Leviathan Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes 1588 1769 Son

Leviathan Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588 -1769) • Son of a priest (who had to flee) was educated by a wealthy uncle. – Thomas read and wrote at 4, learned Greek & Latin at 6, and went to Oxford at 15. • Tutor of the Cavendish, had to live in exile more than once • Context: religious struggle & Civil war – Problems: religious liberty & legitimate authority (the King or the Parliament? ) • De Cive, 1642 • Leviathan, 1651

A Theory of Obedience • Hobbes St. Paul’s (but) • St. Paul founds his system on God, Hobbes does it without any need for God. • Bourgeois justification of absolute power, by which the Commonwealth appears as a necessary outcome that arises from human necessary outcome nature • The need for Leviathan (mortal God) is selfevident • Power is absolute also because obedience Power is absolute

Fear to violent death is the main force that feeds the organization and preservation of Leviathan.

Influences • Natural Sciences • Geometry: Hobbes seeks to build a “geometry of power”, to find out the natural laws that regulate society • His theory is actually framed as a theorem: he settles his premises one by one. . . Once we accept them, there is no way to escape the necessity of the conclusion.

Hobbes deduces the need for Leviathan and sovereignty from human nature. So, obedience towards the Sovereign is both rational and convenient for us.

Hobbes is both a. . . • Conservative – (ideas) • Revolutionary – (method) Thinker.

Biblical Monsters • Behemoth, the hippopotamus • Leviathan, the crocodile (Job, Ch. 41). Leviathan: “There is no power upon the earth which is compared with him”.

Leviathan First Part: lays the foundation of the system (Laws of Nature) Second Part: theorizes the conditions for the emergence of Leviathan

Anti-Aristotelian “men have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a great deale of griefe) in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all”

Ch. 13: Nature has made men equal… equal In ability, in both ability, • Strength: Bodily differences are not that big that the weakest cannot kill the strongest… • Mind: similarities are even greater… “For Prudence, is but Experience”. . . . and in hope

Equality of ability + equality of hope = Men become enemies -War-

“And because the condition of Man. . . the condition of Man Is a condition of Warre of every one against every one; in which case against every one is governed by his own Reason; and there is nothing he can make use of. . . In preserving his life against his enemyes; It followeth, that in such a condition, every man has the Right to every thing; even to has the Right to every thing one anothers body” (91)

Equality “there is nothing to which every man had not Right by Nature” (92) Insecurity “as long as this natural Right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man. . . ” (91)

Therefore. . . • “every man is Enemy to every man” every man is Enemy to every man • “In such condition, there is no place for Industry. . . And consequently no Culture of the Earth. . . ” • “. . . and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, violent death solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. ”

State of Nature: equality & Fear to a violent death

• “Justice is the constant Will of giving to every man his own. And therefore wehre there is no Own, that is, no Propriety, there is no Injustice; and where there is no coerceive Power erected, that is, where there is no Common-wealth, there is no Propriety; all men having Right to all things: Therefore where there is no Common-wealth, there nothing is Unjust. ”

• “Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre. . . ” • “. . . the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE. ”

No moral implications. . . • “The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin. No no Sin more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them. . . ” • “To this warre of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. ” and Injustice have there no place

Causes of quarrell in human nature In seeking. . . • Gain • Safety • Reputation • Competition • Diffidence • Glory VIOLENCE/WAR

Hobbes’ State of Nature is a-historical; it is a formal a-historical model logically deduced.

Fear of death (to a violent Fear of death) supports the foundation of the social order.

Law of Nature • “Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life. . . And to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved. ” (91) Right Law (liberty to do) (bound to do it)

The Laws of Nature. . . • Apply in “Foro interno” • Are immutable and aeternal

Ch. 14: Natural Laws & Contracts • “The RIGHT OF NATURE. . . Is the Liberty each man hath. . . To use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature, that is to say, of his own Life. . . ” (91) • Liberty = “absence of externall Impediments” (91)

Men’ final end is. . . • “the foresight of their own preservation. . . That is to say, of getting preservation themselves out from that miserable condition of war, which is necessarily consequent. . . To the passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep them in awe. . . ” (111)

First (Fundamental) Law of Nature: to Seek Peace “every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, alll helps, and advantages of Warre. ” (92)

The second Law follows. . . • “That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe. ” (92)

Achieving Peace. . . • In order to gain Security and the preservation of our own life (93) • Requires we renounce our rights. . . • Rights may be – Renounced – Transferred

• Contract: mutual transference of Rights (inmediate). “All Contract is mutuall translation, or change of Rights”(95). • Covenant (or Pact): one of the parts agrees in delivering the Thing contracted and leave the other to perform his part at some determinate time after

The only natural right I cannot give up. . . • “A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is alwayes voyd” (98).

Commonwealth • “But as men, for the attaining of peace, and conservation of themselves thereby, have made an artificial man, which we call a commonwealth; so also have they made artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end, to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power; and at the other end to their own ears. ” (144)

“Whatsoever is done to a man, conformable to his own Will signified to the doer, is no Injury to him. ” (104)

Covenant • Conditions: Individuals renounce all their Conditions: power to the Assembly, which gives shape to the sovereign power. After that moment the rest become subjects. The only right that I keep is not to obey the sovereign if he orders me to hurt myself.

Covenant • Cause: “foresight of their own Cause: preservation, and of a more contended life thereby”

“It is a real unity of them all, in one and the same person, one and the same person made by covenant of every man with every man. . . ”

Formula: “I authorize and give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner. ” (114)

“[T]he multitude so united in one person, is called a COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS this IS the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence. ” (114).

The Commonwealth “is one person, of whose acts a great one person multitude, by mutual covenants with one another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strenght and means of them all, as he shall expedient, for hteir peace and common defense” (114)

Covenant • Gains and losses: individuals get peace and security, but also accept inequalityemergence of propriety (119; 164)-and the alienation of their will and rights.

“[C]ovenants, without the sword, are but word” (Leviathan: 111) • The model of the state of nature is the foundation that serves Hobbes to justify the creation of the Leviathan, or artificial man, as the most rational solution to overcome the state of war between human beings. • Power simply is. We either have power or not. is • Power does not accept degrees: Power is either absolute or it is not power.

Men are freed from Covenants. . . • By Performing them • By being Forgiven

Forms of constitution • By Institution • By acquisition

By institution Individuals decide to stop the state of nature, or the permanent state of war of all against all, and agree everyone with against all everyone to institute an order. (chap. XVIII, 1)

By Institution “[T]he multitude so united in one person, is called a COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS this IS the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence. ” (114).

By Institution Leviathan has similar attributions that Yahve in the Genesis. Fear of each other supports this covenant.

By Institution (three moments) • 1. STATE OF NATURE • 1. MULTITUDE • 2. COVENANT • 2. PEOPLE • 3. COMMONWEALTH • 3. SOVEREIGN/SUBJE CTS

By Institution • The covenant transforms individuals in subjects. • Subjects are neither a multitude nor they Subjects are a people. They become a part of the body of Leviathan

By acquisition: • Men authorize the actions of those who have them in their hands by using force. Fear to others (or the Other, the conqueror) lies behind this covenant.

• The Unicity of power is what must be guaranteed. • No room for differences: “reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will”.

• Otherwise, the search for truth could trigger conflicts, struggle, and the…disappearance of the Commonwealth.

• Difference Sedition, factions. • Factions are treated not as criminals, but as Enemies.

Sovereignty • The Sovereign is a “mortal God. ” • Sovereignty is Sovereignty Absolute: there is no power bigger than it. Absolute Indivisible: power is one by its nature. If two powers Indivisible: emerge, war is going to decide between them up to they unify again. Incommunicable Inseparable Unlimited

The sovereign is the only one who is not obliged by the covenant, and keeps the natural condition.

The sovereign is the only source of truth, justice, and knowledge.

Truth cannot be a value in itself apart from Sovereignty. Those who are powerful do not need to be right; rather, it is power what changes opinions into truths

• The Sovereign’s word is the only truth.

God • Hobbes permanently appeals to God and the Bible (parts 3 and 4 of Leviathan are devoted to discuss the Christian commonwealth and the Kingdom of Darkness), but. . . • His theory builds on assumptions other than theological (natural laws)