Diving into Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan is no easy task. Even if you are to remove the challenge of understanding 17th Century English, the underlying philosophy Hobbes presents is still very complex and difficult to grasp. With the help of the internet and the numerous websites, chat threads, and videos out there, I've finally been able to start putting Hobbes's work into terms I can actually understand.
As I have been deciphering Leviathan, I continue to find myself revisiting one of Hobbes' main claims: that an absolute monarchy, or a single authoritarian figure, would be the best form of sovereign.
I was surprised that he would argue one stand-alone sovereign would be the best representative of a commonwealth, especially given that he had pessimistic view of humanity in the first place. The state of nature that Hobbes describes is one that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Because all men are equal, this state sees every man acting in whatever way necessary to protect or advance their own self-interest.
Following his own theory, and with all men being equal, wouldn't a monarch also be susceptible to corruption by the state of nature since they are a human and as such be prone to act on their own self-interest rather than that of the commonwealth? Additionally, in his philosophy, Hobbes says that the covenant is made amongst the people, and the sovereign is not included in the agreement. Therefore, the sovereign can act in his/her own interest without concern since they are not bound by the rules of covenant.
Hobbes didn't seem to be too concerned about the corruption of a monarch or single authoritarian figure. Today we are able point to numerous examples, such as North Korea and Venezuela, that I think would make Hobbes reconsider this claim. Sure, the citizens are in a sense afforded protection from death from out-side actors. However, for this protection they face starvation, labor camps, and even death - all at the hands of the figure in charge. Even at the time there had been enough occurrences in history of terrible rulers (individual sovereigns), in my opinion, should have given Hobbes cause for concern.
So far, I have only really focused on getting a better understanding of Leviathan in and of itself. I have not spent much time extrapolating his work or the theory to a broader context (such as IR). Now that I've gotten more comfortable with the underlying philosophy, I look forward to exploring how Leviathan can be applied and interpreted in the field of international relations.
I very much like this question, Michael, and truthfully I had the same thought. After completing my reading of Leviathan, I found myself needing to revisit a couple of key areas in order to address this issue. Surely, I thought, Hobbes had the same question.
ReplyDeleteOne of those key areas is how he actually defines the “commonwealth”. Throughout the piece, though it is often viewed as an individual “king” or leader, he almost always makes clear that it can also serve as a group of people (likely a body of counselors or nobles in his mind, but this can easily be extended to today with the idea of elected representatives in Republican forms of government).
An example would be in Chapter 17 where he says “I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men” (p.78).
That said, I think we might be missing the point if we try to dive too deep into this particular facet of the piece. Personally, I think it’s prudent to get to the actual goal of the commonwealth itself, which in the eyes of Hobbes, is to produce peace in a world that naturally would be governed by chaos. To do this, he argues that people yielding individual rights to an ultimate/absolute authority with the most power would result in peace since there wouldn’t be competing interests. All interests would be united under a single cause—all power consolidated into a single body. There would be no possibility of war.
If you stop and think about it, he’s not entirely wrong. The “peace” (i.e. a state without war or fear of war) in states with tyrannical governments is consistently broken when other bodies splinter off or attempt to challenge the rule of the sovereign. This breaks peace and leads to war. This is why he spends time discussing rebellion and outlining why he believes it to be wrong. In Ch. 15 he mentions that it is “against reason” to rebel "against the sovereign power constituted over them by their own consent” (p. 67).
I would imagine in Hobbes’ mind, he sees no way that a democracy could ever work with the self-centered nature of humanity. I would imagine there’d be simply too many decision-makers in his mind, each with conflicting and contradictory interests. If the “self” becomes consolidated into one power, under one state, ruled by one person, with one ultimate decider, a system where everyone benefits for the sake of oneness seems the only logical solution.
Note that he never says it will be a perfect system with everyone happy, wealthy, and prosperous. Rather, he argues there will be "peace".
I don’t necessarily agree with his line of thinking, but if you’ll allow the Vulcan in me to come out for just a moment, I personally believe his logic is sound.