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  • Essay / Theocracy, Fourth Commonwealth and Ideal Common Wealth

    In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes lists three types of common wealth: aristocracy, democracy and monarchy. The Commonwealth is a political community, with a sovereign at its core to administer contentious and non-contentious matters, such as faith. This definition strangely implies a theocratic organization, in which religious theology takes precedence over civil law. In this system, God is determined as the sovereign of the state, the clergy are the administrators of the divine commandments and serve as agents of the invisible sovereign. This is what we find within the Velayat-e-Faqih of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a government led by a jurist. This essay examines the ideal commonwealth advocated by Hobbes in Leviathan and Khomeini in Velayat-e-Faqih. To do so, he uses Comparative Political Thought (CPT) to reference the spatio-temporal essence that cultivated the above works. In doing so, this essay illustrates the similarities between Khomeini and Hobbes' argument for an authoritarian ruler. While Khomeini and Hobbes argue that centralization of authority promotes morality and avoids the state of nature, this essay argues that both texts argue for a theocracy as a republic necessary to guard against moral decadence . Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay First, this essay explores the space and time of both texts to shed light on their respective justifications for 'an authoritarian ruler. This essay uses their “place of origin” to assert theocracy as the Fourth Commonwealth. This means examining Hobbes' Leviathan in the context of the English Civil War and comparing it to Khomeini's Velayat-e-Faqih in the context of the Pahlavi regime. Second, this essay will compare Hobbes's state of nature to Khomeini's rejection of Westernization. Third, it will examine Hobbes's justification of the monarchy as an ideal republic with the jurist's rule of Khomeini. Finally, this essay will argue that Hobbes's ontology of morality is the sine qua non condition for the establishment of a theocracy. The justification of a theocracy as the Fourth Commonwealth is a logical consequence of Hobbes's Leviathan, in comparison with Khomeini's justification of Velayat-e-Faqih. This essay asserts that a theocracy is the Hobbesian ideal type of Commonwealth. First, by comparing the spatio-temporal nature of the two works, this essay asserts that theocracy as a Commonwealth is axiomatic in the origin of Leviathan. Born during the Spanish Armada, Thomas Hobbes observed political disintegration throughout his life, so much so that fear became a subconscious and latent element in his writings. This is particularly evident in Leviathan where he writes that it was "occasioned by the disorders of the present time." Leviathan was written during the English Civil War in the 17th century, which encompassed the overthrow of King Charles I by Parliamentarians and widespread sectarian violence. Hobbes feared persecution in England as a royalist and chose exile in Paris. The purpose of Leviathan was to define solutions to prevent the factionalism, violence and disorder that arise from the absence of centralized authority. Similarly, Khomeini experienced exile from his native Iran after being arrested for his objection to the White Revolution of 1963 by the Pahlavi regime. Described as “White” to symbolize peaceful socio-economic reform and “intended to be bloodless,” it nevertheless created a decade of turmoil and bloodshed. The objective of modernization and.