Leviathan: Hobbes’s theory of the state

Thomas Hobbes’s main work Leviathan is a book about the state. Until now I have written in my recent blogs about other aspects of the Leviathan, but this time I want to write on Hobbes’s view on the state. It is especially treated in Part II, titled “Of Commonwealth” with some important introductory sections in the last chapters of Part I (“Of Man”).

A man is a wolf to another man, so Hobbes. We have seen this in my last blog. The consequence is that society is a war of all against all, or at least it is a situation of armed peace with real fighting never far away. According to Hobbes, there are three reasons for the conflicts between men: competition in order to gain profits; confidence in order to live safe; and glory. This state of war is the natural state of man. Injustice doesn’t exist: We cannot talk about what is good and bad or right and not right in such a situation, for where a common power that keeps man under control doesn’t exist, there is no law, and where there is no law, there is no injustice. However, people fear death and they want to live a pleasant life. Therefore they want peace. By reasoning this way, Hobbes gets at his first law of nature: We must seek peace and strive for it. However, this is only possible – and that is the second law of nature – if man is willing to give up as much of his rights and liberty as is necessary to get this peace, provided that others are willing to do the same. These two rules are the core of Hobbes’s Law of Nature.

So, people want safety and peace and for this they have to take the safety and peace of others into account. This problem can only be solved if there is a common power and a kind of state, so Hobbes. This can happen only, if men conclude a treaty by which they hand over their rights to a sovereign or to a leading council. The function of this authority is to give the people safety, so that they can build up a good life with which they are satisfied. When people have concluded such a treaty, they have given birth to the great LEVIATHAN. The authority they have installed this way contains the essence of the state, or “commonwealth”, as Hobbes actually says. This essence is “one person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the authority, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defence.” This authority is called the sovereign and all the others are called subjects. (see the end of chapter xvii of Hobbes’s Leviathan) In this state it is the sovereign who makes the laws that the subjects must obey. There is one restriction: A subject keeps his right to protect his or her own life; the sovereign is not allowed to take the lives of the subjects.

This is the core of Hobbes’s theory of the state. What remains in Part II of his Leviathan is mere elaboration. It is clear that Hobbes is an advocate of an authoritarian state, governed by an autocratic ruler, or otherwise by an autocratic council. Although Hobbes doesn’t say so, implicit in the Leviathan is that he prefers the former, the one-man autocracy. Once the sovereign has been chosen, the influence of the subjects is almost nil. Of course, the sovereign has his advisers and he has to take care of the safety of the subjects and must take care that they can promote their welfare. He must also respect their lives and a few other rights. But basically the sovereign rules alone. There is no place for a kind of democracy or a kind of state without a central authority, like the Republic of the Netherlands in his days (several times in the Leviathan Hobbes refers to the Republic). This makes his state theory different, for example, from the state theory developed by Spinoza not long after Hobbes wrote down his one. Spinoza discussed several types of state in his Political Treatise. He clearly preferred a kind of democracy, although he wondered to what extent it could be realized. Not so Hobbes. A democratic state even didn’t come in his mind, although there had already been examples of such types of state. The most famous democracy was, of course, Athens in the 5th and 4th century B.C. Apparently, Hobbes didn’t see it as a realistic option. History proved him to be wrong – the history of England and the UK in the first place did.