Hobbes was an Englishman who lived at the time when his country was passing through the turmoil’s of a civil war. He thought that only an absolute monarchy-could restore peace and order in his troubled country. He adopted the current theory of social contract in his book “Leviathan’ (1951) in which he advocated the establishment of a strong and absolutist government to maintain law and order.
Hobbes on the “State of Nature”:
Hobbes begins his theory with the State of nature. His conception of it was pre-social, and he based it on an analysis of human psychology. According to him, man was essentially selfish, egoistic and self-seeking. The sole motive of all his actions was the satisfaction of his own desires and appetites at the expense of others’ desires and needs. He did not know pity or compassion. His dealings with other men were not ruled by reason or intellect but were characterized by competition, diffidence or distrust and selfish love of power. From this analysis of human nature, Hobbes concluded that man was not a social being; indeed he finds “nothing but grief in the company of .his fellows”. All men were equally selfish, self- seeking, cunning, covetous, brutal and aggressive.
Having painted human nature in such a dark colour, Hobbes gives us an equally dismal, description of the “State of nature”. It was, he said, a State of unceasing strife, a condition of war of every man against very other man— “where every man is enemy to every man”. It was not a war in an organised sense but a perpetual struggle of all against all, caused by competition, diffidence and love of power and glory. And there was no common power or authority to bring it to an end. Consequently there was, in the State of nature, no distinction between right or wrong, justice or injustice, because the rule of life was, as Hobbes says, “only that to be every man’s that he can get; and for so long as he can keep it”. Obviously, such a condition of life was a State of “continual fear and danger of violent death”, and, as Hobbes adds in his pithy style, “the life of man was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.
Hobbes, however, recognizes that even in the State of nature men had a sense of the laws of nature. These laws were: to seek peace and follow it; to relinquish the right to all things, which being retained, hinder the peace of mankind; to “perform their covenants made”. Man also enjoyed natural liberty and natural rights, one of which was the right to self- preservation, and another was to take whatever one liked. But natural rights were really natural powers.
Yet one man’s powers were unequal to the greater strength or greater cunning of others. Therefore men did not possess any security of life and property in the natural State: hence the perpetual fear and danger to life and property in the natural State. The perpetual fear and danger to life and property compelled man to make an agreement to put an end to the conditions of perpetual strife among-them and establish a common authority or civil society.
The Contract:
With the precision of a lawyer, Hobbes mentions the exact terms on which every man entered into a mutual agreement or covenant with all others in these words: “I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men on the condition that thou givest up thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner”.
The State and the Sovereign:
After defining the terms of the contract, Hobbes adds with evident jubilation: ‘this is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence. ‘Thus the State is created. Men have completely and unconditionally surrendered their natural rights to some particular man or assembly of men, who thereby become the sovereign while the covenanting individuals become his subjects. The contract is between the covenanting individuals, who have agreed among themselves to submit to the authority of the sovereign. The contract is not between the subjects and the sovereign. It is not a governmental compact and, therefore, can never be violated, no matter what the king or the ruler does.
Hobbes, Theory of Sovereignty:
On such conditions and consequences of the social contract, that Hobbes based his theory of absolute sovereignty. The sovereign’s power is absolute because it is not held “on condition.” There could be no condition because the sovereign was not a party to the contract at all. On this ground also, sovereignty is inalienable and indivisible. The sovereign is also unpunishable. The sovereign alone has the power to make law which is not a counsel but a command. The sovereign is the sole judge of what is right or wrong and what is necessary for the people to believe and what doctrines are fit to be taught to them. He has the right to make war or peace, appoint judges and officials of the State and to confer honours and give punishment as he likes.
This is, in a brief outline, Hobbes’s theory of social contract. It is, as Leacock says, “a bold defence of absolute monarchy, the philosopher appearing as the theoretical apologist of the Stuart despotism.”
Appreciation:
Hobbes has exercised a great influence on political thinkers, as, for example, on the German philosopher Hegel and his own countryman, the jurist John Austin. His theory has certain merits. It is a correct theory of legal sovereignty and rights. As Pollock says, “Hobbes defines legal sovereignty and legal obligation with admirable strength and precision.” Moreover, Hobbes has been aptly described as a philosopher of discipline. He was so filled with the desire to maintain peace and order in human life that he went to the extreme of justifying despotism by an absolute king or ruler. He skilfully turned upside down the theory of social contract, which was really a theory of free consent and voluntary association, into a theory of absolute power and unconditional obedience. Once you admit the premises on which he bases his arguments you irresistibly draw the same conclusions as he did. His logic is unassailable, though his politics is unsound. His theory is correct to that limited extent he intends to use it, but it is unacceptable in the larger context of a true philosophy of the State which his restricted outlook on the nature of the State could not properly and accurately visualize.
Defects:
Fear cannot alone be the basis of the State.
According to Hobbes, fear is the psychological basis of the State. It was the fear of others and of immediate death which, so to say, drove the men of the natural State into a mutual agreement and civil society. But it does not appeal to common-sense, as Locke said afterwards, that these men, who were after all nearly equal in strength and cunning, should willingly put their necks under the heels of an absolute master with unlimited authority over them. How could the cats agree that owing to their mutual fear, they should be ruled by a lion?
His analysis of human nature is also unsound
Hobbes describes human nature in such dark and dismal colours that it is unreal and untrue. Man is not so inherently selfish, aggressive and self-centred, as he describes him. Man is selfish, yet he is also a social creature. He feels sympathy towards others and has also altruistic tendencies. Love, sympathy and compassion are natural to him. Moreover, there is still another weakness in the psychological analysis of Hobbes. If human nature is as selfish, aggressive and anti-social as he describes it, how can it be so suddenly transformed by a contract within a single day? How can Hobbes explain that the savages of the State of nature become saints in civil society within a day? Such psychological and social changes of character and conduct do not occur so rapidly in our work-a-day world: and if they do occur at all, they take a whole lifetime of struggle and discipline and training. Hobbes’s psychology is as defective as his politics. Either his social contract was not a single act, or it must have extended over ages, which mean it was not a ‘contract’ at all, but a painfully slow and laborious process of social evolution in human history. Looked t from any angle, whether as a fact or a fiction, Hobbes’s view of human nature is false, because it is one-sided and incomplete.
Hobbes also twisted the meaning of the word “contract”
A contract is always between two parties. But Hobbes’s contract was one-sided or unilateral. The sovereign is not a party to it, nor is it binding on him. Hobbes has deliberately done so, in order not to make it binding on the sovereign whom he wanted to possess absolute powers, and also to make it irrevocable by the subjects. But such a unilateral contract does not appeal to human reason, even to the reason of the men of the natural State who were, according to him, so selfish, aggressive and cunning.
Hobbes is inconsistent in describing the terms of the contract
At first he says that men completely surrendered all natural rights to the sovereign when they entered into a covenant among themselves. But subsequently he asserts that they have retained the natural right of self- preservation, and self-defence. There could not be a complete surrender when something is still preserved in the contract. Even the complete surrender of rights docs hot appeal to common-sense. The conception of the natural rights is also false.
Hobbes’s legal theory of rights and sovereignty is also one¬sided
It does tell us something about the nature of the State, but not the whole of it. It tells us that rights must be recognised by the State, but it does not inform us why and when they should receive such recognition. It tells us what rights have been granted by the State in the past, but does not enlighten us as to what rights must be granted in the future. Hobbes further says that law is the command of the sovereign. But this does not explain die real nature of law. Laws are really made by the people and not by the sovereign; they are merely formulated by him. The source of laws is the people and not the sovereign. They embody the will of the people and not the will of the sovereign. Nevertheless, the juristic theory of sovereignty, rights and laws had enabled Hobbes to make the sovereign’s power absolute which was, indeed, the real purpose of his theory of social contract.