Jurisprudence (2) : Hobbes
Government is justified because without it we will destroy each other
Topic: the justification of coercion & governmental authority.
We will ask:
– Can we justify coercive political authority?
– If so, what ought such authority to look like? Democratic or despotic?
– How can we achieve just and stable political institutions? We want to keep the state running in the long run.
We begin with the richest tradition in political theory
– Political authority rests on a ‘Social Contract’ ; a form of agreement in society
– Hobbes; Kant; Rawls; Rousseau
The ‘social contract’ as a liberal idea
- Liberalism
• To justify the state, you don’t appeal to God, ‘spirit of people’ or common good (stuff that sounds supernatural or
paranormal).
• Instead, you justify government by putting individuals in the centre (the task of justifying government is giving a
story to each person, as to why they are bound by government)
• We have to assume that everybody is entitled to a story, they are free and equal individuals - you need to give them
a reason why their freedom is limited by government, and this is okay.
- We agree on 2 things
(a) A justification of political authority must be addressed to everyone
(b) A justification must speak to each person individually, and explain why that person, rather than someone else,
has reason to accept political authority.
• This rules out some arguments in favour of political authority such as ‘we must have government because God
says so’ Not everyone is religious, and religious people do not all believe in the same divine ting, so the God
argument only addresses some people.
• Liberal philosophers try to justify political authority by means of one story that works for each person
- The Challenge of liberalism
• As people differ radically, is it possible to come up with one story that speaks to everyone? We have to start with
things we all share.
• The social contract theory : there is one story that we can give to all?
Story (1) : political authority relies on consent
- If there is no consent = no authority
- Criticism
(i) When did ever give consent? Nobody asked me whether we should have a democracy, what forms government
will take etc. The most we can say is that I was born and raised within a political system in which state
institutions were already running, and you’re playing your part in it. Not walking away from or failing to object
to a society and its government is not the same as having consented to those things. No existing authority meets
test fully.
(ii) This test is too strict; suppose you give consent, and you change your mind, does it take away government
authority ? How often do we check that our consent is ongoing (see GDPR : maintaining consent all the time is
burdensome)?
(iii) Not all coercion requires consent : Duty of care exists not because of consent, you are still liable (it is not
morally right to say that because you haven’t consent, you are not responsible for the consequences)
(iv) Some people cant give consent : babies; unconscious patients
Story (2) : Political authority rests on hypothetical consent
- I have reason to agree to it, on the condition that others agree to do the same. If I have reason to be bound by a
system of democratic government as long as other people agree to do the same, and the existing system is in fact
democratic, the system is justified towards all of you regardless of the fact that no one actually asked you to endorse
it. All that matters is that you have reason to agree to the system.
• If you have reason to want a democratic government, and you are living in a government that is already
democratic, this government is justified to you. (If you have reason to agree to, and conditions are satisfied, there
is no need for additional consent)
Page 1 of 32
,- Criticism :
(i) Having reason to want / agree to something is not equivalent of consent (if you have reason to agree to sell me
your bike for 50 pounds, you still need to sign the contract)
(ii) Hypotheticals are fictions, and we ought to do better than rely on fictions when we attempt to justify
government.
(iii) A hypothetical agreement is not an agreement at all — Dworkin (If I tell you that you are bound you
government because you have reason to be, I am not asking your view at all)
Story (3) : Political Authority rests on implicit consent
- Your consent to government is implicit, entailed by your existing beliefs about what people in your community owe
to each other and how their relations are to be governed.
• How do we infer this? Infer things from what people want require government
• If I want certain things in society for myself (security, fairness, freedom) and getting these things require
government, you want the means (government). If having a government is a necessary means for achieving those
means, then by endorsing the ends you implicitly endorse the means
- Social contract: implicit social agreement to live under government
• Different ways to identify existence & content of that agreement
- Criticism :
(i) The problem is that this only refers to you, don’t apply to everybody
- 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 are not just wish lists, but a record
of what you are committed to)
The social contract rests on the assumption that there is an implicit social agreement to live under a political authority
Page 2 of 32
,The logic of Leviathan
- how the human body works (physics) — how humans behave (anthropology, psychology) — how we interact
(sociology) — how we can change terms of interaction (reason) — how we should govern ourselves (politics)
- Problem : Given our nature, how should we govern our societies?
- Solution : Only through the creation of absolute sovereign — we want to know whether Hobbes’s description is
plausible and whether his solution follows.
• Political authority is based on the covenant (social contract)
• Your reason to enter the covenant : it saves you from a lot worse
• But the covenant can only do that if it creates an absolute sovereign.
(1) HOW WE WORK : HUMAN BODIES
Hobbes’s view of man is shaped by Galileo’s new insights about motion. He translates doctrines of physics into claims
about man and politics. Man, like other physical objects, keeps moving until something (death, in the case of man) stops
him.
- The reason we are alive is because the stuff inside of us is in motion (Galileo - law of inertia - everything in nature
wants to maintain its state, unless there is some force exercised)
- All human function are based on the law of inertia : emotions, desires (motion towards from what we think is good or
bad for us), will (the decision to realise our desires), reason (our capacity to calculate how to realise our desires),
freedom (ability to move), equality (sameness).
• We are free when we suffer no physical impediments to motion
• Freedom is consistent with fear and necessity
- In terms of equality, we are more or less the same - size, shape = equal (physically equal)
• He assumes that people are sufficiently similar in their mental and physical attributes that no one is invulnerable
nor can expect to be able to dominate the others.
• There is natural equality of mankind (unlike Aristotle where he states that a social order can mirror a natural
hierarchy where a better person is distinguished from the less good. ex. Men from women; adults from children;
free men from slave
- Hobbes assumes that people generally “shun death”, and that the desire to preserve their own lives is very strong in
most people.
• He differs with his predecessors’ views (Aristotle) who thought that there was some kind of natural attraction
toward the good, and toward life in society. He thinks that there is an aversion to death
Note :
- Hobbes argues that humans are not political in nature, our association depends on an agreement to observe justice and
we need common standards of right and wrong to regulate our affairs.
(2) HOW WE INTERACT
In the state of nature, human instinct based on self-preservation drives men into conflict with one another. Because of
the natural equality in mankind, there will be no perpetual winner in the competition for self-preservation. Conditioned
by scarcity, we are grappled with continuous fear in the state of nature. The combined pressure of competition,
diffidence, and vainglory leads to the war of all against all, and to life that is ‘poor, solitary, nasty, brutish and short’.
- We are alive, we want to stay alive (law of inertia)
• Given that there isn’t enough stuff to go around (resource scarcity), our instinct of self-preservation makes it
likely that we will enter into conflict.
• Because of our basic equality (sameness), there would be no perpetual winner in the conflict for self-preservation.
- Our equality = no perpetual winner in conflict for self-preservation
• the nature of man, we find three principle causes of quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly,
In
Glory.
- In the war of men against men, the notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice do not exist.
- Hobbes famous observation is that life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short’.We are in the
state of nature. The state of nature is the state of war
• The right of each to all things invites serious conflict, especially if there is competition for resources, as there will
surely be over at least scarce goods.
• People will quite naturally fear that others may invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an
anticipatory defence.
• He isn’t telling us that the state of nature is bad because of the conflict, because of scarcity and self-preservation,
we are going to live in continuous fear. We are afraid, more likely to do things we would not do.
Page 3 of 32
, • State of nature = perpetual state of necessity for every person.
- The State of nature is a perpetual state of necessity for every person, where you can do whatever needed for
self-preservation
• So, if we don’t do something, we are doomed to live in a ‘State of Nature’
Hobbes’ Methodology (Alan Ryan)
- Hobbes’s science of politics is a form of blueprint making — sets out a rational strategy for individuals placed in the
dangerous and anxiety-ridden state of nature, where it is assumed that individual need to self-preserve and their
means of survival is minimal.
• He sets out what these rational individuals must do if they are to form a political society (not predict what they
will do).
• He despised the habit of showing off historian knowledge without understanding the current age’s dilemmas.
• He opposes to the idea of taking past political actors, beliefs or systems as authoritative models in current
conditions.
• We cannot follow blindly as we would repeat their errors and refuse to learn from experience.
Critique : state of nature (Alan Ryan)
(i) Hobbes writes of the ‘condition of mankind by nature’ without historical accuracy, he states that the state of nature
is simply the condition where we are forced into contact with each other in absence of superior authority that can
lay down and enforce rules to govern our behaviour towards each other.
• He thought that the Indians of North America were still living in the state of nature, the inhabitants of Britain had
been in this condition during the Civil War .
• The state of nature is the condition of civilised people deprived of stable government.
• Alan Ryan has argued that this can be seen as a simple thought experiment
(ii) There are other societies which are acephalous
• Alan Ryan has noted that there are many societies that are acephalous (lacks political leaders or hierarchies),
which persist for long periods with no apparent tendency to self-destruction.
• Hobbes suggests that this existence is impossible to explain, we must fall into a state of ‘a war of all against all’
because there is no rules, no authority, and therefore a threat to each other.
• If what Hobbes says is true, these societies would self-destruct. There are reasons they would not.
[Critique] Alan Ryan has pointed out that there are acephalous societies that lack political authority and hierarchies
which persist for long periods without no apparent tendency to self-destruction as envisaged by Hobbes. For Hobbes,
the state of nature is the condition of mankind deprived of stable government. If Hobbes is right, acephalous societies
would self-destruct even though there is clear evidence that they would not. I think Hobbes has played down the
existence of these societies and this is a flaw in Hobbes’s analysis of the state of nature.
State of nature (Alan Ryan)
- Hobbes considers men in an ungoverned situation, where they are rational (able to calculate consequences), self-
interested and vulnerable to one another — essentially anxious, because they understand cause and effect, passage of
time and have sense of own morality.
• Man is heedful/aware of the future, no present success acts as an assurance for the future.
• Each of us has the natural right and duty to preserve ourselves, and this right is an equal right. You have no greater
right over anything that I have, and I have no greater right over anything than you have. We all have a right to all
things, we have no obligation to defer to someone else or yield to them.
- This equality of right is matched by a rough equality of capacity.
- Each of us is a potential threat to everyone because each of us faces a world in which other people may cause us
harm. This is because the
(a) state of nature is a state of scarcity, there is competition
• The problem of scarcity and competition can be dealt with achievement of prosperity.
(b) fear or diffidence, people are driven to attack one another no matter what their motives.
• Example : 2 nuclear powers who can wipe out the other side’s nuclear forces if they strike first and cannot
revenge themselves if they do not strike first (taking a World War II illustration)
• People in this situation are driven to attack one another by the logic of situation, no natter what their
motives.
• The problem of fear can be dealt with a system of police.
(c) pride or vainglory
• That minority of prideful or “vain-glorious” persons who take pleasure in exercising power over others will
naturally elicit preemptive defensive responses from others.
• Hobbes views that indeterminacy is part of human desire. We are uncertain about what we want, unsure
whether what we want is worth having. There is no tendency to gravity toward the truly good, and we envy
other men.
Page 4 of 32
Government is justified because without it we will destroy each other
Topic: the justification of coercion & governmental authority.
We will ask:
– Can we justify coercive political authority?
– If so, what ought such authority to look like? Democratic or despotic?
– How can we achieve just and stable political institutions? We want to keep the state running in the long run.
We begin with the richest tradition in political theory
– Political authority rests on a ‘Social Contract’ ; a form of agreement in society
– Hobbes; Kant; Rawls; Rousseau
The ‘social contract’ as a liberal idea
- Liberalism
• To justify the state, you don’t appeal to God, ‘spirit of people’ or common good (stuff that sounds supernatural or
paranormal).
• Instead, you justify government by putting individuals in the centre (the task of justifying government is giving a
story to each person, as to why they are bound by government)
• We have to assume that everybody is entitled to a story, they are free and equal individuals - you need to give them
a reason why their freedom is limited by government, and this is okay.
- We agree on 2 things
(a) A justification of political authority must be addressed to everyone
(b) A justification must speak to each person individually, and explain why that person, rather than someone else,
has reason to accept political authority.
• This rules out some arguments in favour of political authority such as ‘we must have government because God
says so’ Not everyone is religious, and religious people do not all believe in the same divine ting, so the God
argument only addresses some people.
• Liberal philosophers try to justify political authority by means of one story that works for each person
- The Challenge of liberalism
• As people differ radically, is it possible to come up with one story that speaks to everyone? We have to start with
things we all share.
• The social contract theory : there is one story that we can give to all?
Story (1) : political authority relies on consent
- If there is no consent = no authority
- Criticism
(i) When did ever give consent? Nobody asked me whether we should have a democracy, what forms government
will take etc. The most we can say is that I was born and raised within a political system in which state
institutions were already running, and you’re playing your part in it. Not walking away from or failing to object
to a society and its government is not the same as having consented to those things. No existing authority meets
test fully.
(ii) This test is too strict; suppose you give consent, and you change your mind, does it take away government
authority ? How often do we check that our consent is ongoing (see GDPR : maintaining consent all the time is
burdensome)?
(iii) Not all coercion requires consent : Duty of care exists not because of consent, you are still liable (it is not
morally right to say that because you haven’t consent, you are not responsible for the consequences)
(iv) Some people cant give consent : babies; unconscious patients
Story (2) : Political authority rests on hypothetical consent
- I have reason to agree to it, on the condition that others agree to do the same. If I have reason to be bound by a
system of democratic government as long as other people agree to do the same, and the existing system is in fact
democratic, the system is justified towards all of you regardless of the fact that no one actually asked you to endorse
it. All that matters is that you have reason to agree to the system.
• If you have reason to want a democratic government, and you are living in a government that is already
democratic, this government is justified to you. (If you have reason to agree to, and conditions are satisfied, there
is no need for additional consent)
Page 1 of 32
,- Criticism :
(i) Having reason to want / agree to something is not equivalent of consent (if you have reason to agree to sell me
your bike for 50 pounds, you still need to sign the contract)
(ii) Hypotheticals are fictions, and we ought to do better than rely on fictions when we attempt to justify
government.
(iii) A hypothetical agreement is not an agreement at all — Dworkin (If I tell you that you are bound you
government because you have reason to be, I am not asking your view at all)
Story (3) : Political Authority rests on implicit consent
- Your consent to government is implicit, entailed by your existing beliefs about what people in your community owe
to each other and how their relations are to be governed.
• How do we infer this? Infer things from what people want require government
• If I want certain things in society for myself (security, fairness, freedom) and getting these things require
government, you want the means (government). If having a government is a necessary means for achieving those
means, then by endorsing the ends you implicitly endorse the means
- Social contract: implicit social agreement to live under government
• Different ways to identify existence & content of that agreement
- Criticism :
(i) The problem is that this only refers to you, don’t apply to everybody
- 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 are not just wish lists, but a record
of what you are committed to)
The social contract rests on the assumption that there is an implicit social agreement to live under a political authority
Page 2 of 32
,The logic of Leviathan
- how the human body works (physics) — how humans behave (anthropology, psychology) — how we interact
(sociology) — how we can change terms of interaction (reason) — how we should govern ourselves (politics)
- Problem : Given our nature, how should we govern our societies?
- Solution : Only through the creation of absolute sovereign — we want to know whether Hobbes’s description is
plausible and whether his solution follows.
• Political authority is based on the covenant (social contract)
• Your reason to enter the covenant : it saves you from a lot worse
• But the covenant can only do that if it creates an absolute sovereign.
(1) HOW WE WORK : HUMAN BODIES
Hobbes’s view of man is shaped by Galileo’s new insights about motion. He translates doctrines of physics into claims
about man and politics. Man, like other physical objects, keeps moving until something (death, in the case of man) stops
him.
- The reason we are alive is because the stuff inside of us is in motion (Galileo - law of inertia - everything in nature
wants to maintain its state, unless there is some force exercised)
- All human function are based on the law of inertia : emotions, desires (motion towards from what we think is good or
bad for us), will (the decision to realise our desires), reason (our capacity to calculate how to realise our desires),
freedom (ability to move), equality (sameness).
• We are free when we suffer no physical impediments to motion
• Freedom is consistent with fear and necessity
- In terms of equality, we are more or less the same - size, shape = equal (physically equal)
• He assumes that people are sufficiently similar in their mental and physical attributes that no one is invulnerable
nor can expect to be able to dominate the others.
• There is natural equality of mankind (unlike Aristotle where he states that a social order can mirror a natural
hierarchy where a better person is distinguished from the less good. ex. Men from women; adults from children;
free men from slave
- Hobbes assumes that people generally “shun death”, and that the desire to preserve their own lives is very strong in
most people.
• He differs with his predecessors’ views (Aristotle) who thought that there was some kind of natural attraction
toward the good, and toward life in society. He thinks that there is an aversion to death
Note :
- Hobbes argues that humans are not political in nature, our association depends on an agreement to observe justice and
we need common standards of right and wrong to regulate our affairs.
(2) HOW WE INTERACT
In the state of nature, human instinct based on self-preservation drives men into conflict with one another. Because of
the natural equality in mankind, there will be no perpetual winner in the competition for self-preservation. Conditioned
by scarcity, we are grappled with continuous fear in the state of nature. The combined pressure of competition,
diffidence, and vainglory leads to the war of all against all, and to life that is ‘poor, solitary, nasty, brutish and short’.
- We are alive, we want to stay alive (law of inertia)
• Given that there isn’t enough stuff to go around (resource scarcity), our instinct of self-preservation makes it
likely that we will enter into conflict.
• Because of our basic equality (sameness), there would be no perpetual winner in the conflict for self-preservation.
- Our equality = no perpetual winner in conflict for self-preservation
• the nature of man, we find three principle causes of quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly,
In
Glory.
- In the war of men against men, the notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice do not exist.
- Hobbes famous observation is that life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short’.We are in the
state of nature. The state of nature is the state of war
• The right of each to all things invites serious conflict, especially if there is competition for resources, as there will
surely be over at least scarce goods.
• People will quite naturally fear that others may invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an
anticipatory defence.
• He isn’t telling us that the state of nature is bad because of the conflict, because of scarcity and self-preservation,
we are going to live in continuous fear. We are afraid, more likely to do things we would not do.
Page 3 of 32
, • State of nature = perpetual state of necessity for every person.
- The State of nature is a perpetual state of necessity for every person, where you can do whatever needed for
self-preservation
• So, if we don’t do something, we are doomed to live in a ‘State of Nature’
Hobbes’ Methodology (Alan Ryan)
- Hobbes’s science of politics is a form of blueprint making — sets out a rational strategy for individuals placed in the
dangerous and anxiety-ridden state of nature, where it is assumed that individual need to self-preserve and their
means of survival is minimal.
• He sets out what these rational individuals must do if they are to form a political society (not predict what they
will do).
• He despised the habit of showing off historian knowledge without understanding the current age’s dilemmas.
• He opposes to the idea of taking past political actors, beliefs or systems as authoritative models in current
conditions.
• We cannot follow blindly as we would repeat their errors and refuse to learn from experience.
Critique : state of nature (Alan Ryan)
(i) Hobbes writes of the ‘condition of mankind by nature’ without historical accuracy, he states that the state of nature
is simply the condition where we are forced into contact with each other in absence of superior authority that can
lay down and enforce rules to govern our behaviour towards each other.
• He thought that the Indians of North America were still living in the state of nature, the inhabitants of Britain had
been in this condition during the Civil War .
• The state of nature is the condition of civilised people deprived of stable government.
• Alan Ryan has argued that this can be seen as a simple thought experiment
(ii) There are other societies which are acephalous
• Alan Ryan has noted that there are many societies that are acephalous (lacks political leaders or hierarchies),
which persist for long periods with no apparent tendency to self-destruction.
• Hobbes suggests that this existence is impossible to explain, we must fall into a state of ‘a war of all against all’
because there is no rules, no authority, and therefore a threat to each other.
• If what Hobbes says is true, these societies would self-destruct. There are reasons they would not.
[Critique] Alan Ryan has pointed out that there are acephalous societies that lack political authority and hierarchies
which persist for long periods without no apparent tendency to self-destruction as envisaged by Hobbes. For Hobbes,
the state of nature is the condition of mankind deprived of stable government. If Hobbes is right, acephalous societies
would self-destruct even though there is clear evidence that they would not. I think Hobbes has played down the
existence of these societies and this is a flaw in Hobbes’s analysis of the state of nature.
State of nature (Alan Ryan)
- Hobbes considers men in an ungoverned situation, where they are rational (able to calculate consequences), self-
interested and vulnerable to one another — essentially anxious, because they understand cause and effect, passage of
time and have sense of own morality.
• Man is heedful/aware of the future, no present success acts as an assurance for the future.
• Each of us has the natural right and duty to preserve ourselves, and this right is an equal right. You have no greater
right over anything that I have, and I have no greater right over anything than you have. We all have a right to all
things, we have no obligation to defer to someone else or yield to them.
- This equality of right is matched by a rough equality of capacity.
- Each of us is a potential threat to everyone because each of us faces a world in which other people may cause us
harm. This is because the
(a) state of nature is a state of scarcity, there is competition
• The problem of scarcity and competition can be dealt with achievement of prosperity.
(b) fear or diffidence, people are driven to attack one another no matter what their motives.
• Example : 2 nuclear powers who can wipe out the other side’s nuclear forces if they strike first and cannot
revenge themselves if they do not strike first (taking a World War II illustration)
• People in this situation are driven to attack one another by the logic of situation, no natter what their
motives.
• The problem of fear can be dealt with a system of police.
(c) pride or vainglory
• That minority of prideful or “vain-glorious” persons who take pleasure in exercising power over others will
naturally elicit preemptive defensive responses from others.
• Hobbes views that indeterminacy is part of human desire. We are uncertain about what we want, unsure
whether what we want is worth having. There is no tendency to gravity toward the truly good, and we envy
other men.
Page 4 of 32
