphasis on mutual covenants, the construction of the sovereign, and the prioritization of civil peace over other goods.
Its force lies in the austere realism of its premises and the clarity with which it links anthropology to institutional design. Whether one accepts Hobbes's conclusion, De Cive remains a pivotal statement about why political order arises and what institutional forms it must take to prevent societal collapse.