Question

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

With the Treaty of Westphalia, the papacy had been confined to ecclesiastical functions, and the doctrine of sovereign equality reigned. What political theory could then explain the origin and justify the functions of secular political order? In his Leviathan, published in 1651, three years after the Peace of Westphalia, Thomas Hobbes provided such a theory. He imagined a “state of nature” in the past when the absence of authority produced a “war of all against all.” To escape such intolerable insecurity, he theorized, people delivered their rights to a sovereign power in return for the sovereign’s provision of security for all within the state’s border. The sovereign state’s monopoly on power was established as the only way to overcome the perpetual fear of violent death and war.

• A. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states based on a transactional relationship between people and sovereign state that was necessitated by a sense of insecurity of the people.
• B. Thomas Hobbes theorized the voluntary surrender of rights by people as essential for emergence of sovereign states.
• C. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states as a form of transactional governance to limit the power of the papacy.
• D. Thomas Hobbes theorized that sovereign states emerged out of people’s voluntary desire to overcome the sense of insecurity and establish the doctrine of sovereign equality.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Each option is analyzed sequentially. Option A provides a correct summary, emphasizing the transactional dynamic of the relationship, specifically the exchange or conveyance of rights between individuals and the supreme government.
Option B addresses the voluntary cession of rights. However, the text explicitly states the "transfer" of rights, not their complete forfeiture.
Option C is deemed irrelevant as it does not focus on the "powers of papacy," which is not the central theme.
Option D fails to incorporate a crucial element from the passage: the transfer of rights between individuals and the sovereign entity, rendering it an insufficient option.

Therefore, the correct choice is (A): Thomas Hobbes posited that sovereign states arose from a transactional bond between individuals and the sovereign state, a necessity driven by the populace's inherent insecurity.