A Comparative Study on the Foundations of the State’s Legal Personality in the Political Thought of Hobbes and Mohammad Bagher Sabzevari

Abstract

By the establishment of Safavid state and new conditions ahead, Shi’a political thought in 16th century saw itself faced with numerous questions the most significant of which was the presence of Shi’a but non- masūm king on the throne. Rozat-al-Anwar Abbasi by Mohammad Bagher Sabzevari's is among the works which is written for answering these questions including Mohaghegh Sabzevari’s main ideas as to human being’s nature, society and the way for governing it. This article, through studying one of the most significant works of Safavid era e.g. Rozat-al-Anwar Abbasi and one of its most important contemporaneous works e.g. Leviathan written by Thomas Hobbes, aims at answering this question that why despite the fact that Hobbes and Mohaghegh Sabzevari almost share the same view as regards human being’s nature and the society, propose different solutions for governing the society and permanence of governance? The authors maintain that the different time and social conditions in which they lived have led Hobbes to consider the state as an artificial human as the solution for the permanence of society’s governance, while have induced Mohaghegh Sabzevari to follow connecting Safavid king to immortal Imam and ensuring the permanence of governance through creating the notion of non-original Imam. For the purpose of this article, in studying the works of these two writers, the manuscripts are used and the library-based, descriptive and analytic method is employed.

Keywords

• leviathan
• rozat-al-anwar abbasi
• legal personality of state
• state of nature
• civil state