Hobbes as a modern contractualist. A misleading proposition

Abstract

The present article intends to show that Hobbes, despite being one of the founding fathers of the modern political individualist paradigm, is not a contractualist, emphasizing, for this purpose, his Leviathan. In this work, the sovereign is not established by the social and political contract that originates society; rather, the contract already implies the character of the sovereign, without whom the individualist political society could not exist. Hobbes’s main purpose is therefore to provide a complete understanding of the sovereign’s power.