William

Political Philosophy

Plato

The only thing needed from Plato and Aristotle is that the idea of politics, the polis, political life, the fact that we live in a city state and so on is for them not something to be explained and justified once we have a justification but is a natural thing. The political condition is a natural state of affairs. This is distinct from social contract theories. For social contract theory, the state is fundamentally created and fundamentally unnatural. Locke explains what the point is of basically having a government. Next week Locke explains why we should have a state.

This is not something that Plato and Aristotle needed to justify. For them the natural condition was to live in a state. Whilst for Locke a good argument is necessary. We’ll begin having a yardstick to know whether a state is doing what it’s supposed to. It’s an invention that we want. Once the state stops doing what it’s supposed to, then it goes against its agreed upon purpose, which would give us a right to have a revolution, at least for Locke.

In Plato we know that the level of true being and stability is contrasted with the imperfection we see in observable reality. Plato wants to say that the good, and justice, has true ideals in the world of forms. There is a form of the good which transcends all other forms. The good is the purpose of the polis, so there is an idea of what the state should do, and that’s how we know what we should be doing, and this cannot be based upon what we now in time agree upon.

Knowledge-opinions, forms-world, reason-senses, being-becoming.

As such there is a true answer to what the good thing is. It is a goal which we must always strive towards.

Plato in the republic has a discussion over what justice is. Justice is natural, and it is good in and of itself. Socrates explains this in dialogue with Thrasymachus and Glaucon. Thrasymachus thinks that justice is what is in the interest of the stronger party. Socrates disagrees. What if the stronger party wants something that is contrary to its own interest. Justice is not relative to something, ie. stronger and weaker parties, but it is self-standing. Justice is what is good in and of itself irrespective of what others think.

They discuss the ring of Gyges, which Glaucon argues that would make us all steal because we could never be detected doing that. Every just person will be inclined to steal once it cannot be known. There is no standard of justice if I can always get away with it. But in a state we agree upon self-preservation and so on because there is no such ring. We need to artifically set some standards and common norms. This idea is very similar to the social contract tradition that only really emerges in early modernity. Plato really strongly argues against this position. Justice according to these partners is not nature, but is nomos and artificial, and is relative to what we here together think. For Plato everyone may be mistaken about justice.

The point is that for Plato politics is not a matter of convention. What makes politics natural is our own nature. Our own nature makes it natural. We need to find a balance where everyone can do what they are good at. There is an objectively correct way of doing things. Each part should do what it does best in harmony with other parts. We need to follow our natural division of labour.

The same answer is given by Aristotle.

The same contrast in Plato exists in Aristotle. There are universal principles and principles of change. Aristotle argues that the polis is a natural thing. Polises arise out of primitive associations of households, which together form villages, which together constitute the self-sufficient entity of the polis. It is natural for men and women to come together, and because of this they will form an aglommeration which is the polis. Everything can be done on the level of the polis. It is a natural thing. Nature has also endowed human beings with reason and speech, and this allows us to talk about the right thing to do, and so we should figure this out. The polis is also prior to individuals in that we need it for our natural survival. We belong to the state as a part to a whole, as a hand belongs to a body. I could not survive without the state helping me. A person or a man that is so self-sufficient that he does not need a polis is either a lower animal or a god. Human beings naturally need it.

Enter Hobbes.

The first of four social contract theories. Hobbes operates in the 17th century.
In his autobiography, he says about himself that his mother was so shocked by the news that the spanish armada had set sail for England to invade, that she went into labour prematurely. Fear and I were born twins together. Fear is indeed a very important feature of Hobbes’ theory. Fear makes it rational for Hobbes to fight. It is fear that drives us. He is inspired by some of these new scientific methods which he wants to apply to moral philosophy. He wants the certainty of geometry, and to arrive at a science of morals. He wants the same rigour as the natural sciences. We don’t need to explain how people come into motion, but we need to explain how the stop them. People will move as their natural condition, and sometimes we need to put a stop to that motion. Wants the social contract to serve this purpose.

He had to write Leviathan in France because he was a royalist, and the parlimentarians won. In 1660 monarchy was restored for a while. He is not in favour of the parlimentarians. And Hobbes feels this is about to happen. The book was entirely written in fear of his own life and in support of the royalist position. The royalist are however not extremely pleased with the text either. Hobbes gives an argument as to why you should never resist the government. You cannot fire the sovereign. He argues that since peace and security is the purpose of the state we must give up our freedom. We have a king, and once the rebellion starts, you should not join the rebels. But what if the rebels win and Cromwell come into power? Well then Hobbes’ argument says that we should support the new ruler. The pursuit of peace commands you to follow the new ruler. It is not a divine right argument or anything like that. It is a different kind of argument, which could be endorsed by both positions, depending on who is in power.

Hobbes’ argument arrives with the social contract tradition that there should be absolute unlimited power to the authority. And we must submit to this. Sovereign power needs to be absolute. It is quite striking that he ends up with this defense.

He comes up with the idea that, as every social contract theory does, that there is a description of the state of nature and political society. Step 1 is anarchy, and step 2 is having a government. In each case we will see a description of the state of nature, and a description of exiting that state of nature.

Hobbes argues that the ruler needs power over the church, and power over the commonwealth, ie. civil matters. You cannot allow that there is someone like the pope who decides over spiritual matters. There should not be any conflict between the common leader and the spritual. He wants to say that the Leviathan stands above all of them.

In Hobbes’ state of nature, he thinks he is doing a kind of neutral science, you have to imagine that there is no army, no laws, no government. You could still want to come to class, but it would feel quite unsafe, because there is no authority. Here there is Leuven police and so on. You imagine that there is no state, you live in a state of nature. This is a condition without a monopoly of force. Hobbes makes a few claims, which for him are purely descriptive. Men in that state are roughly and naturally equal. Nobody is strong enough not to have to fear murder. Roughly it is all quite equal, because even if I am physically the strongest than the rest, then I can still not see sleep very safely, something I have to do, and someone may kill me once I take a nap. Imagine I am the strongest in the group, but five together I have no chance against. There is not just one huge beast or God who would be stronger than all the rest of mankind. There is nothing moral here either. We would be roughly unsafe. This equality leads to quarrels as a result of the fact that we have desires to satisfy. All of us have certain drives. This is quite controversial at the time. People are driven by the search to satisfy their desires.
In Aristotle there is also a drive towards happiness, eudaimonia, but this is not what Hobbes thinks about. He is closer to Peter Singer. In Aristotle, happiness also has a moral push, in the utilitarian understanding it could be anything as long as they are pleasing to me. This is what Hobbes means. Satisfaction of desires that drive me. In such a condition human beings are likely to attack one another. Competition, diffidence and glory. In Hobbes’ time diffidence meant fear or distrust. We are likely to attack each other maybe for compeition over resources, because we are afraid of each other, ie. for self-protection, and glory because of wanting to fulfill our own dignity and reputation.

Hobbes believes in general equality of men and women in the state of nature. Women can also be rulers if necessary. It is striking that he emphasised this fact himself.

The result is that the state of nature is an uncertain war against all. He believes that we will not be able to cooperate in basically anything at all. There can be no industry basically. Nothing can be unjust or just in the state of nature, because there is no common power to make law. Hobbes takes great care of words and definitions, and ties justice to the existence of a fundamental civil society that can sanction transgressions of the law. Justice can only exist when there is an absolute power that guarantees that we follow the law.

We are however free to decide what our good life is and how we secure it. There is a natural liberty to take whatever we want, even the life of another. This is derived from the right of self-preservation. Everyone here will probably agree that we all have a right to defend ourselves. This also means that it is my right to decide when a situation is dangerous. Imagine that I am afraid of the professor, and have something I want to protect. So it might be wise for me to preemptively strike. What if mr. Professor comes into my house and steals shit??? I need to murder him.

If there is a right to self-preservation in the state of nature, then it is also my right to do whatever I think is necessary to defend myself. If you start from the right of self-preservation, everything else follows. When Hobbes talks about a right, he talks about what we tend to call a privilege right, and not a claim right. (Hochfeld)

Privilege right: Imagine I want to paint my bedroom yellow. All of us agree that I have the right to do that, but it doesn’t mean anyone else has to help me. They have no duty to help me. When I am on the beach and see a nice shell, I have a right to pick it up because I want it.

Claim right: if I have a right, you have duty to fulfill it. Every human being has a right to food and shelter, and someone else has some left over, they have a duty to help me. By the right there is a claim collected. When I have a right, others have duty to do something for me.

Hobbes argues for the right to self-preservation as a privilege right. Because I have a right to x, doesn’t mean anyone has a duty to help me. There is no justice or injustice until there is a law that forbids something.

Very importantly, there is also no property in the state of nature. If I claim a piece of land, there are no laws that argue that someone else should observe that fact. If I pick up a shell, someone else has the right to pick it up. I could take the shell, or I could move in to someone else’s house.

Now we’ll start to realise a few new things. Hobbes distinguishes 3 laws of nature. Extremely important to understand that the hobbesian argument: there is nothing moral. There is no ought. Hobbes uses the term laws of nature, but you need to think of them like almost physical laws within the moral field. We will all understand that the situation he described is not good, we need to leave this state as soon as possible, because no one is safe tonight. You want to instead to give up certain rights to gain safety and self-preservation. Just a moment of thinking allows you to conclude that if I lived in a different situation where there is a police who can stop a thief, then I couldn’t have any private property. We need to all understand that there is going to be one law that applies to everyone and if we don’t do it we will be punished. If we start calling the takers thiefs, then someone will punish them. Previous to that there are only takers and havers. But, Hobbes says, it would also be quite stupid to act altruistically in a state where everyone prioritises their own self-preservation.

For Hobbes, the laws of nature are rational instrumental principles. This is instrumental reasoning, it is good for my own self-preservation. God has not given me any way to stop my self-interest. An atheist could follow these arguments. An atheist could also understand that I need to preserve myself to leave the state of nature. A smart person will understand that this is what needs to be done.

We are going to imagine laws that we give each other which gives us a good chance of self-preservation. It is a kind of fictional story right now which explains why we want to leave the state of nature.

1. Every man ought to endeavour peace. If you cannot get peace, then you may seek the advantages of war. We may fight back if we cannot preserve peace.

2. To reach peace we must be prepared to cancel our rights to everything. Ideally we should not take another person’s life. If others were to be willing to also agree to give up all of their rights, it would be great if we all that.

3. We must perform the covenants that we make. When I make a promise or a contract, I need to stick to it. Therein lies the foundation of justice. Justice means that there is a law, and I promise to keep it. And if everyone keeps it, we really have justice.

Important to understand prisoner’s dilemma for Hobbes.

You can make everyone keep quiet if you get a third external enforcer that makes sure to cooperate, even if not everyone is properly willing. This is why you want to attach an external power that keeps the self-defeating process away. It is relatively good for every farmer to do their part of the work, even if one individual farmer could have it better on the cost of others by not cooperating. Hobbes says that it is quite stupid to not cooperate if no one else cooperates also. So you have a right to use the advantages of war in a state of nature. It is in your self-interest to cooperate.

In a state of nature you have a right to take from others, but at the same time you are also constantly at risk, so it would be better for all to cooperate through an external enforcer. Our reason suggests convenient articles of peace. It’s not that people are going to constantly do what is in their self-interest, but if they do it, there is no reason not to do it.

Instead everyone else will agree that we need to get out of the state of nature asap.

We know through a purely instrumentalist reason guided by self-interest, that we need to have that third enforcer-kind that punishes thiefs and preserves property and similar concepts. These concepts start to exist with laws. But covenants without swords are just words: a power must be attached to it to guarantee the keeping of contracts.

So confer all the power to 1 man or 1 assembly of men, who is coercive and makes sure self-interest does not outweigh what reasons dictates, who keeps the people to the laws: the sovereign attaches costs to violating the covenant and forces our passion in line with our reason. It becomes harder to purely follow self-interests. The sovereign must keep the people to the law, and he does this by attaching punishments. In the state of nature I have both a reason to do as I wish, but also a reason that would tell me it would be disastrous if I and everyone else do. It is constant readiness to fight, even if it is not necessarily constant fighting.

The leviathan can come about through sovereignty by institution, or by sovereignty of acquisition. The sovereign is the one assigned by us, this is by institution, we vote. The second one is when a foreign power comes with an army and they threaten to kill all of us if we don’t submit. The choice to submit is a way to lay down your arms to stop fighting. The sovereign promises not to kill you. I sign a contract because I will otherwise die. It is important that the sovereign cannot do something wrong; political absolutism. In Hobbes there are no human rights. Imagine there’s a sovereign, but the sovereign is sometimes held to an external standard, and this gives us two sovereigns, and this puts us back into the state of nature. In a state of nature there are technically a million state’s of nature. With two rulers, whatever they be, that’s terrible: civil war and state of nature. We cannot have both king and Cromwell. This is why we need to give up everything to the sovereign in order to gain security, peace, and stability.
In later social contract theories, it will be fundamentally different. In Locke we only give up a bit of freedom. Whilst in Hobbes we give up basically all of it, ie. the ability to purely follow self-interest. Never go along with civil war. What applies to Cromwell, also applies to human right courts or any odd principle. The least bit of division you allow, is to install civil war, because then I have 2 kings to obey.
Hobbes is also the originator of the argument that many conflicts exist through language, because people take different meanings to stay for the same word. He says men should heed to their words. People just say things. They don’t really think it through properly, and this easily leads to quarrel. One says it’s a law that a thief should be hanged and another that they should actually just go to prison. For Hobbes this is a problem, because then there are two definitions of morality. So the sovereign power means to have sovereignty also over the dictionary, whatever is just is what the sovereign says is just.

Questions we could raise against Hobbes

Many people will say a critique like ’Hobbes has such a pessimistic view of humans’, Hobbes reply is that he doesn’t think people are terrible, it’s just that it’s rational to defend yourself when you are uncertain what they will do.

Hobbes puts consent centrally. The question is what it really means. Think of the second way in which a legitimate power comes into existence, ie. by conquest; there is technically consent involved, but it is a contract under duress. It is still valid for Hobbes. If I sign it I have signed it. If we reconstruct the argument that what Hobbes means isn’t necessarily that consent is important, but it is in your self-interest to consent to give up freedom.
It is very clear for Hobbes that in the conceptually default way of sovereignty, ie. to promise each other to give up our right to liberty, is that the contracting parties are not the sovereign versus us. In fact what the contract implies is that everyone horizontally signs it. Why does Hobbes do that? Because he thinks there can never be a breach of contract. We cannot really think of the Leviathan as a thing that has to do things for me, then we are allowing ourselves to doubt the legitimacy of the laws, we want complete political obediance. This is why the contract is between the individuals. A lot of literature has been spilt about how to reconcile the first kind of sovereignty with the second. The foreign invading king who argues that another should submit, is difficult to think of as a contract I ever signed. It seems like a contract between me and the sovereign. Hobbes doesn’t really resolve this conondrum. The first is horizontal, between the citizens, and the second is vertical, between a sovereign and me.

Lastly and importantly: is there a right to disobeying? Hobbes is very clear on the idea that there is absolutely no right to disobey. There is never a right to civil disobediance. This gets us back to civil war. Interestingly self-interest drives the whole argument, it is what allows me to imagine that I don’t want to go back to the state of nature. Self-preservation is why we need civil society. Does this mean that I could on the basis of self-preservation appoint a monarch who could kill me? That seems bizarre. Then self-preservation would argue that I defend myself. Indeed Hobbes has multiple passages, like the one which we’ll read, in which he says that no man can defer his right to save himself from death. The point is simply that I cannot sign away my right to resist if you come with force to me. If the king comes onto me to kill me, then I may fight back. Hobbes is a bit contradictory here. But when my own personal life is at stake, I may fight back. There is a small right to disobey, but it amounts to no more than kicking and screaming on the way to the gallows.

Locke centrally argues against Hobbes that there is a right to disobey an unjust ruler. I would rather stay in the state of nature if the result is that I die anyways. I will prefer the state of nature if I may die.

Hobbes warns not to take altruism for granted in international relations. The most important example he gives for an actual state of nature is civil war. The second situation is international states not being together. All states are in a state of nature for Hobbes. Hobbes thinks the international states of people’s must have a global state. We need to quit the state of nature as much as possible. He thinks fundamentally that a world-government is necessary. States are in a position of war against each other.