Positive Obligations Notes

Competing conceptions of security:

• Hobbes: the primary of peace

• According to Hobbes, the transition of humanity from a state of nature to a political community is motivated by the promise of security, which in turn provides conditions in which our lives can become meaningful and culturally and socially expressive

• Hobbes gave security such primacy that no one in his society could contest the power of the provider of the peace (the sovereign power)

• Instead, in his view, the social contract was a bargain between individuals to cede their liberty to the extent necessary to avoid war

• For Hobbes, security was both the rationale for the existence of the state and the justification for unlimited sovereign power over the subjects within it

• Although Hobbes knew there would be complaints about the sovereign, Hobbes thought the good of security too valuable to be threatened by civil dispute

• It is easy to disagree with Hobbes about what is in our interests

• This account is instructive insofar as it highlights the value of security and its connection with political power and his understanding of the way that the good of security allows for human flourishing and social and cultural development BUT the primacy Hobbes affords to security and the power he gives to the sovereign is less persuasive as he fails to appreciate how the state itself can pose a threat to individual security

• Hobbes’ recognition of the value of security as a prerequisite to the realization of other individual and social goods has echoes in contemporary justifications for security as a meta-right

• The immediacy of insecurity and our strength of our fear of harm can lead us to prioritise security at the cost of corroding other social goods

• Centuries after Hobbes, liberals generally agree that security has to be balanced with other goods and its attainment at the expense of all liberty and all capacity to challenge political power is a step too far

• Locke’s conception of liberty as security:

• We need to craft a conception of security that is good not just for security’s sake but for the social arrangements flowing from its pursuit

• For Locke, Hobbes’ society threatened the security of citizens themselves

• Unlike Hobbes’ agreement between subjects to cede their liberty to an unrestricted sovereign power, Locke’s social contract imposes reciprocal obligations on the state which had to be liberty regarding

• For Locke, the point of entering into a political community was precisely to optimize the enjoyment of one’s liberty and property

• In entering society from the state of nature, men give up certain freedoms but they dos o only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself his liberty and property

• Locke did not share Hobbes’ view of the state of nature as a state of war, nor of the benefits of an absolute monarchy to preserve against such a condition

• He brought sovereign power down from the pedestal and argued that absolute monarchs are but men and favoured limits on their powers instead, viewing absolute power as the greatest threat to the security of individuals

• Where a sovereign power breaches trust, they forfeit power the people put in their hands and the power devolves to the people who have a right to resume their original liberty

• If arbitrary power constitutes the greatest threat to the security and preservation of individuals, its antithesis constituted the greatest source of security for Locke power needs to be constrained by law and people find security within the limits of law

• Since the power of the government is only for the good of society it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated law

• Locke’s conception of security thus differed greatly from that of Hobbes he agreed that security underpins meaningful human existence and constituted the object of civic or political community but his ideal of security was a rich conception embedded in the enjoyment of basic rights to liberty, life and property

• It was the law’s capacity to protect these rights and the law’s limits on sovereign power that kept individuals safe and secure within the limits of the law

• This theory forms the foundation of a liberal conception of the right to security grounded in the protection of liberty, life and property

• Hobbes: peace/bare security is a value so important as to supersede other goods

• Locke: a rich conception of security is inseparable from the enjoyment of the liberties and property that is naturally ours to enjoy

• This balance between liberty and security remains a perennial debate in liberal theory today

The right to security

• Neither Hobbes or Locke spoke explicitly about a right to security

• The following theories explicitly develop such a right:

• Blackstone: the right to personal security

• B identified a right to personal security as the...