Disclaimer: the Debate This!-series aims to promote civil and open discussion about philosophical and political ideas. Every Debate This!-post will start out with a premise (often an idea by a great historical thinker), on which I will provide my personal thoughts. I don’t pretend to have the right answers, but instead hope to learn and gain new insights from an honest debate in the comments below. Today’s premise is:
Government is a necessary evil - according to Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is often considered as the founder of modern political philosophy. His most famous and important work is Leviathan. In his magnum opus he (among other things) argues that a strong government is a necessity of a peaceful civil society. This government is represented by a sovereign who has absolute civil, judicial, military and even ecclesiastical powers.
Hobbes arrives at this conclusion in three steps, that build on each other:
State of nature
According to Hobbes all humans are created equal, but naturally don’t desire the same things. Since all men are ‘equal in faculties of body and mind’, everyone is naturally willing to fight one another to have their own self-interests fulfilled. Hobbes calls this the ‘war of all against all’.
In this state every man has a natural right to do anything what he sees fit to preserve his own life. As a result he becomes apolitical and asocial. There is no right or wrong, no good or bad. Since there are no laws, there can’t be any injustice.
But although humans don’t share the same desires, they do share the same fear: the summum malum or greatest evil, the fear of a violent death.
When man is in his state of nature however, this summum malum is always present. Or to put it in Hobbes’ own words:
“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 the use of 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.”
So men want to avoid this state of nature and seek out to establish a social contract.
Social contract
The social contract is created when individuals come together and cede some of their individual rights so that others cede theirs. This ends the war of all against all and makes human life more peaceful.
For example, I cede my rights to kill you and use your possessions to fulfill my desires if you cede the same rights.
However, since men are naturally driven by their self-interests there is no guarantee that both parties will keep up their end of the deal.
For example, I say I agree to not kill you to make sure you won’t kill me, but still murder you in your sleep.
That’s why, according to Hobbes, ‘a terror of some power’ is necessary to keep up the social contract and make sure everyone abides by its rules.
The sovereign
This terror must be provided by an absolutist government with a sovereign at its head. Without it the social contract will cease to exist.
Therefore every man must give up his right to govern himself to this sovereign or else is doomed to live a ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ life.
Personal thoughts
Although Hobbes’ arguments might seem logical at first, I think his whole theory is predicated on the idea that humans are naturally driven by their self-interests. If this isn’t the case, his whole argument falls apart.
So what about clear cases of altruistic behaviour? Hobbes would probably argue that these are fundamentally also driven by self-interest, but this seems like a far too simple explanation for such a complex phenomenon. Scientists of multiple fields have been studying altruism for ages, so to simply discard it as an extension of egoism seems faulty.
His argument that justice and morality can only exist where laws rule, also seems like an oversimplification. Especially in the light of modern moral philosophy and even biology: Levinas states that the primacy of ethics is derived from the encounter with and the acknowledgement of an other human being (‘the Other’). Nietzsche argues that master-slave morality is universal. And biologists are more and more convinced that morality is an evolutionary product.
What do you think by Hobbes’ ideas? Is a government necessary to have a peaceful civil society? Or is man simply to absorbed by his self-interests to naturally live in peace with each other?
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Even if humans exhibit genuine altruistic behavior, how does this behavior make Hobbes's argument fall apart? People still act selfishly most of the time. Without an external entity, I think Hobbes argues that we are still in the state of war with small groups where the members may act in the others interest, but we still have uncooperative groups that seek what's best for their small group. We are still fighting without an external sovereign. What's the alternative mechanism for leaving the state of war / state of nature?
I will be completely honest with you.
Adolf Hitler was the Leviathan. The head of state who must be trusted absolutely with the governing of his nation. Had he been able to conquer the entire world, the chaos would eventually fall into place, and things would become stable. The workers would have their nationalistic socialism, and all would be right with the world.
However, I do not bow to authority. I do not bow to governments. I do not bow to Hitler.
Do you? Or does the leviathan within yourself scream out, desiring to gobble up Hitler, and other leviathans who think "If everyone followed my political philosophy, the world would be better?"
I agree with Hobbes completely. There are people that are genuinely altruistic as well as those who wouldn't hesitate to hurt you given an opportunity. You could only get away without having a governing institution if everyone were the same, and we are not. We need a rulebook, an arbitrator, and an executioner.
But should rulebook, arbitrator and executioner all be combined in one person at the top?
I am not sure about one person, but power must aggregate somewhere. A person or a group of people - it doesn't make a big difference. It is still a minority controlling a majority.
That is, unless we develop a decentralized blockchain-technology based nation.
Just kidding. It would be the same anyway. =)
I vehemently oppose Hobbes's positions and I find them nefarious at best. There is a simple, logical counter argument for all these: Remove the psychological barrier, which is held and maintained by a mind driven by the opposition of duality, that dictates that being "human" is to be guided (by another jaded god) into sullen submission. Self-centered, yes we are. But we are also in constant evolutionary flux and on top of that, amazingly adaptive. Hobbes's ideas ordain that man is to be treated as nothing more than an uncultured, untrustworthy savage. If any of you personally comply with that derailed train of thought, please remove your flat cap before bowing down in front of your (abstractly chosen) overlord. In today's world, we are spreading ideas and knowledge and we have the infrastructure and cognitive abilities to do so, fruitfully. In Hobbes's run down world, nothing is holier than a whip lash.
Synopsis: Hobbes's ideas were shit back then, they are still shit now.
Great post mate. Upvoted and followed!
Hobbes wrote Leviathan partly as response to a very brutal English civil war, so his idea of man is probably greatly influenced by this.
If he was alive today, his idea of an 'uncultured, untrustworthy savage' could vary. Although one could argue that even modern man still behaves like a savage from time to time.
Thanks for the follow and compliment ;-)
Does it have to be all humans? Wouldn't it still work if it was "most"? Or "a significant number"? You don't need many drug cartels to throw any altruistic society off kilter.
I guess his argument was a "worst case scenario" kind of deal. I mean, if the members of a society are really altruistic, then what's wrong with making the social contract official anyway? Now, we all know the bad things big government can lead to, but in the context of Hobbes' thinking itself it makes sense, it sounds rational.
But yeah the problem with all politics and economics is that they're predicated on theories about what human nature is really like, and not even psychologists or biologists know what it's really like, so I don't know how political thinkers managed to convince themselves that they have the answer. It's the reason economics can't predict shit, cos they assume people are rational actors, so they build up this model of the human as a homo economicus.
I think we need to have segregated societies where we can try different models. People could move there willingly. Preferably they would also contain a number of psychopaths so we can see how the society deals with them.
Who's going to willingly join the autocratic and totalitarian society though? :-D
CEOs, drug lords, Popes, Beyonce...
societies without governments have existed, and often with less murder rates and death than those with governments.
Interesting. Could you share an example?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
this book has a lot
Thanks, will check it out!
@gamesjoyce
Great content!
Thanks for sharing!
I don't truly believe government is an evil to begin with. It's human nature which requires a government and a social construct and it's human nature which destroys that social construct. This is who democracy is the best for of government because the people and the government weigh each other out and it is harder to corrupt. The problem however is that once the people realize they can, they vote themselves out of the system so they don't have to work.
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