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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
In this article, I argue that there is a fundamental contradiction in Hobbes' political theory: the contradiction is between the method (which may be called “realism”) used in the deduction of the commonwealth and sovereign, and the sovereign's alleged obligation to obey the laws of nature. In order to explain how the contradiction arises, I begin by giving a brief account of the laws of nature in Hobbes, and the way in which he deduces the necessity for a sovereign. I then discuss a number of possible ways of avoiding the contradiction, and find them all unsatisfactory. Finally, I propose a solution to the problem. This solution involves some criticisms of Professor C. B. Macpherson's analysis of Hobbes, and also has some bearing on the relationship of the thought of Marx to more orthodox political theory.
In De Corpore Politico, Hobbes says that the laws of nature are “the dictates of natural reason … moral laws, because they concern the manners and conversation of men, one towards another; so are they also divine laws in respect of the author thereof. …” The laws of nature, then, can be seen in three ways: as rational, as moral, and as divine. It is because he says that they are both moral laws and dictates of reason, in that reason dictates on the basis of certain facts, that Hobbes is said to be guilty of the naturalistic fallacy, of attempting to deduce values from facts. And he calls them divine in order to emphasize that they cannot, according to his own account of law, properly be called laws at all except they be commands, in this case the commands of God. “And forasmuch as law, to speak properly, is a command, and these dictates, as they proceed from nature, are not commands, they are not therefore called laws, in respect of nature, but in respect of the author of nature, God Almighty.” Hobbes gives various explanations of just why the laws are moral, and all of them are unsatisfactory in one way or another. In the above passage he says that they are moral because they concern the manners and conversation of men, one towards another; but not everything which concerns the manners and conversation of men is moral.
L'objet essentiel de cet article est de soutenir qu'il existe une importante contradiction dans la théorie politique de Hobbes et de suggérer un moyen par lequel cette contradiction devrait être résolue. La contradiction se trouve entre la méthode (qu'on peut appeler réalisme) qui est utilisée pour conclure au commonwealth et à la souveraineté et la prétendue obligation du souverain de se soumettre aux lois de la Nature.
Hobbes considère les lois de la Nature comme divines, morales, et rationnelles; et il les qualifie de rationnelles parce qu'elles énoncent les conditions de la conservation. La conservation est une fin immanente que l'homme recherche inévitablement et les lois de la Nature sont les moyens nécessaires, et par conséquent rationnels, d'atteindre cette fin. Il est nécessaire par suite que les hommes observent les lois de la Nature; mais il leur semble également impossible de s'y conformer à cause de leurs instincts naturels qui les poussent à la compétition, à la suspicion, et à la vanité — en un mot à la lutte de tous contre tous. On peut définir le réalisme comme l'opinion voulant (a) que les lois de la Nature soient contraires aux instincts naturels des hommes et (b) que les lois de la Nature ne peuvent être observées sans la crainte qu'inspire une autorité coercitive. Par conséquent, on ne peut mettre fin à la lutte de tous contre tous ni faire respecter les lois de la Nature (en somme l'instauration d'un commonwealth) sans la présence d'un souverain; et la fonction essentielle du souverain est d'inspirer suffisamment la crainte pour que les hommes obéissent, plutôt que de suivre leurs penchants naturels. C'est ainsi que Hobbes tire de son réalisme l'instauration de la souveraineté.
Mais Hobbes en outre indique clairement que le souverain doit se conformer aux lois de la Nature et ceci paraît contredire son réalisme: ce n'est pas réaliste. En effet, puisque le souverain est un homme (ou un groupe d'hommes) il doit (ou ils doivent) être soumis à ces instincts naturels qui empêchent les hommes de se conformer aux lois de la Nature. Dans le cas des autres hommes, il y a un pouvoir coercitif (le souverain) qui les force à obéir: évidemment ceci ne peut pas s'appliquer au souverain lui-même.
Un certain nombre de solutions viennent à l'esprit pour éliminer cette contradiction. Peut-être le souverain n' est-il pas victime des passions qu'éprouvent les autres hommes. Peut-être existe-t-il une autorité contraignante susceptible d'astreindre le souverain à l'obéissance des lois de la Nature: on pourrait suggérer que Dieu peut jouer ce rôle ou que la menace de la révolte est suffisante. Hobbes toutefois rejette explicitement l'idée que le souverain soit libéré des instincts naturels. Par ailleurs, si nous acceptons que Dieu peut contraindre le souverain, nous ne voyons plus pourquoi un souverain était indispensable auparavant: si Dieu peut contraindre le souverain, il peut également contraindre les autres hommes et les forcer à observer les lois de la, Nature sans le secours d'autres sources d'autorité qui seraient davantage de ce monde. Si d'autre part, nous admettons que le souverain puisse être contraint par une autorité civile, alors, suivant la conception de Hobbes, le souverain n'est plus un souverain, mais un sujet.
Dans The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, le professeur C. B. Macpherson suggère que le souverain pourrait être soumis à ce qu'il appelle la « classe possédante » (possessing class). C'est une suggestion extrêmement importante, mais elle ne tient pas dans sa formulation actuelle. Par implication cependant nous pourrions substituer à la notion d'une classe possédante le concept d'une classe souveraine ou d'une classe dirigeante. Ce que Macpherson appelle le « corps souverain » devrait être considéré, non comme souverain, mais comme le comité exécutif d'une classe dirigeante.
Comment cette conception peut-elle servir à résoudre la contradiction originelle? En réponse, nous proposons de distinguer la classe elle-même de ses membres individuels. La classe elle-même n'est pas soumise à la loi, mais ses membres individuels le sont. Plus précisément, tout membre individuel de la classe dirigeante peut être condamné par la classe ou par son comité exécutif; mais si nous parlons d'une sujétion de toute la classe dirigeante, nous parlons d'une révolution. On peut donc résoudre la contradiction originelle en disant qu'il ne s'agit pas vraiment d'une contradiction: le souverain est à la fois soumis à la contrainte et il ne l'est pas selon qu'on le considère à titre de membre individuel ou de classe dirigeante dans son ensemble.
Il est intéressant en soi d'envisager Hobbes de cette manière mais cette approche suggère en outre que la pensée de Marx est beaucoup plus intimement liée, même sur des points de détail, à la philosophie politique classique qu'on ne le suppose souvent.
1 I have found it convenient frequently to refer to Hobbes' “deduction” of, for example, the sovereign; but I do not mean to imply anything specific about the nature of Hobbes' logic, and still less to imply that his thought is strictly and validly deductive.
2 Molesworth, William Sir, ed., The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (London, 1740), vol. IV, 111.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 109.
4 Ibid.
5 Oakeshott, Michael, ed., Leviathan (Oxford, n.d.), 32.Google Scholar
6 Ibid., 84.
7 Lamprecht, Sterling F., ed., Thomas Hobbes: De Cive or The Citizen (New York, 1949), 32.Google Scholar
8 Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962), 78.Google Scholar
9 De Cive, 26.
10 Leviathan, 109.
11 De Cive, 58.
12 P. 109.
13 Ibid., 112.
14 De Corpore Politico, 129.
15 According to Macpherson, “You can move from the universal struggle for power in society, or from the state of nature, to the necessity of a sovereign without further assumptions.” (Possessive Individualism, 18). This may be true, but it is not what Hobbes does. Hobbes derives the necessity for a sovereign, not just from the estate of nature, but also from the laws of nature. I claim, in other words, that the sovereign is a means of resolving a tension between two deductions: the estate of nature and the laws of nature. Macpherson sees the deduction of the sovereign as linear, whereas I see the sovereign as appearing at the meeting point of two apparently contradictory lines. Other writers, it may be true, have over-emphasized the laws of nature, but Macpherson makes too little of them.
16 For practical purposes, it will not be misleading to leave the definition of realism in this form, although it should be clear from what I have said earlier that it is not, strictly speaking, accurate as it stands. To be accurate, it should read: (a) the laws of nature are contrary to enough of men's natural passions to (b) make it impossible for them to obey the laws of nature without the terror of some coercive authority. Some of our natural passions, according to Hobbes' account, do incline us to peace, but not powerfully enough to make any difference where the deduction of the sovereign is concerned.
17 Plamenatz, John, Man and Society (London, 1963), vol. I, 112.Google Scholar Where Plamenatz writes that Hobbes “makes too much of reason in one way, and too little of it in another,” Sabine has written “Human nature is neither so reasonable nor so unreasonable as he assumed it to be.” Sabine has the advantage, though, in that he is aware of the difficulties created by this view for an account of the necessity of sovereignty. He says: “The effective motive by which men are socialized is the fear of punishment. … Just how this motive stands in relation to the reasonableness of performing covenants is not quite clear.” It is true that he goes on to say “apparently Hobbes meant that reason provides a sufficient ground for mutual accord but it is too weak to offset the avarice of men in the mass,” but he does not see that this, however unsatisfactory in itself, completely negates his previous objection to Sabine, Hobbes. G. H., A History of Political Theory (London, 1937), 397–8.Google Scholar
18 Leviathan, chap. xxvi.
19 Ibid., 212.
20 De Cive, 95–6.
21 Warrender, Howard, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (New York, 1957), 1781–9.Google Scholar
22 Mintz, Samuel I., The Hunting of the Leviathan (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 26–7.Google Scholar
23 References gratefully gleaned from Warrender, , The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 178–9 (these references are to Molesworth, , ed., The English Works): vol. II, 80–3Google Scholar; vol III, 199–200, 215, 312; vol. IV, 140, 213.
24 Macpherson, , Possessive Individualism, 91.Google Scholar
25 See Mintz, The Hunting of the Leviathan
26 Possessive Individualism, Part II.
27 De Corpore Politico, 140.
28 Leviathan, 120.
29 De Corpore Politico, 213.
30 P. 162. See also, in De Corpore Politico, 166: “… it seemeth inconvenient that there should be committed so great a power in one man. … This inconvenience … must be derived not from the power, but from the affections and passions which reign in every one, as well monarch as subject, by which the monarch may be swayed to use that power amiss.” And in De Cice, 94: “… the monarch may diverse ways transgress against the … laws of nature, as by cruelty, iniquity, contumely, and other like vices.”
31 As, for example, in Leviathan, chap. xix.
32 De Cive, 58.
33 De Corpore Politico, 213. My emphasis.
34 Leviathan, 110.
35 In Behemoth or the Long Parliament, ed. Tönnies, F. (London, 1889).Google Scholar
36 Possessive Individualism, 90–100.
37 Leviathan, 127.
38 Possessive Individualism, 97–8.
39 Ibid., 94.
40 De Corpore Politico, 144.
41 Ibid., 143.
42 Leviathan, chap. xxvi.
43 See, for example, Leviathan, chap. XXVI.
44 My position on this is, I think, similar to Rousseau's in that very difficult chapter (chap. VII ) in Contrat Social where he writes: “… chaque individu, contractant pour ainsi dire avec lui-même, se trouve engagé, sous un double rapport : savoir, comme membre du souverain envers les particuliers, et comme de l'État envers le souverain.” In this connection it can be mentioned that there is nothing in principle preventing what I have said of the sovereign class being applied to the totality of society. This is how one would sort out some aspects of the relationship between Hobbes and Rousseau. But an analysis in terms of class is of more practical significance in our own society.
45 I should like to quote Trotsky, who summarises the position beautifully: “Naive minds think that the office of kingship lodges in the king himself, in his ermine cloak and his crown, in his bones and veins. As a matter of fact, the office of kingship is an interrelation between people. The king is king only because the interests and prejudices of millions of people are refracted through his person. When the flood of development sweeps away these interrelations, then the king appears to be only a washed-out male with a flabby underlip.” Trotsky, Leon, Fourth International, 59 Google Scholar, cited in Deutscher, Isaac, ed., The Permanent Revolution: A Trotsky Anthology (New York, 1964), 173–4.Google Scholar