Leviathan By Thomas Hobbes

An individual must always question the motives of authority, especially when it demands the resignation of your natural rights. By giving up your natural rights, you are simply facilitating a regime’s potential to become oppressive. Therefore, when natural rights cease to exist an individual is subjected into a state of vulnerability because their value within society is jeopardized. A human being no longer possesses the power to determine their own worth, instead the authoritative regime dictates your worth on the basis of beneficial one can be within society.

In the Leviathan text, Thomas Hobbes incorporates the notion which states that every individual is created equal. Therefore, if an individual is subjected into a dangerous environment,
their innate response would be self-preservation. However, if this individual fails to maintain self-preservation they are not allowed to attribute their failures to the dangerous environment, it is simply irrational to perceive the cause of one’s failure as an external force.

Rather self-preservation simply requires a human being to be precocious in the manner they exercise their power. According to Thomas Hobbes, the most important attribute a human can possess is power. Power, a quality equally distributed among all humans beings to attain the greatest commodity offered by society. The reality comes down to the type of power an individual possesses, and how they choose to exploit and take advantage of this power to reap from the benefits.