Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan

Okay um so Thomas Hobs Leviathan Hobbs uh wrote The Leviathan quite late in life um he was uh he was he wrote it largely in reaction to the events of the English Civil War and many people say that that is an essential part of understanding the conclusions that he draws or uh maybe the motivation for uh drawing those Conclusions because what's interesting about the Leviathan is that it is very unlike filmer for example in one respect and that is that it justifies um political Authority by reference to the those governed that is it doesn't it

it thoroughly rejects the idea of the divine right of kings or it rejects political naturalism that we've seen in Aristotle as well that humans are Naturally uh political or that there is some kind of natural hierarchy of humans humans Hobs insists are both free and equal in uh naturally free and equal although uh what he means by those uh is not the same as what uh more recent philosophers or for example John Lock means by them so we'll we'll mention them uh we'll we'll talk about his definition in a little bit but still uh humans

are there is such a thing as a state of Nature this is the key concept of social contract theorists of which hubs is an early and sophisticated variant um and a state of nature is the natural state of humans which is not political um in this Natural State there there are no political obligations there is no political Authority so then the question is if humans begin in this state how is it that they can ever legitimately leave it arrive at a Political State arrive in a in a system whereby there is political Authority that's the

question that all social contract theorists um have to answer and hubs answers it in a in a very sophisticated way that um modern uh commentators have said is a sort of Forerunner of Game Theory Game Theory is uh a theory that um blossomed in the 20th century that analyzes human behavior as a rational response to sort of social situations Um if anybody's familiar with Game Theory the the thing that they've come across is something called the prisoners dilemma and um there is some suggestion by some commentators that uh it's because of a prisoners dilemma in

the state of nature that you need a um a sovereign you need to set up a political state but at any rate Hobs does believe that you can leave the state of nature legitimately and acquire political obligations so even though naturally Humans are apolitical there is no natural hierarchy we are naturally all on the same level um there is a root out of the state of nature towards a political system now because of the way that he describes the the state of nature um and the the phrase from Hobs that if you know you will

know even if you didn't know it was from Hobs is uh nasty brutish and short uh the the full quote is life is in the state of nature Is solitary poor nasty brutish and short so your life will not last long if you stay in a state of nature and because the state of nature is so horrific according to Hobs um the political system that uh humans that have been in the state of nature will be motivated to set up or at any rate the political system that will last that will um endure is the

maximally stable one so uh it's always good to contrast this with John luck a later thinker who will be coming to next uh who was the most influential on um the founders of the the USA um in John Lo's view the state of nature is comparatively benign certainly in comparison with with Thomas Hops and that you have uh you have great Liberty in the state of nature and you can acquire property this is one key feature of um of lock state of nature whereas in hubs the way Hobs describes it is Basically no no kind

of of civilization is possible in the state of nature if you try to make a little farm somebody will steal it so there's no point in trying to to there's no point in trying to improve the land or trying to improve your um situation because in a state of nature people will just come and take it or destroy it um whereas in Lo a comparatively sophisticated things can happen in the state of nature which is why Libertarians like luck because Liber Uh luck seems to suggest that uh it's you know life without government at all

is fairly tolerable and perhaps the most free kind of existence so you know only the minimal kind of political system can be justified because it's comparatively good in the state of nature whereas for hubs state of nature absolutely horrible so the political system that will prevent us devolving back into the state of nature is Justified and the Political system that Hobs ends up justifying is a lot like one that filmer defends filmer the divine right of King's guy ends up defending uh a system very similar to Hobs the uh the state of nature guy the

uh social contract theorist in particular Hubbs defends uh power the power of the Sovereign is absolute The Sovereign is above the law and the power of the Sovereign cannot be divided or limited so this whole separation of Powers thing in the the United States is completely anatha to Hubs all powers must be Lo uh must be concentrated in The Sovereign now he's not an out andout monarchist he does suggest that um the uh Sovereign can be a single individual but it can also be uh a body so you can have acting as a sovereign like

a parament or or something like that but it cannot be the case that you have separate institutions like uh Congress the presidency and the Supreme Court with competing powers that is absolutely a nogo for uh hubs for various reasons because he says um once you have separation of powers you will have uh disagreement over where the power of one body ends and the power of another body begins and it will lead to things like the English Civil War which is uh in the English Civil War is essentially the parliament against the king and it was

it broke out because of a disagreement over the The Authority Each had against the other so when there there's uh a possibility of an argument about what powers each body has or the extent of the powers then that's going to be unstable and it's going to lead to collapse which is why you can never do divide or limit you can never have for example a body above the king even like the Supreme Court you think the Supreme Court the Supreme Court isn't going to raise an army you know it does it sounds like hubs' worry

there is ridiculous That you not you're not going to have uh the Supreme Court suddenly try to take over the presidency but if you have a supreme court it's still Limits The Power Of The Sovereign and effectively and this is an argument that Filmer too effectively uh the the real Sovereign is then the Supreme Court if the if the uh if there's a judge above the um the king and also what happens if the Monarch or the The Sovereign and the the Supreme Court disagree who mediates that dispute there's nobody to appeal to and when

there's nobody to appeal to to mediate disputes that's when you get conflict which is actually the main problem with the state of nature the part the problem of the state of nature is there's nobody to mediate disputes there's nobody to settle um uh conflict so if you have uh divided sovereignty if you have the powers of the Sovereign divided up you haven't Solved the problem that the that sovereignty is supposed to be instituted to solve okay so that's the interesting thing that uh on the one hand and actually uh critics of hubs' Leviathan were sort

of in both camps um you have critics like John luck coming along later who says look why on Earth would people in the state of nature who whose problem is other individuals who are essentially the same Power as them why would they to solve that set up some kind of super beinging um that is much more powerful and can do much more damage to them particularly given the powers that the Sovereign has uh for example uh The Sovereign has the power of property to of deciding who gets what um so basically everything belongs to The

Sovereign and if anybody gets to own it uh own property Legitimately it's at the sufferance of the The Sovereign now again as with filmer the point of The Sovereign is to uh look after the subjects so you know there's uh it shouldn't be the case that they're just enriching themselves and uh leaving the people to starve and in fact if that happens hubs has a solution which leads to the other criticism but to finish this criticism first uh lot famously said you know if if in the state of Nature you're being faced by pole cats

and foxes the solution is not to set up a lion because that's worse uh so that's one kind of criticism um that a social contract theorist would have against hubs you know okay you believe people are naturally free and equal then why would you give away all of their power to this absolute Sovereign um on the flip side of the coin um famously uh some critics at the Time Leviathan came out a Critic called bramel said it was a Rebels catechism this is leviathan because despite the Sovereign having absolute power undivided uh and they're judge

and they they cannot injure the subjects so for example if you say I'm being oppressed by my Monarch uh Lo says uh sorry Hub says no that can't happen because effectively the Monarch is you the Monarch has is Just using power that you have given them um they have no power that hasn't come from you and you have in a sense agreed to give them this power so you can't really object it's it's as if you are punching yourself and saying ow stop punching punching me you've got no one to complain to to but yourself

and he says the same thing is true of the uh uh The Sovereign if you object to anything The Sovereign is doing it's like objecting to something you're doing Because they're just impairing themselves now that of course sounds very sus suspicious and someone like Lo would absolutely reject that reasoning but that is certainly what he says um yeah and uh you cannot say that the Sovereign has uh broken a contract with you because this is a very important point that all of the sophisticated social contract theorists say the social contract that they talk about is

not between the people and The Sovereign it is amongst the people so the social contract is an agreement that all of the people make amongst themselves and the agreement is to give up power that they have in the state of nature and so they're agreeing with each other I'll give up my power if you give up your power okay everybody agreed and then they invest it then they give it to The Sovereign so they haven't sort of given it under conditions to The Sovereign it isn't like okay Sovereign Uh I will give you this so

long as you obey these terms and conditions no the agreement is with each other that each each other will give up their power um and The Sovereign gets the power but under no basic conditions basically under the conditions that uh they the people in the state of nature had the power in the first place and according to uh hubs as we see you have basically unlimited each person has unlimited freedom to do what they think right to Preserve themselves and so the Sovereign gets basically unlimited freedom and under no conditions so you can never say

oh you uh as happened in the English Civil War oh wait a minute you violated the terms of the powers so therefore you know you're an illegitimate Monarch that can't happen according to HS so sounds very you know tyrannical sounds like here is an absolute monarch but on the flip side of the coin as Bram says a Rebels Catechism in chapter 21 this uh the rights of the Sovereign are listed in chapter 18 in chapter 21 he talks about the liberty of the subject subjects now in the first part of this chapter uh he defends

something that in in the philosophy of Free Will is called compatibilism yeah so a little sidebar here if you start reading the Leviathan which is a big heavy book uh at the Beginning you will wonder when it's going to get to the political stuff because it begins like I don't know the the kind of stuff you read in dayut in fact hubs was one one of the Phil Hobs was a contemporary of dayart although in fact older than dayart but dayart published all his stuff when he was a young man whereas hobbs' most famous works

uh late in life and Hobs lived a good long life um which was pretty remarkable given that he was Uh always fleeing from Britain because uh when the the power changed hands he was out of favor uh and this kept flip-flopping in the in the later years of his life so he had to hop over to France on a regular basis but lived a good old long life and published most of his important Works quite late in life um but Hobbs is one of the people who commentates on uh decart's meditations now decart's meditations in

decart's meditations of course dayart Depends cartisian dualism this idea that there are two kinds of stuff in the universe there is matter that follows all the laws of matter and is is determined by the laws of nature such as the ones that Newton had discovered um and uh on the other hand there is this other substance which is mind and that and we are a combination of both somehow we have bodies that are physical but we also have Minds that are Immaterial and have no location and all that kind of stuff Hobs was a hardcore

materialist that is whereas deot is a dualist he says there's mind and matter Hub says no there's just matter mind if you talk about mind that's just a kind of side effect of matter so you read the early chapters of Leviathan and he he talks about human beings in a very mechanistic way he uses an analogy of autom you know robots we are uh Everything is explained by little springs and motions beginning inside us so where uh other philosophers would talk loftily about us having Free Will and this being a sort of power uh and

uh we we have a complete freedom because we have this immaterial mind part of ourselves hes believes no the entire universe is like a giant machine and we're just part of it so in what sense are we free uh what is freedom well it's basically just us Doing what we want in a certain way and where our desires are not necessarily under our control so he is an early compatibilist in the philosophy of um free will yeah so why does he begin um his great work of politic iCal philosophy with all this metaphysics all this

stuff talking about uh materialism well because you've got to understand what people are he um Leviathan is broken into four books Um the only two that most people talk about unless it's in an actual Hobs class are the first two but the structure that Hobbs had in mind is the first one of man is what he call he the structure of Leviathan is what he calls resolutive um compositive okay what does that mean well when you resolve something it means take it to Pieces so he says the the first chapter is one of the resolutive

chapters that's where we uh he's he's if you think of Leviathan as written in response to a political crisis the English Civil War he says how do we fix this we can't have this happen again well the first thing you got to do is take everything apart and look at the bits before you can work out what went wrong so the first book Is him taking a part a political system and looking at the matter of the political system which is humans so humans are the things that make up a commonwealth so we got to

look at the bits in detail And that's what the first book of man is about and it's about man in his Natural State the state of nature what are humans like what what is the source of the problem and the key source of the problem is that humans are egoistic humans are driven by um by their desires to further their own interests that's part of the problem now does that make humans bad no humans are not uh Hobbs doesn't think that humans are Naturally good or naturally evil humans are just naturally the way they are

and if you're going to make a political system that works you have to understand that nature don't judge it just understand it so the the resolutive part is of man and then the compositive part of the first two books is the second book which is on Commonwealth the Commonwealth so this is given the the bits that we've now analyzed humans how do we fit them together in a way that Won't collapse as we've seen in the English Civil War and that's where he talks about you know the way that a a stable well- constructed Commonwealth

will be like the other two books uh also do that but there the reason why they're less read is because they're mostly about scripture they're they're mostly directed at uh hubs' Christian readers of the time uh and it's um that it's sort of compositive resolutive in reverse order so chapter 3 Is another compositive one which is basically a defense of the political of the the argument of the the second book with scripture arguing that this is what a a good Christian Commonwealth will be like and then the fourth book is why we haven't got that

it's this explanation of why how scripture gets misinterpreted and uh offering his own interpretation of scripture which is hubs at the time was widely accused of being an atheist because his Interpretation of scripture was first of all materialist so what is God God is made of matter God is a big material thing that's a weird view I mean that's kind of a view like Spinosa um and Hobbs actually was exposed to Spinoza's work and was basically said well he's lucky he can get away with saying that um but you know basically God is kind of

like the universe and uh completely incomprehensible to Human Minds um now modern uh readers of Hobbs Don't think he's an atheist they think he's just kind of a weird uh weird but uh sincere Christian um so but certainly at the time he was accused of atheism and and there are people to this day who who think he's really an atheist um but there so there's these two giant sections of the Leviathan that's arguing about uh about religion now some commentators on hob say this is very important because one of the reasons that for the English

Civil War is that um that H if humans believe that they have a duty to God that is more important than their duty to their political leaders then of course they should follow God because God is the more important one and once you have a significant number of people thinking like that that's going to lead to terrible instability hubs' solution essentially is to say that is to argue extensively that your duty to God is to Follow the Sovereign and The Sovereign is the representative of God on Earth um again sounds a lot like divine right

of of Kings although of course he comes at it from a completely different angle but that's the way to solve instability is to remove this um this alternative power that that like like the Pope the um people don't remember but one of the things uh John F Kennedy was the first and I think Biden is the only other one Catholic President of the United States And when Kennedy became president he basically had to give a speech saying I won't follow what the says because the worry about Catholics was always well they've got another leader the

pope and they're going to follow the pope before us because the pope represents God on Earth so you know this worry that if people believe in religious authorities it's going to undermine political stability persists to this day and is of course um you know a lot of people talk That way that they're going to appeal to Heaven um you know if they don't like what the what uh what the political government will do um so oh and actually one more if you look at the the frontis piece of Leviathan is one of the most famous

uh philosophical pictures and it's actually one that Hobs designed himself and had commissioned the most famous part of it is the one that I've got as the banner of in our class Is the picture of the king made up of tiny little people so it's like a giant being composed in tiny entirely of of of tiny little people that's essentially the Commonwealth the Commonwealth becomes an entity uh that can act like a person or at least a sovereign can and and a commonwealth exists where you have a sovereign and so basically The Sovereign is composed

of all of the people so the power of The Sovereign is from all of the people that make it up That's why his view is different from filmer filmer says the power the The Sovereign just has the power that people never had uh the The Sovereign just naturally has it whereas for hubs any power that the Sovereign has comes from the power of the individual so that's the famous representative representation of that but equally important for Hobbs was either side of this are two little panels that represent Uh uh sort of political power or uh

secular power so for example a a cannon represents the power of the armies and the the one on the other side represents religious power so instead of a cannon you've got lightning bolts so these are and actually The Sovereign is holding in one hand a representative of the a sword that represents terrestrial power and a is it a miter or scepter anyway you know a thing that Bishops hold he's holding in the other hand to represent his Religious power so for Hobbs the second two parts that are all about scripture are very important but less

so now because uh he's he hasn't got such a Christianity isn't assumed to be uh the True Religion for all humans as it was in um in Hobs day so uh that's why the the second two sections uh books three and four are less read and we're focusing on arguments from one and two so uh here's a good summary of what humans are like Um uh at least in the state of nature uh and I'm quoting from the a piece from the Stanford encyclopedia philosophy written by my um dissertation adviser Sharon Lloyd and um Suzanne

shria he said he assumes that people are sufficiently similar in in their mental and physical attributes that no one is invulnerable nor can expect to be able to dominate The Others this is the sense of equality that Hobs uses so where this Separates him from someone like luck is uh the the basic idea of all uh social contract theorists uh well at least up until um can't all social contract theorists say that there's essentially a state of nature that is that there is an apolitical state that is natural to humans so in some sense political

obligation is artificial and it is only comes about through the action of humans Contrast that with political nationalists who say no it's natural we are like bees or uh we're born into a natural hierarchy social contract theorists reject that so they have to say that in some sense we're free from political obligation and we are initially equal now what do these free and equal mean well that depends on your social contract theorist um freedom for someone like can't means a very special thing it means you are free to use your Reason in the way in

which it was intended so for example Kant would say you are not free if you just follow your desires that is the opposite of Freedom whereas for hubs that is what freedom is at least in the state of nature freedom is basically absence of restrictions which is what most people would mean by it today you are you know like like uh oh no the rabbit's got free means it's got out of its cage um so we are free in the state of Nature in the sense that there are no restrictions on us because there are

no laws because there's no political system now this isn't necessarily a good thing as Hobbs points out but it's certainly something that most people want and actually how uh when in the beginning of this chapter 21 on the liberty of subjects he says those people who complain of an absence of freedom in uh in society are kind of missing the point because the freedom that they had in the State of nature led to cuz everybody's free uh and there's a famous quote by Isaiah Berlin a 20th century writer on uh on Liberty who said uh

freedom for the pike is death for The Minnow a pike of course is a large carnivorous fish and a a minnow is a small fish so free you get the point that is um if uh if other people are free that could be bad for you because they they could they're free to do what they want to you so he he basically chastises People who complain uh who complain you know about the power of the Sovereign meaning that they're not free first of all he says uh that Greek writers like Aristotle are wrong to say

that we're Freer in a democracy than we are under a sovereignty actually Aristotle probably wouldn't say that but uh certainly there's a tradition in Greek writing and and certainly other Athenians regarded the Athenian system of democracy as the only free one and hob says that's Ridiculous probably under the Monarch you would be left alone more than and actually again a point that filmer makes uh under monarchy you could be left alone to your own devices just as much under a democracy and possibly more so so under my definition of Liberty you're free and in fact

he says that uh the the extent of your freedom is determined by the number of the laws fewer laws more freedom um but so uh but under someone like K Freedom is you're not free if you follow your desires where is for uh hubs that's exactly what freedom is and also equality what is equality well equality might be that you equally have a set of rights now rights are a a very um controversial notion in moral and political philosophy there kind of uh there are a lot of writers who are suspicious of them they say

well these are weird metaphysical entities where how do you know we have rights where Does it say on our bodies that we have rights are they encoded into our DNA what's that it sounds in fact the idea of Rights sounds like something constructed and made up by humans so uh the equality that um although uh Hobs does say we have at least one right that I'll get to in a second the right of nature it's not the kind of right that people have in mind like the Bill of Rights rights like life liberty and the

pur of habit Uh someone like lck does say that he he does believe that naturally we have a set of Rights in fact they the the as I said the founders were very much influenced by luck that we had these sort of god-given Rights hubs doesn't say that so the equality that he talks about is not equal in the sense of having this the same basic set of Rights it the equality is is very downto Earth and materialistic it is we're basically an equal threat you know even if you're Bigger than me I can kill

you while you're asleep so essentially we're basically an equal threat to each other that's the equality that he talks about all right so uh sufficiently similar in their mental and physical attributes that no one is invulnerable or can be expect to be able to dominate the others if for example you know uh we were some of us were like born 10t tall with it pre skin then obviously we wouldn't be equal in that sense but he Says humankind's basically the same you know we vary in height only by uh TW you know like 25% of

our height usually so um so we're essentially equal threats hubs assumes that people generally shun death like uh they fear death and actually this is one area where religion complicates matters because the only people who don't shun death who don't fear death and therefore understandable in the same ways and responsive to the same Um uh to the same uh uh kind of offers from other people are religious people religious crazy religious people who believe that there's a they they're going to have a a life after death they're the ones that you want to watch for

because they believe that it doesn't matter if they die uh but generally people shun death and that the desire to preserve their own lives is very strong in most people while people have local affections their Benevolence is limited that is they they're very fond of their children but they don't care about other people's children uh and they have a tendency to partiality my CH my children are much better than your children concerned that others should agree with their own high opinions of them M themselves people are sensitive to slights Yes uh Hobs Hobs is big

on uh people caring about being dissed this is a huge source of uh conflict um yes uh There are three causes of quarrel in the state of nature competition for resources distrust of other people and Glory that and glory is connected with this idea of Honor that um you know you're dissing me so I have to kill you because unless you respect me um I have to put you in your place and of course that's that's a cause of all kinds of fights to bar fights break out for this reason to this day but um

that's uh that's a problem a natural feature of Humans people are very sensitive to what other people think of them they make evaluative judgments but often are seemingly uh use seemingly imp personal terms like good and bad to stand for their own personal preferences I'll get back to that in a second they are curious about the causes of events and anxious about those Futures those latter two lead to religion because they are curious about you know what causes thunder and anxious About their future humans are are very likely to invent stories uh and those lead

to religion you can see why hubs writing this is uh was not popular amongst religious people um so the uh that's the way that people are now uh the stuff about good and bad uh again a difference between hubs and later social contract theorists like Loch is that lock believes that there are are moral laws that are natural in Some sense they're the laws of God that there are laws that uh apply even in a state of nature so even if you don't have a political system for someone like lock you have morality and there

are strict moral rules that so you can do something deeply immoral in a state in the state of nature for luck this whether or not hubs thinks that is a matter of some dispute so are there moral laws in hubs' state of nature well on the one hand he Says uh things in chapters 13 and 14 that appear to be a clear no answer I quote the Notions of right and wrong Justice and Injustice here have no place or there have there no place have in the state of nature no place so the very idea

of right and wrong doesn't really apply in the state of nature uh now why would he say that well because essentially it's a war of all against all it's every man for himself in the State of nature so it's like uh moral laws are a a luxury and B only exist in a stable situation that you're going to that you only have when you have a sovereign and there's a point that many people who argue for divine right of kings say you can't really have laws of any kind including moral laws without a lawgiver and

of course with lock he would say yeah that's true and the lawgiver is God so you have uh moral laws in the state of nature but for Um uh Hobs he's interested is well who's enforcing these moral laws nobody's going to enforce these moral laws in the state of nature if I kill my neighbor uh because I can nobody's going to stop me and nobody's going to punish me so essentially you know you can talk about right and wrong all you want but do they actually have any effect or any um you know reality no

h and the quote in uh chapter 14 is Every Man Has a right to everything and even to another body now That sounds like people have a right but when everybody has equal right to everything essentially that means nobody has a right rights are supposed to uh you know everybody's rights are supposed to protect everybody so you can't have a right to something that ensures that is greater than the right that somebody else has well in effect Hobbs is saying everybody has our right to everything so that means nobody has rights well but on the

other hand so so this seems to Suggest that he doesn't believe that there is morality that morality has an existence in the state of nature and in fact some uh writers there's a guy called gotier who wrote a book called morals by agreement who uh thinks that hubs has provided the basis for a a a justification of Morality In game theoretical terms that is morality is the solution to Game Theory puzzles so this is an idea that Essentially egoism is true that we are just um out for our own interests but that from that one

truth you can come up with a set of Mo moral rules that are ultimately justified by being uh the solution to the problems of people following their own interests and and it leading to conflict so some people have taken a hsian idea what they take to be a hsian idea and say you can construct morality out of self-interest that morality is simply uh solutions to Problems of conflict that arise from self-interest that morality is nothing more than that uh if you break a moral law it's not like you'll be punished by God or anything like

that it's just uh you're acting irrationally in some sense and there does seem to be a a fair one clear way to interpretate uh hops so but on the other hand he does talk about a right of nature uh gotier would not talk about rights so what is hubs' right of Nature self-preservation he says essentially you have the right to do anything to preserve yourself um he just thinks that that's obvious that you uh that human beings as animals out for themselves have this right so this is in a sense a sort of normative um

claim so it's not a descriptive claim the the descriptive claims are that we're egoistic that we're like little autometer that we're driven by desires including famously a Perpetual and Restless desire for power after power that ceases only in death he does say this but it doesn't mean what it seems like it means some people take this quote and say oh well this is the problem everybody's trying to expand all the time everybody's trying to get power over anybody else that's not what he means by power early on in a section that is not in the

excerpt that you've got he defines power and there's a whole chapter on it which is Essentially uh your power is just what you have control over and you want to uh have control you see you're chasing power after power just so because power is your means of satisfying your desires so because you have desires you're going to want the means to satisfy your desires so you're perpetually seeking the means to satisfy your powers now that me that does mean that we're going to come into conflict but it doesn't mean that we're seeking Political power now

on the other hand though there are people in the state of nature not everybody this suggests uh but but there are certainly people who are driven by um the desire to control others you've probably met them they go into Administration um there are people like this in the state of nature who want to control people that is that is their the thing that gives them their jollies they want to be they want to dominate and They're they're another source of uh huge disagreement uh then of course we have the laws of nature um the laws

of nature what are they um so we we first of all we he says there are no Notions of right and wrong um and then he says but then he goes has two entire chapters given to listing the laws of nature which obviously must mean laws that apply in the state of nature so What the hell are these well the way that they are interpreted uh or at least one clear way that they're meant to be interpreted is as goate interprets them as sort of uh conclusions that you will reach if you are self-interested uh

and in fact what he calls the fundamental law of nature is to seek peace now why is that a fundamental law of nature because it makes rational sense if you're in this Situation the state of nature where everybody is like this including you it's going to be hell and you're not going to be able to live a good life you're just going to be in Perpetual fear of you know it's like I don't know in Haiti where the gangs are in control nobody's enjoying their life there everybody's insecure everybody body needs locks on the doors

you you could be killed at any second there's there's no police to come and Help you it's horrible so then given that fact it's in your interest to try and escape to try and make things better to try and seek peace um so it makes sense it's not like uh a a a law from it's not like a something written on a stone tablet that's not what the laws of nature are that not God's rules that we couldn't have worked out for ourselves there they're obvious conclusions that you will draw given the facts about humans

So they're sort of uh the correct conclusions to draw the laws of nature are the laws that any sensible rational person will come up with rules of thumb that every any sensible rational person will come up with once they know what people are like so there sort of rules of rational ity now of course he does say that God backs them up um so you could view uh hubs as a Divine command theorist as well but that seems a little tacked on uh and it Seems like you know him justifying himself to the the Christians

so it looks like uh for hubs you can't really even talk about morality outside of a a society outside of a political system because it's just empty words now that creates a bit of a puzzle because if there aren't even rules like uh like because how is it that we can even get off the ground in a establishing a political Society there Has to be some basis of trust so how do how is it uh I mean we would someone like uh lock would say even in the state of nature there's a moral rule that

you have to keep your promises if you make an agreement you have to keep it whereas Hub seems to deny that so how is it that we're going to establish a social contract how is it that everybody's going to agree with themselves to give up their uh right of nature to seek preservation give that power to The Sovereign so the Sovereign is now the sole enforcement body and that stops everybody fighting how are we going to ever do that well hubs sort of shortcuts it and he says and here's another key difference between hubs and

luck according to someone like lock whether or not a political uh system is legitimate depends on whether or not it was set up in the right way think of it as uh like a club Club you're only a member of the club if you've agreed to Be a member if you haven't agreed then you're not a member so whether or not you're a member depends on a historical fact whether or not in the past you signed an agreement or you agreed whereas hubs actually says there are two ways to set up a sovereign there's sovereignty

by institution which is if everybody you know everybody sort of get has a big parlay in the state of nature and says you know this is crap right we we hate this fighting business Uh let's do something about it everybody agreed okay well I'll give up my right to kill you if you give up your right to kill me and we'll set up a sovereign that would be uh uh sovereignty by institution but just as good is sovereignty by acquisition which is if a sovereign and already established Sovereign comes in and takes over and then

you have a sovereign just as much as if you had a sovereign by institution which of course Lo would Deny absolutely said no I don't have to obey somebody who came in and just said they're my boss because you know I haven't promised them I I haven't made any promise there's uh but political obligation for um Hobs is results based the point of The Sovereign why would you ever give up your power to a sovereign for the purpose of self preservation because that's what you care about so if the so long as the Sovereign can

preserve you can elevate your status Above the state of nature then they have the rights of the Sovereign but the moment they lose uh the ability to protect you all bets are off you don't owe them anything so in the chapter that um led to Bishop bramel calling it the uh Rebels catechism Hobs lays out when the subject doesn't have to obey the Sovereign and for example although this is this is this will um get you confused on the one hand The Sovereign has the right of Life On death over you the sovereign has every

right to sentence you to death but you also have the Liberty to refuse that and to escape you have you have the right to resist being killed you don't have to consent to it you don't have to say okay if if my king commands it here Chu my head off absolutely not you can run you can do whatever you it takes because the point of the Commonwealth is that it's better than the state of nature and even in the state of nature You have the right of self-preservation so you would never you would never go

into a commonwealth where you're worse off than in the state of nature so uh you have the freedom to refuse without Injustice to kill or harm yourself even if commanded by The Sovereign to confess to a crime conscript to be conscripted into an army now if you consent to be in an army then uh you have to do it and that's one of the weird another weird Thing about hops wait a minute so Justice and Injustice have no place in the state of nature and yet one of the laws of nature is uh and this

isn't in the excerpt that you've got um I didn't make the excerpt it's an important part is one of the laws of nature is you've got to keep your covenants covenants are a special kind of agreement um why have you got to keep your covenants why wouldn't you in a state of Nature a promise to do something a a covenant is where uh somebody gives you something and then later on you give them something else so it's not simultaneous it's one thing happens and then the other so uh suppose you say uh I will promise

to pay you if you do this work for me uh that's a covenant so they do the work for you why wouldn't you just say haha sucks to be you I've got what I want and now screw you why would you then pay them and and according to Hubs you absolutely do have to keep your uh covenants because it's in your self-preservation because and basically it's uh the a hub scholar called Greg kavka who's one of the people who took his ideas and app applied them to things like nuclear deterrence Game Theory and nuclear deterrence

had a really good um quip uh he said s believes that time wounds all heels heels he e LS you know like bad guys so time wounds all heals that is if You sure if you can get away with breaking your Covenant maybe the first time but you will Fast get a reputation and nobody will believe you and that will work against your pres self-preservation you have to be moral uh for your own good is eventually so covenants even in the state of nature you do have to follow your Covenant so that's why uh you

we can have um Commonwealth by Institution all right so big picture humans in the state of nature neither good nor bad they're just what they are they're self-interested they have the right to self-interest this despite them they're not evil but these facts about them will lead to quarrel they'll lead to a so the state of nature is a state of War now a state of War doesn't mean constantly fighting it means constantly it's like the cold war the Cold War uh even if we weren't actually fighting the Soviets there was a constant threat so that's

what the state of nature is like so constant state of anxiety that's sort of the state of War caused by the way humans are naturally drives humans to establish a uh a system because the problem of the state of nature that's the other thing um sidebar a common criticism that we already see in filma of any social contract theorist is that the state of Nature is a myth like uh we have no record of humans sort of existing in a pre-political state obviously and hubs kind of has an explanation for that because he says you're

not going to get literature or any kind of civilization from people in a state of nature because they haven't got the time they're always guarding against their neighbors uh he has a long discussion of how we'll never get technology we'll never get any kind Of advance in a state of nature because humans are just taken up with surviving but so consequently there's no historical record of humans ever existing in this state so some critics like filmer would say it's just a myth this there is no state of nature humans humans have always existed in society

because we're Political Animals now Hobs has a response to that he says I'm not necessarily talking about like a preol like a time in human prehist We're going to later on read um a famous work by rouso called discourse on the origin of inequality where he describes a kind of uh human anthropology and talks about the develop the evolution of human society and talks about pre-political Society Hobbs isn't necessarily talking about that he says look you say the state of nature is a myth because it never existed it still exists because the state of nature

is just A situation where there is no common power to fear the re what you set up in leaving the state of nature is establishing a common Power by giving up your power to The Sovereign um any situation where there is no judge above you and that's what would happen between the Supreme Court and uh The Sovereign if power was divide uh was divided or Limited um that that would be essentially a state of nature again so that's why we Want to avoid that because we want to get out of the state of nature and

he gives uh the example look think of a sovereign of one country What relation are they to a sovereign of another country they're in the state of nature which is why countries go to war because countries countries start acting like individuals in the state of nature they want to encroach they say oh you know uh for our own preservation for the preservation of our country we've got to Have a buffer zone so like Russia and Ukraine Russia uh will move in once they lose their puppet guy in Ukraine they St feeling insecure and so they

move into predominantly Russians speaking areas of Ukraine that's exactly like the behavior of individuals in the state of nature so he says sovereigns now are in a state of nature um with respect to other sovereigns so you can't use that it never existed criticism because it still exists Because this is how I Define state of nature but then that's kind of a a trick because you say well wait a minute if that's all the state of nature is then why is that human's natural state I mean if you're going to use the idea of this

is human nature then you're sort of implying that humans are naturally individualistic and naturally separate from the herd and does that really make sense that can we even exist and um another thing Hobbs Does talk about the family and does talk about the uh Power that parents have over their children in a way that filmer might say well you've given me a little wedge uh for patriarchalism because it's not if every human is an individual you have little clusters you have groups you have families and what if the families got bigger wouldn't they be their

own little uh natural political systems so that's a sort of uh conflict in hops but anyway That's what he says about uh the state of nature that it is um just a state in which there are uh no common commonly accept authorities and that's why the solution is to set up a common Authority by setting up a sovereign and a sovereign the powers of the Sovereign come from the powers of the uh of the individuals which is why if it's no longer in their interest to be ruled by The Sovereign they can take back their

power and Essentially say if you're not protecting me the quote at the end of this chapter is the end of obedience is protection that is the point of obedience is protection if you're no longer protecting me I'm not going to be obedient and as brl pointed out well this kind of ruins your whole um argument because you said that we've got to have the maximally stable Society because the state of nature is So shitty but you've given us this kind of excuse to disband the um uh the Commonwealth at the drop of a hat because

who gets to judge uh whether or not the The Sovereign is legitimately protecting you to the extent that you want you do nobody else can judge that so basically uh Hobbs has given each individual the license to say I'm not feeling protected enough so I no longer um I no longer obey now what Hobs can do to fight that Is a lot of propaganda because one of the things that the Sovereign has uh a right to is basically control education and um decide and decide when um of control of education and S censorship decide when

a uh a book or a a particular person is spreading uh ideas that will lead to um to dissolving the power of the Sovereign and of course somewhat Ironically uh Leviathan itself was banned for exactly this reason uh that reading it might give the um the populous ideas but of course there's also the other two chapters uh two books of Leviathan on um on religion where he argues that actually a good Christian has to obey the Sovereign um because God wants them to and that will be another way to ensure uh that the sovereignty that

the the that nobody deserts that nobody free rides and um says I'm not Going to do my part I'll sure I'll I'll drive on the roads that uh our Commonwealth has produced I'll take advantage of all the uh the fruits of a commonwealth that will not exist in a state of nature of Technology Arts culture that kind of thing I'll take advantage of that but I just won't do my part if ever called on that's a free riter and that's someone who's breaking their Covenant and God will punish them uh according to the arguments of

of the Other two books but there you go so it's very interesting in that absolutely disagrees with someone like filmer on human's natural state on uh you know the origin of power where power comes from but ends up arguing for something very similar to what filmer is arguing uh for an absolute uh Sovereign now it doesn't to be a single individual but from all of the arguments that Hobs gives that would probably be More stable than a body because then because in a body you will perhaps have disagreement uh amongst the amongst the members of

The Sovereign body um but there you go uh so a lot of tensions in uh hubs tensions for example are there moral laws in the state of nature on the one hand no but on the other hand what are these laws of nature um tensions between what uh critics like Loch will Regard as tyranny giving the Sovereign too much power that nobody would agree to that but on the other hand what critics like bramell would say is leaving too much power in the um subjects to the extent that it will lead to the dissolution of

the Commonwealth Thomas hubs