Hobbes for UPSC PSIR: Why "Individualist but Absolutist" Keeps Returning
Hobbes returns to the PSIR paper more often than almost any modern thinker, and always through the same paradox: how can the arch-individualist — man as a bundle of appetites, the state built by consent — end in absolutism? The 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2023 papers all circle this. Grounded here in the Arihant Chapter 1 treatment and the IGNOU modern-philosophy texts.
What UPSC has actually asked on Hobbes
From our PYQ Map — the codes matter, read the years:
2016 (10):'How would I and my fellow human beings behave… in a state of nature… innate predispositions?' (Hobbes) — Comment2023 (10):State of Nature as State of War (Hobbes) — Comment2013 (10):'Covenants without swords are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all' (Hobbes) — Comment2017 (10):Hobbesian notion of Political Obligation — Comment2011 (15):Hobbes as an individualist — Comment2022 (15):'Individualism is inherent in Hobbes' absolutist Ideology' — Comment2013 (15):Comment on Laslett's assertion that Filmer and not Hobbes was the main antagonist of Locke
The doctrinal ground those questions test
- Context, method & mechanistic materialism
- Human nature & psychology
- State of Nature as a state of war
- Natural right, natural law & the social contract
- The Sovereign & sovereignty
- Political obligation, liberty & the limit of obedience
- The individualist → absolutist passage
- Criticism, comparison & relevance
The scholars the answer stands on
These are the named positions from our teaching sheet — enriched from the IGNOU course texts, so your answer carries references the standard coaching notes don't:
- Hobbes: fear and I were born twins; politics as a science of passions
- Michael Oakeshott: the Leviathan is the greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece of political philosophy in English
- Leo Strauss: Hobbes's premises are humanist, his theory moralistic
- Sabine: Hobbes imports the method of physical science into politics
- Hobbes: a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death
- John Plamenatz: psychological egoism — we desire what we believe benefits our vital motion
- Strauss: fear of violent death as the foundation
- Oakeshott: man as a creature of restless appetite
- Hobbes: the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
- IR Realists (Morgenthau, Waltz): international anarchy mirrors the state of nature
- Plamenatz: the state of nature as a deduction from human psychology
- Rousseau (counter): Hobbes mistook socialised man for natural man
How the scoring answer moves
The paradox is the answer. As George Sabine puts it in the reading we teach from, Hobbesian absolutism is derived from, not opposed to, his individualism — the sovereign is absolute precisely to protect the one right the individual cannot surrender, the right to life. Deploy that and the "individualist but absolutist" question resolves rather than merely restating itself. Two more moves lift the mark: the named critic — Locke's retort that this is "as if men should be content to be devoured by lions" is the counter every "critically examine" wants; and the modern lens — Foucault reading Leviathan as the birth of the modern disciplinary state gives the contemporary edge. On "covenants without swords are but words" (2013), the whole doctrine of political obligation and the enforcement problem sits ready.
Grounded in: Arihant Ch1 · IGNOU BPSC-111, BPSC-113, MPSE-003. Hobbes is taught with Locke as a paired session so the state-of-nature contrast is examinable both ways.
Teaches the 115-session PSIR Foundation at Karol Bagh, Delhi; marks 450 answers per mentorship student against a 6-part rubric.
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Foundation 2026–27 · Answer-Writing Mentorship · 13-Test Series — taught and marked by Swetank Pandey at ALS IAS, Karol Bagh.