Among animals there are two basic types of motions: vital and animal. The former involve basic functions of which we are normally not aware, such as breathing and the circulation of the blood. The animal or voluntary motions, on the other hand, involve actions such as walking, speaking, and striking. These motions originate in the imagination, or what Hobbes calls “endeavor.”
There are two types of endeavor: 1) appetite or desire causes us to gravitate toward an object that we find pleasing, whereas 2) aversion forces us to withdraw from something which may give us pain. For Hobbes, love refers to the objects of appetite or desire, whereas we are said to hate those things to which we are averse.
Regarding appetites and aversions, some are natural, such as hunger and the impulse to avoid of pain, while others are acquired from experience. But because man’s constitution is constantly changing, Hobbes argues, “it is impossible that all the same things should always cause in him the same appetites, and aversions: much less can all men consent, in the desire of almost any one and the same object.”
Section 2:
According to Hobbes, our use of the terms “Good” and “Evil” simply reflects our desire for (good) or aversion to (evil) a given object. Good and evil, in other words, have no significance independent of our subjective valuations, “there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.” Good and evil are therefore relative (to the individual), not absolute. Since not all men will desire, or have an aversion to, the same object (because not all men are pleased or displeased by the exact same things), it stands to reason that not everyone will agree that the same object is “good” or “evil”—with the following exceptions: according to Hobbes we can all agree that self-preservation and pleasure are good, and that death (in particular, violent death) is bad.
Section 3:
Hobbes was one of the first thinkers to argue in favor of natural equality: while some men are manifestly of quicker mind or stronger body than others, “yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable” such that one man may claim a natural superiority over others. When it comes to the faculties of the mind, Hobbes finds “yet a greater equality amongst men, than that of strength.” Prudence, for example, “is but experience; which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.” Vanity is the source of our mistaken belief in our own superior wisdom.
“From this equality of ability, arises equality of hope in the attaining of our ends.” It is this equality of hope which gives rise to all the violence and instability of the state of nature, which is mankind’s natural condition. Scarcity is one of the defining features of the state of nature: because there are not enough resources available to satisfy human needs, men enter into violent competition in order to acquire those scarce goods. Even if an invader comes “prepared with forces united, to dispossess, and deprive” someone “not only of the fruit of his labor, but also of his life, or liberty,” he in turn will be “in the like danger of another.” There is no security in the state of nature because there are no private property rights, to say nothing of a governing body to defend such rights.
The surest means of securing oneself (short of erecting a commonwealth), Hobbes remarks, is “for force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him…” In other words, one would have to either kill or otherwise enslave everybody else. Clearly that is not exactly a viable option. As Hobbes will point out in subsequent sections, the only escape from the horrors of our natural condition is to leave the state of nature entirely by the establishment of a civil society.
Section 4:
Hobbes identifies three principal sources of human conflict: 1) competition for scarce goods 2) diffidence, or the mutual sense of insecurity or vulnerability to attack which impels us to strike preemptively in order to gain the upper hand in the struggle for survival, and lastly 3) glory, the quest for immortal fame, perhaps the scarcest of goods and hence an object of bloodthirsty competition.
Whenever men live outside the bounds of civil society, and thus without the restraints of law and order, they are in a condition of war in which “every man is enemy to every man.” In such unstable condition, all the appurtenances of civilized life are conspicuously absent: there is no place for industry, as property rights are non-existent; no agriculture; no navigation or international trade; no spacious and convenient dwellings; no technology or labor-saving devices; no knowledge of the earth; no account of time; no fine arts and letters; no agreeable social relations; “and, which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Life in Hobbes’ state of nature, to put it bluntly, is hell on earth.
Section 5:
According to Hobbes, human beings enter into society not out of mutual goodwill or fellow feeling, but out of the mutual fear they have of each other, a fear consisting “partly in the natural equality of men, partly in their mutual will of hurting.” What makes us all equals in the final analysis is our equal susceptibility to violent death; Self-preservation thus becomes the individual’s highest priority. But is not the selfish desire to preserve one’s life at all costs a thing to be discouraged? Far from it, says Hobbes:
[T]o have a care of one’s self is so far from being a matter scornfully to be looked upon, that one has neither the power nor wish to have done otherwise. For every man is desirous of what is good for him, and shuns what is evil, but chiefly the chiefest of natural evils, which is death; and this he doth by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves downward.
Hobbes here lays the groundwork for his theory of natural rights, foremost among which is the right to self-preservation by any means necessary: “since every man hath a right to preserve himself, he must also be allowed a right to use all the means, and do all the actions, without which he cannot preserve himself.” Thus “in the state of nature, to have all, and do all, is lawful for all,” meaning that men are entirely free to do whatever reason requires (killing, stealing, enslaving, pillaging, etc.,) for the purposes of survival and avoidance of pain: “profit is the measure of right.”
Sections 6 and 7:
Anticipating the objections against selfish and exploitative action in the state of nature, Hobbes challenges us to reflect for a moment on our own experience: When we go on a journey, do we not arm ourselves and bring companions for safety? When going to sleep, do we not lock our doors and secure our valuables (and this when we know that laws are in place to punish criminals)? What opinion do we have of our fellow citizens, of our servants, and even of our own children, when we behave in such suspicious ways? Do we not there as much accuse mankind by our actions as Hobbes does by his words? So it is, then, that the “desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin”—they are unalterable aspects of human nature. Likewise, the actions (rape, theft, murder, etc.,) that proceed from those passions “are in themselves no sin” until a law is made that forbids them, and in the bare state of nature there are no such laws, since there is no governing body to enact and enforce them. This being the case, the “notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice.” For Hobbes, justice is equated strictly with positive, or man-made, law (as he says in section 12: “no law can be unjust”). Unlike St. Thomas Aquinas’ natural law theory, for Hobbes there is no standard of justice that goes beyond the human law.
So how, according to Hobbes, do human beings escape the violence and instability of their natural state? The solution lies partly in the passions, partly in our reason:
The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles…are called the Laws of Nature.
Mankind’s motivation to find a way out of their misery originates in 1) fear of the greatest of evils that can ever befall us, namely violent death, combined with 2) the desire to live comfortably. These two passions impel our reason to discover the law of nature (“to seek peace, and follow it”), from which Hobbes derives the social contract:
[T]hat a man be willing, when others are so too [for the sake of peace] to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
In order to secure ourselves from violent death in the state of nature, we must first join together, mutually divesting ourselves of our right to harm one another, which is nicely captured in the modern saying, “your right to punch me ends where my nose begins.”
Section 8:
Our covenants, or agreements, are valuable only to the extent that we abide by them. It is here that justice and injustice acquire their original meaning and significance: “when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust: and the definition of INJUSTICE, is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust, is just.” But in order to ensure compliance, there must be “some coercive power, to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment, greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant…” The coercive power Hobbes speaks of is the civil government, or commonwealth.
Section 9:
The laws of nature can be neatly summed up in Hobbes’ Golden Rule: “Do not that to another which thou wouldest not have done to thyself,” which is in stark contrast to Christ’s version: “Do unto another as thou wouldest have others do unto thyself.” The latter version promotes charity and compassion, whereas the former merely advises against harming others, not out of any concern for their well being, of course, but purely out of a selfish regard not to be harmed oneself. This revised Golden Rule is peculiarly modern, and can be seen everywhere, from such platitudes as “honesty is the best policy,” to the injunction to obey traffic laws on the grounds that “the life you save may be your own.”
Section 10:
Hobbes’ commonwealth invests certain rights and faculties in the sovereign or ruling power, which may be comprised of one, few, or many individuals, depending on “the consent of the people assembled.” First, once the people enter into a covenant, they cannot dissolve or otherwise alter it without the sovereign’s permission. Secondly, the sovereign, as the origin of the covenant, can never be guilty of violating it, since he is not bound by it. Thirdly, because a majority of consenting voices declared a sovereign, whoever may have dissented must now consent with everyone else, for by voluntarily entering into deliberations with the others, he has “tacitly covenanted, to stand to what the major part should ordain…” Sixthly, the sovereign must exercise the power of censorship in order to prevent ideas and opinions that are destructive to the peace from reaching men’s ears. For, Hobbes explains, “the actions of men proceed from their opinions; and in the well-governing of opinions, consisteth the well-governing of men’s actions, in order to their peace, and concord.” The only relevant criterion for invoking the censorship rule is not the truth-value of the idea in question, but rather its likely effect on peace and stability in the commonwealth. Seventhly, the sovereignty has the power to establish what Hobbes calls propriety, or the range of permissible and impermissible actions: “These rules of propriety, or [mine] and [yours], and of good, evil, lawful, and unlawful in the actions of subjects, are the civil laws; that is to say, the laws of each commonwealth in particular.” The laws, in other words, contain within themselves the entire moral framework that guides each and every subject in the commonwealth.
Section 11
One of the great “diseases” of civil society is the “seditious doctrine” that “every private man is judge of good and evil actions,” or what in contemporary language is known as ethical relativism. This may be true in the anarchic state of nature, but otherwise “it is manifest, that the measure of good and evil actions, is the civil law.” One may wonder why Hobbes so vehemently opposes the freedom of each individual to define good and evil for himself; “From this false doctrine,” he explains, “men are disposed to debate with themselves, and dispute the commands of the commonwealth; and afterwards to obey, or disobey them, as in their private judgments they shall think fit; whereby the commonwealth is distracted and weakened.” The same holds true for liberty of conscience, which tends to have a similar effect on social order whenever the subjects’ private judgments happen to conflict with the civil laws, which latter in Hobbes’ commonwealth assume the role of a surrogate conscience, ensuring thereby concord and law-abidingness.
Section 12:
The sovereign is responsible for making clearly stated laws that are for the good of the people:
For the use of laws, which are but rules authorized, is not to bind the people from all voluntary actions; but to direct and keep them in such a motion, as not to hurt themselves by their own impetuous desires, rashness or indiscretion; as hedges are set, not to stop travelers, but to keep them on their way.
The civil laws do not repress all voluntary action, but rather direct and channel human activity so as to prevent men from harming one another. In the final analysis, Hobbes’ entire political project is dedicated to establishing “the safety of the people.” The goal, however, is not “a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger, or hurt to the commonwealth, shall acquire to himself.” The only other option is a total breakdown of the commonwealth, and therewith a return to the “calamity of a war with every other man, which is the greatest evil that can happen in this life…”
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