HIS109Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Louis Xii Of France, Fronde, Leviathan
Document Summary
Concentrated power in hands of monarch worked better to protect from foreign invasion. Development of political theory and ideology as a response to the insecurity and instability of the 30 years war. Hobbes developed one such theory of absolutism, trying to explain the english civil. He dismissed the divine right of kings theory (god doesn"t intervene in human affairs, especially politics) He wrote leviathan to explain another theory as to why kings should have the power that they do. Men and women originally lived in a state of nature where the very strongest prospered (life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short). To get away from this system, people would need to come together in a community where laws applied to everyone and the strong could be controlled. In order to exercise this law, there would need to be a sovereign power strong enough.