Hobbes and the Leviathan

3 September 2008

Conflict

• Responses to the problem of conflict– Thucydides– Classical political philosophy– Medieval just war theory– Christian pacifism– Machiavelli

Conflict

• These responses vary in– Their focus (internal vs. external)– Their assessment of the sources of conflict– Their estimate of the possibility of education– Their approaches and proposed solutions

Hobbes: New Approaches to an Old Problem

• Hobbes’ approach: a theory of political obligation grounded in human rationality– When is it rational for us as self-interested

individuals to obey a ruler? – When are we obliged to do so?

Hobbes: New Approaches to an Old Problem

• Hobbes’ solution: we must learn to recognize that our obligations to obey the sovereign are rationally justified, and hence to respect the sovereign power– “Internal” focus– Assumes people are not educable– Assumes a certain amount of rationality and

self-interest

The State of Nature

• What is our natural condition? Are people naturally equal?– Aristotle: No, some are masters and some are

slaves according to the degree of rationality– Christian philosophy: yes, they are all equal in

that all have an immortal soul– Hobbes: yes, they are all equal in one

important respect: equality to kill

Equality

• Everyone is strong enough to kill the strongest

• Everyone thinks him/herself above average in practical intellectual ability (prudence)

• But prudence is merely experience• Ergo, there are no natural distinctions

distinguishing masters from slaves, or rulers from ruled

The State of Nature

• What is our most important natural desire?– Aristotle: the desire to have a good life– Hobbes: the desire to avoid violent death

The State of Nature

• Do our most important natural desires lead to social integration or disintegration?– Aristotle: our important natural desires lead to

the creation of small communities and then to larger communities. We need and desire to be with others.

– Hobbes: our important natural desires lead to social disintegration, given our natural equality in the ability to kill or be killed.

The State of Nature

• Are our most important desires naturally integrative or disintegrative?

The State of Nature

• Natural causes of conflict:– Distrust: I do not trust you not to kill me, so I

try to kill you first– Love of gain (a natural desire): I know myself

equal to you, and I want your things– Love of glory (a natural desire): I think myself

(erroneously) better than you are, and think I deserve reparation

The State of Nature

Trust and cooperate

Do not trust, attack

Trust and cooperate

We gain from cooperating: arts, sciences, etc.

One of us gets killed, the other lives and takes your property

Do not trust, attack

One of us gets killed, the other lives and takes your property

One or both of us may get killed

The State of Nature

• “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Chapter 13)

Rights

• Is there a right to self-preservation? How far does it extend?– “even to one another’s bodies” in the state of

nature

• The justification of this right comes from the universal interest in preserving yourself

Rights and justice

• Because everyone has the same right to everything, there can be no justice or injustice in the state of nature

• Justice is a human construction that we have to make possible

Rights and justice

• Is Hobbes right?– Are there any places in the state of nature

today?

Escaping the state of nature: the problem

• There is an empirical problem: states actually exist

• The problem is not only empirical but also normative: are we obligated to obey existing states?

• We can only appeal to what is rational for us to do, not to God or some other agency

How do we escape the state of nature?

• Could the problem be solved through the prospect of future cooperation? – The stakes are always too high; death

prevents future cooperation– Repeated cooperation does not solve the

problem of how we come to have obligations to the state

The sovereign

• Hobbes’ solution: we all together transfer (most of) our right to everything to a specific person to act in our name to preserve ourselves

• This person is then authorized (we are its “authors”) to use all means necessary to preserve the peace (to use “us”)

The Sovereign

The Sovereign

• Why is this a solution?– The sovereign has enough power (all of us) to

prevent attacks by any of us individually

The Sovereign

• Why is this a solution?– With the sovereign in place, what can be

reasonably expected of others shifts: we can now expect that they will not attack us, so we can now speak of justice and injustice

The Sovereign

• Why is this a solution?– The act of transferring our right to everything

to the sovereign creates a presumptive obligation to obey the sovereign

The Sovereign

• The Sovereign is an artificial person– It can be a single natural person (a monarch)– Or a collection of people that can act in a

unified way (an assembly)

Sovereignty and political regimes

• For Hobbes, the most important thing is that there be a sovereign, not so much the form it takes

• For Aristotle, the more important question is the form of government

Politics

• For Aristotle, the purpose of politics is to realize man’s highest good– The best regime most fully realizes the

highest good, but other regimes also realize it to a smaller extent

• For Hobbes, the purpose of politics is to avoid the worst of evils– Any regime avoids the worst of evils (war)

Hobbes’ approach to the problem of conflict

• Hobbes wants to remind us that our obligations to obey the state are rationally justified– They are obligations (i.e., they apply generally)– They are in accord with our self-interest, and in

particular with our interest in avoiding violent death

• Conflict arises ultimately from error and irrationality, but it does not require extensive education to solve it

• Focuses on the internal problem of conflict, leaving the external problem unresolved