Thomas Hobbes, Patriot and Blasphemer: Rethinking Liberal Theory Part 1

8/3/2019 Thomas Hobbes, Patriot and Blasphemer: Rethinking Liberal Theory Part 1

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Rethinking LiberalTheory part 1:Thomas Hobbes,

patriot andblasphemer

by John MacBeath Watkins

Liberal democracies are the envy people living

under all other forms of government, for their

wealth and their freedom. While democracy is a

form of government that goes back at least to the

ancient Greeks, and the ideas behind it go back as

far, I'm going to be dealing with the modern,

Northern European idea of liberalism, since that's

the sort the civilization I grew up in is based

upon.

Thomas Hobbes was the first, and to my way of thinking, the deepest, of the liberal theorists.



The "liberal" tag is a 19th-century invention, and given his pro-Monarchist feelings he might not have

agreed he was one. But Hobbes wrote Leviathan , the book that lays out the system of values and the

moral structure that underlies modern liberal democracies, and the way we regard the legitimacy of

governments.Hobbes was a brilliant man, a scientist as well as a political theorist, and fortunately for him, the

tutor of the child who would become Charles II, king of England. Fortunately because during the reign

of Charles II, parliament put some blasphemy laws on the books that bear some resemblance to those

which are currently controversial in Pakistan, and Hobbes was one of the intended targets.

Hobbes was a dedicated materialist. The views that got him in trouble were related to this, as

Hobbes claimed to believe in God, but believed that since only the material universe existed, God must

be a material being, just one with great powers, sort of like Superman. It's well to keep this in mind

when people tell us that we are in a "Christian nation." Hobbes sought a legitimacy for government not

founded in religion, because his sort of religion wasn't what most Christians would regard as

Christianity. He also saw that a new source of legitimacy for the state was needed, in part because kings

and priests had been working very hard at destroying their own legitimacy, but in larger part because

Europe no longer had the religious homogeneity for churches to bind together states. In religiously

heterogeneous states, some secular form of legitimacy was required.

He wrote Leviathan during the English Civil War, which he sat out in France tutoring the heir to

the throne while Charles I was losing his head, literally, because of the Civil War (beheaded after a trial

for treason in 1649.) In 1648, the Thirty Years War ended, while the English Civil War started in 1642

and didn't really end until 1651, the year Leviathan was published.

Both of these wars were about religion, and since the 30 Years War ended with Germany's

population about a third smaller than when it started, you can imagine the sort of world Hobbes was

writing about. In Chapter X of Leviathan, he lays out man's "state of nature," which was really the sort

of breakdown of society that Hobbes saw happening throughout Europe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_Pakistan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_Pakistan



Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to everyman; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition,there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently noCulture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported bySea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as

require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

That was the world religious conflicts had given us, and in fact, much of the conflict had been

about which rulers could claim the divine right to rule. After all, if you were an apostate, how could

you have God's blessing?

Karl Marx looked at the misery ministry brought to man, and thought the solution was to

eliminate religion, but did not propose a working system of values to replace it. Hobbes, instead of

proposing the elimination of religion, simply showed what source of government legitimacy might

replace it, perhaps understanding that if the sovereign was legitimate regardless of religion, that would

mean religious conflict could be confined to the civil sphere, and not involved armies marching against

each other. He saw that somehow, we had to find a way for a government to legitimately govern a

society as divided by religion as England or Germany, a lesson nations split between Shia and Sunni

might benefit from.

But how could government be legitimate if the sovereign wasn't God's chosen?

Hobbes, being a materialist, decided that government must exist because it was man's nature to

have government. Man in the state of nature, he reasoned, must be like man when government has

broken down. And what happened in that circumstance? See the above quotation.

But a society must be based on the need for a society, and the devastation of the Thirty Year's

War showed why it was needed. Without someone to adjudicate disputes and enforce laws, chaos

reigned instead. To be protected from violent death, therefore, we needed a government. We valued

government for what it could do for us, just as we value people for what they can do for us. From

Chapter X of Leviathan :



The Value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so muchas would be given for the use of his Power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and judgement of another. An able conductor of Souldiers, is of

great Price in time of War present, or imminent; but in Peace not so. A learned and uncorrupt Judge, is much Worth in time of Peace; but not so much in War. And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price. For let a man (as most

men do,) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more thanit is esteemed by others.

This sounds terribly philistine, but the remarkable thing here is that Hobbes was describing a

subjective system of value, "dependent on the need and judgment of another," not on God as interpreted

by His priests, not to be determined after your death, but here and now and judged by your fellow man.

I find it ironic that modern libertarians think the system of value that Hobbes described means

that we don't need government. For Hobbes, it was why we need government: The sovereign does us a

service by ruling, because without the sovereign, "...there is no place for Industry; because the fruit

thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the

commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and

removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of

Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent

death..."

I can only think that libertarian anarchists have not read Hobbes, and do not understand the

history that caused him to write his book. Hobbes wanted the younger Charles to return to rule

England, not just for the sake of his student, but for the sake of his country. Yet the very system of

thought that helped justify the rule of Charles II In 1666, parliament passed a law against atheism and

profaneness, and, as Wikipedia notes:

That same year, on 17 October 1666, it was ordered that the committee to which the billwas referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend toatheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in particular... the book of Mr. Hobbes called the

Leviathan.

Hobbes, in fear of his life, destroyed some incriminating papers. But he was protected by



Charles II, by then sitting on the throne of England again. Eventually he wrote some essays regarding

the heresy laws, published in Amsterdam as appendices the Leviathan because he could not get a

censors license to publish in England, and never again was able to get such a license for any writing on

the conduct of human affairs.I find his notion that society is formed so that we may be free of violent death a little

unsatisfying. Wolves are really good at killing, and they manage to have a society where they don't kill

each other. Perhaps Hobbes would say that's the point, a pack without a leader will have its participants

struggling to establish social position, sort of like high school red in tooth and claw.

And he would have a point. But it seems to me that human societies are different from animal

societies. They involve cooperation between humans who are not related to one another by blood,

which in the animal world would be very unusual. There must be something more to human

cooperation, and John Locke, another Englishman who wrote in France because politics made it

unhealthy for him to live in England, suggested the answer we've been using as long as America has

been a nation, which I also find unsatisfying.

Thomas Hobbes, Patriot and Blasphemer: Rethinking Liberal Theory Part 1

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