3: Leviathan: The Making of a Mortal God

1. 3: Leviathan: The Making of a Mortal God 1

2. Method in social science We begin with immediate experience, the uncomprehended social totality that we perceive around us Old empiricism: abstract essence from this observation The new science as model: Analyze this into its basic components Free and equal rational individuals Complex development of simple motions Reconstruct the whole on this basis Follow the interaction of these rational individuals over time, starting from the simplest level: Individuals in a state of nature (i.e., without a political state) 2

3. 1) Rational Reconstruction of History A and B both want X Common desire for a scarce object makes them naturally enemies They fight A defeats B because A is stronger A defeats C, etc. But B and C combined are stronger, more powerful, than A Hence: practical equality of human beings (B + C) defeat A 3

4. 2) The Right of nature No free will Only rationally self-interested individuals Each is naturally free � natural liberty � to pursue one�s interests = the right of nature: to do whatever is necessary to secure one�s survival Egotism follows logically from materialism This body is what I am, all that I am; and for me there is only me 4

5. The duty/law of nature: morality The necessity of nature: individual survival � is the duty of each person It restricts natural liberty Duty (necessity, law) v. liberty (right) The duty of survival, rationally comprehended, will ultimately lead to abandoning the right of natural liberty i.e., through rationally comprehended experience, we will discover a duty to step outside the state of nature, and give up our natural freedom to do whatever is in our self-interest 5

6. Political Animal? In describing humans as �zoon politicon� (political animal) Aristotle assumes what needs to be explained Socially cooperative individuals are the result of a process, the effect of a cause, not a given �form� to be classified Lawlessness is apparent even in a state society In highway robbery We wish the state were stronger We glimpse the underlying danger of the state of nature It becomes openly manifest in civil war Time of Hobbes� writing: the English Civil war of 1640s 6

7. 3) From Simple to Complex New complexity: cooperating group (B + C) makes peace with each other Each is learning a lesson: war is not the best means of achieving one�s goals Peace between individuals is better, more powerful than the natural war of each against the other But, for (B + C) to renounce war altogether, while A does not, is to violate the law (duty) of survival So war is still necessary: a compromise, imperfect solution: some peace, but continued war 7

8. 4) The Ultimate Futility of War (B + C) rule over D, E, and F (D + E + F) defeat (B + C) Reason: 3 is greater than 2 > no limited group is free of danger until all are united in renouncing war as a means of survival Even a determined minority of slaves has the power to undermine the rule of a majority Rational (enlightened), self-interested individuals learn the futility of war Over time, and through painful suffering What is evident to us now, in retrospect 8

9. War of all against all �Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. 9

10. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; 10

11. and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.� 11

12. 5) The Universal Law of Peace: The Golden Rule Law of Survival commands that individuals give up natural right or natural liberty (as long as all others do so too) 1st law/duty of morality: to seek peace How? => 2nd law: Golden Rule Limit one�s means of survival (the right of natural liberty) to those means that allow others to seek their own ends�as long as others do the same =Don�t use force or fraud in dealings with others Right of property The Golden Rule is based on individual self-interest, not altruism or benevolent feelings 12

13. The Golden Rule, scientifically understood �From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. 13

14. �For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing anything he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he, then there is no reason for anyone to divest himself of his: for that were to expose himself to prey, which no man is bound to, rather than to dispose himself to peace. 14

15. �This is that law of the gospel: Whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris [what you do not want done to you, do not do to others.]� 15

16. 6) Laws of the Science of Morals 3rd law: keep contracts with others 4th law: be grateful for benevolent deeds => promotes positive bonds between people�not just refraining from negative actions Benevolent actions are done for self-interested reasons (E.g., Roman clientele) For the benefited to show ingratitude undermines self-interest of both parties Hence there will be peace, trust between rich and poor in an unequal society 16

17. Benevolence is self-interested �For no man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help, nor of reconciliation of one man to another; and therefore they are to remain still in the condition of war, which is contrary to the first and fundamental law of nature which commandeth men to seek peace.� 17

18. 7) Reason and Passion Some moral philosophers seek the origin of morality in �a mediocrity of passions� They are looking at effects, not causes Were our natural passions directed to social harmony, there would be no problem of morality and politics The reality: our (short-term, narrow) passions push us to conflict, war, while reason (long-term self-interest) deduces rules for maximum happiness Based on, confirmed by, experience 18

19. A mediocrity of passions �Now the science of virtue and vice is moral philosophy; and therefore the true doctrine of the laws of nature is the true moral philosophy. But the writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices [as in Hobbes� deductions]; yet, not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living, place them in a mediocrity of passions: as if not the cause, but the degree of daring, made fortitude; or not the cause, but the quantity of a gift, made liberality.� 19

20. Against Aristotle�s Ethics Same virtues as Hobbes, but a different explanation A mediocrity of passions: a universal desire for happiness founded in common human nature Fortitude, liberality: seen as a matter of degree or quantity A mean between extremes (medium, �mediocrity�) Hobbes: need to understand the virtues in relation to their causes Individual self-interest rationally understood is the underlying cause of the virtues But Aristotle simply describes the existing virtues, measures them, quantifies them, rather than explaining their cause 20

21. 8) The Weakness of Reason We see that it is better for each if all were to obey the moral rules But if I can break them, while others keep them, it is to my advantage to do so We remain naturally individualists, egotists Recall �ring of Gyges� in Plato: shows that Plato recognizes the reality of egotism I know that all others must think the same I know that some people are better able to restrict their desires than others Hence, I should kill him before he kills me Hence: reason-based morality and its �theorems� is powerless against the narrow passions 21

22. Free rider 1) If everyone else obeys the laws And I alone violate them when I can I benefit both ways 2) If I don�t break the rules, someone else will Better I do so than they Raskolnikov on robbing, killing the pawn broker 3) If I don�t break the law when others will, I put myself at risk, and so violate the law of nature 22

23. Contradiction? 1) Abstractly, and in general, it is in one�s interests to cooperate with others, to follow moral rules But long-term benefits of morality are vague and uncertain for me 2) Concretely and in particular, it is often in one�s interests to violate cooperation, to break moral rules Short-term benefits of breaking moral laws are definite, sure, in my particular case 3) But each person�s motive is his/her own individual interest, not the well-being of society in itself Which is a means to one�s own happiness A contradiction? Morality is fine in theory, is unworkable in practice 23

24. 9) Creation of a Mortal God: the Leviathan Next step in the step-by-step synthetic reconstruction: We need a power to enforce the moral laws�the Leviathan State We must call into being a �mortal god� And chain ourselves to its laws Giving up natural liberty for �civil liberties� E.g., freedom to buy and sell, pursue one�s trade, and educate one�s children 24

25. Morality is mere verbiage, without force �For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.� 25

26. Human beings should voluntarily give up � �that natural liberty, which only is properly called liberty. But as men, for the attaining of peace and conservation of themselves thereby, have made an artificial man, which we call a Commonwealth; so also have they made artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power, and at the other end to their own ears. These bonds, in their own nature but weak, may nevertheless be made to hold, by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them.� 26

27. Self-enslavement The state is an evil, but a necessary one It violates our natural right �civil rights� are thus based on violating natural right Laws suppress desires as much as they realize them State society is a form of slavery But we chain ourselves Our chains are comfortable ones: since they are forged for our comfort 27

28. 10) A Modern Science of Political Society Aristotelians place virtue in a �mediocrity of passions��as realizing a common human nature But if we have matured from selfish to social beings, no political state would be necessary�no terrifying instrument of power Observed socialization is the result of existing states, an effect of political causes and cannot be taken as an argument for a natural sociability, as the Aristotelians argue 28

29. Evidence for the state of nature The state of nature is a permanent possibility of a reign of violence Highway robberies and other glimpses of state of nature Civil wars and their terrible sufferings It continues to exist on the international plane, where nations remain in the state of nature, and so of war We agree to the Social Contract as soon as we see this No need for an actual, empirical contract 29

30. 11) Hobbes and the English Revolution The Levelers + the Grandees against the old feudal state How unite B + C, with their different goals to defeat A? Hobbes� theory: theoretical basis of a social-political revolution 1) The poor Levelers want equal political power 2) The Grandees (bourgeoisie) want to keep their property But 1) threatens 2) 30

31. Hobbes� Give and Take 1) Against the Levelers, natural liberty must be abandoned for the sake of peace Compare Hobbes to what Adam Smith later calls, optimistically, �the system of natural liberty� For the Levelers what is being proposed is a violation of natural liberty (Rousseau agrees) 2) Against the Grandees: the State must be based on the will of the people as a whole 3) For the Levelers: a uniform system of law, equality before the law 4) For the Grandees: law of property and freedom of commerce as fundamental basis of State 5) For both: an end to feudal privileges and arbitrariness 31

32. No �right to vote� 6) For the Grandees: Suffrage (if the sovereign is to be an assembly) is limited to significant property owners Otherwise the poor would take away the property of the rich 7) For the Levelers: peace: otherwise, further civil war against a better armed opponent, and triumph of the feudal nobility Hobbes (implicitly) asks the Levelers: Which is better, which is in your rational self-interest? Peace with major gains over the traditional feudal situation, or endless war and defeat 32

33. Return to the given totality We now come back to the initial point of departure�an unequal society But less so than under feudalism Hence this is not a justification of the status quo, but a revolutionary argument for a new society It is now explained from out of its opposite: starting point of free and equal self-interested individuals As the radical Levelers would insist that all recognize They come to accept (rationally comprehend) this situation of inequality in material conditions for the sake of equal laws Thus, a compromise is needed in terms of the most radical demands Social science coincides with the evolution of the consciousness of people 33

34. 12) The sovereign is �absolute� The sovereign is �absolute�; whether an hereditary monarch or an elected parliament based on limited suffrage Yet limited by rationally comprehensible laws based on the rational will of the people As understood in rational theory The sovereign should understand that without this limitation by reason, civil war will reemerge This is how an absolute sovereign is naturally limited This is Hobbes� guide for the sovereign, his version of Plato�s Republic Without the need for a �noble lie� (see Leo Strauss) No sovereign is above the law of cause and effect! 34

35. The Rational State of the People versus the Feudal Common Law The rational system or code of the Civil Law should replace the irrationalities of the Common Law In Leviathan, Hobbes sets forth basic principles of Law, founded on reason Versus the Feudal system of the Common Law, where past precedent, interpreted by elite judges, determines the law Civil law method: from basic principles to particular cases Followed in US Constitution But not in American private law (except in New Orleans) where the Common Law of (feudal) England prevails 35

36. 13) The Rational State and the Church Divine revelation cannot be contrary to natural reason, but supplements it The will of the people in accord with the laws of nature (created by God) is the will of God The role of the Church is to persuade people of these matters, but not use force The State remains the ultimate arbiter of religion The State can demand a uniform religion for the sake of peace Including in Muslim countries: to deny the right of Muslim countries to create a state religion, while affirming it for Christian states, is to violate the Golden Rule Commanding external conformity of behavior, but not inner conscience (and should not try to) 36

37. 14) Plato versus Aristotle on the Cause of Human Destiny Plato�s �noble lie� is Aristotle�s truth of nature The materialism of this lie is �shameful� but necessary for social peace The slave boy without education in the Meno remembers geometric truths One�s destiny is created freely by individuals over many lifetimes Our lot in life is determined freely, or by the luck of the draw�not by our different inner natures Hence Hobbes essentially turns from Aristotle back to Plato Our world is really created by free and essentially equal individuals The �ring of Gyges� problem is solved by the Leviathan as the enforcer of moral rules (i.e., Plato�s Republic endorses a Leviathan) 37

38. 15) Enlightenment against Paternalism The Aristotelian position justifies paternalism�rule by those who have full rational abilities over those who don�t Knowing what is good for those others�slaves, peasants, women�lacking the capacity for philosophy The Hobbesian state does not know what will make fundamentally different and equal individuals happy But only what will impede their pursuit of happiness Creates a legal framework for the pursuit of happiness on the part of different individuals (�negative State�) > Law of equal liberty (Golden Rule) 38

39. 16) The Human Creative �Fiat� The state is an artificial, not a natural entity For the mechanist, the state is just as �alive� as any intricate organism All bodies are mechanisms, including �living� ones: this is a consequence of basic physics Teleology: the part subordinate to the good of the organic whole, is an illusion Its creation by humans is analogous to God�s creative fiat Whose purpose is to contradict natural right and the egotistical passions of individuals Once individuals create the state, it rules over them with its means of terror This creation is an on-going necessity, for the state can always collapse back into civil war 39

40. Watches are alive �Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principle part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? 40

41. God�s fiat �For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many springs; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? fiat, or Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation. 41

42. The state: an artificial human being �Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, OR STATE (in Latin, civitas), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was intended; 42

43. �and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial limbs; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; 43

44. �the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people�s safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. 44

45. The Social Contract: Another Creation �Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that that fiat, or Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.� 45

46. What difference does reason make? Rational consciousness of the laws of nature operating in human experience makes a fundamental difference to how these laws operate 1) we wage war to realize our interests And discover the futility of war 2) we seek peace to realize our interests And discover the impotence of morality 3) we give up our natural freedom and rights to a Leviathan to realize our interests 46

47. The State is unnatural The creation of the state involves an unnatural suppression by human beings of their natural inclinations Rather than a natural process of maturation, as in Aristotle Rather than an expression of our natural inclinations and passions as �political animals� 47

48. 17) Contradiction in the Hobbesian Theory? 1) Reason is powerless to suppress egotistical passions 2) So the State is necessary to supplement pure reason 3) But the State is the creation of Reason itself 4) Reason, powerless to rule the passions of individuals, (nevertheless) is powerful enough to create a Power that can do this 48

49. Alienation The State is the instrument of Reason created by human beings as a quasi-independent Power that rules over them Alienation: the state is the power of human reason externalized, and ruling over human beings like an alien entity = Reason becomes armed and dangerous 49

50. Another violation of natural law? God sets up natural laws by a creative fiat of free will Humans set up political laws by a fiat of reason This happens not just once, in the beginning, but on a continuing basis as people reject Civil War and implicitly, on a daily basis, approve of the Social Contract Thus just as divine free will underlies a system of natural laws Quasi-divine human rational will underlies a system of civil laws and law-enforcement Hobbes implicitly admits free will as the basis of the Social Contract 50