Hobbes's State of Nature: The Logic of Sovereignty

The most famous and most influential passage in the Leviathan is the description of the state of nature as a condition in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The passage, which appears in chapter 13, became a touchstone of the subsequent political philosophy of the Enlightenment. The state of nature is also the most controversial of Hobbes’s doctrines. The French philosophes attacked it as a libel on human nature. The Scottish moralists challenged it on the basis of the social and sympathetic side of human life. Rousseau turned it into a defense of the natural man as peaceful and good. The twentieth-century contractarians — most importantly John Rawls and David Gauthier — tried to show that the state of nature could be reconstructed in a way that avoided Hobbes’s pessimism.

While the recent literature on Hobbes has been more sympathetic to his moral psychology than were the readings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the basic argument of the state of nature has not been abandoned. The question is no longer whether Hobbes is right about the state of nature; the question is what the state of nature is for — whether it is a logical analysis, a rhetorical device, a description of some historical condition, or a tool for evaluating institutions. The contemporary debate is, in significant part, a debate about how to read the state of nature.

The Argument

The argument of the state of nature begins, in chapter 13 of the Leviathan, with the observation that human beings are by nature equal in body and mind. The equality is not exact; some people are stronger or quicker than others, and some are more prudent or experienced. But the differences are small enough that even the weakest person can kill the strongest, given sufficient cunning. The most prudent person can be outwitted by the most foolish, given sufficient luck.

The equality of vulnerability has, Hobbes argues, three important consequences. First, because no one is so superior to others that he can be confident of his safety, all human beings live in constant fear of one another. Second, because no one can count on the long-term fruits of his labor (since others may take them from him), no one invests in long-term projects. Third, because no one can be sure that the goods he has acquired are secure, no one develops the arts of cultivation, the sciences, or the refinements of civilized life.

The argument is that the state of nature is a state of war. The war is not, in Hobbes’s view, a state of open conflict; it is a state in which the willingness to fight is constantly present, and in which the reasons for fighting are constantly arising. The “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes) is the logical conclusion of a condition in which each person is the judge of his own case, in which no common authority can adjudicate disputes, and in which the temptation to preempt is constant.

The state of nature is not, for Hobbes, a historical period. It is a logical analysis of what human life would be like if the basic conditions of political life were removed. The argument can be tested, in Hobbes’s view, by considering the actual behavior of sovereign states in their relations with one another. The relations among states, in the absence of a common authority, are a state of nature, and the behavior of states — their distrust of one another, their preparations for war, their exploitation of opportunities for advantage — confirms the analysis.

The Laws of Nature

The way out of the state of nature, for Hobbes, is the social contract. The argument for the contract is based on what Hobbes calls the “laws of nature” — the conclusions of reason about the means to self-preservation. The first law of nature is that “every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it, and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.” The second is that “a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, 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.”

The laws of nature are not, in Hobbes’s view, moral principles that are binding on human beings independently of their own interests. They are conclusions of prudence — what each person, if he is rational, will recognize to be in his own interest. The laws of nature oblige “in foro interno” — that is, they are always binding on the conscience. But they do not oblige “in foro externo” — that is, they are not binding on the conduct — except when the security of a common power makes them effective. As long as the state of nature continues, the laws of nature are merely conclusions of prudence; they become genuine moral obligations only when the social contract is in place.

The asymmetry between the internal forum (where the laws are always binding) and the external forum (where they are binding only when there is a sovereign) is one of the most distinctive features of Hobbes’s moral philosophy. It was a source of confusion for many of his readers, and it is the source of the modern theory of “conditional” or “hypothetical” moral obligations — obligations that depend on the existence of an institutional framework within which they can be effectively enforced.

The Social Contract and the Sovereign

The social contract, for Hobbes, is the agreement by which the individuals transfer their right of self-government to a sovereign. The contract is not a contract between each individual and every other; it is a contract between each individual and the sovereign. The sovereign is not a party to the contract, and the contract does not bind the sovereign in the way that it binds the citizens. The sovereign cannot, in Hobbes’s view, do injustice to the citizens, because the citizens have authorized everything that the sovereign does.

The justification for the absolute sovereign is that the alternative to sovereignty is the state of nature, and the state of nature is intolerable. Even a bad sovereign is better than no sovereign at all, because a bad sovereign can still protect the citizens from the violence of the state of nature. The argument is the source of the modern theory of sovereignty, and it is the basis of the modern case for the priority of order over liberty.

The argument is also the source of a deep puzzle in Hobbes’s political philosophy. If the sovereign can do no injustice, and if the citizens are bound to obey the sovereign in all things, then there is no room for resistance, even against the most tyrannical sovereign. The puzzle is, in significant part, the source of the Lockean response to Hobbes. Locke, in the Two Treatises, developed an alternative theory of the social contract in which the sovereign is bound by the terms of the contract, and in which the people have the right to resist a sovereign who violates the terms. The Lockean response has been the dominant theory of the modern Western tradition; the Hobbesian alternative remains a powerful critique of the Lockean theory, and a source of the modern realist tradition in political philosophy.

The Critique of the State of Nature

The state of nature has been criticized from a number of different directions. The Cambridge Platonists of the seventeenth century — Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and the other thinkers of the Cambridge school — attacked Hobbes on the grounds that the state of nature is a fiction, that human beings are naturally social, and that the proper political life is one in which the human soul can flourish. The Scottish moralists of the eighteenth century — Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith — challenged the Hobbesian account of moral psychology by emphasizing the social and sympathetic side of human nature. The French philosophes — Voltaire, Diderot, Helvétius, and the other writers of the French Enlightenment — used the state of nature as a foil for their own arguments about the natural goodness of human beings.

The most powerful critique of the Hobbesian state of nature, however, came from Rousseau. In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755), Rousseau argued that Hobbes had it exactly backwards. The natural man, in Rousseau’s view, is peaceful and good; the state of nature is a condition of primitive simplicity and happiness. The development of civilization, including the introduction of private property, the establishment of laws and government, and the cultivation of the arts and sciences, is the source of the corruption of human nature, not the remedy for it. The argument was a direct challenge to the Hobbesian view, and it became the basis of the Romantic critique of the Enlightenment.

The contemporary debate about the state of nature is, in significant part, a debate about which of these accounts is closer to the truth. The Hobbesian view, with its pessimistic account of the natural condition of human beings, has been defended by the realist tradition in international relations, by some strands of contemporary contractarian moral philosophy, and by various evolutionary psychologists. The Lockean view, with its more optimistic account of the natural condition, has been defended by the liberal tradition in political philosophy. The Rousseauian view, with its account of the natural goodness of human beings and the corruption of civilization, has been defended by the romantic and communitarian tradition.

The contemporary debate is not, in the end, about which thinker is right; it is about which thinker’s account is the most useful for the analysis of the political problems of the present. Hobbes’s account is most useful for the analysis of the relations among sovereign states, where the absence of a common authority is real. Locke’s account is most useful for the analysis of the relations between the state and the citizens, where the question of the limits of governmental power is central. Rousseau’s account is most useful for the analysis of the pathologies of modern commercial society, where the loss of community and the corruption of the moral life are real.

The state of nature, in short, is a tool for political analysis, not a description of a historical condition. The question of which account of the state of nature is the most useful depends on which political problem one is trying to analyze. The three great accounts — Hobbes’s pessimistic, Locke’s optimistic, Rousseau’s nostalgic — are not mutually exclusive. They are three different tools for three different problems, and the contemporary reader who is serious about political philosophy will use all three.