Page 101 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 6: Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes did not attribute the predicament of the natural person to either sin or depravity, but to Notes
human nature. The individual was the author of his own ruination. The state of nature degenerated
into a state of war, “a war of every man against every man”. Such a condition might not exist all
over the world, other than in America where the savages lived in a nasty and brutish manner. The
state of nature was a condition when political authority failed:
The state of nature dramatizes what Hobbes takes to be the fundamental dilemma of
human existence: that men both need each other and “grieve” each other. Most social
life, he tells us, is for gain or for glory, and as we have seen, men pay for these
pleasures by a host of small pains and humiliation at each other’s hands. Such things
are but hints of what would happen did we not live under government. They would
very rapidly have impelled men into civil society, so that the state of nature cannot
have existed for long, though it is approximated whenever authority breaks down.
Hobbes was not referring to an actual historical process of development of human society. The
conditions in which men lived were of their own making. Civil society either controlled or
suppressed the natural instincts, but never changed them. Interestingly, Hobbes toned the aggressive
view of human nature in De Cive. He described the natural state as one of war, which was not
responsible for the evil in human nature. In a footnote, he accepted the natural gregariousness of
human beings as indicating a desire to come together. Logically, civil societies were not mere
meetings, but bonds, that made faith and compacts necessary. For Hobbes, it was the absence of
“faith” or trust and not the presence of an evil quality in man that caused human misery in the
natural state. The absence of faith was partly due to limited natural reason, and partly due to
human inability to decipher the thoughts and motives of others.
Natural Laws
In a state of nature, individuals enjoyed complete liberty, including a natural right to everything,
even to one another’s bodies. The natural laws, 19 in all, and considered as Articles of Peace, were
dictates of reason. These were not “laws” or “commands”. Subsequently, Hobbes, like Grotius,
argued that the laws of nature were also proper laws, since they were “delivered in the word of
God”. These laws were counsels of prudence. It prescribes types of civil manners that promote
peaceful behaviour.
Natural laws in Hobbes’ theory did not mean eternal justice, perfect morality or standards to
judge existing laws as the Stoics did. They did not imply the existence of common good, for they
merely created the common conditions which were necessary to fulfil each individual good. These
laws were immutable. Of the 19, there were three important natural laws: (a) seek peace and
follow it; (b) abandon the natural right to things; and (c) that individuals must honour their
contracts. Hobbes stressed the fact that peace demanded mutual confidence, for society depended
on mutual trust. This led him to conclude that supreme power ought to coincide with supreme
authority. Governments had to be always backed by force, if not direct, at least, implicit, for
“covenants without swords are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all”.
Social Contract

Since the first law of nature enjoined individuals to seek peace, the only way to attain it was
through a covenant leading to the establishment of a state. Individuals surrendered all their
powers through a contract to a third party who was not a party to the contract, but nevertheless
received all the powers that were surrendered. The commonwealth was constituted when the
multitude of individuals were united in one person, when every person said to the other, “I
Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my self, to this Man, or this Assembly of men, on
this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner”.
In the seventeenth century, the notion of the contract as a free agreement between self-interested
individuals became an answer to the problems of social cohesion. The third party was a consequence

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