On Hobbes the Philosopher

Reading the book, The Standard Bookshelf, Great Philosophers by S.E. Frost Jr., I came across the authors view of Hobbes in his Chapter Man and the State 

  pg. 216.
Frost writes,
"The materialist, Thomas Hobbes, based his theory of the state upon the fundamental principle that man has the natural right to do anything which he pleases. The most primitive urge of all men is that of self-preservation. To accomplish this end, man may use any means he deems necessary. In this state of nature man may invade the rights of others with the  result that chaos reigns"

In this assessment of Hobbesian theory, any man can and will violate the very basic rights of another for their own gain and this is to be seen as a natural state of man. In this theory, a man who wishes to obtain land or wealth simply must be stronger than those that he wishes to obtain them from. By that it stands to reason that what Hobbes describes as rights are in fact only permissible actions or objects, since any man can come along and take them away. In a way, we live in that Hobbesian world now.

The next paragraph, "Man is, then, fundamentally a ferocious animal, one who engages in war and pillage, seeking always his own gain. But in such a state no man can be strong enough to preserve himself for long. Each man will destroy the others and he in turn will be destroyed by others."

In this part of the theory all actions are seen to only benefit the one at the expense of all others. The author makes it clear that in the Hobbesian model all men are expendable to the strongest other and in the end it shall be the strongest that survives and thrives until another rises to be stronger still.

He continues, "Thus, to escape from this inevitable end, man creates a society in which he voluntarily gives up his rights in many matters. This is a contract which men make with each other by which they give up certain rights in order to obtain others which they desire. To insure this mutual contract, men transfer power to one ruler or an assembly. After the ruler has been set up and given power, the men must obey."

The creation of "society" is done by the mergence of all interactions and individual actions of all living beings in any geographical area. What the author is trying to establish is Hobbes' inclination to the voting of given power, but then negates that by establishing the subjecting class of individual to obey this ruler. The inherent fault of modern voting is that even those that do not wish for that particular ruler or any rulers at all are subjected to the will of the majority because of some cosmic happenstance of geographical location relative to others. If one objects to those rulers or rulers in the general sense they are vilified and accused of "Utopian Idealism". The author charges that Hobbes was a monarchist, trying to defend the right and rule of the King of England. He made his theory to fit a mold of this belief.

Later in this dissection of Hobbesian theory Frost writes, "Hobbes recognizes, that at times the ruler will be unjust and will wreak hardships upon men. But they have no right to rebel. Hobbes justifies this position by holding that even at their worst, the injustices of a ruler are never so bad as the original state of man before power was given to the ruler."  

This is the mindset of those minarchist, monarchist, communists, socialists and all other forms of rule against individual secession and anarchy. Those that can give up their rights, and in turn the rights of others, for the gain of rule over them and given no form or function to remove these self locked chains are the sort this world is full of at the moment.

This theory is obvious in its practice today in our modern world. Its adherence is cast into all young people through mandatory hours of subjection to state made educational programs. This theory is not one that recognizes the inherent natural rights of man but rather forms them to be basic, aggressive and completely arbitrary to the will of the strongest man around. In nature the theory of " the strongest survive" is given leeway to man's ultimate desire without the least inclination to the fundamental rights of others. It is a theory of "you have right to what you can take and what you can keep, and you have a right to elect those that will take for you, but have no right to reduce or refuse that elected power". Seems pretty counterintuitive to a wholly moral philosophy in my personal opinion.

John Locke, philosopher, had a very different idea of the rights of man. I will detail this authors writings of Locke in a later post.

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