Reflections on the political theory of Thomas Hobbes
How to deal? What was your true intention by imagining and describing a warm and wild presocial state, in which men turn life into a negligible and sperm show? Why did he put so much to convince us that sovereign power is good by definition, and that our obligation is to obey the great Leviathan, above all things?
Perhaps it is shocking that the keys that give answers to these questions are the search for peace and the maintenance of the social order. Not in vain the main objective of Hobbes’s political philosophy was to try to convince the subjects of the advantages that the sovereign had to obey, and thus avoid the civil war coming in England. In addition, if we dare here to name him as a peace champion, it is not because. In fact, this same feeling will be established as a cornerstone of his political science, on which he erects a whole sophisticated theory of supreme authority.
Fear as the foundation of power is a double -edged sword: on the one hand, it guarantees the internal order and support of citizens;On the other, it limits the freedoms of the latter and, in extreme cases, can convert politics into a regime of terror. How many times are individual freedoms and national security? At convulsive moments, for example, it is when the first ones are most transgressed under the pretext of the second. But not only then this happens, unfortunately, from the investigation to the persecution there is only one step. And many acts whose sole purpose is oppression, disguise themselves as essential tools to guarantee protection. Threats can also be functional for power and, on certain occasions, are created (and even support) enemies that help justify public policies in another way inconceivable. But who watches out those who watch us? Cases such as (pending), for example, highlight the need for power to have independent instances that control it. In this sense, the modern state is as soon as it is limited by other counterparts, which defends Hobbes, it is not at all.
The main practical objection that can be made to the political thought of Hobbes has to do with: to what extent should we give up our rights to be able to live in peace? What is the true price of peace? Hobbes’s response is not direct, it is based on the fact that we must opt for the dilemma between one and the other. Clearly, instead of exploring the value of peace and freedom, he prefers to concentrate on the aversive passion that, according to his conception of human nature, characterizes the human being. Consequently, we find instinctive fear, which leads us to the natural state in which freedom is dangerous and unequal.
For Hobbes, the answer to the question about the price of peace is freedom. This price does not seem too high compared to the costs that war and death suppose. And, paradoxically, paying freely is the only way to enjoy it, since it is not possible to reach a maximum level without this in anarchy, crime and death. But it is worth asking us what a sense does one without the other: freedom without security and security without freedom.
First, what is useful to be free if we don’t feel safe? Before answering we must ask ourselves if absolute power is really necessary to ensure that we feel like this. This is where the weakness of the Hobbesian argument can be more clear, its fallacy lies in linking freedom and security. In addition, with the rules of hobbes, you can only avoid calvary through a strong, indivisible and not questioned authority. Then it follows, although erroneously, that without an absolutist regime it is not possible to live safely or achieve the benefits of life in society. Is it not possible to think of a regime that guarantees broad freedoms and at the same time ensures internal peace and order? It is true that the monopoly of violence is one of the foundations of the modern state, but this is not an obstacle that it should not undergo constant supervision and control. Actually, in political terms, it is too problematic that the sovereign is beyond any consideration of justice.
Second, what is the use of security if only a slave peace offers us? In countries with a high degree of insecurity or in war, it is very likely that citizens are willing to sacrifice much of their individual freedom to feel protected. But if the exceptional situation has disappeared and the state of emergency is maintained, we are faced with a usurper power that brings individual rights through protection fraud. The one we can call slaves does not really allow the economy to progress, since this uncontrolled authority will appropriate its benefits, and that individuals enjoy their alleged security, since fear will constantly be encouraged to justify as drastic as permanent measures. Hobbes repeats until the satiety that power must be undivided, the supreme authority and the absolute sovereign, if the work of protecting citizens wants effectively.
In an related critical line, Locke warns of how irrational it is to delegate powers so unlimited in a sovereign. If the sovereign is as determined by his passions as each of us, if the spirit of the beast is not special, is not a political regime that does not make us depend on the whims and fears of a despot that continues inThe state of nature? Who limits, then, the ambitions of the one above good and evil? Is this man no longer a wolf for the rest of the men? What forces will stop you in your appropriation of our freedoms through your unstoppable legislative activity? If this is the security price, according to our philosopher, will we really be willing to pay it? Would anyone sign a contract with such clauses?
In addition, Hobbes conceives citizens as a passive agent, whose activity is practically apolitical, or only political in the precise and unique moment of consenting the social pact. In this way, it only reserves duties for the subjects, while their diminished rights depend on the action of a single sovereign. As a defender of order, it limits the role of excess citizen, to the point that individual action has barely relevant effect on the functioning of the system. The citizen is a passive agent whose function is to be part of a whole that does not control. It is an obedient subject that is allowed to send by supreme authority.
However, that we are part of the great Leviathan does not mean that we commune with all its actions, nor that we must refrain from trying from within, or that we legitimize it with our simple participation in social life, or that, in a caseextreme, let’s not have the freedom to abandon it. However, Hobbes is not willing to accept disobedience, since he considers it one of the dangerous causes that originate the civil war. In addition, it also does not leave room for collective action;His is a universe of atomized, lonely individuals, who cannot expect any selfless collaboration of their peers. Good luck, in this, he was also wrong. He was not aware of the modeling capacity of social movements. These resistance and opposition forces are the ones that take care of stopping the totalizing and perpetuation of the rulers.
In spite of everything, Thomas Hobbes was one of the great philosophers of modernity. Pioneer of individualism and contributed significantly to the school of political realism. Developed from beginning to end a rigorous philosophical system. His effort, however large and meticulous, has an intrinsic value, although some of his conclusions and fundamentals, as he wanted to record, are debatable. However, there have been more contributions that have transcended. His social contract theory was a pioneer and served as the basis for those of Locke and Rousseau. And most importantly: he thought he had found the explanation of the state’s emergence through a deductive process that started from his conception of human nature. And this is a first magnitude contribution, which still endures today. After hobbes, it is no longer possible.
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