Critical Comments on Thomas Hobbes’ State of Nature
Introduction:
Society formation and the civic laws that governs it are the most important invention that ever founded by human beings. They are the building blocks of civilizations, economic exchanges, and for the protection of individual’s life and property.
In this era, the talk about how the society has formed is of very little interest to the public and also to many academics. Rightly so, because there is no reason nor time to go back to study once more why and how societies and human groups are being constituted apart except for the study of anthropology, also for many there is no clear connection about how understanding societal formation are connected to modern issues of politics and ethics. Except, it is connected very fundamentally in our understanding of why people obey rules of ethics and the laws of the government, and why do people get to (choose) be social in the first place.
Back few centuries from today’s world, the mystery of societal formation was brought up very heavily, mainly because of an unstable shifts between political systems, changing from anarchy to monarchy to oligarchy, and to republic democracy. Often with very deep losses and consequences.
Among the most notable philosophers who deeply thought about the reasons of society and government formation is the famous English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).
In his book “the Leviathan”, Hobbes argues from the premise of societal formation onto why the public must follow and obey their rulers regardless of their cruelty and their demeanors.
Hobbes starts its premises from the beginning, before the group formation and civilized sophistication, from the “state of nature”, that is a state in which the individuals lived a Solitary, selfish life without any laws and group cohesions. A state of admitted natural freedom to do whatever one desires and own every possessions.
That freedom of one’s right to own everything in this world, and the ability to do anything without moral or lawful ramifications is harmful and evil to one’s self and to others, Hobbes thought, Because it makes the person in the status of war against every other human being holding that same right of that absolute freedom to own all.
So it will be the fate of man to be in war of all against all, of neighbor against neighbor in the state of nature without the governmental formation and intervention. One must then protect his life from murder and his resources from being stolen only by himself.
As Hobbes famously quoted in his book “the leviathan”:
“In such condition, 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, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”[1]
Hobbes as stated earlier was thinking about why the public should obey their rulers? His thinking was that the masses had two choices to make. Either they take the sovereign as their leader and obey him on every manner, or return to the state of nature where every man is for himself, of disintegrated civilization, and of primitive and savagery, which he famously describe that state to be “nasty, brutish, and short” to any man. Clearly he thought it was the most rationale to obey and move on.
This, of course, is a false dilemma. Obviously there are much more choices to make rather than leaving or taking the kings and princes sovereignty. Yet we notice he took that as a starting proposition to describe and explain the reasons behind his social contract theory.
After such a comprehensive analysis, Hobbes comes into conclusion that the individual must choose to enter the society and form groups out of fear of nature itself. Establishing authoritative government is part of the civic society as well as taking a sovereign, which the person must give up his right to everything in nature to the sovereign, and give him right to rule him in order to establish an order for the good of the public.
That order must be established regardless of the consequences, and sometimes even if the means was met by force; remember, in Hobbes mind the nature of man is evil and selfish itself and force might be required by the authority to gain control over the chaos.
No matter how bad the sovereign is. Individuals must obey him and take him as they gave their rights to him. Because even if the leader is bad, the return to state of nature is far worse than that of the government, because under the government you only have one enemy to worry about but in the state of nature you have the whole public as your enemy.
This was a logical, intelligent, ideal theory from Hobbes about how society and human civilizations formed from human condition in Nature. But the problem that Hobbes had in his argument some hidden axioms about the human nature that is not true at all. One can see that through the information that sciences of anthropology has given us in this modern time about how humans constituted society and politics in the past.
Part one: We are naturally social beings.
Our human existence always accompanied by other human beings, both in time and in space with us. We always existed in groups, from birth to death, never alone, whether it be a family group, a tribal group, or a group with the common goals.
Our genetic blueprint from birth has already made a contract to enter the society and obey its unspoken laws, laws that has been accepted unconsciously. As far as we know Human history, our ancestors were always hunted and gathered in groups, traveled in groups, and fought in groups. These groups were bands of extended families at first with egalitarian social form, then developed to clans and tribes with chiefdoms as a political leaders in which their commands were obeyed out of convention, or out of a good will of being part of the tribe. Their choice of leaders was based upon his merits, his physical power, mental ability, and also his persuasive behaviors. The sovereign for this primitives was not concerned with the individual desires and wants, like wanting a horse or something for oneself but he (the chief or the leader) was acting as a filter to achieve the common goals of the whole group like survival and maybe reproduction by creating social rules and accommodating with the natural laws, these goals is the baseline and standard charisma for the leader to be obeyed. As long as they are walking towards these objectives and obtaining some of the task, the follower is obliged to follow.
Going back to our beginnings, we all know our existence would not have been possible without our parents, two people making a third one to form a group of three. On our birth, we are automatically associated and bonded to our family, without a conscious mind to evaluate to join or not to join, or to be dependent on these groups, we are automatically become part of them without any conscious choice, therefore we can say it is a natural kind of bond between parents and their offsprings.
Next, after our bloodline group, we grow to share a land with other tribes and people who are little different from us (perhaps they share most of the physical characteristics with us) yet they share the same land as we do. We fight for the space together against others and live together on it. As we can see this also is not selected consciously because we are born at some land and we are categorized by our skin and bone to our fatherland without a choice. And also this has some relief in the gloomy world of humanity that Hobbes painted, meaning we are not alone, we do have other people who do look like us and who would pick us to be on their sides over anyone else.
We might be sharing a land with people, but one big and more important bond that can organize us under one group, is the common goals that is shared among different individuals or different groups, even the land sharing can fall under this category.
Those who have the same purpose as we do are the second closest individuals to us, they are our friends, our neighbors, and our colleagues at work, and these people are compose a large portion of the societal bonds and civilized progression towards an aimed goal. But yet again we did not choose them, they have been recognized by our unconscious mind as beneficial to us and our purpose as they can ease off the burden of the means to reach the common end.
All these groups did not need a law or a sovereign to make them join the groups in which they are part of, they were not individuals who ran the land alone looking for a deer to hunt, or defend his life against other humans and beasts. The social contract has never explicitly been made, it is in our blood to organize into society, as other creatures do, as ants do, as bees do.
All this indicates that our choice of law and government formation did not come because of our fear, we did make contract with the leader to lead for our benefits not because we are afraid of each other nor because we are afraid of harsh environment of nature, because we already got that covered in our own little group.
Part two: we become closer in harsh situations.
Yet the other premise of Hobbes conjecture is that in war like situations, we as a human beings become ever more divided and selfish, trying to save ourselves on the account of others.
But our history proves otherwise. Times and times again, we have seen human beings in harsh events and fearful times, they become together, hurdling under primitive ultraistic behaviors, behaving in the holistic good of the majority rather than picking selfishly. It is true that we do fight among each other when we are loose of any external pressure that requires each of us to overcome the task, but once the war begins and brakes out. You will see those who share something in common will form groups as fast as the sound of war travels.
We do form groups as we discussed earlier for many reasons, whether it be family group as a direct support, or a tribal group as environmental taking, and we can form groups because we have similar goals with other people, a common path to follow.
These common goals generally are very hard to tackle if one has tried to achieve them on his own, yet, it would be much easier in groups.
In war therefore, the goal would be to eliminate the enemy’s group, and the only way to shatter them is to join groups of people with the same interest as you. These formed groups, or the one who joined these groups, the bond between its members will be ever stronger, for
Given that premise, in the state of war and fear, people actually join existing groups, others form a new ones. And the bond grows even stronger as the war tighten its grip on the people. Many instances worth mentioning as an evidence for, let’s take an example from our modern times. We have seen many times that when a hurricane or an earthquake hits any land occupied by people. The indigenous of that land and even others will go out of a limb and save others. How many times have you seen a person jumping on a high sea level in order to save a drowning person, or a man going on a fire building to save his neighbor.
Another example, perhaps more closer to Hobbes’ point, is the formation of formidable bonds between frontline soldiers (so called brothers in arms), these men, who are strange to each other, create a contract between them as strong as the bonds of kinship. I have heard many stories about these fighters acting unselfishly towards their companions, both before the battles as they survived the harsh environments of Nature together and in the battle where their most narcissistic Human nature should’ve appeared, changing the enemy line between oneself and the people in the battle (no matter what color they are wearing).
Why such behaviors become displayed among the soldiers? Perhaps it is the commander that they are obeying, for he is commanding them to stick together and fight for one another, or the obligation they feel towards the job that they signed for. None of them I would argue; the bond these soldiers have is double, in one hand they have the bond of nation that they are part of and which they are defending, the other bond is the common goal of survival that they share in the battle against the enemy’s intention.
In the light of these foundations, diverging from the point for a short paragraph, we deduce that in the past we had much more stronger bond with our families not because of the blood line but also because we needed each other to hunt and gather resources and defend our village. Every man is required in the hunting process. Our bonds becomes stronger to those who we need. Therefore during the times of peace. Inside the society itself, the bond of the individuals with others is loose if not broken. But once a trouble comes its way, we form ever stronger bonds together, especially in the face of meeting greater challenges that no man alone can face, to tackle natures or manmade problems. We can conclude then in times of need, especially in the face of meeting great force that no man alone can face. We form groups to help alleviate the pressure off of us much like the group of nails help elevate the pressure of a magician’s feet.
Before the conclusion, another explanation shall be mentioned:
We know that human beings gets together to overcome the task that is impossible to accomplish for a single man, therefore in war like situations, when one strong man holds rich resources on its hands, it becomes ever more harder for the average person to tackle that person, therefore the task is harder than it was before, therefore the taker must employ other takers with the same goal on overtaking the keeper, but we know also that the keeper will add to his side another keepers which adds more difficulty to the task of the taker which in turn adds more power to his party making it even more greater and so on and so forth, therefore we see that a hard task makes us come together to accomplish this hard task but the task itself is dynamic and can react to the force that is sensing coming towards it which himself must add more power in order to keep the resources, therefore we see group formation on both sides as they make the tasks harder and harder, the need for other peoples becomes more and more required to live and accomplish goals (taking or defending).
Conclusion:
Hobbes thought our nature did not incline us to solidarity and friendship, thus we could and must be only by conscious logic we can achieve those.
The society formation from individuals comes because of the human nature itself, not from the choice of the conscious minds. We are social beings intrinsically, and we form groups of that who are similar to us from the moment of birth. Hobbes was mistaken with his utterances about selfishness and loneliness of human beings in their nature.
We are first born with groups and societies, without a conscious mind we become part of the unit, and indeed only by our conscious mind we choose to abandon them and break apart to join another group or to live a solitary life.
Society is largely not the construct of our minds and our reason, But by our nature. For what is a civilization but a cluster of groups of clans and tribes gathered in approximate places, sharing the same fruitful land.
We did not form groups and made a social contract out of fear from Natural challenges and others harm (paraphrasing Hobbes’ claim), rather, in a state of wars, we become ever more bonded as the common goal of survival emerges with no single man being able to achieve it on his own or survive in the face of it.
In addition, We as a single being have always been different from other beings, either because of the Far lands that separates us or because of different color or body tweaks, or different thoughts and believes. But we have never diverged from others alone. Always in groups. You don’t need me to tell you that: Whatever you are, or what thoughts and believes you hold, you can find a name for that groups of people that share the same divergent path you chose to take.
perhaps after all it is not war of all against all in the state of nature as Hobbes articulated, much rather like of war of groups against other groups.
[1] Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan.