Compare and contrast the two philosophers of politics: John locke and Thomas Hobbes - Term Paper Example

? LOCKE AND HOBBES AS PHILOSOPHERS OF POLITICS by Presented to of the of the of of the City and State] May 25, 2011 Introduction The aim of the present essay is to compare and contrast the political philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704) and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), eminent thinkers whose ideas defined the further development of early modern political thought. The comparison between their theories will be made through detailed expositions of their general arguments, and through contrast between them. It will be argued that, while Locke placed utmost importance on the idea of natural rights, Hobbes was early proponent of utilitarian concepts in politics, which informs the antagonism between their positions. Lockean political philosophy In his Essays on the Law of Nature, which he composed in 1663-1664, Locke concentrated on the duty of men to serve the others both for God’s rewards and terrestrial happiness. Locke argued that all men were basically united in friendship and had a duty of ‘liberality’ to each other1. Locke specifically lambasted a notion of ‘every man’s own interest’ as the basis for natural law, claiming that pursuit of private advantage alone could not provide a lasting basis for society’s unity2. In Essays Locke observed that “the inheritance of the whole of the mankind is always one and the same”3, decrying fraud and competition over the necessarily limited natural riches as the original basis of all social ills. At the same time, Locke directly tied service to society and obedience to natural law with the security of property, maintaining that it was this obedience, rather than arbitrary egoism, that created solid basics for property preservation4. In Essays Locke for the first time came to conclusion that rights of property are predicated upon natural law, even though he still did not explain the mechanism of their formation. Other themes of Essays which were later continued in Locke’s mature writings included the notion of purposeful creativity of human beings, with a presumption that God created men to engage in productive labor, rather than pursuing idleness5. Locke also noted that society was formed out of “pressing needs” of men and that “inward instinct” of human beings made them seek their self-preservation, so that self-preservation became an innate obligation6. The Lockean political theory was eventually laid down in Two Treatises on Government, written in the 1680s with an aim to refuting the arguments of supporters of divine right of the kings. The First Treatise presents a comprehensive rebuttal of absolutists’ argument by setting out logical limits to the powers of royal authority, recognizing the right of political community to evaluate whether the sovereign transgresses his powers. Here the problem of property is also decisively dealt with, which played important part in development of liberal doctrine. According to Locke, the application of labor distinguishes private from communal property. Locke believed that product of labor constitutes the inherent property of the laborer, and that in applying his labor to the natural reaches, whether by hunting, gathering or agriculture, the right of man to the product of his labor is acquired. The necessity of individual labor thus leads inescapably to the formation of “private possessions”7. According to Locke, even though God gave the Earth to men “for their benefit, and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it”8, men are obliged to use natural reaches and land itself in a rational manner, and those whom Locke termed “the industrious and rational” fulfill this duty much better than “the quarrelsome and contentious”, which means that the former are provided with greater share in initially communal property than the latter9. The industrious and rational are at the same time obliged not to waste land and its resources, and should avoid arbitrary use of their riches. Therefore, the right to individual appropriation of nature’s goods is a continuation of the precept that “every man has a property in his own person” and in “the labour of his body”10. Accordingly, the good that someone has “mixed his labour with”11 rightfully belongs to the latter, with the necessary proviso that it is used for satisfaction of his natural needs, and “there is enough, and as good left in common for others”12. Locke espoused the same principle when dealing with the enclosure of land for agriculture, as it greatly increased land productivity, and therefore, in Locke’s judgment, the ‘industrious’ men have always had a right to enclose land for cultivation, provided that they themselves labored on it. Locke thought that as long as accumulation of wealth took the form of perishable commodities, no one would have either motive or right to produce more than they could use, give to others or exchange before these goods were spoiled in his keeping. The invention of money, however, modified the whole nature of property-rights, since money does not spoil in storage, as the other goods do. Locke thought that use of money allows exploiting land fully, and stimulates production through increasing the surplus that can be then traded in exchange for other commodities13. Nevertheless, Locke agreed that the side effect of these developments greatly complicated the execution of the law of nature and encouraged its more frequent breach through greed. Locke emphasized that, rather than following the will of political power, the aforementioned rights of property, as well as money and land enclosures arose before the institution of political authority, and that this authority was specifically designed to guarantee their exercise from encroachment14. This claim aimed at denying the dependence of property on the will of sovereign, as was asserted by Thomas Hobbes, and emphasized the pre-political character of property rights. In The Second Treatise, Locke argued that political government is a human invention, which follows, rather than precedes, private property. Political society is defined by Locke as one where “any number of men are so united into one Society as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public”15. Locke noted that human beings have an obligation “to preserve the rest of mankind”16 by a rational extension of their duty of self-preservation, so that nobody “ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions”17. However, before individuals surrendered their unlimited power to “punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation”18, human beings lived in the state of nature that presupposed liberty from any constraint, save for moral duty to God as a creator of all life. Locke compared this state of nature to the modern international system, within the framework of which there is no single authority to determine the conduct of individual states19. Nevertheless, as Locke noted, there existed a potential for abuse of this unlimited power, and therefore men resolved to submit their disputes to “a judge on earth, with authority to determine all the controversies, and redress the injuries [of members of the society]”20, that is, to political authority, whose main goal should be to secure general freedom from “the arbitrary will of another”21, and from any other authority nor deriving from the common will of society at large. Locke ascribed the formation of such political society to the free will and express consent of individuals participating in it. He believed that the establishment of political authority took part in two stages, with a majoritarian agreement to form a political community as the first one, and the entrustment of rights to judge and execute laws to a man or political body as the second one. Therefore, according to Locke, government involves more than just a simple contract; it is a trust agreement, and the body that executes the entrusting constitutes itself as political society due to this very act22. The problem of causes of consent to establishing governments was solved by Locke by pointing at uncertain character of the law of nature as moral guide, and the necessity to ensure impartial and effective judgment and punishment led to the creation of governments. In the Second Treatise, Locke was more conclusive on this problem, writing that “The great and chief end therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property”23. However, as the rights surrendered by individuals to their governments were of necessarily limited character, Locke concluded that the powers of the government should be limited as well. Thus he defined legitimate government as that of limited powers over its citizens/subjects24. In addition, Locke noted that as the government was established by the contractors, it is therefore illegitimate for it to act contrary to their intentions. Locke established the following principles which determined the level of legitimacy of any government: the absence of arbitrary rule (as the rights of individuals under natural law are not arbitrary, they themselves could not entrust their government with arbitrary power); the public character of laws, with the individuals who decide on them being subject to their effect just like anyone else (a private character of laws would increase the level of arbitrariness and partiality, thus making people worse off than in the state of nature); the separation of legislative and judicial functions of the government (it alone can safeguard the subjection of lawmakers to their own laws), and the absence of delegation of government powers to individuals (as the government powers are result of trusteeship with the people, they cannot be delegated to some proxy body)25. Proceeding from aforementioned principles, Locke expressed his opinion on the institutions he deemed necessary for the establishment of “well ordered commonwealths”26. In his judgment, it is legislative power that should fulfill the functions of supreme authority, as it is entrusted by the people with defining and implementing the law of nature in the form of laws common to all political society. Locke thought that legislature does not need to be in continuous session, as it might be biased in application of its own laws. In order to minimize this risk, Locke recommended that the legislative power be entrusted in an assembly which consists of representatives who meet from time to time, separate from the continuously acting executive27. The executive power for Locke encompassed the administrative and judicial functions of government and is necessarily continuous in their discharge. A third, ‘federative’ power, which is entrusted of coordinating the relations of war, peace and alliances with other political communities is governed by the laws of the executive to a lesser degree than the executive power, but is usually combined with the latter28. Locke ascribed moral superiority to legislative power, seeing it as a creator of the laws that govern the whole society29. Nevertheless, Locke believed that executive power cannot be completely dependent on decisions of the legislature. He therefore accepted the necessity of granting certain “prerogative powers” to the executive, enabling it to act without express consent of the legislators30. However, these powers cannot be invoked to justify abuse of power by the executive by limiting subjects’ property rights and undermining process of lawmaking. The abandonment of government by the executive, and the subversion of the legislature by the former make the monarch-executive himself a delinquent and destroyer of the government, justifying the rebellion of his subjects against him31. The latter are thus free to return to the state of nature, with a right to establish a new government. The political ideas of Hobbes Just like Locke, Hobbes was the politician foremost, and the philosopher only next to that. His life and career was informed by his allegiance with royalist cause in their years preceding and following the English Civil War, and thus his conservative position may be regarded as the direct consequence of his political inclinations. Hobbes’ major works in political theory, The Elements of Law (1640), De cive (1642) and Leviathan (1652)32, were clearly aimed at bolstering the political position of royalist camp, an should be read as such. The most frequent motive of these works is the insistence on the public’s submission to the will of sovereign, which Hobbes unabashedly regarded as a necessary basis for a harmonious existence of political commonwealth33. In order to understand the Hobbesian concept of the state and politics, it is necessary to examine the ethical ideas of Hobbes that formed a basis for his political theory. In his major work on natural and moral philosophy, De corpore (1655), Hobbes argued that, just as mechanics investigates “what effects one body worketh upon another”34, the moral philosophy, which in his classification of sciences comprised both ethics and philosophy of law, deals with the motions of mind, which, according to Hobbes, include “appetite, aversion, love, benevolence, hope, fear, anger...; what causes they have and of what they be causes”35. These motions of the mind are themselves effects of human senses, which are grounded in empiric reality. Therefore sensory representation leads both to human reaction to external reality and to the emergence of mental representations and ‘passions’. The latter in turn compel human beings to follow and continue their experiences if they are conducive to vital motions of the body and mind, producing pleasure, or to discontinue and reject them if the vital motion is prevented or restricted by the effects of sensory experience36. The recognition of harmful effects of this or that action for vital motions of the human being leads to aversion, while satisfactory experience engenders successive appetite for it. Thus it may be concluded that Hobbes recognized pleasure and pain/displeasure as two basic driving forces of human psyche, and the Hobbesian concept of valuation of individual and collective experiences is strongly predicated on the assumption that individuals generally tend to pursue pleasure and avoid its opposite37. There is no intrinsic good or evil in this valuation system, as adverse and positive effects of certain actions differ from one individual to another. Likewise, different individuals necessarily pursue different goals, and the attempts to construe the singular goal for the whole society are futile38. The happiness of individuals depends not on singular pursuit of one particular good but on successful combination of several such pursuits. Such reflections form a basis for the connection between broader Hobbesian moral philosophy and his specific theory of the state and politics. Hobbes believed that humans need to understand the moral nature of their actions in order to achieve happiness but that the activities of most members of human society are predicated upon their simple reactions to pleasure or displeasure that they accrue in the process39. This leads to mutual misunderstanding, as various individuals pursue divergent goals and apply different criteria to moral valuation of their actions, leading to disregard for long-term and collective consequences of short-term and individual pleasures. This requires scientific evaluation of consequences of human actions, and this evaluation may be achieved only through the actions of unbiased mediators that are supposedly detached from immediate pursuit of short-term pleasures and benefits40. However, according to Hobbes, as the majority of people generally cling to their own opinions, they would most likely ignore the advice of these scientific arbitrators, if the latter were to be supported merely by their moral authority41. Hence, the necessity of political state to enforce the objective valuation of human actions is stipulated. Hobbes believed that the conflicts between individuals around their specific courses of pursuit of happiness inevitably lead to the situation when the whole of society engages in incessant confrontation. This state of society, regarded by Hobbes as similar to generalized warfare, is maintained by natural struggle for power as a means of overcoming the competitors in generalized struggle over social goods42. Hobbes views power as both physical and immaterial; for him, the category of power comprises both material capabilities of social subjects and the ideological means they use in exerting their own influence. As the distribution of power is ever-changing, the social subjects, according to Hobbes, tend to accumulate as much power in their hands as it is possible, which Hobbes attributes to individual’s concern for attaining the desired goals by all means possible. This fact, despite all possible good intentions by competing individuals, invariably leads to mutual distrust and internecine struggle for survival, which Hobbes terms a ‘state of nature’43. The argument presented above is most often construed as Hobbesian support for the idea of natural selfishness of human beings. This may be further underscored by Hobbes’s grim portrayal of humans as generally egoistic and dishonest in De cive44. However, it should be emphasized that Hobbes did not attempt to create a uniform theory of human nature; just as with his rejection of the existence of universal good and evil, he asserted that humans are rather diverse in their inclinations and behaviours but it is their inability to understand the difference between long-term and short-term pleasures and pains that leads them to confrontation. Hobbes believed that both ‘vainglorious’, whom he portrayed as constantly seeking the others’ good for the sake of acquisition, and ‘moderate’, who merely try to safeguard their property, are drawn into generalized warfare by the fundamental clash of their interests, not out of some innate anti-social tendency45. In any case, Hobbes believed that the tendency towards state of nature leads to aggravation of general insecurity and the decay of cultural and technological potential of society, making human life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”46. With regard to the question of possible counterinfluence of morality and moral norms on human predisposition towards general warfare, Hobbes believed that even though some moral principles may be followed in the state of nature, they run counter to human preoccupation with sheer survival, and are thus ineffective, as individuals in this situation act on their own impulses in securing their self-preservation and wellbeing47. The individuals may surrender this right in the interest of self-preservation, but never at the cost of the latter. This leads Hobbes to conclude that altruistic behaviour is thus uncompetitive in the state of nature, as if one may think that others will take advantage of his pacific and generous conduct, he may regard such behaviour as the source of personal vulnerability, as the result abandoning it. The simultaneous decision by multiple individuals that altruism makes them vulnerable would most probably invalidate any moral effect of cooperative ethics, and the latter are thus worthless if not supported by something more than the power of persuasion. According to Hobbes, the solution to the problems engendered by life in the state of nature lies in delegation of power of personal judgment by the majority to a person or a group of persons who are by this agreement entrusted with securing the lives of the other members of society against physical assault and against the severe deprivations of the state of nature48. This new governing body takes its powers from a collective submission of the majority to its will. The majority consent to be governed by the laws of a power body (or sovereign, as Hobbes most often refers to it), finding this situation to be a more efficient method of safeguarding their life than the action of individuals in the state of nature. The majority submit to the sovereign both in agreeing to support its actions against lawbreakers and as an armed force in fighting against the other societies49. This submission results in the majority’s actions being subjugated to the sovereign’s law and its refraining from the actions that would run counter to it. This law is consequently an expression of the sovereign’s will with respect to questions of property, religion, trade, warfare, punishments and rewards, and it is completely independent from the wills of individual members of society50. Hobbes explains that the sovereign’s will is superior because it, uniquely in the commonwealth, still constitutes an expression of the right of nature. While each and every individual who is subject to the sovereign is obliged to refrain from exercising this right, the sovereign is not obliged to make any concessions to his subjects a kind of reciprocity. Hobbes permits the disobedience of the subjects and the return to the state of nature only in case of the sovereign’s express failure to safeguard the commonwealth from the outside intervention that threatens the lives and well-being of the majority51. However, in all other cases, Hobbes finds it indispensable that the state as represented by the sovereign should expect the compliance of its subjects. The majority ought to comply with the state’s will, as the safety of individuals depends on the extent to which they agree between themselves to be law-abiding. The members of the society should also comply with the sovereign’s will due to allegedly voluntary nature of their submission, as long as he succeeds in making and keeping the peace, making obedience to the state more advantageous than reverting to the state of nature52. Despite its clearly identifiable absolutist overtones, Hobbes’ theory is ambiguous on the extent to which the sovereign should regulate public life. To begin with, there were limits to what laws could do: personal belief could not be forced on the subjects, so a certain modicum of religious tolerance was advisable. At the same time, people could not be expected to risk their lives in order to obey the law, as that would make the results of their life in the ordered commonwealth the same as in the state of nature. In the same vein, forced military service, if it were likely to lead to death, might reasonably be seen as unacceptable according to the terms of Hobbes’ social contract53. Likewise, the government that secured most people’s possessions from common-law crime, but that engaged in repressive taxation, could be regarded as a failure by the sovereign to fulfil his obligations to provide life that was better than in the state of nature, as the safety that results from the creation of the commonwealth is not confined to bare survival. In these cases one may see that Hobbes retracts from taking the position in favour of the absolute power of sovereigns, even if the latter logically follows from his point about surrender of the rights of majority to the sovereign. Conclusion From differing points of view presented by Locke and Hobbes, it is clear that the two thinkers held contrasting positions on many political issues. While Locke viewed the property rights as primary ones and viewed the state as mere instrument of safeguarding these rights, Hobbes believed that it is the state that creates the rights of property and may withdraw them freely. Locke proceeded from the assumptions of the existence of certain inalienable human rights that are merely delegated by the members of society to their authorities on condition of their compliance with the implicit will of the constituents; Hobbes viewed the foundation of the state as definite surrender of the individual rights to the sovereign who is then empowered to decide which rights his subjects should have at all. In addition, Hobbes viewed the very existence of mutually accepted rights as the result of consented necessity, because for him political and property rights, just as the state itself, existed only because the individuals value their utility, not as the consequence of primordial existence of certain rights and freedoms. While Locke accepted the right to rebellion in case of bad governance, Hobbes explicitly denied it in any cases save for definite state failure. Therefore it may be said that Lockean and Hobbesian theory of politics are fundamentally incompatible, as the former proceeds from the assumption of natural rights of property as the basis of the state, while the latter asserts their utility-based nature. References Baumgold, D. (1983). Subjects and soldiers: Hobbes on military service. History of Political Thought, vol. IV, no. 1, pp. 43-64. Gert, B. (1995). Hobbes’s psychology. In: Sorell, T., The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hampsher-Monk, I. (2001). A history of modern political thought: Major political thinkers from Hobbes to Marx. 13th ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hobbes, T. (1642/1984). De cive: The Latin version, ed. H. Warrender. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobbes, T. (1651/1994) Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, ed. by E. Curley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. Hobbes, T. (1655/1839) De corpore. 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Williams, A.J. (2006). Liberalism and war: The victors and the vanquished. New York: Routledge. Read More