Hobbes

Lecture:
State, government and coercion:
- Topic: the justification of coercion & governmental authority.
- We will ask:
o Can we justify coercive political authority?
o If so, what ought such authority to look like?
 Are we okay with democratic authority but not archaic?
o How can we achieve just and stable political institutions?
 To survive
- We begin with the richest tradition in political theory
o Political authority rests on a ‘Social Contract’
o Hobbes; Kant; Rawls; Rousseau
The ‘social contract’ as a liberal idea:
- Liberalism… in justifying government:
o Does not appeal to God, the ‘spirit of the people’, the ‘common good’
o Puts individuals at the centre
 Justifying government to each and every person who is subject under the authority
o Treats justification of government as owed to every person under it
o Takes all persons to be free and equal
 Assumption
 Because they’re free, burden of justifying government placed on the one trying to impose a government
- The challenge for liberals
o Find one story that justifies government to every person
- Candidate story #1: ‘Political authority rests on consent’
o Problems of this story:
 No existing authority meets test fully, but test itself may be too strict
 People are born into systems- no-one is asked whether they’re okay with having a government
 What if you give your consent but then change your mind? Logistical struggle
 Should there be checks of consent?
o Not all coercion needs consent (e.g. self-defence, duties of care etc)
o Some persons unable to give consent (babies; unconscious patients)
o Obtaining/giving consent for everything can be cumbersome (GDPR)
From consent to social contract:
- Candidate #2: ‘Political authority rests on hypothetical consent’
o If you have reason to want government to be democratic, and your government already is democratic, government is
justified to you.
o But: having reason to want something ≠ consent (e.g. contracts)
 Shouldn’t be bound just because certain conditions are met
 Need to be able to back out
o A hypothetical agreement is not an agreement at all’ (Dworkin)
 Not asking view at all- just saying, well you have reason to agree to you should agree. Individual not
involved in the transaction - merely passive and receiving which isn’t liberalism
- Candidate #3: ‘Political authority rests on implicit consent’
o If you want some things (security; fairness; freedoms etc), and getting them requires existence of government, you
consent to government.
 If you want the end [government], then you also want the means.
o Social contract: implicit social agreement to live under government
o Different ways to identify existence & content of that agreement
o Rawls: ‘contract’ metaphor reminds us that our social agreement is
 Public
 Between equals
 Not a list of our preferences, but of our commitments to others [contracts] - record of what you’re
committed to.
Hobbes:
- Born in 1588, dies in 1679.
- From 1640 to 1651 flees English civil war between Parliamentarians and Royalists, lives in France.
o The fragility of politics
- Influenced by the ‘new science’ of Galileo and Descartes
- Enlightenment person: Hobbes tries to construct a rational and scientific account of political authority, without any resort to
the supernatural.