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John Thomas Hobbes 's ' The Leviathan '

Decent Essays

Over the course of history humans have evolved and continue to due so in countless ways, but one of the most interesting of all evolutions is to see how we have become social creatures and what is expected of us as human beings. The way we interact is greatly influenced by a number of things, which we are able to analyze over time in order to point out influential factors, which shape the way that we live together in communities across the world. Thomas Hobbes mentions in the Leviathan, that human beings are born into a ‘state of nature’ where the state of nature is a "war of all against all," in which human beings constantly seek to destroy each other in a never-ending pursuit for power. Power, according to Anthony Giddens, refers to a …show more content…

In Giddens’ “State, Society and Modern History”, we learn what it means to have power being an agent. The author writes about two types of power, which are allocative and authoritative. The first refers to the dominion over material facilities like perhaps non-renewable resources or access to agriculture that perhaps other states do not have available to them. The second refers to the actual dominion over human activities like it is to enforce the law and have citizens abide by the rules. According to Giddens, to be an agent is to be able to make a difference to the world, and to be able to do that is to have power. This is a very important point since it provides with a very good base for what is to be discussed next. Otto Hintze and Max Weber, the “founding fathers” of state building theory, make a lot of emphasis on the use of violence and warfare as successful means for state building. The work of these authors is very interesting and logical since it provides us with proof of what has worked effectively in the past. Weber’s definition of the state is divided into three main components, which are the existence of regularized administrative staff able to sustain the claim to legitimate monopoly control of the means of violence and uphold that monopoly within a territorial area. In other words, have a government that is able to put a strong and large army that is feared by others and be able to protect their borders with such army. Hintze says it is military

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