Soberania estatal absoluta em Hobbes: ponto de partida para um estudo racionalista dos direitos fundamentais

Abstract

Presenting the current uses of the expressions “external sovereignty” and “internal sovereignty” – as well as the relationship between both, investigates the meaning and the scope of the concept of “sovereignty”, in Hobbes. It justifies this study (rationalist) as being a starting point to the comprehension of the Modern State, defined precisely, inter alia, from its ability for contention of the sovereign power of the absolute State, or, in the Hobbesian model, of the Leviathan State. It briefly relates Hobbes’s biography, specially the aspects that most intensely had influenced his work. It takes as an argumentative starting point the natural state, which can be synthesized in two Latin phrases: homo homini lupus and bellum omnium contra omnes. It points the passage of this natural state to the Civil State as the only possibility to preserve life, and it also clarifies that the instrument of this transition is the original social contract. It comments the peculiarities of the sovereign power, constituted by the original social pact. Last but not least, it observes that even in the Leviathan State, although exceptionally, there exists the extreme hypothesis in which the liberty in the defense of life (the primary good) prevails upon the duty of the political obligation