THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)

EXPONENT OF SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY
BOOK: LEVIATHAN
 INTRODUCTION
• English Civil Wars, also called as Great Rebellion, (1642–51),
took place in the British between supporters of the monarchy of
Charles I (and his son and successor, Charles II) and opposing
groups in each of Charles’s kingdoms, including Parliamentarians
in England, Covenanters in Scotland, and Confederates in Ireland.

• The civil wars are traditionally considered to have begun in

England in August 1642, when Charles I raised an army against
the wishes of Parliament.
THE CAUSES OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL
WAR
The English Civil War has many causes:

• Personality of Charles
• Root of trouble was both ‘Religious and Economic’
• Opponent of Charles was Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658) one of the men
who signed the death warrant of Charles.
• The status of the monarchy had started to decline under the reign of James I,
James was a firm believer in the "divine right of kings". This was a belief that
God had made someone a king and as God could not be wrong.
• James expected Parliament to do as he wanted; he did not expect it to argue
with any of his decisions.
• Charles I was equally insistent upon maintains his royal prerogatives.
• Parliament had one major advantage over James - they had money and he was
continually short of it.
 CONTINUED……
• Parliament and James clashed over custom duties. This was one source of
James income but Parliament told him that he could not collect it without their
permission.
• In 1611, James suspended Parliament and it did not meet for another 10 years.
James used his friends to run the country and they were rewarded with titles.
This caused great offence to those Members of Parliament who believed that
they had the right to run the country.

• In 1621, James re-called Parliament to discuss the future marriage of his

son, Charles I, to a Spanish princess. Parliament was outraged. If such a
marriage occurred, would the children from it be brought up as Catholics?
Spain was still not considered a friendly nation to England and many still
remembered 1588 and the Spanish Armada. The marriage never took place
but the damaged relationship between king and Parliament was never mended
by the time and James died in 1625.
CONTINUED……
• Charles had a very different personality compared to James. Charles I was
arrogant, conceited and a strong believer in the divine rights of kings.
• He had witnessed the damaged relationship between his father and Parliament, and
considered that Parliament was entirely at fault. He found it difficult to believe that
a king could be wrong. His conceit and arrogance were eventually to lead to his
execution.

• “The Petition of Right of 1628” in which Parliament assert its authority against the
King (Charles I sign but with reservation)

• From 1625 to 1629, Charles argued with parliament over most issues, but money
and religion were the most common causes of arguments. In 1629, Charles copied
his father. He refused to let Parliament meet.

• Members of Parliament arrived at Westminster to find that the doors had been
locked with large chains and padlocks. They were locked out for eleven years - a
period they called the Eleven Years Tyranny.
Issues which set king and parliament at odds.
1. Taxation without Legislative Consent.
2. No taxation without legislation.
3. Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment
4. Imposition of martial law and billeting of troops in private houses
• In 1638, Scotland out griped the Charles attempt and establish
Anglicanism in that country, issued the ‘National Covenant’ A
proclamation of Scottish determination to defend the Presbyterian
faith, and sent an army against Charles I forces in England.
• Legislators turned rebellious and Lines were drawn for civil war.
• The king had made the fatal error of alienating the middle class.
• The king’s coalition consisted mainly of rural supporters, nobles and
the Anglican clergy. It was no match for the urban middle class and the
puritans who supported the parliamentary cause, especially when
parliament secured the help of the Scots.
• By 1649 the parliamentary forces, under Oliver Cromwell, had
defeated the royalists and beheaded Charles I.
• Divine Right Theory

• They had repudiated the doctrine of divine right (King), to which

their support had formerly given meaning and importance.
• Their defection was a clear indication; in other European countries
that doctrine of divine right is on the way to disappearance .
THOMAS HOBBES
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, in some older texts Thomas Hobbs
of Malmesbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for
his work on Political Philosophy.
Born: April 5, 1588, Westport, Wiltshire
Died: December 4, 1679, Derbyshire, United Kingdom
Nationality: British
Education: Hertford College, Oxford (1603–1608),
Malmesbury School
Books: Leviathan, Elements of Law (Natural and Politic),

De Corpore, Deceive, Man and Citizen.

CONTINUED…..
• The English Philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is best
known for his political thought, His main concern is the problem of
social and political order: how human beings can live together in
peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict.

• He gave alternatives that we should give our obedience to an

unaccountable sovereign (a person or group empowered to decide
every social and political issue).

• “State of nature” that closely resembles civil war – a situation of

universal insecurity, where all have reason to fear violent death and
where rewarding human cooperation is all but impossible.
THOMAS HOBBES’S BIOGRAPHY
• Hobbes’s biography is dominated by the political events like civil war
in England and Scotland during his long life.
• Born in 1588, the year the Spanish Armada made its ill-fated attempt
to invade England, he lived to the exceptional age of 91, dying in
1679.
• He was not born to power or wealth or influence: the son of a
disgraced village Vicar (a priest in the Church of England who is in
charge of a particular church and the area around it)
• He was lucky that his uncle was wealthy enough to provide for his
education and that his intellectual talents were soon recognized and
developed (thorough training in the classics of Latin and Greek).
• Those intellectual abilities, and his uncle’s support, brought him to
university at Oxford.
CONTINUED…..
• And these in turn won him a place tutoring the son of an important
noble family, the Cavendish (William Cavendish (1590-1628), the
2nd Earl of Devonshire, was the pupil of Thomas Hobbes )

• So Hobbes entered in a circles where the activities of the King, of

Members of Parliament, and of other wealthy landowners were
known, discussed and influenced. Later he would even be math tutor
to the future King Charles II.
• As the situation was being set for the Civil Wars of 1642-46 and
1648-51 – wars that would lead to the King being executed and a
republic being declared – Hobbes felt to leave the country for his
personal safety, and lived in France from 1640 to 1651.
CONTINUED…..
• Thus Hobbes lived in a time of upheaval, sharper than any England
has since known. This turmoil had many aspects and causes, political
and religious, military and economic.

• England stood divided against itself in several ways. The rich and
powerful were divided in their support for the King, especially
concerning the monarch’s powers of taxation.
• Parliament was similarly divided concerning its own powers vis-à-
vis the King.

• Society was divided religiously, economically, and by region.

Inequalities in wealth were huge.
INTRODUCTION TO HOBBES
PHILOSOPHY
• Hobbes political writing was occasioned by the civil wars and was
intended by him to exert influence upon the side of the king.

• They were designed to support absolute government and in

Hobbes’s intentions this meant absolute monarchy; all his personal
interests attached him to the royalist party and he sincerely
believed that monarchy was the most stable and orderly kind of
government.
 HUMAN NATURE:
• According to Hobbes Political Philosophy; Man’s behavior, he
argued is determined by his responses to sensation, which is
the form of motion.

• Human being invariably responds positively toward things that

are undesirable. If this simple fact is understood we can go for
toward gaining an understanding of the nature of man and the
kind of political community necessitated by that nature.

• The Nature of Man and the State of Nature:

The controlling factor in human life, he thought is that inner
forces which compels man to seek his own self-interest, especially
to avoid injury.
As Hobbes states:
But whosoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire. That is it
which he for his part called good: and the object of his hate and
aversion evil. The chief object of man’s desire is self-preservation;
and what he wants most to avoid is loss of life. Thus security is the
greatest good, and insecurity the greatest evil. Man wants to be sure
of his life and possessions.

• The struggle for power among men is complicated and emphasized

by their relative equality. Men seek the same ends, and they have
generally the same capacity to achieve them. Nature has made men
so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that though there be
found one man sometime manifestly stronger in body or of quicker
mind than another.
According to Hobbes: Society is an aggregate of individuals, each of
whom seeks his own advantage and does so at the expenses of other
individuals when such aggressive seems necessary and Hobbes
believes that it generally is.
No person can afford to restrain his own drive for power others will
not do so and he will find himself at a dangerous disadvantage.

“Maximum Pleasure and minimum Pain”

He is individualistic, self-seeking, fearful, and competitive to the

point of combativeness. If he were completely at liberty to follow his
own inclinations he would be inevitably caught up in “such a war as is
of every man against every man”. Life in a state of nature would be
intolerable. It is not important to Hobbes to prove that man once
actually lived in a state of nature. He is interested only in
HOBBES' SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was the exponent of the social contract theory.
According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short",…. Life was 'anarchic'.

Thomas Hobbes devised and stated his theory of the social contract in his
book Leviathan. Hobbes stated that society and government have an
established "social contract".
Hobbes' social contract was based on a firmly established relationship between
the state and society, a relationship that placed the state as the higher power in
the contract between society and government.
In Hobbes' opinion, an absolute sovereign was the preferable holder of
political power and rights in a social contract, and as long as this power was
able to keep society in a state of general order, then society must follow this
power in full compliance and goodwill.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LEVIATHAN
(MORTAL GOD)
As Human Nature is selfish so solution is Leviathan.

• Men cannot hope that a change of human nature will bring peace and
security. They are unalterably selfish. Yet there is a way out the only
practicable way since it is based upon the inescapable fact of man’s selfish
nature. The passion all men have for the gratification of self-desire can be
employed to achieve a secure and peaceful existence.
• Although men are driven by selfishness, they are also reasonable
creatures. Their chief goal is preservation of life; their chief fear is that of
death. Man can understand that unless they are willing to accept the
discipline imposed upon them by a superior authority their possessions
and their very lives may be forfeit.
• In a state of nature each person has a right to do anything which in his opinion
will promote his own security, including the use of ‘another’s body.
HOBBES SOVEREIGN
According to Hobbes’s The sole right which the subject retains in Hobbes’s
state is that of self defense.
• Man is subjected to sovereign authority in order that he may achieve security.
If the sovereign cannot provide for his safety, the subject need not obey.
• In fact a sovereign who cannot protect his subjects is no sovereign at all.
There is no divine right of kings and no divine duty of obedience. The rule in
short is that of the self-preservation. Men may resist the sovereign if their
lives are at stake.

• Men must obey the law if there is to be peace in the Commonwealth, and for
Hobbes, law is the command of the sovereign, who alone has the power to
enforce it. The sovereign is not subject in any manner to the law, for ‘he that
can bind, can release; and therefore he that is bound to himself only, is not
bound.
 CONTINUED……
• Hobbes rejected the traditional idea of natural law. There are in
nature some ‘qualities that dispose men to peace and to obedience,’
but there are no true laws outside of the common wealth and these
‘qualities” becomes laws only when the sovereign command them.
• Once the people have entered into the contract it becomes
permanently binding.
• When the covenant is completed no subject is justified in
complaining of injury committed by the sovereign. In the first place
the sovereign is not a party to the contract and is not bound by it.
• In the second place, the people are themselves the authors of the
sovereign power and consequently are responsible for whatever is
done.
 CONTINUED……
• The sovereign has complete authority over all governmental function.
He has authority to make and enforce law, to exercise the legislative
and executive powers, he is the chief judicial officer. He hears and
decides all facts and law.
• He controls the military and levies the taxes necessary to support it. He
choose his own ministers and counselors, who are his agents and
responsibly solely to him. He has the power to punish and reward his
subjects.
• All this authority must belong to the sovereign, for it’s his responsibility
for governing and keeping the peace, which is the chief end of the state,
he must control the means to that end.
• The power of the sovereign cannot be divided. A mixed state cannot
exist: “A kingdom divided in it self, cannot stand.”
• Hobbes was in favor of absolute monarchy as it has many advantages.
CONCLUSION & CRITIQUE
• Hobbes believed that too high a price may be paid for these
advantages in the form of a surrender of liberty. Hobbes also
believes that the only purpose of the state is to provide security.
• Hobbes conviction that men are entirely selfish, that they seek only
their own ends and the power to safeguard what is good for
themselves.
• The sole function of the state and the sovereign is to provide
security for the individuals.
• Hobbes individualist and utilitarian at the same time…The
utilitarian's accepted the Hobbes premise that men are driven by
their desire to avoid pain and obtain pleasure.
• Hobbes doctrine of self interest became a postulate of the individual
of utilitarianism.
Critique:
However, there are multiple problems that come with this theory. The
state system, which grew out of the social contract, was also anarchic
(without leadership) with respect to each other.
For example, if the sovereign power proved to be tyrant and oppressed
society in most general ways, but still managed to keep that society in a
state of general order, then the populace would have no right to
overthrow this tyranny.

Also, if the sovereign power proved to be weak in economic or foreign

affairs, but still kept general order and peace, then once again there
would be no basis for society to replace or overthrow the existing
power.