On Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan | Hacker News Reader

On Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan

amp.theguardian.com

41 pointssubmeta27 comments

Kind of tangental, but I've started this history of civilization that was recommended to me by some anarchist friends and which frames the parts I've read in terms of that Leviathan. So far it's been interesting if not super convincing:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-agains...

If Syria has taught is anything I hope it is that Hobbes is right -- however bad you think your current government is, civil war or revolution is worse.

I think the difficulty with this as a general proposition is that not all rebellions/coups/revolutions end up like Syria. With the benefit of hindsight it seems clear that almost everyone would have been better off leaving Assad be. But this can't be universally true for two reasons.

First, not all revolutions end up like Syria. Relatively bloodless coups are common, and even many civil wars with fighting are much less bloody and disruptive than the Syrian civil war - the US war of independence might be one example.

The second is simply that if no revolution is justifiable, there's nothing to make a despotic monarch give any attention to the needs of their people - as the people will 'sensibly' not revolt anyway. So on the one hand Germans shouldn't resist the holocaust, or Cambodians the killing fields, and on the other you get figures like Charles I and various French Louis' making tensions in their countries far worse because they believe their position is secure. Neither is a template for a happy society.

The American Civil War suggests the opposite may be true when the "your" in "your government" starts to become unpacked. "All civil wars are bad" produces logical contradictions such as both the rise and the fall of the Soviet Union were bad.

> ... logical contradictions such as both the rise and the fall of the Soviet Union were bad.

they can both be bad, it's just that "the bad" is different in each case.

The US Civil War killed 620,000 people, and ruined the lives of many others. That's pretty freaking bad. On the upside, it freed about 3.9 million slaves, but really there should have been a less costly political solution to the slavery problem, as was found in every other country in the Americas at around the same time.

>"All civil wars are bad" produces logical contradictions such as both the rise and the fall of the Soviet Union were bad.

The fall of the Soviet Union didn't occasion a Civil War.

Keeping in mind that this is a philosophical counter example regarding Hobbesian political philosophy. See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cr...

Ironically, the recent victories against ISIS in Syria are due in large part due to the efforts of YPG and YPJ, the Kurdish militias that make up most of the SDF The SDF is the preferred name used by US/Western media to reduce association with the PKK(Kurdish Workers Party), of which YPG/YPJ are military arms.

The PKK is the main political force behind Rojava or the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, a group of self governing cantons in Syria. These are the first significant truly democratic and secular developments in the region in a long time. It is also a bold experiment towards tolerance(Rojava is comprised of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Syrian Turkmen and Yazidis as equal members) and gender equality,

The movement has strong anarchistic tendencies, and the PKKs leader Abdullah Öcalan(currently imprisoned in Turkey) is heavily influenced by American anarchist Murray Bookchin(though he later preferred not to use the term).

There is no central government, and it is a union of self governing cantons. The cantons are collectively managed through Athenian style direct democracy, with strong participation of all ethnic groups and women. The YPJ is the purely female counterpart to the YPG.

If Rojava succeeds, it could be an outcome exponentially better than the Ba'athist/Islamic Nationalist status quo. Even if ends up failing, it is a symbol of hope to me, hope that we as a species can radically rethink social relations, like the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, or Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan

Syria tells us nothing, there are many, many governments feeding that war.

Off-topic, tangental, but related. In a fit of sheer political science nerdery I got the Sovereign from the cover of Leviathan tattooed on my shoulder. Been wanting it for years but finally got it done a couple weeks ago.

It's a fascinating book, though the social contract theory that has been built on it is quite problematic.

Coincidentally, this week's instalment of Existential Comics features Hobbes, and is both funny and incisive:

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/211

i've noticed that, whenever an adult enters the picture, hobbes turns from a bundle of energy into a paper tiger.

What is this doing on HN you may ask? I'm not the OP, but the Leviathan was a study on power and trade-offs. Hobbes would have been aghast at the largely unchecked power Facebook, Google, etc. hold. The absence of any social contract, one that is otherwise present between the individual and government, means these multinational corporations are free to (very effectively) compete with Governments for power, with little upside for the individual & society.

The Hobbesian sovereign has only one source of authority, keeping the peace. To the degree multi-nationals keep the peace they have legitimate claims to Hobbesian sovereignty. I'm not saying that Hobbesian sovereignty is a good thing, just pointing to the philosophical mileposts.

  Locke != Hobbes

The only time an individual has the right to oppose the Hobbesian Sovereign is on their way to the gallows. Otherwise, the social contract holds.

Except that the whole point of Hobbes's sovereign is that there can be only one, because in his system divided sovereignty leads to anarchy. So any other entity that looks capable of sharing aspects of sovereignty with government is anathema to Hobbes - even if that entity also 'keeps the peace.'

I didn’t understand the last paragraph.

Not OP, but I think the point trying to be made by that last sentence is that in a world ruled by a Hobbesian Sovereign, no single individual has the right to oppose the sovereign. Such rebellion in a Hobbesian world should and would be a punished as a capital offence.

Not what I meant, see my comments further down. Opposition is a superior right when faced with certain death at the direction of the sovereign. This has implications in terms of the relationship of Hobbes to political anarchy in cases where politcal anarchy opposes conscription as oppression by the state. [1] Then it becomes a matter of the degree to which death is certain.

[1]: https://books.google.com/books?id=DiYlDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT180&lpg=...

Glad you could clear that up! My inability to interpret your comment is only surpassed by my inability to interpret Hobbes ;)

I enjoyed these, http://philosophybites.com/hobbes/

Are you saying that if the sovereign is trying to kill you, the sovereign overstepped its bounds, or mandate if you will, and you are morally right to oppose?

I read it more as OP meaning the social contract is not a suicide pact. Which is correct: a contract must be beneficial to both parties.

Yes.

  *A Mans Covenant Not To Defend Himselfe, Is Voyd*

  A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is alwayes voyd.
  For (as I have shewed before) no man can transferre, or lay down his
  Right to save himselfe from Death, Wounds, and Imprisonment, (the
  avoyding whereof is the onely End of laying down any Right,)
  and therefore the promise of not resisting force, in no Covenant
  transferreth any right; nor is obliging. For though a man may Covenant
  thus, "Unlesse I do so, or so, kill me;" he cannot Covenant thus "Unless
  I do so, or so, I will not resist you, when you come to kill me." For
  man by nature chooseth the lesser evill, which is danger of death in
  resisting; rather than the greater, which is certain and present death
  in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all men, in
  that they lead Criminals to Execution, and Prison, with armed men,
  notwithstanding that such Criminals have consented to the Law, by which
  they are condemned.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3207/pg3207.txt

a contract must be beneficial to both parties.

Except this isn't Hobbes' position. In his system, the benefit to the populace as a whole occurs only once: at the time the sovereign is invested with authority, ending the "war of all against all".

Once the sovereign has been given power, that's it. In Hobbes' system there are no further responsibilities on the sovereign's part to wield that power for a good purpose. There is no concept of power retained by the people, or power to overthrow the sovereign in the event the sovereign fails to provide what the people desire. In fact, such an idea is a contradiction in terms in Hobbes' system; there can be no power other than that which is possessed by the sovereign, because in Hobbes' system all power is ceded permanently and irrevocably to the sovereign.

The ongoing benefit of the social contract is that the sovereign keeps the peace. If the sovereign fails to keep the peace, the sovereign is no longer sovereign (in the Hobbesian sense of 'sovereign'). As Dennis the Peasant says "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses." [1] That's why Leviathan's frontspiece [2] depicts the body sovereign as comprising many individuals rather than solid.

[1]: "not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbe...

Humor aside, Hobbes would not agree with you. He explicitly denies that the covenant can be breached by the sovereign, and explicitly denies that the people would have the right to remove or alter the government of the sovereign. Any principle of the sovereign "breaching" the covenant is non-Hobbesian, and probably a confusion with the theories of John Locke, which were radically different.

As I see it, Facebook and Google actually do one better than a social contract. They have a real contract with every individual user in the form of the EULA. I think you could even say they have a social contract too, that being the public's general understanding of what Facebook/Google offer and what they give in return. The argument for societal consent to Google/Facebook seems very easy compared to societal consent to government authority, even in a democracy. But I don't put much stock in social contracts as an ethical argument anyway. I tend to agree with Lysander Spooner's arguments, e.g. on the Constitution: "No one's consent could be presumed against him, without his actual consent being given, any more than in the case of any other contract to pay money, or render service."

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