Verbal Ability – Summary – With the Treaty of Westphalia, the papacy had been

Slot – 2 – VA

Q. The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

With the Treaty of Westphalia, the papacy had been confined to ecclesiastical functions, and the doctrine of sovereign equality reigned. What political theory could then explain the origin and justify the functions of secular political order? In his Leviathan, published in 1651, three years after the Peace of Westphalia, Thomas Hobbes provided such a theory. He imagined a “state of nature” in the past when the absence of authority produced a “war of all against all.” To escape such intolerable insecurity, he theorized, people delivered their rights to a sovereign power in return for the sovereign’s provision of security for all within the state’s border. The sovereign state’s monopoly on power was established as the only way to overcome the perpetual fear of violent death and war.

1. Thomas Hobbes theorized that sovereign states emerged out of people’s voluntary desire to overcome the sense of insecurity and establish the doctrine of sovereign equality.
2. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states based on a transactional relationship between people and sovereign state that was necessitated by a sense of insecurity of the people.
3. Thomas Hobbes theorized the voluntary surrender of rights by people as essential for emergence of sovereign states.
4. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states as a form of transactional governance to limit the power of the papacy.

Answer: 2
Solutions:

The passage states that due to a state of nature in the past when there was no authority there may have existed a perpetual war of all against all. To escape such intolerable insecurity, people delivered their rights to a sovereign power in return for the sovereign’s provision of security for all within the state’s border. Therefore, it was a give and take or a transactional relationship. Thus, the correct summary is option 2.

Option 1 is incorrect. It distorts the meaning of the passage. Sovereign states did not emerge out of people’s voluntary desire to overcome the sense of insecurity and establish the doctrine of sovereign equality but out of a desire for security.

Option 3 with the term “essential” makes it seem that this path (voluntary surrender of rights by people) was the only way for the emergence of sovereign states. The passage does not say that it was. Option 3 is an inference.

Option 4 distorts the meaning of the passage. Thomas Hobbes theorized the emergence of sovereign states as a form of transactional governance not to limit the power of the papacy but to provide security to people.

Hence, the correct answer is option 2.

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