Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Ish Mishra
The historical roots and the continuing theoretical basis of the modern
liberal; liberal democratic and neo-liberal -- states can be traced to the
economic; political and intellectual developments during the Age of Enlightenment,
also known as, the long 18th century (1685-1815) in Europe. In
the history of political theory, Thomas Hobbes marks the beginning of the new
framework of analysis of this period that came to be known as liberalism, the
future paradigm of political analysis, though his major writings predate
the bracketed period. The 17th century
individualism, known as liberalism conceptualizes the human being (man to
be more precise) as a self-seeking, existing on his own, not in association
with but in separation from others, marks the epochal turning point in the
history of humankind. In the realm of political theory, Thomas Hobbes laid down
the paradigmatic contours of liberalism as the philosophy and as the ruling
idea i.e. the ruling class idea of the new epoch. The foundation of this new
theory, the liberalism, through its various phases and versions was and remains
the false assumption of the “natural” atomistic composition of society and the
“natural” individuality of humans. The history of the human civilization, as
Marx and Engels have noted in the Communist Manifesto, the history
of class societies based on the exploitation and domination of human beings by
other human beings and of struggles to end the system of domination,
about two centuries after the publication of the first liberal
Classic--the Leviathan. Individuals do not exist as
individuals but as an integral part of a larger aggregate – the class. A is not
a slave or master as individual but he is so, in and through a society under
certain social laws which she/he enters into independent of one’s conscious
will. Marx calls these relations as social relations of production.
The task of the organic intellectuals of the dominant classes, in
particular historical epochs, has been to find the justification for and the
source of validity of the domination. Machiavelli, the philosopher of the Prince
who rules over people not with any divine mandate but by his political skills
and wisdom required to attain, maintain and expand power, seems confused in
locating the source of validity and places it to the mysterious concept of
Fortune. Hobbes clears the Machiavellian confusion and transported the source
of validity from the mystery of God to the myth of people’s consent, as
individuals and not as the part of the collectivity. The individualist
“naturalness” of the Nature has been questionable from the very outset.
Rousseau was the first one to point the finger, before Marxism beginning with
Marx and Engels, produced its systematic critiques. Hobbes inaugurated in
political the theory the future paradigm of political analysis, the Liberalism,
the political philosophy of the new epoch, concerned with the order in the new
society of increasing inequalities, was confronted with the issue of finding a
new source of validity of the political authority for the management of the new
economic structure. With the reformation, God had lost the ground as the source
of validity of authority and voluntary or under the pressure of new realities
that only God knows, started creating people equal instead of creating people
as plebeians and patricians. Earlier He helped poor and helpless. With the
transition from feudalism to capitalism started helping those who help
themselves, as a neutral benevolent, the social Darwinism. Its overemphasis
over individuality conceals the reality of the class-societies.
The erosion of theological explanations of the historical progress
had already begun in Europe with the Renaissance and `reached its logical
conclusion during, the Age of Reason .The Will of God or the divine mandate as
the source of validity of governance had been losing ground and banished with
the public beheading of the Charles I, in 1649, at the end of the long drawn
civil war in England. With falling of king’s head on the ground, divinity
associated with the crown met to dust. Machiavelli had freed politics from the
clutches of theology. Machiavelli’s Prince is no divine ruler with the mandate
of God but a mercenary leader, an ordinary, private individual, favored by
Fortune, who, with political vision of attaining, retaining and expanding power
leads his people to found a new state. He transported the source of validity of
governance from God to Fortune. God was banished from governance and theology
from the realm of explanation of the materials world. The new discoveries in the
natural sciences, particularly the theories of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton,
provided materialistic explanations of material world. The banishment of God
from his own “creation” sent shockwaves to not only the stakeholders of the
God’s universe but ordinary people too, as they had internalized the
theological pronouncements as the final truth, what Gramsci calls
hegemony . By the 17th century, the process of erosion of the
theological explanation of material world had climaxed and the God lost its
position as the source of validity of authority.
Thomas Hobbes, rightly credited to be the first liberal thinker,
fills the void by theorizing politics using Galileo’s methods of theorizing the
physical universe. With materialistic explanation of politics, Hobbes
transported the source of validity of governance from God to peoples’ consent.
This was a revolutionary theoretical act as in the civil war between Puritans
and the royalists in England the issue was not the God but different readings
of the scripture. Brian Nelson has rightly said that “Machiavelli was
Copernicus of the political theory and Hobbes the Galileo who carried
Machiavelli’s revolutionary insights to their logical conclusion.”(p.163) His
absolutist conclusions were not appreciated by the Puritans and his materialism
was disliked by the royalists, who claimed King’s Devin right to rule and not
by power as propounded by Machiavelli and rationalized by Hobbes on the basis
of the theory of Human nature, a running theme of the subsequent political
philosophies and Social Science.
Thus as we saw above, Hobbes inaugurated a new paradigm of
analysis in the realm of political theory – the modern political theory -- foundations of which were laid by Machiavelli.
It was the beginning of the new quest for finding secular, political answers to
the secular, political questions, arising out of the emergence of the new
protagonist of the history with the new virtue - the virtue of money making.
The qualification of wealth became the new criterion of the new virtue for the
new species of the heroes--the heroes of finance with risk-free heroism. This
hero of finance, which took a peripheral entry on the stage of Renaissance in
Europe, as a minor character, had become “the hero”, within less than 150 years
and came to occupy the center stage in the era of the Enlightenment.
The new protagonist of the history, the self-seeking, possessive,
rational individual who is in perpetual pursuit of desires, gets clearly
defined as such and universalized by Thomas Hobbes, in his classic, the Leviathan (1651).
And in less than 4 decades of the publication of the Leviathan, John Lock quite
unambiguously declares money making to be the political virtue by saying that
the serious matters like governance could be entrusted with only those who have
proved their worth by amassing sufficient money, in his ‘Two Treatises on the
Government’ (1688).
Every philosopher is product of his time, as around after 2
centuries after Hobbes, Karl Marx would say that the consciousness is product
of material conditions and the conscious human effort changes the material
conditions giving rise to the new consciousness. The intellectuals do not
create justices or injustices. They only react to and reflect upon the
justices-injustices already existing in their contemporary societies. Therefore
a text is better understood by placing it into its historical context.
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588, in a decade considered to be the
foundational decade of a new era in the European history, the Age of Reason.
The Enlightenment in Europe also witnessed fierce social political strife and
bloodshed. “Hobbes and fear is twin” saying derives its existence from the fact
that his mother gave a premature birth supposedly caused by the news of attack
by a Spanish Armada. I don’t think that psychological impact at embryonic stage
has so everlasting impact. Source of Hobbes’s fear was not the news of Armada
in embryonic state but the prolonged civil war that took off practically with
the enthronement of James I in 1603. It became more pronounced since 1630.
The bourgeois dissent to absolutist values had been gaining
strength for quite some time with the new scientific discoveries and economic
changes. The political battle between royalist (Tories) claim of absolute
rights and liberal demands by puritans (Whigs) was fought on the religious
agenda of varying readings of the scriptures. Hobbes after his studies from
Oxford was recommended as a tutor to the Cavendish royal family in 1610, and
ever since he spent most of his life with courtesy of and in association with
noble men. In 1641 when the struggle looked decisively tilted against the royal
side, being staunch royalists, Hobbes fled to France to escape the civil war
hardships. It proved for him a Blessing in disguise. It provided him with
unprecedented intellectual exposure and brought him in contact with many
intellectual luminaries in the fields of philosophy and Science including
Francis Bacon and Galileo, whose scientific discoveries became an inspiration
for Hobbes’s attempt to build a science of society, using Galileo’s
methodology.
In England, as is history now, the civil war had ended with the
defeat of royalist forces in 1648 and sealed with the beheading of the King
Charles I. During his stay in France he tutored the future King of England,
Charles II and worked on the new theory of governance that he published in 1651
after his return to the short lived Republican England and protectorate under
the leadership of Cromwell. In 1660 with the restoration of monarchy, he joined
the court and was awarded and received $100 annual honorarium till his death in
1679, at the age of 91.
The context:
As has been pointed out above, a text can be best understood in
its context and the central concerns of the author and the consequent object
and the motive. As Aristotle had said long ago, which all of us know (May be we
need to be reminded of what we already know) that nothing exists without
purpose, that is, everything that exists has some end. Similarly nothing is written
without purpose. All the writings have some end. Hobbes is writing in the
historical context of the civil war in England. The fear of sudden death was
not just a theoretical possibility or a mere imagination but a reality. People
were being killed and the killing spray stopped only with the killing of the
monarch, supposed to be the regent of the God on the earth. Hobbes’s central
concern was the experienced fear of civil strife/war that he has witnessed from
a partisan position. In the Age of Enlightenment, the enlightened monarchies
marked the transition from the decadent feudal values and feudal state to the
modern, liberal nation state. Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy is a
concerned political statement of this transition.
The root cause of the political turmoil, which the Europe was
undergoing, was the transition from feudal to capitalist mode of production via
mercantilism caused by the change in the social relations of production and
distribution. The new social relations needed new political relations and
thereby new definition of state and the new species of the heroes, the
bourgeoisies, whose wealth was not the gift of God but result of their business
skills, needed not only economic rights but also a share in the political
power.
This new man, the possessive individual, the propertied patriarch,
i.e. the bourgeois man, is the Hobbes’s natural man. This self-seeking man,
interested not only in possession but also accumulation of the property, is
apprehensive of the loss of and hence in need of protection of his property.
This hero of finance, the money making individual is distrustful of everyone
including his neighbors, friends and even family members. That is why as Hobbes
would like to demonstrate by saying that he locks his house and suspecting the
integrity of wife and children locks his valuables in the locker inside the
house.
Hobbes’s central concern was the civil war, which he considered to
be the worst evil, under which there can be no industry and no progress. He
thought that the civil war was the result of man’s natural tendency to dominate
over others leading to the state of war of all against all. This “natural”
tendency of the “natural” man has to be checked in order to fulfill another,
superior, natural desire of “peaceable, commodious” life that is impossible if
he behaved “naturally”. This natural tendency in Hobbes’s opinion could be
checked by a strong, legitimate, deterrent power. Thus the purpose of his
political theory is to deduce the need of a powerful, legitimate, public
authority capable of overawing all the “natural”, self-seeking individuals. For
this, Hobbes involves a thought experiment with the interrelated concepts of state
of nature, laws of nature and the social contract, on the pattern of the
inviolable laws of the market contract. Hobbes transports the source validity
from theological notion of God to a concrete concept of social contract among
the “free and equal” individuals in the “state of nature” different from
obscure notion of Machiavellian Fortune. To have order in an increasing
inequality, Hobbes begins with the axiomatic assumptions of natural equality
and equal freedom to prove that the natural equality and freedom of the natural
man is a curse and the root cause of the social miseries. As naturally all of
them seek their own dominion and dominate others. Everyone being equal
no one can accomplish that and there would state of war of everyone against
everyone and hence the need of an absolute Sovereign power capable of overawing
all the “natural” individuals to conduct themselves. Hobbes begins with the
liberal assumptions of free and equal individuals and concludes with the need
of and absolute authority as the ‘sole spokesperson of the body and motion of
the society’, who is capable of overawing all of them.
Hobbes presents the order and freedom as dichotomous and
surrenders the later for the former. His central concern is a legitimate public
authority in the wake of the dissolution of the feudal bonds. For this, he
indulges into a thought experiment involving three interrelated concepts – the
state of nature; the natural laws; and the social contract to construct the
theory of political obligation. The foundation of the edifice of his theory of
sovereignty and obligation is the theory of human nature that Hobbes constructs
with his psychological assumptions.
The State of Nature
Hobbes’s thought experiment, using Galilean method, resolves the
society into its constituent atoms in motion, individuals, and the individuals
into its constituent elements – desire, appetite, aversion etc. -- and then
recomposes them back to transform the unsocial natural society into
an ordered state under a sovereign, an artificial man who becomes the sole
spokesperson of the body and motion of society. He makes an imagined
pre-social; pre-political state as the starting point – the zero point – the
original state and calls it the State of Nature. He makes certain psychological
assumptions about the natural human behavior if not regulated by an external
force. And then from psychological assumptions, he deduces the social behavior
of the individual, who is naturally a rational egoist. It is not a historic
state of nature but an imagined one, as admitted by Hobbes himself, abstracted
from the existing society. The primitive societies show just opposite human
attributes to those of Hobbesian natural man. Hobbesian axiomatic assumptions
about the “natural” nature of the self-seeking, solitary individual, overtly-covertly
remain the running theme through the various stages of liberalism up to the
present neo-liberal stage.
Though Hobbes himself admits, as mentioned above, his state of
nature is not historic, but imagined one yet his novel like presentation makes
it appear real. Natural behavior of his universal natural man is about how
individuals would naturally behave if there was no regulating mechanism of the
state. His natural individual in the state of nature is abstracted from the
emerging commercial society. Unlike Aristotelian axiomatic natural inequality,
Hobbes, in order to defend the newly arising inequalities, which he considers
conventional, begins with the assumption of natural equality and freedom to
prove it to be the root cause of all the miseries on the basis of his
assumptions of human nature.
Hobbes’s State of nature consists of solitary, free and equal
individuals. This natural individual, a rational being equipped with the
developed faculty of reason, is a self-seeking egoist, involved in the
unceasing pursuit of desires that ceases only in death. He is not satisfied
with the fulfillment of the present needs but the needs for an unseen future
too. He does not want only to use but also to possess, and as much as possible.
These were the attribute of the new man, the bourgeois man. Hobbes generalizes
and universalizes it to obscure the root cause of newly created unfreedoms and
inequalities through the ruin of craft and artisans by transforming the craft
production into manufacturing system, with the spread of commerce and the
growth of world market on the one hand, and on the other hand, expropriation of
peasantry under, what is called the Enclosure movement. Two foundational
conditions of capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production and
‘free’ wage labour have thus been prepared by dispossession of the peasantry
and artisans leading to their proletarianization. Not only is he not interested
in discussing the newly arising inequalities and unfreedoms but condemns the
natural equality and natural freedom as the root cause of the worst kind of
miseries like the civil war. In fact his state of nature is abstracted from the
civil war in England that was, in Hobbesian language culmination of contending
claims of Sovereignty in the state of nature.
Hobbes’s free natural men are approximately equal in strength of
body and mind. To prove his point he
says that even the weakest can kill the strongest. He seems too obsessed with
the fear of violence that cites the killing ability to prove natural equality
of men. “For as the strength of body, the weakest has enough strength to kill
the strongest, either by secret mechanizations, or by confederacy with others
that are in same danger with him.” As
far as the strength of mind is concerned, Hobbes writes “I find yet greater
equality than strength.” Prudence is matter of time and experience that can be
acquired by anybody. Most persons think themselves as wiser than others, but
this in itself, mockingly remarks Hobbes, is proof that men are more equal than
unequal. In state of nature, the solitary individuals have natural right to
self-preservation and to do whatever they deem fit for it, using the natural
power of their body and mind. The solitary individuals in state of nature,
diffident and suspicious of each other, present a split personality. This
rational egoist, in the unceasing pursuit of desires is a paradoxical creature.
On the one hand, he seeks not only his own dominion but also to dominate
everyone else and that no one can even touch him or dare to look at him. The
attributes of Machiavelli’s Prince are made universal by Hobbes. On the other
hand, he also desires a peaceable commodious life. Because of the “naturally”
free and equal individuals as they “naturally” are, the reconciliation of the
two becomes impossible in the state of nature. The source of this impossibility
is the natural equality. Since everyone is equal, equally free and equally
ambitious to lord over others, no one can be winner, everyone is loser and
there is a war of everyone against everyone. Everyone is living under the
constant fear of sudden death. Hobbes leaves the onus of proof on the reader,
in order to confirm with his views one has to do nothing but to look into
oneself.
Playing on the fear psychosis, the natural rational egoist decides
in favor of the peaceable and commodious life. Hobbes draws a dichotomous
binary between freedom and the order. He can enjoy the freedom of state of
nature under the constant threat of sudden death or give it up for living in an
ordered society, wherein he can peacefully enjoy his possessions. And the Prudent
individual chooses the order, as the only way to enjoy a peaceable commodious
life is the end of the state of nature. Thus and deduces that end of the
miseries and the state of constant fear of sudden death, is possible only by
ending the state of nature itself. For order, the natural man surrenders the
natural freedom and promises political obligation to the laws of the Sovereign,
the artificial man – a person or the body of persons – to whom he surrenders
the natural rights and becomes social through a social contract.
The Social Contract
As we have seen above, in the context of the protracted civil war
in England, the central concern of Thomas Hobbes was the order, order among the
unequals, as they existed. Order, in his opinion, could be created only through
the absolute political obligation to an absolute sovereign. For this, he
constructs a logical state of nature in which the possessive and egoist, power
seeking, overambitious, solitary individuals are equal and free and with his
theory of human nature, proves the freedom of equal individuals dangerous to
their desire of peaceable, commodious life. In the dichotomy between freedom
and the order he shows preference for the order.
The end of the State of Nature is the only way of the peaceable
and the commodious life for the rational individuals. For this he
constructs a theory of Social Contract, that too, like his theory of the State
of Nature, is logical not historic. He does not explain how the solitary,
rational egoists, incapable of living together, owing to their “natural” ego,
diffidence, competitiveness, come together to make a covenant among
themselves? Though he himself does not claim the historicity of the contract,
yet the way he presents makes it read like a real contract at some point of time.
Like Machiavelli considers fear to be the most reliable basis for the order,
Hobbes replaces the adjective, “most reliable” by the “only”. The
“naturally” “free” and “equal” individuals can be made to conduct them
only by the fear of some all-powerful authority capable of overawing them
all. Rousseau, almost a century later, would correct him by demonstrating
that individuals are not warmongers by nature, but they quarrel over things and
they are so not naturally but in and through a society, as mentioned above.
Hobbes cleverly universalizes a particularly socialized human nature and
deduces the need of an absolute power, the sole spokesperson of the body and
motion of the society with the “consent” as the source of validity of its
authority. All the individuals, as they are, nasty, brutish, diffident who do
not trust each other, only Hobbes knows how, come together and collectively
pose trust in another person or body of persons to create and ensure conditions
of life free from the constant fear of sudden death. Under the contract
people surrender their all the natural rights and powers to a Sovereign, a
person or a body of persons – an arterial man, with its own body and motion.
The contract is irreversible. People, on the basis of rational calculations of
the self-interest, collectively enter into a contract with a sovereign who is
not party to this contract by surrendering his natural rights. The words, as
Hobbes puts it, have no weight without the sword – the coercive power --and
hence people surrender their natural power of self-preservation also.
The command of sovereign is the law. Thus through the contract
people create a law making and enforcing public authority deriving the validity
from the consent of people. Thus beginning with liberal assumptions arrives at
absolutist conclusions. Nevertheless, the theory of governance by consent of
the free and equal individuals has revolutionary implications, as inadvertent
consequence. Sometimes inadvertent consequences prove to be more substantial than
the intended ones. In course of time the free and equal individuals,
living not in isolation but in and through a society, would reclaim their
natural freedom and equality – the human emancipation. The sovereign himself is
not the party to the contract and hence remains in the state of nature with all
the human attributes. Hobbes, thus demolished the prevailing notions of divine
theories of the origin of state and propounds the social Contract theory, in
this sense his theory is revolutionary.
The Sovereign
The sovereign, thus created by consent is absolute and
indivisible. It not only interprets but makes and enforces the law. Thus Hobbes
envisages three functions of the state, law making; law interpreting; law
enforcing – legislative; judicial and executive. Hobbes though
concentrates all the three powers into one authority, yet provides basis for
the development of the theory of the separation of power by future liberals.
People, by virtue of having consented to be governed are not only having
legally extractable prudential obligation to obey the sovereign but Hobbes
would like us to believe that as is dictated by the reason the obligation is
moral too.
Who would be the
sovereign as, according to Hobbes, all men are naturally equal in physical and
mental strength that he meticulously demonstrates in the first chapter of Leviathan. Hobbes
finds an easy way out of the complex problem by bringing in the notions of
sovereignty by institution, i.e. by agreement and sovereignty by acquisition,
i.e. sovereignty by conquest. He acknowledges the historic fact that most of
the sovereignties are established by conquest. As his state of nature that is a
state without the regulating mechanism of a centralized government. Therefore
if there is no government with absolute authority people will plunge into
miserable state of nature. Therefore the prudent individuals must pay their
unconditional obligation to the sovereign by acquisition in the same way as
they would have done had they created it by consent.
Thus, we see that Hobbes begins with liberal assumptions to arrive
at an absolutist conclusion.
[i] A small note on the ruin of craft-guilds
and the enclosure movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment