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Western Political Thought

Notes pivotal role, for in the lawless state of nature they prompted individuals to contract and establish
a sovereign. These laws persisted through the state of nature into civil society, and were essentially
moral in nature, prescribing duties. They were morally obligatory, for the sovereign interpreted
and rendered them fully operative.
Warrender pointed out that there were two systems in Hobbes’ theory: a system of motives, and
a system of obligation. The system of motives ended with the supreme principle of self-preservation,
while the system of obligation closed with an obligation to obey natural law.
The fundamental law of nature was not self-preservation, but to seek peace, giving
a more social and less self-regarding appearance that is often associated with Hobbes’ theory.
These peace enjoining laws are not maxims of personal success nor even personal rules for keeping
alive, they are concerned with the conservation of society; and they are, to quote Hobbes, contrary
to our natural passions.
Hobbes understood political obligation as essentially based on a theory of duty within the natural
law tradition. There was a nexus between salvation and obedience, and political obligation was
essentially moral.
Macpherson (1973) contended that Hobbes’ theory of human nature was deduced from his analysis
of man’s materialistic behaviour within a bourgeois society governed by the market, and that the
theory was not universally valid. Such a view was necessary and possible only in a possessive
market society. The materialistic assumption enabled Hobbes to assume that individuals had an
equal need to be in continuous motion, and this equal need established an equal right and a moral
obligation. The market assumption enabled Hobbes to presume that men were equal in their
insecurity. “Hobbes was able to treat his political obligation as a moral obligation because it was
derived from a transfer of rights which he treated as moral rights”. Pitkin (1967) pointed out that
Hobbes tried to explain and defend political obligation so as to preclude acts of rebellion, revolt,
anarchy or civil war. Obligation followed from the law of nature, which dictated self-preservation,
and everything logically flowed from it.

6.5 Women and the Gender Question

Hobbes as an exponent of human equality argued that nature provided no rationale for inequality
of rights and privileges, nor were human relationships natural, for all authority was based on
consent. Consent meant submission willingly and voluntarily in exchange for protection of one’s
life. Since women were as capable as men, they did not require any protection from men. Protection
was required by both the subject and the child, who were dependent on the sovereign and parents
respectively. In the case of a child, it was the mother as a parent who constituted authority and
guaranteed protection by virtue of giving birth to the child. The child in the process granted her
its consent.
In the state of nature, every woman who had children became both a mother and a lord. A mother
lost the right of authority over her child if taken prisoner, in which case she selected the person
who would exert authority over her child in her absence. Hobbes described the idea of female
subordination as a human creation. Male heirs were preferred to females, for they were naturally
fitter for labour and danger. In a state of nature, the natural domination of the mother was
accepted, because it was she who could declare the father of her child.
For Hobbes, the family, like the state, was an artificial or a conventional institution and had to be
seen in strictly rational terms. It was a “civil person” by virtue of jurisdiction, not by virtue of
marriage or biological parenthood. It was not based on natural ties of sentiments between
generations, but, like the state, arose from the consent of its individual members. With regard to
who would govern within the family, one would assume that given Hobbes’ position on the
equality of sexes; he would grant joint rights and authority to both men and women. But this was

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