Hobbes's solution to the problem of political authority and its major problem

In his major work Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes seeks to provide a justification of political authority that breaks with the Aristotelian tradition that until then had dominated occidental philosophy. Aristotle, who lived thirteen centuries earlier, had offered an active explanation of the state, assuming the existence of an objective moral good and the inequality of people, who are essentially social beings. As this paper will show, Hobbes’s argument, although it represents an intriguing attempt to justify political authority, indeed eventually fails, since it does not explain why people would rationally agree to alienate their right of governing themselves, as it may threaten their well-being. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to review Hobbes’s argumentation and show its major weakness. The paper is structured as follows: the first section presents his solution to the problem of political theory. The second section turns to criticism.