Nick's Hobbes Discussion Notes

Thomas Hobbes:

Wrote the Leviathan

Leviathan argues that people should submit to royal authority because it has the unique power to protect the people from civil disorder.

Makes an argument for eternal and immutable natural rights and laws.

Contractarian.  What does contractarian mean?

-Specifies initial conditions, and the reasoning of agents within the initial condition.

Argument is for a social contract.

He considers first, the motivations of the agents involved in this social contract.

Agents/People have what are called “endeavors”.  Endeavors are motion within the body that is directed towards something or away from it.  These are simply desires and aversions. 

People as a whole are endowed with certain mental and physical qualities, these qualities insure that no person is invulnerable (all are subject to death and pain), and furthermore ensure that no one person can hold domination over others indefinitely.

Agents are self interested individuals.  They fear death and uncertainty and desire others to recognize their worth.  Individuals have limited affections and benevolence, but are interested in the workings of their environments.

Problems in societies and between people arise due to three things:

Competition, diffidence, and glory. (diffidence = distrust).

Hobbes calls his initial condition the state of nature:  which is the condition of humankind when there is no civil authority.

In this state there is a level playing field, a field of equals driven by their own self interests, it is a world devoid of the notion of personal properties and rights, it is a world where everyone struggles to attain all they can get for as long as they can keep it.  It is a war!

Life of man in the state of nature is a life of fear, danger of violent death, solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short.  In these conditions there is no society, no trade, no innovation, not technology.

Therefore, he says that the first and foremost right of people is:

That every person has the liberty to use their own power as they will for the preservation of themselves.

Corresponding to this first and foremost right is the first natural law:

Seek peace and follow it.

The second law:

Obliges one to be willing to make sacrifices for peace.

Be willing to lay down their right to all things and be content with it.  To lay down liberty against other people in accordance with how much the others are willing to lay down liberty.

These two laws require a contract, otherwise known as a commonwealth.

Contracts: mutual transferring of rights to promote other goods.

The only stable form of government according to Hobbes is:

Centralized power, in the monarch. 

Constraints on the monarch:

Constrained by the laws of nature not to try to exceed the rights he has been granted for the purpose of creating peace and enforcing contracts between people.

But if people in the state of nature are self motivated and desire self interest, couldn’t this lead to problems in a monarch?

Therefore: submission to absolute political authority is the only way to achieve peace and stability.  However, individuals do have the liberty to disobey the government commands that would require them to sacrifice their lives or their honor when the contract does not require it for its own self-preservation. 

If the commonwealth is broken by and individual they are expelled from the commonwealth and plunged into the state of nature, prison for instance.