Did Hobbes demonstrate that a valid theory of government could be derived from a general theory of human nature?

The natural condition, where the desire to have as much as or more of a commodity than one’s neighbour prevails, extends to encompass values as well. If there is no agreement to adopt the values of the sovereign, then each man’s appreciation of right and wrong is correct. Since these values will vary from person to person, they will conflict and “warre” will ensue. Thus there can be no law, without a sovereign, because law cannot be upheld or enforced, unless everyone agrees on a “common” law. As such in the absence of law, there is no “just” or “unjust”. In Hobbes’s contemporary society, the granting of excessive choice to men created opportunities for the negative aspects of human nature to influence their behaviour in pursuit of “Glory”, one of the “principall causes of quarrell”. Hobbes’s pessimism about the nature of the individual is balanced by his belief that man, as a being capable of Reason, will never actually descend into a “state of nature” or “warre”. Put very simply, human nature plus Reason equals a need for government.

He employs a “scientific” method to link the actions resulting from the physiological drives and “Passions” within the individual to the politics of governments and states. Thus he demonstrates how the human condition causes and affects the process of government.

 

This scientific method seeks to draw a link between the physiologically based “Passions” of man to the psychology of the individual, and is best summarised by Alan Ryan:

“Hobbes believed as firmly as one could that all behaviour, whether of animate or inanimate matter, was ultimately to be explained in terms of particulate motion: the laws governing the motions of discrete material particles were the ultimate laws of nature, and in this sense psychology must be rooted in physiology and physiology in physics, while the social sciences, especially the technology of statecraft, must be rooted in psychology.”

As such, in Hobbes’s view, politics derives from human nature.  Therefore characteristics of the natural condition of man will influence and give rise to and influence politics.

This logic of this method, and thus its usefulness and the usefulness of Hobbes’s general theory of human nature as the basis for political behaviour, is disputed by various commentators. Noel Malcolm challenges Ryan’s evaluation of Hobbes’s method by explaining how the each step along the route from nature to politics requires the introduction of new concepts to form coherent links. He contests that understanding the nature of the physical make-up of an “artefact” does not constitute “understanding the intentions of the person who makes it or uses it”. This argument applies to the jump from “particulate motion” to “Appetites and Aversions”, and seems to imply that knowledge of a factor other than physics is required to establish desire and fear. If this argument is applied to the jump from “Appetites and Aversions” to a common moral philosophy (which is necessary in a society), then knowledge of what is good and evil is required to determine each individual’s values in a state of nature. Thus moral philosophy (“nothing else but a science of what is Good and Evil”), becomes a “science of intention” that is required to bridge the gap. Malcolm’s criticism of Ryan’s method supports the view that Hobbes was not a “social scientist” for whom politics was directly derived from physics, but simply “applied the method of physical science to the science of politics”. I believe that this interpretation is quite true, but that it does not diminish the effectiveness of the role of the human condition in Hobbes’s theory, due to the fact that throughout Leviathan, he continually highlights the distinction between “Consequences from the Accidents of Bodies Naturall,” and “Consequences from the Accidents of Politique Bodies”, thus creating, according to Malcolm, “a system of classification of the sciences, rather than a deductive method”.

Whatever Hobbes’s case for the origins of politics, he is adamant that there never existed a period in which man has actually lived in a state of nature, but has always had a system of government because it is necessary for his survival to do so. As such, man exists in civil society, and the collaboration of men in society has borne fruit in all of the things that we take for granted. If discipline were to break down in a state, then the natural condition of man would prevail, and men would “live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall.” With no requirement for those things that are by nature mutually beneficial,

“there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be brought in 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.”

As beings that would be solely concerned with bettering their lot at the expense of others, men would not enjoy the benefits of the concerted effort that society represents. Thus the natural condition of man represents the alternative to modern and progressive society, and human nature is at once the cause and the undoing of civil society.

However, this is not a case of “either/or”. Hobbes could identify in his contemporary society the ways in which human nature manifested itself to the detriment of “Peace”, arresting development and reversing benefits of ordered society. Having lived through the English civil war, Hobbes could justify the requirement for absolute authority to prevent such kingly one-upmanship as that which led to the attempts by Charles I to impose an unpopular religious practice on the Scots and to raise a navy to sail against the Dutch, whom he saw as becoming too powerful. The imposition of an unpopular prayer book on Scotland is an example of how an unchecked lust for Glory had reared its ugly head in the history that Hobbes was aware of. The Reformation in Europe, in its second century when Hobbes was around, represented the “substitution of Scripture for Church”; when men were allowed to interpret the Scriptures for themselves, private judgement and individual choice led to  

“a plurality of sects differing in theology, morality and politics.”

Naturally, these sects came into conflict, and irreversibly altered the structure and cohesion of European society forever.

Crucially for the formation of a theory of government by Hobbes, is that the obedience to a sovereign required by Hobbes is as strict as the natural condition of mankind is unpleasant. However, the benefits of government and the upholding of social order far outweigh the sacrifices of rights necessary for its establishment. Thus human nature provides the justification for the surrender of individual rights in the social contract. This, I believe, is also the most effective role of human nature in Hobbes’s establishment of a theory of government, since the effects of the concept are much easier for Hobbes to demonstrate. If one adheres to the view that Hobbes’s method was not “deductive”, but was simply an application of physical scientific method to “the science of politics”, then it is quite right to assert that he did indeed successfully derive, from a general theory of human nature, a system of government.

Bibliography

John Dunn and Ian Harris (eds.), Great Political Thinkers 8: Hobbes volume 2, Edward Elgar, 1997

John Dunn and Ian Harris (eds.), Great Political Thinkers 8: Hobbes volume 3, Edward Elgar, 1997

Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (ed.), Leviathan, Cambridge University Press, 2002

Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, Oxford University Press, 2002

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