GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

514
POLITICS
of the authority of all the other persons or institutions
who or which possess authority, but which itself derives
its authority from nobody and nothing. The possession
of such ultimate power Bodin calls Sovereignty, and the
possessor of it in a State, the Sovereign.
Two questions have been historically discussed. First,
who or what is the Sovereign in a community? Secondly,
who or what ought to be the Sovereign, or rather, who of
what does a particular writer think ought to be the
Sovereign? These questions are, it is obvious, separate
been confused.
questions : nevertheless, they have frequently
Machiavelli, for example, confines himself to the question
of fact. Power in a community is, he maintains, as a matter
of actual fact vested in the Prince. The actions of the Prince
must frequently run counter to what appear to be the interests
and wishes of the people, if he is to keep the com-
munity together; but, since it is in the interests of the
people that the community should be kept together, when
the Prince appears to be thwarting their interests on a
particular occasion, he is not doing so in reality.
Hobbes is concerned with the question of "ought",
He does not maintain that all power in a community does
in fact reside in the ruler; he says that it ought to do so, if
society is to fulfil its primary purpose of giving security
to its members.
The Views of Locke and Rousseau. Locke,
as we
have seen, holds that Sovereignty ought to belong to the
majority. Whether the majority is right is irrelevant;
what is right is that the majority should decide, and in a
would in
properly constituted community the majority
fact do so. Rousseau maintains that Sovereignty belongs
to the people as a whole. While he was prepared to allow
to the government of the day and to the executive special
powers for particular purposes,
be exercised subject to the law,
powers which were to
the whole object and
intention of his writings is to prevent the arrogation of
Sovereignty by any one governing body, whether executive,