Thomas Hobbes' Political Philosophy

Thomas Hobbes and His Political Philosophy

1. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS HOBBES

2. SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, PLUTARCH and CICERO They all have errors that tormented sedition, anarchy and civil war. The distinction between virtue and vice, which is thought to be grounded in nature rather than in positive law. HOBBES Conduct the affairs must be in accord with the standard outside the confines of civil law. Justifies the distinction between monarchy and tyranny and allows citizens to pass judgment on whether the sovereign was fit to rule, which encourages civil disobedience and justified tyrannicide . Contends that the doctrine of soul – and with it the conscience – encourages the belief that divine punishments of civil authorities.

3. LEVIATHAN -artificial man “greater stature and strength” than the original work of nature, man. -imitate “the art whereby God has made and governs the world.”

4. HOBBESIAN NOMINALISM a nd the MECHANICAL PSYCHOLOGY of MAN Recognized that if man is subject to the laws of mechanical motion, the manner of man’s thinking must coincide with the principles of mechanics and the laws of physics. GROUNDING POLITICAL SCIENCE TO PHYSICAL SCIENCE SENSE EXPERIENCE MENTAL DISCOURSE Elaborate the mechanical psychology of man. Define his terms and from these terms he derives their consequences.

5. SENSE EXPERIENCE Hobbes concludes that sense experience is deceptive and subjective because the image of an object is merely the consequence of motions of the material world and resides within the perceiver. The qualities of an object, such as the “good” and the “useful,” also must be subjective because they reside not in the thing but in the individual. There can be nothing good in this world, but only that which is pleasurable or painful, which also turns out to be subjective. Crucial for his political science because it allows him to claim there are no standards of justice or the good by which we can judge the conduct of government. Knowledge is not possible through sense experience. What is required is a method to overcome the unreliability of senses.

6. Reasoned speech reveals the advantageous, the harmful, and also the just and the unjust, the foundations of political life. MENTAL DISCOURSE The desires of the body both guide and prompt mental discourse. Whenever desire arises, it causes the thought of the means to satisfy the desire and further, the thoughts respecting the means to satisfy our desire. Due to material necessity people seek by reason the cause and the means that will satisfy their desires. The desires of the body as articulated by passion, are primary and establish the ends of man, while the task for reason is to satisfy their desires. Man’s ability is the power to locate the origin of his desire and the means to satisfy it. Reason is instrumental “for the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the things desired.”

7. HOBBESINIAN NOMINALISM and the MECHANICAL PSYCHOLOGY of MAN Science stands or falls according to the precision of its definition because imprecise definitions are an abuse of speech. Science is necessary to overcome the deceptiveness of sense of experience and is linked by Hobbes to “right definitions of names” or what is called nominalism . Physics is the basis for understanding man and nature. It reduces all of nature to the constituent elements of matter and motion. The gulf between the image and the perceived object means that sense experience is deceptive and subjective. To overcome the obstacle, man must invent speech and science, which Hobbes calls the art of the correct use of names. Names of Matter Names of Motion Names of Images Names given to name themselves

8. THE MOTION OF MAN and the STATE OF NATURE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HOBBES’ NOTION OF DELIBERATION Denies the possibility of making qualitative distinctions between good and bad, not to mention the distinctions between the just and the unjust and between prudence and expediency. By limiting human deliberation to a calculus of quantities of pleasure and pain, Hobbesenian deliberation denies that individuals are capable of making moral distinctions, leaving the way for the sovereign power to define authoritatively the moral terms that make political life possible. Hobbes argues, all pleasures, desires, hopes and fears are motions, the law of inertia govern them. Consequently, man’s motion is a restless search to acquire power or command over those things conducive to a contended life.

9. THE MOTION OF MAN and the STATE OF NATURE SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY Equality of men in terms of strength, mind, and vulnerability to death means that there is no natural claim to political rule. Implies that individuals have an equal right or claim to consent to a government that would secure their rights. Competition, diffidence and glory. Through political association, the danger and insecurity that exist in the state of nature will somehow be lessened. A n agreement or covenant among men that they will transfer their natural right to preserve themselves from sovereign entity.

10. NATURAL RIGHT, THE LAWS OF NATURE, a nd the POLITICAL STATE OF NATURE The original condition of man is a state of war of all against all. In such a state, there can be no civilization – just the continual fear and the persistent danger of violent death. The natural concern of man in the state of nature is self-preservation. There can be no appeal in such a state to justice because there can be nothing unjust if self-preservation is the highest end. Natural right is that every man must preserve itself. Consequence notion of natural right, which in effect is a natural liberty, is that the natural state of man cannot be anything other than a state of war. From here, Hobbes derives the laws of nature that point to the necessity to seek peace and establish the social compact – the state.

11. STATE OF NATURE NATURAL RIGHT, THE LAWS OF NATURE, a nd the POLITICAL Presents a man with a grave problem that he must of necessity solve. The solution consists partly in the passions and partly in man’s reason. The fear of violent death and its more rational expression, the desire for self-preservation, begin the mental discourse whereby man’s reasons seeks the means to satisfy the desire. The passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and hope by their industry to obtain them. Manipulating human nature for the sake of political order, security and peace. To end the mutual slaughter and secure our natural right, one must choose to give up the unrestricted right to the means.

12. NATURAL RIGHT, THE LAWS OF NATURE, a nd the POLITICAL GOVERNMENT Questions of justice, right and wrong are to be determined by the civil authority. Must be the supreme arbitrator and authority of what is good and evil, just and the unjust, and the power to be fully obeyed. Hobbes’ teaching culminates an absolute sovereign or absolute government. Doctrine of natural right culminates in the teaching that the sovereign secure universal agreement to the lawful, just and true. The “the political geometer”; but unlike actual geometers, the sovereign does not only rely on good-natured scientific inquiry to secure agreement. Government determines the meaning of justice through its law, or what we call today legal positivism.

13. ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY, LIBERTY And the RIGHTS of the SUBJECT ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY Not the representative of the wills of the citizen, but a separate will authorized to secure the natural right of the citizens. Not subject to or limited by the covenant because it was not party to the covenant – it was the outcome of the covenant. All legislation of the sovereign can be viewed as self-legislation. No citizen can rightfully resist the will of the sovereign or judge the actions of the sovereign because the sovereign has been empowered to accomplish what the individuals fought for in the state of nature; peace and security. To accuse the sovereign of any crime or injury is to accuse oneself of wrongdoing. Obedience therefore is exchanged for protection. Security of the citizenry rests in the comforting knowledge that any man who seeks to harm another has more to fear from the sovereign that he can contemplate benefitting from any crime.

14. ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY, LIBERTY And the RIGHTS of the SUBJECT LIBERTY Right to determine the kinds of property rights individuals can possess and how things are to be exchanged resides with the absolute sovereignty. Absence of external impediments of motion which can be applied to both rational and irrational creatures and inanimate objects. Freedom from, rather than a freedom for the sake of, something such as virtue. Civil laws can thus be viewed as artificial chains that by their nature are weak and hold only while men fear breaking them. The other source of liberty then depends on the silence of laws. Because laws cannot cover every human endeavor, individuals are left free to buy and sell those things that can be lawfully bought and sold; contract with others; choose where they live, their own diet, and their own trade; and bring up their children as they see fit. Within the confines of the commonwealth the individual is largely left free to do as he pleases. But he is not free to disturb and disrupt the concord of society.

15. ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY, LIBERTY And the RIGHTS of the SUBJECT SUBJECT If there are inalienable rights, is there some standard by which we can judge the conduct of sovereign or the government? Could we say that there is a right for revolution or even grounds for civil disobedience? When subjects complain about their government and when they accuse the sovereign of being a tyrant, Hobbes accuses them of merely saying that the government does not satisfy their personal preferences. Distinctions of good and bad regime are false because they merely reflect the subjective preferences of individual subjects. To call a monarch a tyrant, an aristocrat, an oligarch, a democrat, or an anarchist is meaningless because all subjects, including the sovereign, benefit from the peace and security of the government. The distinctions lose their meaning, reflecting merely the subjective feelings of the disgruntled and disaffected.