Transcript Hobbes, Introduction - University of Hong Kong

Hobbes,Leviathan
Introduction
PHIL 2345
2010-11
Overview—purposes of SC
• Hobbes:
– secure order, above all else
– Subjects’/citizens’ liberties can be circumscribed to this end.
• Locke:
– protect citizens and their property
– Citizens’ liberties/rights to be protected—err on side of freedom.
• Rousseau
– create a ‘political association’ in which citizens receive benefits
of good gov’t while remaining as free as before;
• Rawls
– Assure justice, equality of opportunity;
– From behind ‘veil of ignorance’.
Who Rules?
• 17th cent. theories of Gov't
– Date back to Middle Ages
– Divine Right of Kings
• King is responsible to God alone
– Anointing in coronation ceremony
• God will punish him if he is a bad ruler
• People must accept whatever he does as if it
were God’s will
– they may not overthrow the king!
– English Civil War: regicide of Charles I
Origins and Role of Government
• Traditional: “divine right of kings”
– Paternal (like a father): father may intervene
in children's’ lives for their own good;
– Sacred--decreed by God; ;
– Symbolized by anointing the monarch’s head
with holy oil in shape of a cross.
• Versus Social contract:
– No divine mandate; civil gov’t = man-made;
– Protects citizens’ goods and lives.
Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II,
Westminster Abbey, 1953
Mayflower Compact, 1620
• Compact, covenant, contract = syns.
• Social compact model in separatist churches
(Reformation, 16th cent.)
• Joint-stock Companies
• Mutual agreement (‘covenant’)—
– Unanimous: all adult males signed; no free riders
• ‘Civill body politick’
• For ‘generall good’ (like ‘general will’—
Rousseau).
Thomas Hobbes
Who was Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679)?
• English political theorist
• Tutor in noble family
• Translator:
– Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian
War, 1628
• Author of De Cive, 1642, and revision of
Leviathan,1651
• Controversy surrounded this work—why?
Hobbes’ political theory
• Life in state of nature is ‘nasty, brutish and
short’;
• People living in danger and disorder agree to
submit to a common authority:
– not necessarily a king;
– state religion to maintain order, limit religious and civil
discord (Thirty Years’ War, English Civil War).
• Problem:
– when should political authority be overthrown or
replaced?
– Hobbes is reluctant to acknowledge that sometimes
this must be done.
Influence of English Civil War
(1642-1651)
'...the estate of Man can never be without
some incommodity or other; and...the
greatest...in respect of the miseries, and
horrible calamities, [is] that [which]
accompan[ies] a Civill Warre’ ... (Lev., ch.
18).
State of Nature = State of War
• SoN = War of all against all (ch. 13):
– ‘continuall feare and danger of violent death;
And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty,
brutish and short’.
• ‘every man is Enemy to every man’:
– No economy or trade b/c no industry, no
farming is possible;
– No shelter;
– No arts, letters or science—in short: nothing
but mere subsistence, if that.
War of all against all
Right and Laws of Nature
• Right of Nature:
– permissive liberty to preserve oneself (not obligatory,
however)
• Laws of Nature: prudential, eternal rules derived
by reason (rational choice):
– 1st: endeavour Peace, but in its absence, use 'helps
of...Warre';
– 2nd: surrender right to all things if others do so as
well (mutual cooperation, Prisoner’s Dilemma);
– 3d: 'performe Covenants made'--foundation of
Justice/Compact.
Laws of Nature
• Science of Laws of Nature based on
– Science of Good/Evil
• Good/Evil = Appetites/Aversions
• Epicurus (ancient Greece) bases his philosophy on
pleasure/pain
• Passions are no Sin (ch. 13)
• No reference to Christian morality at this
stage.
Exit from SoN/SoW (ch. 13)
• equality of hope & ability:
– everyone can hurt everyone else; see ch. 15;
•
•
•
•
•
fear, danger of violent death
own judge/executioner
rt. to each other's bodies
material deprivations
no sociability w/out a power to awe
Why do we exit SoN?
• Our passions = key to choice to exit:
• Where do our passions come from?
• Hobbes’ primary passions:
– competition—striving for honour
– fear of death;
• Death is consequence of staying in SoN;
– desire for comfort;
– hope to obtain it.
Conditions of Compact:
• Unconditional covenant of every one w/ every
one;
– no exceptions/free riders:
• 'This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of
them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of
every man with every man ...'
• Duress allowed?
– Yes:
• 'Covenants entred into by fear, in the condition of meer
Nature, are obligatory' and enforced by Fear of reprisal (ch.
14; also ch. 18)
• Use of force to enforce the compact:
– 'Covenants without the Sword, are but Words‘.
News alert!
texts in modern translation:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com:80/