ABSTRACT
This chapter is on obligation and resistance in Leviathan. The chapter turns on six exceptions to the de facto rule in Leviathan, all of which direct our attention to the sovereign’s character and the citizens’ judgment thereof. They are: (i) the inner consent, (ii) inner resistance, (iii) fortitude and fidelity, (iv) magnanimity, (v) war, and (vi) barbarism and natural punishment. I argue that each expresses a version of a fundamental political fact in Leviathan, namely that when the sovereign strays from virtue to vice, the natural basis of obligation collapses. Sovereign inequity, cowardice, greed, vanity, rashness, pompousness, arrogance, deference to vain elites, and, most fundamentally, sovereign barbarity are naturally dishonorable and will invariably undermine the regime.
