Why should we obey the state?

What problem does political authority solve, and what do we give up when we create it? In the second of three conversations, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson read Hobbes’s account of conflict, covenant and sovereignty in Leviathan. They ask why people might consent to a common power and where the obligation to obey meets the need for self-preservation.

Read alongside us:
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I, chapters 13–14; Part II, chapters 17 and 21: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

Beyond the Text: https://beyondthetext.co.uk/

Transcript

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Welcome And Big Question Of Obedience

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome back to Beyond the Text with me, Samuel Woodall. And me, Jack Thompson. Beautifully done. How wonderful. But this is episode two of Hobbes Why Should We Obey the State. Now we've looked at Hobbes' upbringing, and now we're going to look at what makes political authority legitimate and how much liberty should individuals surrender for security.

The Assurance Problem Without Authority

SPEAKER_01 0:28

So imagine the disappearance of courts, police, enforceable contracts, recognized lords, and an authority capable of issuing a final judgment. Whether people would become immediately savage. Or could we confidently trust strangers or disarm uh before knowing that everyone else had disarmed? The core problem here is assurance. Reasonable people cannot safely cooperate when compliance leaves them vulnerable to non-compliance. This is a debate we see in international relations with nuclear disarmament. Well, if I disarm, how can I be sure that everyone else will disarm? If we don't have a common authority, how does society function?

Hobbes’s State Of Nature Explained

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Now, Jack, we're gonna delve straight into the idea of the state of nature in Hobbes's work. Um first of all, what did you think? What what does Hobbes seem to say about the state of nature? We've discussed nasty brutish and short, a state of war. What are these concepts and unpack them a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, so I I mean I would it's been very good for me to to read this uh primary source for the first time. Um it's been interesting to discover how sobering is Hobbes' view of nature. It neither has the excess optimism of a naivety, I think, of early Rousseau at least, nor um Careful. No, I qualified with early Rousseau. Um and he doesn't have the now there's a you wash over this subject in a way I think Locke does. I think Locke um I heard someone here describe Locke as watered down Hobbes and having read Locke before and now coming to Hobbes, I completely get it because I think it's funny, it's funny because if you ever discuss the battle of social contract theory, Locke is there, but he's he's often either left out or awkwardly placed.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

It will always be Hobbes versus Russo. Those are the things that are.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Um, which leads to to all forms of strife and conflict, and we we can therefore describe this as a state of war because there's always a risk, a there's a perpetual risk of conflict.

Equality And Three Causes Of Conflict

SPEAKER_00 3:30

So, how did he come to this conclusion? Well, he begins from the observation that we all more or less have equal uh equally distributed uh attributes, abilities, and competencies. He doesn't mean that we are all equally strong um or equally fast or equally cunning, even, but where one person has strength, someone else usually has something to complement and sort of combat it.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Essentially an equal ability to threaten one another.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yes, yes. So I have my competency, but you have something I don't, and in this way we're sort of equal. We we all have means to get over one another and to circumvent the defenses of the other. Um and because we all have some basic ability about us, um he says we sort of have an equal right to hope for things. Um and because of that, that's how we get into conflict.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

So he also doesn't yeah. Sorry, uh do are you gonna say the three causes of conflict? Yes, exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

So there are three three or three characters that say um that this conflict takes. So competition, uh the equality of means and hopes, yeah. Which I think he gets the second one, he doesn't quite make this it sort of comes through in the way he sequences it. Um distrust um emerges because there's now a desire for security. If I know that I can in principle try and get whatever I want, I know other people are thinking that about me. And so distrust means I want the means to protect what I call mine, uh, my property, my family, my my person.

Glory, Humiliation And Recognition

SPEAKER_00 5:18

And finally, and I thought this was the most disconnected. Um this was the desire for glory or desire for recognition, the desire for people to see me uh of of value. I thought this was the most disconnected because it seemed to me to be the least morally neutral. Um what kind of function does this serve in a state of nature? This seems to verge on the Christian notion of pride, let's say, if you think of the world like that. Seemed a bit beyond natural utility.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

I think it sort of relies on the first two having taken place, because it's essentially sort of, you know, in a modern context, I guess it's sort of like humiliation, isn't it? It's sort of like if someone were to lie to me and then get the better of me, I would feel angry about it, and therefore the next time I would want to pay back get payback for being humiliated. So say we're with the first situation competition, we're looking for we're looking for resources, we're looking for oil, or we're looking for water, or we're looking for the minerals, and someone else gets there first, then right, I want to get there first next time. Or in the second case, the distrust. Well, I started the discussion with the idea of nuclear disarmament. Well, what if someone didn't disarm? Or what if someone had stockpile weapons, and actually that makes me think, well, next time I'm going to stockpile far many more weapons and nuclear warheads than them because they've humiliated me the first time round. So I think I think I think that's how it's sort of like.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

I can see I can see as that's a fair connection. It's no longer just about securing what I have, but also ensuring that nobody humiliates me, no one uh sh sh sh shows up my weakness or something like this. But this is a distinctive, I think it's a distinctively human vulnerability. Yeah. Um, and so I think it's very interesting. And so in defense of Hobbes, I might even say, although I don't think he would necessarily take this perspective, but but we are quite interested in recognition at a kind of metaphysical value in in modern philosophy. I think it has Christian roots, but it shows up in Hegel, it shows up in um postmodern sort, this desire for recognition, and I think that points to the human dignity, the dignity of the person. Um and I could imagine how that might function in a state of nature, this sort of wanting to be recognized as an individual, as a with with intrinsic value. Anyway, that's a sort of but I I like the connection you made to humility.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, yeah. Humiliation, sorry. Humiliation. Um, but this state of nature, it never actually existed, unlike in some of the later philosophers like Rousseau. There is no kind of uh pre-social society in which the state of war was necessarily a thing, it's just a descriptive idea of what would happen if there was an authority. So again, I suppose he's being more logical there, and he's not trying to invent some kind of fictional beginning.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Um, but but but equally, I wouldn't begrud necessarily begrudge him if he was, because it may yeah, maybe not a fictional beginning, but certainly a possible state if our societies were to disintegrate. Which comes to justify the fact of societies and the reason they organized in the way they are. Exactly.

Two Laws Of Nature For Peace

SPEAKER_01 8:50

But even if he doesn't create a state of nature, he does rely on the first two laws of nature. Did you pick that up?

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yes, indeed. So um natural law, meaning um the kind of rationality whereby we can govern ourselves from first principles and from this reasoning from this state of nature. What what kind of ought would I have in this state of nature? And the first is self-preservation, pretty straightforward. And it that's actually quite sobering as well, because he I think fairly assesses that in this state of nature anything goes, yeah. Um, in that there is no common law to us. And so it's it's about if it's just about self-preservation, the these these this notion of competition, distrust and glory, and then the desires that correspond to these can't exactly be described as morally wrong, as sinful. They're quite rational, they're functional, they take on a very practical meaning. And um, you see this in like the notion of self-defense still that it's enshrined in law. If someone makes an attempt on my life and I retaliate, and maybe I do take their life in return, that would be mitigated. It would not be considered murder. Um and this it sort of reflects some of this sort of first principle thinking. The second uh law of nature um effectively states that for the sake of peace, I ought to be willing to um to renounce particular rights, or more accurately, particular hopes and desires. Because I in the state of nature I have a right to everything. And everyone has a right to everything.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

But you have to restrict it. You have to restrict it to be able to form those kind of reciprocal relationships.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Yeah. And it's interesting, he puts that desire in our nature itself. So my nature tells me, my natural reason tells me that for the sake of peace, I have to um I have to lay down certain claims and I have to do that in a way where I'm I'm I'm thinking already about the other person. The way he he expresses it, it it clocks back to the gospel, do unto others as you would do unto you. He uses that kind of a phrase. It's about um I should lay down my rights to the and liberty to the ex um to the extent that the other person I would want the other person to do for me. That's how he phrased

Why The Sovereign Avoids The Covenant

SPEAKER_00 11:20

it.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Of course, one person who isn't, however, party to that contract, party to that covenant is the sovereign. The subject's covenant is with one another, it is not with the sovereign. The sovereign does not make an equivalent covenant with them. Hobbes asks, who could decide whether the sovereign had broken such a covenant? Private judgment would return the dispute to force. Now, he does say that in theory, if your direct right to life was threatened by the sovereign, you could try and make some sort of stand, some sort of judgment in that situation. But other than that, the sovereign himself is not party to that covenant, party to that agreement. The covenant is between the people under the sovereign.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yes, it's it's curious. This isn't one of the most radical elements of Hobbes philosophy that there isn't really a fleshed-out transcendental moral law you see in previous philosophers. There's no fleshed out law independently of what a sovereign would construe, and to that extent, the sovereign, besides the two natural laws, which are far fairly abstract, could come up with all kinds of laws. Um but I think the hope is that these natural laws sort of capture almost everything of what we would consider common sense.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Um well there's this idea, there's this idea of Hobbesian liberty, so maybe we can expand on that a little bit further. Sort of the absence of external impediments, um, and that laws in this covenant restrict natural liberty, but also create the security within which such freedoms can flourish, become possible, can actualize. Um I think that's that's an element of this, that yes, there's no there's no stringent kind of law on the sovereign, but that is because almost I guess the social laws are coming out of the state in which a sovereign is operating. You wouldn't put restraints on them because there are essentially no laws unless you have a sovereign in place.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yes, precisely. He can repeatedly uh refers to you know the the the um there's no right or wrong in the state of war for one of a common power, a common law. Um yeah, so so the reasoning is well, they don't know right from wrong because there's no common law made known to them. There's no one who would make that known to them. There's no agreement about who would make that known to them. So it's strange because the the the act of erecting a sovereign is effectively arbitrary. And yet it's a condition for for morality as we know it. Yeah, yeah. And what the significance of that metaphysically, I think, is quite staggering.

Liberty, Silent Law And Protection

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Um, completely. Um, but talking about his lack of laws, he also has this idea of the silence of the law, that if there is not something directly written on a certain matter or procedure or element of the social functioning, and this would really endear libertarians to him, even though he's come up with this idea of a quite authoritarian sovereign. But at the same time, he has this idea that if there is no law in place that discusses a certain social interaction or certain doing that you're going about in society, if there's no law relating to it, then the law is silent, it is yours to go and do and investigate and uh do as you wish, which I think is quite interesting as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yes. Um it speaks, I think, to this foundational principle of liberty that that that freedom is the absence of opposition. Um so because in his framework, there's no positive there's no concrete positively defined end for which freedom exists, except peace, let's say.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

And and a certain sense of protection and obligation, I guess, as well, in terms of uh you are submitting some freedom to the sovereign, and the reason that you're doing it that is that the sovereign can then protect you and your freedom.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Um this idea that the purpose of obedience is protection, when protection is impossible, the natural right of self-preservation re-emerges. So that comes back to the point I was making earlier. If the sovereign did suddenly the mad king goes and says, I'm going to slaughter all the babes, all the kids. There is a ability for the individual to reclaim the right of self-preservation because that is why you passed over some liberty to the sovereign in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yes. So I think this this framework of the natural rights ended up being pretty robust. So I can imagine where this goes wrong is probably just uh a few technical points that might emerge in the formation of society or very specific ethical dilemmas. Um, but it is interesting what this shift signifies for what is morality. Um for the first time, really, um morality is is is something I think constructed in in all of its details. And it's interesting because that's also what Montaigne thinks. And uh and he uh he uh spent time in exile in Paris, and I'm sure got to know those essays. Oh, sure. Montaigne is very critical of custom and sees it as uh see the radical distinction between nature and custom. Um and so yeah, I think that's also relevant to Hobbes. This question of the seeming arbitrariness of morals and customs is not something that bothers him.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah, yeah.

Morality As Construction And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 17:16

So we've got three, two, one here, Jack. We've got three causes, we've got two first laws, and we've got one political sovereign. The sovereign replaces private conflict with common law. Um, but organized groups may reject settlements and advance their own interpretation of the public good if directly threatened to life. Um, a faction, perhaps that could be, that forms leadership. So when does legitimate disagreement become a rival political authority? I think this is an interesting question to delve into when we're looking at someone like Thomas Hobbes, and that's lucky, isn't it? Because that's what we're going to be doing in the third and final part of our epic series on Thomas Hobbes, and we hope you'll rejoin us for that um in a couple of days' time. So thank you, Jack. Thank you, Sam. And we'll see you next time. Excellent.