Hobbes and Rousseau

1. Hobbes and Rousseau 3 September 2008

2. The state of nature • Why do you have a right to everything in the state of nature, according to Hobbes? • In the absence of someone who can determine what others will do (and in particular who can ensure that they will keep their promises), it cannot be reasonably expected of me to refrain from any potential course of action if I judge that it will protect me from violent death

3. The state of nature • Why should I leave the state of nature? • I want to leave the state of nature but… • It is only rational for me to do so if there is a sovereign strong enough to protect me… • Not because I am especially self-interested, but because I fear violent death! • Ergo as long as there is no sovereign, it is not rational for me to give up my right to everything

4. The state of nature • Should I ever exit the state of civil society? • If there’s a sovereign in existence, it is not (generally) rational for me to disobey the sovereign: the sovereign is not my equal • So long as the sovereign does not directly and obviously threaten my physical existence • If there’s a sovereign in existence, it is not (generally) rational for me to claim a right to everything • Rational expectations in civil society produce political and social obligations

5. The state of nature • The state of nature and the civil state are both rational equilibria: it is difficult to “shift” from the first to the second • False views of the nature of political obligation threaten to shift us from the second to the first • The state (the civil state) is therefore an achievement that needs to be protected from those false views

6. False views • It is appropriate to rebel when the government is tyrannical • Only democratic or republican governments have any claim on our obedience

7. Hobbes as a monarchist • It’s not that his premises are monarchist; he argues from the equality of men to the necessity of a supreme authority, whatever its form! • He justifies submission to almost all forms of tyranny as a means to prevent the state of war

8. Rousseau • Tyranny should not be justified; we need to justify a free from of government

9. Rousseau • What is Hobbes’ main mistake? • He does not see that human desires evolve historically; we no longer have the same desires that we used to have in a state of nature • So we cannot tell whether our desires lead us to social integration or disintegration independently of the form of society in which we live

10. Rousseau • Nevertheless, Rousseau thinks it is necessary to go back to the state of nature. Why? • Only by going back to the state of nature can we tell what our best social condition might be

11. Rousseau’s state of nature • Are we originally equal? In what respect? • Physical equality: our way of life made us originally more equal than we are (including the sexes) • Social equality: we were originally independent of each other (as opposed to interdependent)

12. The ideal of equality • Equality is the result of independence: natural man did not depend on others • Inequality is the result of interdependence: social interdependence generates differences in social power • Ideally, a social state would create an artificial independence it would equalize differences in social power

13. Rousseau’s state of nature • What are our truly natural desires and instincts? • Need for food, sex, sleep. Natural abundance prevents conflict and makes the cooperation of others unnecessary. • We have a natural abhorrence of cruelty • We are not rational calculators; hence • We are neither good nor bad

14. Rousseau’s state of nature

15. Rousseau’s State of Nature: A Tale of Corruption • Rationality develops at the expense of independence • Division of labour • Invention of property

16. Rousseau’s state of nature: a tale of corruption • There is a “happy medium” • a kind of golden age where we are neither so interdependent as to be unequal, nor so irrational as to be like apes • Unfortunately this happy state is unstable

17. Rousseau’s state of nature: a tale of corruption • Progressively, new passions are awakened, in particular comparative passions • Amour de soi: the natural self-love of man for his own existence. “Man desires his own well-being” but such well-being is “limited by nature to physical necessity” • Amour propre: the self-love of man in comparison to others (hence, all the passions of honour, competition, etc.). “Abundance arouses greed.” • “Morals become corrupted as minds become more enlightened”

18. Rousseau’s state of nature: a tale of corruption • In the end, political states emerge to prevent some of the worst problems of this intermediate state • But such states are generally unjust; they are founded on inequality

19. The State of Nature and the State of War • War cannot exist between individuals properly speaking: there are only limited quarrels between men in a state of nature • War can only exist between states, which are moral beings

20. The State of Nature and the State of War • But war is really the normal condition of the international system • States do care about the comparative power of other states, and they are in a competitive context in which they must care about it; what is not true of human beings in the state of nature is true of states. • War comes from peace, i.e., from the very establishment of states as a way of preventing some of the problems of a later stage of the state of nature

21. The point of Rousseau’s state of nature • It describes an ideal of autonomy, independence, and freedom • It is a tool of critique • Points the way to the possible solution of our current state: the re-establishment, by artificial means, of the original autonomy, independence, and freedom of human beings, i.e., their full socialization

22. Critique • The “social contract” governing existing states generally a fraud: “Well versed in my duties and happiness, I shut my book, leave the classroom, and look around me. I see unfortunate nations groaning under yokes of iron, the human race crushed by a handful of oppressors, a starving crowd overwhelmed with pain and hunger, whose blood and tears the rich drink in peace, and everywhere the strong armed against the weak with the formidable power of the law”

23. Critique • Right now, we live in the worst of both worlds: neither fully in a state of nature, nor fully in a civil state, with the inconveniences of both: our natural inclinations perverted by the tendencies of states • More generally, there is a contradiction between nature and social institutions: either man should be left alone in nature, or he should be shaped more completely by social institutions.

24. Countervailing tendencies • Is there any hope? • Nature is not entirely suppressed; it can never be entirely extinguished

25. The solution: the true social contract • What does the true social contract do? • Eliminates all personal dependence and substitutes for it a dependence on the law: the rule of law • Socializes us into becoming citizens, not having a private will distinct from the general will

26. Paradoxes of the social contract • The community recreates the original independence of men as a personal independence of each one on any particular other but a dependence on the whole • Such a community would have to be very small to preserve the feelings of identification that make it strong (“nationalism”) and provide its citizens with a sense of the common good