Hobbes\' Leviathan John Hobbes if

Hobbes' Leviathan

John Hobbes

If the sovereign command a man (though justly condemned) to kill, wound, or mayme himself; or not to resist those who assault him; or to abstain from the use of food, ayre, medicine, or any other thing, without which he cannot live; yet hath that man the Liberty to disobey."

Let it first be explained that it seems very likely that when Hobbes speaks of "liberty" in this case he actually means "prerogative" and not "freedom" in the traditional sense. I wholeheartedly agree that a human has "the liberty to disobey," that a human being under the pressure of being ordered to die has the prerogative to disobey. The early colonies in America had the liberty to disobey the King of England because it was their right to survive. The resistors in France ("Resistance") had a right to disobey the Nazis after Germany invaded their country in WWII. There are countless examples of instances where humans could have given up and been killed or left to die, but they had the liberty to make their own decisions, and those decisions led them to a passion for survival against all odds. And in his Chapter XIV "Of the first and second Natural laws, and of Contracts" (MacPherson, editor, 1968) Hobbes asserts that Nature (the natural world, including people in their natural state) affords man, "each man" with the right to use "his own power as he will himself or the preservation of his own nature" - indeed, his own life. But wait, Hobbes also wrote that the political state, the "sovereign" rulers, had a right to absolute authority over individuals. So, how can humans have total liberty and yet governments also have authority to define what liberties humans should have?

REVIEW of SCHOLARSHIP on HOBBES' LEVIATHAN: There are many passages in Leviathan that explain in much greater detail why Hobbes takes the positions that he does. And there are many scholarly research articles that point out how Hobbes intended for his philosophy to be understood and embraced, and they will be reviewed in this paper. When it comes to decisions that only individuals can make, they do have the Liberty to make those choices, Hobbes explains (www.historyguide.org),because liberty is "the absence of external impediments"; liberty is the shaking off of those impediments which "...take away part of a man's power to do what he would."

There is a passage in Chapter XIV in which Hobbes insists that when a person "transferreth his right, or renounceth it," that is to say, when he transfers his right to make a personal choice over to some other person or authority, it should be a "voluntary act." That act should mean that a person is giving his right to his own free will in order that "good to himself" will result from it. There is no "benefit consequent" to being patient with "...wounds, chains, and imprisonment," Hobbes continues. Moreover, since a person who is witnessing others coming at him violently doesn't know whether they intend to kill him or not, but, Hobbes implies, if that person quietly assumes they are not trying to kill him, he has thus transferred his right to life over to their hands. It is an interesting philosophy, and one that has been discussed by many historians, philosophers, academics, intellectuals, scholars and students of all persuasions.

Meanwhile, writing in the Journal of Value Inquiry, D. Goldstick alludes to Hobbes' philosophy in Leviathan as "casual determinism" and that "what you do not on balance desire to do, you will not do, at any rate not freely." but, he goes on, "...what you cannot desire or will to do, you cannot do, whether freely or not." So scholars are taking what Hobbes has written and trying to fit it into contexts that make sense today. Goldstick goes on to say - paraphrasing Keith Lehrer, a philosophy professor at the University of Arizona - that one "...cannot do what you cannot choose to do." The point here is that yes, one has the natural liberty to choose what to do in any case or any eventuality, but a choice, conscious rational decision, has to be made first before an act may be carried out.

Scholar J. Judd Owen ("The tolerant leviathan: Hobbes and the paradox of liberalism") writes that according to his interpretation of Hobbes, the "condition of absolute human liberty, of absolute individual liberty, is the state of nature, which is a war of all against all." Owen, writing in Polity, asserts that Hobbes' view is not only about personal liberty, but it is also about "authoritarian rule." In Owen's opinion, Hobbes was preaching that "toleration" requires the "peace and security that only a sovereign authority can allow." And so the view taken earlier in this paper, that Hobbes supports an individual's right to make a choice against a sovereign master, is in conflict with Owen (and other philosophers).

Owen goes on to quote Hobbes from Leviathan: "Among masterless men, there is perpetual war of every man against his neighbor...[there is] no propriety of goods or lands, no security, but a full and absolute liberty in every particular man." And so, Owen continues, Hobbes is saying that the "state of absolute individual liberty" is the "worst possible human state." And going on, while Owen agrees that Hobbes is saying humans "are absolutely free" while in the state of nature to do whatever they make a conscious choice to do, Owen also believes Hobbes is saying that while in the "natural state" humans "cannot prosper" - that in fact life is "poor and short." What Hobbes is building up to, Owen explains, is that only in a "political society" (as opposed to a natural state) can humans be truly free, because freedom must be restrained by law.

This seems contradictory; Owen's interpretation of Hobbes is that humans need laws to have peace and security and freedom, because without laws neighbors would be totally free to turn on their neighbors if they could make a conscious decision to do so? Indeed, Owen goes on, the true goal of a political society is not the "alienation of natural liberties per se." But Hobbes was aware that he might offend some future readers who contend, "on one side for too great liberty, and on the other side for too much authority" (quoted by Owen). It is "...hard to pass between the points of both unwounded," Hobbes explains. Of course some alert, thinking individuals are always going to demand as much personal liberty as possible - even standing up against the sovereign power when its decisions go against the morality - and others will gently abide by any decision the sovereign power comes up with. And given this dilemma of Hobbes between what a political authority should dictate and what an individual should be allowed to decide to do (within his personal rights and liberty), Owen writes, "Hobbes's instructions to the sovereign that the severe limitation on the purpose of his office is a matter of natural law." So we're back to natural law again, which is where we started at the beginning of this paper.