How does Hobbes understand justice? What does he claim justice is? How is it known? How do we

2. How does Hobbes understand justice? What does he claim justice is? How is it known? How do we discover it and pursue it? How does it relate to the natural law?

ANSWER

Hobbes’ Understanding of Justice

Hobbes starts his argument by stating that there is no such thing as justice or injustice in nature. He further goes ahead to highlight that nothing can be unjust on the basis that there is a continuous war of every man against another man. Hobbes states that in the absence of standard power, there is no law hence no injustice. He says neither justice nor injustice is the faculty of the body or mind. The existence would only be in a man who was alone in the world, together with his senses and passions. He explains further by saying that they are characteristics of people in society and not in solitude. The philosopher also says that whatever is not unjust is just, thereby giving injustice its definition of ‘the not performance of covenant.’ Hobbes later defines justice as an artificial virtue required of civil society and a function of the non-mandatory mutual consensus of the societal contract. He describes justice ordinarily as the constant will of giving every man his own. There is no injustice in the absence of own, no decency, and where a common good does not exist, and unjust does not exist.

The common concept of justice is moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, equity and fairness, and the law’s administration. Considering the non-negotiable and inborn rights of the entire human race, all citizens and people have the right to equal protection before the law. Hobbes says for just and unjust to exist; there must be a controlling power that obligates men uniformly to their covenants’ performance through the panic of some punishment, which is more significant than their expected benefit resulting from breaching the covenant. Hobbes further argues that human beings are not naturally social or political, defining a state of nature as continuously in war and thus must create a government mutually based on mutual consent and proposes critical equality among its members.

A comparison of justice to natural law starts from the fact that human beings are naturally equal. Each has a natural right to preserve himself and possesses the natural right to claim anything and pursue power that one so desires. He further says that humans are all equal in the physical and mental capacity in the natural state. No one is strong or smart enough to have self-defense with surety against menaces arising from other self-centered individuals. Hobbes refers to human life’s natural condition to consist of distrust, competition, and the desire for glory, a condition that exists when natural passions are unrestrained. In the natural state of war, every person faces the other as an enemy; this results in a lack of collaboration since all human beings want to preserve their lives and commodities and fear suffering at others’ hands. Human beings’ nature of avoiding collaborations renders life poor, solitary, brutish, short and nasty.

Hobbes further highlights that justice should then consist of keeping valid covenants, which is should then begin with the constitution of civil power sustainable to oblige individuals to keep them hence the beginning of propriety. From Hobbes’s argument and understanding of justice, it is clear that there is nothing like moral rights and obligations. Instead, there is only power; whatever is known as moral rights and duties is a product of the government’s power, obligation and force are the same things. Finally, in the absence of power, moral rights and obligations are not safe to be respected.