The definition of "liberal thinker" depends greatly on the context in which it is examined. In Leviathan, Hobbes understands freedom simply as "the absence of external impediments" (Hobbes, 21.1). However, classically, it is often used to describe people who favor greater individual freedom while largely rejecting the prevailing political norms of autocracy and excessive government control[1]. In this essay, the term "liberal thinker" will be associated with people who adhere to the characteristics defined above. I will argue against the misconception that Hobbes is a “liberal thinker,” but rather a proponent of absolutism based primarily on his clear emphasis on ensuring the ruler's authority over his subjects presented in his political doctrine, Leviathan. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Leviathan was written during the time of the English Civil War, a time of lawlessness in which Hobbes witnessed a high death toll and the dissolution of the monarchy as a result of human passions, rather than on rational grounds. Hobbes believed that English citizens had been led into a position of anarchy in the post-war period, where "every man against every man... Notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place" (Hobbes, 13: 13) and therefore, his vision of human nature was a series of inevitable cyclical wars. In the absence of a common power, the key was survival: you think only of yourself. This view of human nature undoubtedly gives rise to tyranny as it projects humans as naturally brutal creatures requiring absolutist government to keep warped human nature in line. However, almost all philosophers before and since have disputed this view and have described a much more benevolent picture of human nature. As Tarlton states, "Hobbes's contemporaries, however, generally recognized the despotic nature of Leviathan's political theory. Many writers, from widely disparate political persuasions, agreed in rejecting Hobbes's absolutist prescriptions" (Tarlton, 2002). Smith, for example, believed that all human beings experience natural feelings of sympathy in what he called the "feeling of solidarity"[2]. Locke also disagreed with the Hobbesian view of humanity and its existence in the state of nature. “Promises and covenants for the truck…and the keeping of the faith belong to men as men, and not as members of society” (Locke, 1983) shows how human beings create peaceful relationships not through a centralized organism but through transactions and exchanges. However, as Hobbes constructs a tyrannical view of human nature and its functioning, he creates a political theory that is itself tyrannical. Hobbes writes "no breach of covenant can occur on the part of the sovereign; and consequently, none of his subjects, by any pretense of forfeiture, can be delivered from his subjection" (Hobbes, 18.2.2). Prescribing an absolutist ruler who is above the law, based on the idea that a covenant is created by a ruler's subjects, is itself a recipe for tyranny. Hobbes proposes the acceptance of a dictatorial, authoritarian government that can actually do what it wants because any act or law instituted by the sovereign is believed to have the implicit ratification of the people. Given the Hobbesian view of human nature, the resulting form of sovereignty prescribed to end the state of nature is undoubtedly that of tyranny and despotism, which clearly shows that Hobbes is far from..