‘Leviathan’ Claims No Price Is Too High to Pay for Peace
‘Leviathan’, by Thomas Hobbies, reviewed.
In a condition of war, wrote Thomas Hobbes, there is ‘no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Hobbes’ essay on the social contract, written during the dark years of the English Civil War, asks how we can stop ourselves from falling into a state of ‘all against all’, and suggests the answer is an all-powerful sovereign: a ‘Leviathan’.
Leviathan, Hobbes’s masterpiece, is remarkable for all sorts of reasons, starting with its name which, unlike other works of political philosophy such as Burke’s Reflections, evokes, rather than describes. The mythological Leviathan is a ‘tortuous’, fire-breathing sea serpent mentioned in the Book of Job and described as impossible to kill. The Leviathan has such power that it can only be slain, and will eventually be slain, by God Himself on the last day, before being cast into the abyss. And though it might seem just a bit odd that Hobbes thinks someone like this a fitting candidate for ruler, we must remember the background against which he was writing. Hobbes lived through bitter sectarian conflict, not only due to the English war but the European religious wars on the continent. For Hobbes, peace and security were the highest goals of government, and he was willing to pay a heavy price for them.
Hobbes lived through a time of bitter sectarian conflict, not only due to the English war but the European religious wars on the continent.
Hobbes takes his time to bring us to this conclusion, however, writing at length on human nature and his mechanistic conception of the human animal. In Hobbes’s view, one can explain everything about human beings without reference to the immaterial or supernatural. In fact, he believes one can explain all things in the universe in terms of the motion and interaction of material; he is therefore something like the first modern materialist. Against the ruling view of his time, he also argues that there is no ‘greatest good’ to which society can aim. Human desires are so different, writes Hobbes, that any political community that aims for the greatest good will collapse into civil war as its members argue what that good should be. There is only a greatest evil, Hobbes says, and it is violent death. It is on avoiding this that a society’s political structure should be based.
Hobbes faces a dilemma here. Although there is no greatest good, and although a political community aimed at the greatest good is therefore not suitable for man, neither is life outside of it. In what Hobbes calls the ‘state of nature’, man competes violently for the scarce resources he needs to achieve his goals. What man needs is to live in a community in which he can renounce his claim on things because others agree to do the same, and where a single authority is given the power to keep order. In such circumstances, he can live in peace side by side with others without fear of violence. But order is difficult to maintain, which is why the authority who keeps it must have absolute power. The sovereign, for Hobbes, has the right to assert his power over matters of faith and doctrine. He can choose his successor. And, no matter how he acts, he cannot be accused of injustice or put to death.
What man requires is to live in a system in which he can safely renounce his claim on things because others do the same, and where a single authority is empowered to preserve order.
The style in which Hobbes wrote Leviathan, which reflects its time, will be a barrier to enjoyment for some. But Hobbes was careful in his writing nonetheless, aiming to use commonly used words, even if he sometimes failed in the attempt. (It is ironic that Hobbes, like Orwell, often breaks his own rules for writing, frequently using metaphors despite attacking them in the opening chapters.) Hobbes also puts forward his claims in a neat and logical way, moving from axioms to arguments. (Not for nothing is he sometimes called the father of modern analytic philosophy, which is marked by clear writing, rigorous argument and formal logic.)
At any rate, it is difficult to overstate the impact of Leviathan, which, due to introducing social contract theory, influenced Locke, Rousseau and Kant, among many others. Cast as a conservative, Hobbes in fact had radical ideas for his age, objecting to the tradition of the divine right of kings and stressing reason in place of accepted authority long before the Enlightenment. He called for a redistributive tax system to help those not in work. His beliefs about human nature shocked many of his peers. And his notion of the ‘war of all against war’ has made a big impact in the realist school of international relations. That said, due not just to its contents but its context, there is still something gloomy about Leviathan. Having fled to France, Hobbes watched across the Channel as his country sank into chaos. His judgement of human nature, and the proper means to temper it, could be nothing but grim and pessimistic. The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper described Leviathan like this: ‘The axiom, fear; the method, logic; the conclusion, despotism.’
