Human nature and common peace in Leviathan

Leviathan

In his work on political philosophy, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes outlines what he theorizes as the state of nature for man. In this state of nature, without any government or regulated society, each individual is essentially at war (or potentially at war) with every other man, as there is no higher rule of conduct that prevents this eternal and ongoing conflict. Without any established rules of right and wrong and without any system of punishments, rewards, restraints, or inducements towards certain modes of interactions and behaviors, each individual has only the power that they can physically possess and implement, and life is essentially brutish.

Into this state of nature Hobbes inserts some fundamental laws, however, and these both more clearly illustrate the state of nature as Hobbes' conceives it and point to the manner in which this state of nature might have ceased to exist. First, peace is seen as intrinsically and extrinsically valuable as it is by definition the freedom from conflict and this allows for greater direct happiness. Hobbes' first fundamental law of nature, then, is that all individuals should strive towards peacefulness, not out f an ethical responsibility but simply as this is the logical course that would guide behavior in a situation without other rules and regulations. The second law, however, is that everyone has a right to everything, including another person's body, in this state of nature. Exercising this right would often come into conflict with the first law of striving for peace, though, and thus contracts or covenants in which individuals agree to not exercise their right over persons and properties in exchange for the same courtesy come about. The formation and carrying out of these contracts is the third fundamental law of nature.

Hobbes goes on to insist that there is only one reliable way to obtain security and peace through these fundamental laws of nature, and that is if an authority is defined and granted as a part of the large social contract form that gives the right of assessment and punishment of other contractual breaches to an individual that is above the influence and sway of the people. That is, the desire for power, wealth, greater comfort, etc. will always incline some towards the breaking of the social contract and towards the exercising of their right under the second law of nature to have what they can take, and there must be a means of addressing these contractual transgressions if the contract is to have any integrity and install a lasting and reliable peace. An absolute sovereign, Hobbes contends, is the only way to achieve this, as this sovereign would be imbued with the authority to seek out and to redress contractual failings or breaches, while remaining outside the purview of the other members of the contract and thus remaining ostensibly incorruptible. The threat of punishment from the monarch enforces the contract, and the sovereign keeps the rights of everyone to everything at bay by promising its own application of this right in the form of imprisonment or other punishment should transgressions be noted. In this manner, the laws of nature -- which again, are not ethical guidelines but simple rational inevitabilities like the laws of physics -- can be utilized to ensure peace, whereas without this absolute power to punish transgressions and breaches of the social contract there would be only the base functioning of the laws themselves and a consistent return to the brutishness of a life without order and consensus.