Page 104 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes poor and nasty lives that individuals led prior to its establishment, and enabled them to pursue
their interests. It was the ruthlessness of individuals that made the indivisible power of the state
an absolute necessity. To Machiavelli’s emphasis on interests, Hobbes added the dimension of
fear, and provided a comprehensive theory of political absolutism that reconciled legitimate political
authority with conflicting yet justified human demands. The sovereign created enough order to
ensure that competition between discrete individuals became peaceful and orderly:
The use of laws, which are but rules themselves is not to bind the people from all
voluntary actions; but to direct and keep them in such a motion as not to hurt themselves
by their own impetuous desires, rashness, or indiscretion, as hedges are set, not to
stop travellers, but to keep them in the way.
Hobbes stipulated that for ensuring civil peace, lesser associations could exist only with the
permission of the sovereign. Hobbes did not trust the motives of private associations and factions,
for he saw them as a seed-bed for subversion. He subordinated the church to the sovereign. The
church, being a corporation, would have a head who had to be a secular sovereign. The teachings
of the church were lawful only when authorized by the state. Though a materialist, Hobbes
professed faith in God and believed in the essential teachings of Christianity.
The cause for disorder, according to Hobbes, was general desirousness among individuals who
were equal. The problem got compounded in a situation of scarcity. Social peace was only possible
when individuals abandoned or restricted their passions and appetites, or if the available pool of
resources was increased. Since the second option was not feasible, he preferred the first. There
was no possibility of a metamorphosis of human nature. Instead, the political order was devised
to accept human egoism and self-interest. The state was no longer visualized as a moral institution
that would transform individuals. It was to restrain individuals through the overwhelming power
of the sovereign, without preventing the pursuit of their desires. Since the state existed for
individuals to fulfil their aspirations and ensure their well-being, Hobbes was therefore an
individualist and a utilitarian. The sovereign’s position is similar to a referee in a football match
as the grand master of the rules. The political system for Hobbes meant a system of rules which
was only possible if there was civil peace. A system of rules could become operative only if justice
was understood as fairness, equality of rights and equality of treatment. To the question how
would egotists be expected to act fairly towards one another and Hobbes’ answer to individuals
was follow the cardinal principle of ‘do not that to others, you would not have done to yourself’.
Fairness did not demand that individual forsake their egotism but that they imaginatively substitute
others for oneself. Hobbes’ equation of justice with fairness and equality has become part of
political lexicon of subsequent liberalism. Further more Hobbes also made it clear that it was only
with the creation of a common political language that political order was possible. To understand
political order as being involving power, authority, law and institutions would be simplistic. The
commonness of the meanings in politics depended on the ruling power capable of enforcing them,
that is, declaring the precise meaning of right and punishing those who refused to accept the
assertion. When this authority was prevented from enforcing definitions then the city was reduced
to a condition where each member was at liberty to assign to words the meanings he chose.
Hobbes rejected private reason as it not led to confusion of meanings but also destroyed the body
politic as a communicating whole.
Hobbes’ sovereign stood outside the society, and it was only fear and interest that supplied the
reason for his existence. However, his analysis of power was over-simplistic, for power required
not only the elimination of hindrances but also getting the citizens to participate actively. Hobbes
separated community and public will, and it was Rousseau who subsequently “revived the older
notion of a community as a corporate fellowship and then endowed it with the unity of will
associated with the Hobbesian sovereign”. Hobbes defined “representation by the way in which

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