Talking Politics

By Sophia Pogorelova, Year 13 Secondary Head Girl

Hello! My name is Sophia and I’m a Year 13 student here at Winchester. My hobbies include reading classical literature and having an absolutely unhealthy obsession with collecting vinyl records. I aspire to get into the world of international relations and political science as I'm interested in understanding the frameworks of theological thinking. Now, what is my ultimate goal? I aim to make it onto the Forbes List.

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Thomas Hobbes and the social contract tradition

The social contract tradition is focused on the idea of consent. The contract implies the idea of agreement or consent as forming the basis for a government. And of course, once we start talking about a contract to create a government, that implies some circumstance in which the government doesn't exist. That we start from some prior condition, a state of nature, or some pre-governmental state, and then the governmental society gets created.

So, let's just think about that for a minute before we get started. If there were no government, no state at all, what do you think life would be like? It's a difficult condition to live in, would you say? For a human being to live in a state without structure, without real authority?

Decoding the notion of consent

The core idea of the social contract tradition is the notion of consent. What is it that people consent to? We will have to dig into the meaning of consent, particularly as it was originally understood in the 17th-century theories, and then how we've come to think about it subsequently. The originator of what we think of as modern social contract theory is Thomas Hobbes wrote a book in 1651, called ‘Leviathan’.

Thomas Hobbes and the social contract theory

When Hobbes talks about consent (the social contract) he doesn't think it's what people agree to, but what is rational for people to agree to. He argued that any person who thinks clearly, who reflects on what it's like to live without government must agree with him. That submitting to absolute sovereignty is better than living in the state of nature. There are two obstacles to people realizing that, one is in the universities. Hobbes was a brilliant man and a great scholar by any estimation, however, he had absolute contempt for the universities, which were filled with followers of Aristotle. He once spoke of the insignificant mutterings of the schoolmen, and by that, he meant the followers of Aristotle, who he thought of as the most misguided theoretician of politics ever to have existed. And he saw his ‘Leviathan’ in an important sense as a response to Aristotle's politics.

But then the other reason was that he thought people were confused by merchants and others who had their agendas that had bred the conflicts that had led to the English Civil War. He wrote a history of the Civil War called ‘Behemoth’, in which he endlessly attacks those individuals who have deceived the commons about their interests. So, the combination of the woolly headed academics in the universities filled with Aristotle's misleading ideas, and the ideologies out there in the world of merchants and others deceiving the common people made it hard to see what's rational.

He thought we could see geometrical proof that the account he was going to give is what any rational person must agree to. So, the agreement that Hobbes is talking about is not an agreement between the people and the ruler.

An unequivocal advocate of social consent

Hobbes is unequivocal that the agreement is among the people to give up their authority, their power, their freedom to enforce, their wishes, the law of nature, whatever it is that they think they should be doing, to give that up to a third party, to their state, and the state will have absolute power. So the agreement is among the people, not between the people and the government. And when he gives his account of why people should be willing to do that. He says, think about the state of nature. Think about what it's like to live without a government.

Hobbes' description of the state of nature illustrates an idea where there's no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth. There's no navigation, no use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious living, no instruments of moving, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts, no letters, no society. And which is worst of all, there is continual fear and danger of violent death. In his own words,

“The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. So this is what you're facing in the state of nature, and this is what gives you every incentive if you're thinking clearly to recognize that it'd be better to give up that power to a third party.”

Does social consent mean complete submission?

Now, Hobbes lived through a civil war and it's often the case that people who have lived through a civil war take a different view, and no different and more malevolent view of the state of nature than those who have not. But it's certainly how he portrays it. Now, the state of nature is a state of war, and we escape it by giving up our power to an absolute sovereign. We do it because it's so terrible to live in a state of nature that anything else is better. But even for Hobbes, there are limits to what the government can do, and he, in particular, articulates two.

One is, people shouldn't be obliged to die for the sovereign. After all, if the point of entering into this agreement with everybody else to give up your power to the sovereign is to escape the war against all that's going to bring you, most likely, an early and nasty death. Then, if the sovereign orders you to go and die, it's unlikely you're going to obey. So it's not clear that Hobbes wants to say we have a more right to resist the sovereign. But he certainly wants to say to the sovereign you'd be very foolish to order people to go to their deaths because pretty much they're not going to do it.

The second limit was very important in the England of Hobbes' day. He said if the state can no longer

protect you, then the obligation to obey

the government disappears. And this was a live controversy because of what had happened after the civil war, Cromwell had prevailed, and the king had fled to France. Hobbes had fled with him and lived in exile. But there was then an issue in England of what the Royalists should do. And the anti-royalist government pressed the issue by insisting that they participate in a so-called engagement controversy. They said you have to swear an oath of allegiance to the government. And these supporters of the king didn't know what to do because they were royalists after all. And Hobbes had a view about this where he states if the King does not give you the protection you're no longer obliged to obey him. And so if the king has run off to France, you can swear the oath of allegiance, you can engage with the government. But of course, if the king comes back and can take over again, well then you will re-transfer your allegiance back to the king. Hobbes takes the view that you're obliged to the sovereign so long as he doesn't order you to die and they're able to offer you protection. Because that is the raison d'etre of the state.