Thank you, Stephen. It makes one think about the darkness that Hobbes was trying to penetrate. I have a PBS video on the life of Napoleon that I watched the other night. What struck me was how quickly a people who, on the basis of the equality and rights of all men, beheaded a king, shifted to crowning an emperor because they again wanted to submerge their equality and rights into something they saw as greater than themselves.
When I was a very young man, fresh out of university, I had a boss who became one of my mentors. He based his knowledge of human behaviour on cats. He had several cats, very large ones. When he had us out to his place, he would invariably set his cats on the kitchen counter and sprinkle catnip into the sink. The cats would jump into the sink and start roiling around. "See, see!" he would say in mock amazement, "Look at those cats!" And then he would always look us directly in the eye and add: "Never forget … Never ever forget, people are just like pussy cats, ten percent conscious and ninety percent unconscious. And it’s the ninety percent you have to worry about!"
I don’t know if he had his percentages right, but as I found in progressing through my career, he had a point.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Straker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "futurework"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
"Selma Singer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 3:15 AM
Subject: Re: Hobbes
meditating a decent response.
Ed says:
> ... I must say I've never felt comfortable with
> Hobbes' articulation of man in the "state of nature". It
> depicts man as solitary, acting only to satisfy himself,
> being nothing more than an "organic automaton".
> Personally, I don't think it was ever like that. First,
> we have always lived not by ourselves, but in groups, and
> groups were always governed by codes of behaviour...
As you note later, Hobbes does not understand himself to be
giving a *historical* account. It may well be that it has
never been "like that" for any historical society.
But we can do the thought-experiment. What is it LIKE, what
is our condition *in the absence of civil authority*? Ans:
It is like when there is civil war (as, very sadly, in some
parts of the world right now).
Speaking perhaps more directly to us, Hobbes says that there
is another way to see political actors living in "the state
of nature" --> take a look at international relations;
consider the sovereign rulers of the sovereign states in the
world. Between them there is no law, no mine or thine, no
common power to keep them all in awe & thus to enforce
obedience. There is only the practicalities and tenuous
agreements, for the time being and every one of them
breakable. The invasion of Iraq shows this as clearly as
anything could.
[Thus there is ultimately a Hobbesian argument for world
government (though he never argued for such a thing).]
Thus a simple answer to Selma Singer, who asked:
>> Something that has always puzzled me about Hobbes: In what way does the writing he does profit him? In what way does the fact of his being a writer, philosopher, generator of ideas, support and validate the philosophy he writes about? <<
Hobbes wants us all to understand clearly: what a sovereign,
what government, *is*, what a citizen is, what the nature of
legitimate political authority is, and, in short, why anyone
should ever obey any law.
He believes that almost everyone is grotesquely and
dangerously confused about these things and therefore
subject themselves to the most slavish and absurd
arrangements. He can make his argument from clear first
principles and he thinks it is persuasive.
**It's all in your head**
It has always seemed to me important to underline and
emphasize one especially important feature of Hobbes's
argument: he is urging us to *revise* the way we look upon,
and relate to, a landscape that remains largely familiar. He
wants us to look at it from another angle and see it as it
*really* is for the first time. At one level nothing at all
changes. Daily life goes on and the things, people &
characters who populate our world remain intact - Dukes
remain, princes remain, paupers and yoeman and farmers and
soldiers remain, just as before. But who they really are and
what our relationship to them all is radically reconfigured.
Give your head a shake and see it all for what it is.
We are matter in motion, organized so as to seek to remain
in motion, to seek life and to shun death (the cessation of
all motion). All the rest follows.
This is very like what Copernicus and Galileo do with the
Earth, Sun, and Planets. At one level, nothing changes at
all - the sun continues to rise in the east & set in the
west, Venus carries on as Evening Star and Morning Star, the
earth is firm beneath my feet. And yet, at another level
*everything* has changed and with my mind's eye I can "see"
that we are spinning and whirling around a resting massive
Newtonian sun, etc., etc., etc. There is nothing but "massy"
particles & laws of motion.
Hobbes says "political science begins with me" - all that
has come before is superstition and error. And indeed when
we get it straight we do get the sort of perspective that Ed
sketches: political authority legitimate because *authored*
by the governed who have joined their wills to meet their
needs and thereby in fact govern themselves; and
>> ... perhaps what is most important about Hobbes, if I have it right, is that he believed people to be rational and essentially material in their interests. It would seem that he believed that man's fate was in the hands of man, not God. ... <<
The immediate context of Hobbes's writing is the New Science
of Galileo and the English civil war. _Leviathan_ was
written in Paris where Hobbes was in exile - "the first of
all that fled" - and back home the King has been seized and
beheaded. Unheard of! And yet, although he believes that for
various *practical* reasons a monarchy is a superior form of
government, Hobbes is urgently putting _Leviathan_ through
the press (in 1651) in order to persuade the English that
THEY NOW HAVE A NEW SOVEREIGN to which they owe obedience.
True, the Protector is a Sovereign by acquisition, but a
Sovereign nonetheless, whose legitimacy is constituted by
all their rights and powers conjoined, who thereby commands
sufficient power to keep the peace, maintain the rule of
law, and sustain civil society. (Just as when, later,
Charles II is invited to return to England as King in
parliament, the English have another new Sovereign, and the
same analysis of political authority obtains.)
> Stories that govern
> morality, part myth but also part history, have been told
> and retold for many thousands of years...
Part of Hobbes's task is to debunk such of these stories
that mislead us into subjecting ourselves to *illegitimate*
powers; such stories are false, dangerous, and ideological.
Just for example, the story about "the divine right of
kings". Nonsense. This is pure ideology and serve the
interests of a particular faction. "For who is there that
does not see to whose benefit it conduceth to have it
believed that a king hath not his authority from Christ
unless a bishop crown him? That a king, if he be a priest,
cannot marry? That whether a prince be born in lawful
marriage, or not, must be judged by authority from Rome?
That subjects may be freed from their allegiance if by the
court of Rome the king be judged a heretic? That a king, as
Childeric of France, may be deposed by a Pope, as Pope
Zachary, for no cause, and his kingdom given to one of his
subjects? ... [Such errors are pronounced] not only amongst
catholics, but even in that Church that hath presumed most
of reformation" [Bk I Ch 12].
So, we come to recognize that there could be nothing worse
in principle than life in a state of nature - continual fear
of violent death - and so we choose life; we choose peace;
we choose to take ourselves *out* of the state of nature by
creating an "artificial Man", a Sovereign Power. We say to
one another (in principle), "Look, I hereby covenant to
transfer *all* my natural rights and powers to that 3rd
entity (say, the elected members of parliament) thereby to
constitute a common civil power, provided you do the same."
Now we have a new set of answers to all the old questions:
Why should I obey the law? Because ultimately you are the
author of the law. What is justice? Obedience. [and so on]
One final thing concerning this last bit. Hobbes is *NOT*
saying "You cannot be disobedient" as if this were somehow
impossible. He is *not* saying "You cannot behead your King"
since he doesn't wish to appear stupid.
He *IS* saying - if you are disobedient, if you behead the
King, there is one thing you cannot legitimately do: you
cannot correctly claim to be acting according to justice,
you cannot correctly claim that God or your "conscience" or
some imagined higher power makes your disobedience
legitimate after all. You cannot claim that your wants or
desires are "above the law". (Well, you can *claim* this,
but nobody should believe you.)
Does this mean there can be no grounds for revolution? no
such thing as a bad king who *therefore* ought not to be
obeyed? Yes, that is what this means.
But so what? All THAT means is that in such situations you
are ON YOUR OWN, taking your own chances. Who knows, you may
succeed and be justified retrospectively. Just be clear -
you cannot call upon the sovereign to support you while you
try to destroy that sovereign.
But it is just as well this not be easy and open to the
frivolous. Plunging us into civil war is serious business.
I must give Hobbes the last word. Noticing that we commonly
blame the government, blame the rulers, for failing to deal
sufficiently with the various miseries of daily life, Hobbes
writes:
"And commonly they that live under a monarch think it the
fault of monarchy; and they that live under the government
of democracy, or other sovereign assembly, attribute all the
inconvenience to that form of Commonwealth; whereas the
power in all forms, if they be perfect enough to protect
them, is the same ...
"[They do not consider] that the estate of man can never be
without some incommodity or other; and that the greatest
[worst] that in any form of government can possibly happen
to the people in general is scarce sensible, in respect of
the miseries and horrible calamities that accompany a civil
war, or that dissolute condition of masterless men without
subjection to laws and a coercive power to tie their hands
from rapine and revenge ...
"[Nor do they consider] that the greatest pressure of
sovereign governors proceedeth, not from any delight or
profit they can expect in the damage weakening of their
subjects, in whose vigour consisteth their own strength and
glory, but in the restiveness of themselves that,
unwillingly contributing to their own defence, make it
necessary for their governors to draw from them what they
can in time of peace that they may have means on any
emergent occasion, or sudden need, to resist or take
advantage on their enemies.
"For all men are by nature provided of notable multiplying
glasses [microscopes] (that is their passions and self-love)
through which every little payment appeareth a great
grievance, but are destitute of those prospective glasses
[telescopes] (namely moral and civil science) to see afar
off the miseries that hang over them and cannot without such
payments be avoided" [end of Bk I, Chap 18].
Brilliant!
Thank you for your patience ...
Stephen
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Vancouver, B.C.
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