Thomas Hobbes Notes

Thomas Hobbes: Conflict in the State of Nature

DEFINITIONS

• Right – A ‘liberty or freedom’; not in the positive sense of a right guaranteed by law, but simply the absence of a particular prohibition or impediment.

• Natural right (Jus Naturale) – ‘The liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature... which in his own judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto’. This right is inherent by virtue of human nature, and universally discernible through reason.

• Laws of Nature (Lex Naturalis) – ‘A precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same’.

1. Men should endeavor to seek peace insofar as others are equally willing to seek peace. Where there is no prospect of mutual cooperation, men are incentivized to engage in pre-emptive deterrence for ‘covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all’

2. The contractual transference of natural right into a system of reciprocal costs and benefits – ‘That a man be willing when others are so too, as far forth, as for Peace, and defense of himself, he shall think it necessary to lay down his right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself’.

3. Once made, men shall keep their covenants since they are the origins of – and indeed, constitutive of – justice.

• State of nature - The hypothetical condition of man without a sovereign power to compel order.

INTRODUCTION

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan was published in 1951 partly in response to the unprecedented political turbulence of 17th century Britain during its Civil War. Here, Hobbes presents two epoch-making arguments:

1. The ‘state of nature’ is the worst possible calamity that can befall mankind.

2. The only way to escape this ruinous condition is by surrendering one’s individual sovereignty to an absolute sovereign, thereby compressing an anarchy of wills unto one unanimous will.

This essay aims to clarify and interrogate Hobbes’ position on the necessity of establishing an absolute sovereign; ‘necessity’ of which yields two possible approaches:

1. Absolutism as a prerequisite for instrumentally absolving mankind from the ‘state of nature’ and securing peace.

2. Absolutism as a logical inevitability preceding from Hobbes’ conception of natural man.

I argue that Hobbes’ rationale satisfies the first approach but contains a paradox regarding human rationality that diminishes its ability to satisfy the second.

GEOMETRY*

It is important to note Hobbes’ penchant for deductive or ‘geometric’ reasoning, whereby basic universal axioms form the grounds for all subsequent normative assertions. To fully appreciate Hobbes’ idea of absolute sovereignty, one must begin with the raw material of human psychology with which political sociability is contrived.

This is based on two inertial movements:

1. Primitive appetite (deliberate motion towards an object), aversion (away from an object) and contempt (indifference), compounded in numerous ways to produce a spectrum...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Political Theory From Hobbes Notes.