To analyse the following piece of Leviathan: "The Obligation of subjects to the Sovereign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by Nature

Sara Serras Pereira

November 2005

Politics

Essay n°1: Leviathan

In this essay, I intend to analyse the following piece of Leviathan: "The Obligation of subjects to the Sovereign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them. For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished. The Soveraignty is the Soul of the Common-wealth; which once departed from the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it. The end of Obedience is Protection; which, wheresoever a man seeth it, either in his own, or in anothers sword, Nature applyeth his obedience to it, and his endeavour to maintaine it. And though Soveraignty, in the intention of them that make it, be imortall, yet is it in its own nature, not only subject to violent death, by foreign war; but also through the ignorance, and passions of men, in hath in it, from the very institution, many seeds of a naturall mortality, by Intestine Discord." (chap. 21, p.153).

This extract can be found in Leviathan’s Part 2, ‘Of Common-wealth’. It is preceded by ‘Of Man’, in which after having described men, their defining features, (such as the use of words, reason, judgement), Hobbes concludes that because men are born equal, but at the same time differ immensely in their opinions, and in the objects of their passions, no man can assume that his own judgement is better than that of one other, and, in dubious situations, men cannot come to any kind of agreement on what is good or bad; right or wrong. The solution Hobbes provides for this ethical relativism constitutes his political theory, and is developed in Part 2: because in the state of nature the only rule for men’s actions is ‘The Right of Nature’ i.e., ‘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; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.’ (Chap. 14, p. 91), this state of nature can only be one of permanent war of all against all, for people’s independent judgements on what is good for them will inevitably lead to clashes among them.

Thus, Hobbes’s conclusion is that clearly, such natural right to seek self-preservation is self-defeating, and men in the state of nature will come to realise that only rational thing to do in order to escape such a state of permanent fear and ‘diffidence’ is to renounce their right of private judgement over what is to count as dangerous, and accept for themselves the judgement of a common authority – and because no man can pretend to be a better judge than one other, than the choices made by that sovereign on behalf of the people are not likely to be worse than the ones one would take for oneself, their value relies on the fact that they bring agreement and peace: the main role of the sovereign, therefore, and his only obligation, is to guarantee that people are out of danger. “The Obligation of subjects to the Sovereign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them.” From this obligation to make sure that his people are safe, it follows that the sovereign should be, according to Hobbes, fully empowered to maintain peace by whatever means, and, for instance, ‘it is directly annexed to the Soveraignty, to be Judge of what Opinions and Doctrines are averse, and what conducing to Peace; and consequently, on what occasions, how farre, and what, men are to be trusted withall, in speaking to Multitudes of people; and who shall examine the Doctrines of all bookes before they be published. For the Actions of men proceed from their Opinions; and in the well governing of Opinions, consisteth the well government of mens Actions, in order to their Peace, and Concord. And though in matter of Doctrine, nothing ought to be regarded but the Truth; yet this is not repugnant to regulating of the same by Peace […].’ (chap. 18)

Such a restriction of one’s liberty of thought, for the sake of peace might seem shocking to us nowadays, and remind us of totalitarian regimes. However, one should not forget that Hobbes was writing in the seventeenth-century, and by writing this he intended to make sure that the sovereign’s power would be above that of churches, since religion was the cause of most civil wars across Europe, and the only means to control the power of such institutions was to fully allow the sovereign to determine a public doctrine. However, as Tuck notes, ‘this was mainly a negative role: to align ...

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Thus, one can see that there are limitations to the sovereign’s power: he should only restrict people’s liberty of choice to that extent he judges necessary in order to prevent civil war, and not any beyond that. However, these limitations are rather moral duties upon the sovereign than rights which his subjects can enforce against him: not until he threatens their lives can they legitimately break his rule: ‘For the right men have by Nature to protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no Covenant be relinquished.’

Nonetheless, Hobbes does recognise that a sovereign who neglects his duties to such extent that he no more satisfies people’s basic needs, though not directly threatening their lives, will probably be unable to keep his authority for a long time: ‘The Soveraignty is the Soul of the Common-wealth; which once departed from the Body, the members doe no more receive their motion from it.’ It is, however, clear in Hobbes’s account that in the relationship of representation the sovereign embodies the people, and they are to accept his decisions as if they were their own: thus there is no interaction between subjects and sovereign, and indeed, the people can only act through the person of the sovereign; in the state of nature, they are but a ghost, incapable of acting because incapable of finding any ground for agreement. Paradoxically enough, Hobbes, in the above quote, seems to recognise that the people have indeed some power: but it is only the power of agreeing on overthrowing the ruler on extreme situations, when temporary factors bring agreement among them (for instance, if the sovereign is so neglectful as to let a majority of people suffer from hunger). However all they can do after overthrowing the ruler is return to state of nature, in which they will see the necessity of establishing a new contract and a new ruler: ‘The narrowness of the rights of the right which the citizen possesses against the sovereign […] is thus a function of the general narrowness of the rights which people possess under any circumstances; and that in turn, as we have seen, is a function of the impossibility of finding an agreed, coherent, and compelling moral theory of any elaborateness or complexity.’ (R. Tuck, Hobbes, 1989 p. 75)

As for the last part of the quote, (“The end of Obedience…by Intestine Discord”), we see that paradoxically, though the people all agree on the fact that they need to follow the judgement of one single authority so as to be protected from the potential threat they represent to each others, this rule can only be enforced upon them by fear. Hobbes’s justification for this is that if they have no other reason to stick to rules but the idea that they should do so, then they will inevitably, subject to their natural selfishness, be inclined to pursue their own interests, even when that means causing harm to others (which is usually the case, for there is a discrepancy between individual and common interest).

The problem that follows is that, if people are so unwilling to stick to the contract, even knowing it is in their own interest to do so, then how did they come, while still in the state of nature, to establish that same contract?

In Leviathan, a common authority is created when everyone in a state of natures agrees ‘to submit their Wills, everyone to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgement’ (Leviathan ch.17)

Hobbes talks about the contract in terms of a promise made by the people, to each others and not to the sovereign, in which they agree to take one person’s or assembly’s judgement’s as their own – however, he also claims that in a state of nature, the ‘bonds of words are too weak to bridle mens ambition, avarice, anger, and other Passions, without the fear of some coercive power’ (Leviathan ch.14).

The only explanation for someone sticking to this promise while in a state of nature, where diffidence regulates the relationships between people, relies on the fact that this promise is not made to the sovereign, but, as I mentioned above, to the other prospective citizens. Therefore, the fact that I keep my word, and take the sovereign’s judgement as my own, will probably not be a disadvantage in dealing with other people, even if they don’t: it won’t be an advantage either, for only if everyone follows the same rule will the commonwealth be instituted.

We could think that the life in the state of nature is so miserable that it compels the multitude to keep their word only in order to abandon such a lifestyle, and in that case, only if either the sovereign cannot satisfy the people’s basic needs, and condemns them to starvation or extreme poverty, or he cannot find the appropriate laws to control his people’s opinions will his regime come to an end.

Of the former case I have already spoken, as far as the latter is concerned, Hobbes was, curiously enough, particularly concerned about humanists, a kind to which he had belonged himself in his youth, for, he thought, they misread the texts of the Ancients; they praised republican liberties out of their context, and wanted it for themselves, whereas for Hobbes it was precisely those wishes for individual liberties that could lead to the ‘death’ of the commonwealth, for the freedom of men only means discord.

In conclusion, I shall say that although Hobbes’s account of how to govern a state seems to inevitably lead to a very authoritarian rule, such commonwealth could just as well turn out to be a libertarian state, since much is left – and that is, I think, what seems most striking to us today – to the character of the sovereign.

A parallel could be drawn with Marx’s thought, if we consider that such sovereign sought to keep his authority by increasing his subjects’ wealth – which Hobbes does indeed suggest – and, introducing this materialist point of view, we could imagine a hobbesian state to be very close to Marx’s ideal communist society: one where the individuals wellbeing would be assured, leaving them free to pursue their own interests in different areas.

Such comparison, however, ignores the fact that whereas for Hobbes there is no such thing as society, and only the representative can indeed act, for Marx the opposite is true, i.e., the people are those who have the real power; moreover, whereas Hobbes thinks that authority of one person or assembly is the only way to avoid civil war, Marx rather sees the rule of one group of persons as the source of internal conflict.

Whereas one seeks to abolish freedom, and sees in it the source of all ‘Intestine Discord’, the other seeks to free the man in order to eliminate conflict.

Both, however, suggest rather extreme types of government; both produced, in different ways, visionary accounts of society, and, what is more, it should not be forgotten that Hobbes sought to – as did Marx – abolish preconceived ideas: he denied that kings’ power could be of a divine nature, and introduced the idea that it actually came from the people – although his conception of representation was, as we’ve seen, very different of our modern interpretation of it (which implies a two-way, interactive relationship), he was the one who introduced this concept, undeniably a crucial one in modern politics.

Bibliography:

Hobbes, T., Leviathan (ed. by R. Tuck)

Tuck, R., Hobbes, Oxford 1989