Hobbes’s Leviathan – Chapters XI-XVI Options Menu: Forum
In this week’s reading, you’ve been introduced to the Hobbesian account of the state of nature and the natural law. You’ve already seen St. Thomas’s presentation of the natural law. Does the Hobbesian state of nature teaching necessarily follow from the physics and psychology he had previously discussed?
Do you think Hobbes is right that the state of pre-political/non-political society is a “war of all against all”? Is human life without effective government just “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”?
What do you make of Hobbes’s arguments for equality? How persuasive do you find them? What strengths and weaknesses do you see in them?
Lastly, how does Hobbes understand justice? Do you think he is right? Wrong? Partially both? How and why? Comparing his teaching on justice to the one you saw in Plato’s Republic, who seems to offer a more persuasive account of justice? Why?
Hobbes’s Leviathan – Chapters XI-XVI
In Chapters XI to XVI, Hobbes maintains his initial antics about the state of nature. According to him, human beings are in constant state of want in dominating the rest and gaining respect. He also offers that the natural condition of humankind is war, where life is solitary, brutish, short, poor and nasty because people are always at war with each other. I do not think he is right that the state of pre-political/non-political society is a “war of all against all”. From a basic observation of children playing where they are unaware of their own intentions, there will be a few who engage in conflict with each other but most of them form friendships, some even partnerships towards a common goal. Children can be trusted to represent human nature in its most primal state and unlike what Hobbes thought, it is not always about domination but also love, kindness and justice. This observation is regardless of whether or not there is some sort of governance in a society of people. A government and the law, is mostly to set the bare minimum standard of human decency, to manage the economy and ensure equality. The government does not enforce morality making Hobbes point highly debatable.
On equality, Hobbes was not very insistent on form of belief and left it fairly open where he believed that there was a chance that nature made people equal and also a possibility that nature made people unequal although they thought themselves as equals. In both scenarios, he felt that people should acknowledge equality in human societies. Everything including justice was artificial according to Hobbes unlike Plato who believe that humans in nature are just and acting otherwise was acting against their own nature.
References
Hobbes, T. (1965). Leviathan, reprinted from the edition of 1651. Clarendon Press.
