Leviathan (Hobbes)

Leviathan, or The Matter, Form, and Power of an Ecclesiastical and Civil State (in the original English: Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil), commonly called Leviathan, is the best-known book by the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Published in 1651, its title refers to the biblical monster Leviathan, of enormous power ("There is no one so daring to awaken him... The strong are afraid of his greatness... There is no one on Earth who resembles him, animal made exempt from fear. He despises all high things; he is king over all the proud"). of the social contract, and establishes a doctrine of modern law as the basis of legitimate societies and governments.

Content

Part I: Of Man

In this first part, Hobbes begins by studying man himself in order to be able, from there, to study him in society. He analyzes human knowledge, whose origin he bases on experience. Experience, according to Hobbes, is formed by the repetition of events that will be stored in memory, which is why they are a source of sensations that allow the production of memorized images. Memories are used in these mental combinations and enable man to simulate future events and therefore acquire an indispensable prudence. The man will act according to his experience, by which he will try to avoid the undesired results that he has suffered in previous moments. The fundamental element that will make this process much faster is the word, since it allows the transition from the mental to the verbal, oral and written, which is why it favors the emergence of the truth. If we tell the truth we can transmit our experience and receive that of others, with which we can complement each other. However, having wrong data, the absence of veracity in this communication would have a disastrous effect on our prudence. The discourse is, however, a source of errors and deceptions that must be eliminated in order to obtain rigorous definitions that, in turn, become access routes to science. These errors do not have to be inevitably malicious by others, but may be the product of a lack of linguistic precision. The word is the basis of reason and is acquired by action, this being the source of sensations and images that are intellectualized after the acquisition of a methodology. Reason is characterized, according to Hobbes, by the "calculation of the consequences" of our thoughts. He will break down the situation that is presented to her and will analyze, based on his experience, the possible future events to choose the one that best suits her.

Subsequently, he examines human will and behavior, always tending towards action motivated by desire: man's power resides in his ability to act, and the acquisition of power becomes a permanent search dominated by passion.

The person acts according to the impulses they receive from the outside, so they will try at all costs to avoid the impulses that are unpleasant and get all the pleasant ones possible.

The problem arises when these sources of pleasure have to be shared with other people or interfere with their desires. This determines that each human being is in continuous war with the others. This situation in which the human being lives in his natural state found the best definition of him in two of his most universally known sentences: Bellum omnium contra omnes ("War of all against all"); and Homo homini lupus est ("Man is a wolf to man").

In this process of analysis of the human being and his senses, he arrives at a series of definitions that will be crucial for his philosophy. He points out the importance of these definitions, to which he implies that he is trying to axiomatize humanity on the model of geometry. This influence of the exact sciences is perceived in the very objective and unemotional way in which he describes the passions. For example:

What is somehow the object of any appetite or human desire is what is called Good.and the object of their hatred and aversion, Bad.and his contempt, vil and inconsiderable or Unworthy. But these words of Good., Bad. and despicable They are always used in relation to the person who uses them. They are not always and absolutely such, nor can any rule of good and evil be taken from the nature of the objects themselves, but from the individual (where there is no State) or (in a State) of the person who represents it, or from an arbitrator or judge to whom men allow to establish and impose as judgment their rule of good and evil.

It is followed by a long sequence of similar definitions such as hope (appetite with an opinion of obtaining) or honourable (any action, quality or argument that is a sign of power) For example.

Chapter XIII is an exposition of the natural condition of man. It encompasses the framework of his happiness and unhappiness. It contains the famous phrase previously quoted, “Bellum omnium contra omnes”. The life of man is solitary, poor, malevolent, brutish and short.

Hobbes finds three basic reasons why there are conflicts in the state of nature: the first is competition, which makes man invade to obtain something; the second, distrust, for security; and the third, glory, for reputation.

The Hobbesian laws of nature will start from these three concepts. Hobbes defines 19 laws of nature. However, the first and second laws are the most important, and all the others will be deduced from them. The first law is made up of two parts: Each man must seek peace as far as he can hope to achieve it, and, when he cannot achieve it, then he may seek and use all the advantages and aids of war . The second part refers to the natural right, to the liberty of each man, which authorizes him to use his own power, as he pleases, for the preservation of his own life, and therefore to do whatever he conceives to be the most adequate to achieve that end. From this law the second law will be derived: A man must be willing, when others are too, and in order to achieve peace and personal defense to the extent necessary, not to make use of his right to everything, and to be content with as much freedom in his relationship with other men, as he would allow others in their dealings with him. From now on, Hobbes's laws will define the social contract, which is the basis of the next chapter.

Part II: Of the State

Hobbes develops his idea of the contract or social pact, developed by men as a guarantee of individual security and as a way of putting an end to the conflicts that, by nature, generate these individual interests. Thus, the natural passions of man are opposed by moral laws, being in turn natural laws. The natural laws are conceived both as theorems of reason and as commandments of God, with which the interpretation is constant that with this Hobbes tries to persuade both those who are believers and those who are unaware of the idea of a divine authority, being that theorems are axioms that help with the goal of self-preservation.

The State (or Republic) that Hobbes projects in Leviathan is not the modern concept of republic (absence of monarchies) but rather it is conceived as a res publicas, that is to say, a power organized in a common way whose function is to “rule” public affairs and which is founded on the sum of free individual wills that decide to act to acquire common advantages. The freedom of the individual will be reduced to spaces where the law is not pronounced. However, since there was a voluntary transfer of power, a case was contemplated in which individuals could rebel against the sovereign: when the latter caused harm to their bodily integrity or their physical freedom, that is, if the sovereign did not fulfill his part of the social contract (defend the freedom of individuals ensuring peace) the pact was broken immediately. Hobbes' thought leaves a very narrow margin to free will and individual freedom.

The purpose that Hobbes gives at the beginning of the second book is to describe the final cause, the end or the desire of men (who love freedom and dominion over others) in the self-imposition of the limits in which they live in society that is an instrument for its own preservation and, consequently, to obtain a more peaceful life; that is to say, to get rid of the terrible condition of constant warfare, which, as was demonstrated in the first part, is natural to the passions of man when there is no visible power to limit and control them by fear of punishment for those who carry them out. cape.

Hobbes explicitly renounces the separation of powers, particularly what will later become the separation of powers set forth in the United States Constitution. It should be noted that in the sixth right of the sovereign, Hobbes specifies that he is in favor of censorship of the media and restrictions on freedom of expression, if the sovereign considers that they are negative for the preservation of public order.

Hobbes admits three types of state: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. There can be no more forms of government than these three, since none, or all, can have all the sovereign power (which has been previously shown to be indivisible).

Although there have been other forms of government in the past, such as tyranny and oligarchy, Hobbes did not consider them names of other forms of government but the same ones with another name. For those who are dissatisfied with the monarchy call it tyranny and those who are dissatisfied with the aristocracy call it oligarchy, just as those who dislike democracy call it anarchy (meaning lack or absence of government).

For Hobbes, the most practical is the monarchy; since the difference between these types of government does not consist in the difference of power, but in the convenience or ability to ensure the peace and security of the people; after all, it is the reason why they are instituted.

When comparing the monarchy with the other two, from this he deduces that where public and private interests are very united, the public ones are more favored. In the monarchy the public and private interest are the same. The wealth, power, and honor of the monarch arise from the wealth, strength, and reputation of his subjects. It is impossible for the king to be rich, glorious or powerful if his people are poor, without aspirations, or weak due to poverty or ignorance, to wage war against his enemies. While in democracy or aristocracy, public property does not give as much individual fortune, giving rise to corruption, the misuse of ambition, treason or civil war.

Hobbes considers the political reality in which he lives and develops a series of explanations for the paternal-filial succession; if the express denotation of an heir by the monarch is missing, the tradition will be followed. This establishes that the firstborn male will be the heir of his father, having immediate right of succession by custom; it is assumed that the monarch would have declared it so in life, as it is a tradition of generations. Therefore, in practice, it turns to the firstborn male as the heir.

Part III: The Christian State

In this third part, and with regard to the relationship between spiritual power and temporal power, Hobbes advocated the total submission of the Church to the sovereign.

Hobbes investigates the nature of a Christian state. This immediately raises the question of which scriptures we should trust and why. If anyone claims that the supernatural is superior to the civil, then there would be chaos, and Hobbes' main desire is to prevent it. Therefore, he concludes that we cannot infallibly know the divine revelation given by another person; since when God speaks to man, it is through man himself or another equal to the one he has previously spoken to. The person with whom God spoke understood him perfectly, but that does not mean that when the revealed person tells it to another, this other person understands him; so it is difficult, if not impossible, to know with certainty what God wants. Also, for someone to prove that God has spoken to him is practically impossible, so he cannot expect others to believe him. Since this could be considered heresy (when applied to the Bible), Hobbes says that a test is needed, and the real test is to contrast the sayings of those who hear God with the holy scriptures - since he considers the scriptures to be the teachings that God has given-, and the sample of a miracle. If both requirements are met, he is a true prophet. As today seeing a miracle is unlikely, he considers the Bible as the only true source of faith.

Hobbes discusses various books that are accepted by different sects and the question of the true authority of scriptures.

For Hobbes, it is a manifesto that no one can know what the word of God is (even if Christians believe it) unless God has told them personally. So the real question is: What authority does the law have? As expected, Hobbes concludes that there is no certain way to know if it is not through civil power: to whom God has not personally revealed that they are his, nor that the one who made them was sent by God himself, has an obligation to obey anyone whose will is not law. Therefore there is only obligation to obey the sovereign of the State, which only has legislative power.

Discusses the Ten Commandments, wondering who gave them the force of law. There is no doubt that the law was given by God himself, but these are neither obligatory nor are they law for those who do not recognize it as an act of sovereign power. How did the people of Israel know that it was God who gave them to them, and not Moses, if they could not approach the mountain? He concludes that the enactment of the law of the Scriptures is the task of the civil sovereign.

Finally, it considers what power the Church has over those who, being sovereign, have chosen the Christian faith. He concludes that Christian kings are the supreme shepherds of their people and have the power to order their shepherds what they want, they can teach the church, that is, instruct their subjects.

This third part is packed with biblical teachings. However, once Hobbes' main argument (that no one can be sure of the divine revelation of his neighbor) is accepted, his conclusion (that religious power must be subordinate to civil power) is reached by deduction.

Due to the historical moment in which this work was written, the long explanations that are presented in this third part were necessary. The need that Hobbes saw for the supremacy of sovereign power arose on the one hand from the consequences of the civil war, and on the other, to destroy the threat of the popes from Rome, devoting considerable effort to the latter idea.

Part IV: The Kingdom of Darkness

In this fourth part, he exercises a severe criticism of the Church, which he accused (after denouncing the fabulous traditions that sustain the whole of Christian mythology) of being impregnated, even, with a certain atheism. However, and in order to avoid possible reprisals and ecclesiastical censorship, in the appendix with which Leviathan concludes he tried to temper his positions by resorting to examining the jurisprudence on heresy.

When Hobbes names this section "the realm of darkness", he is not referring to Hell (by not believing in either Hell or purgatory), but rather the darkness of ignorance as opposed to the light of true knowledge. This interpretation by Hobbes is quite unorthodox and he sees darkness in the misinterpretation of Scripture.

For this author there are four causes for this darkness:

1. The bad interpretation of Scripture. The most prominent abuse is teaching that the kingdom of God is in the Church, therefore diminishing civil power. Another abuse is to turn consecration into a conjure or a foolish ritual.
2. The demonology of the poets, trying to demons that are nothing but constructions of the imagination. It criticizes many practices of Catholicism, such as the veneration of the saints, images, relics and other things practiced by the Church of Rome, claiming that they are not permitted by the word of God.
3. Mixing relics, scriptures and Greek philosophy (especially Aristotle) have caused great havoc. Hobbes is not very fond of philosophers in general. It despises the fact that many have taken the aristotelian philosophy and learned to call, the different commonwealths, tyranny (as was Athens at the time). At the end of this section there is an interesting idea (in addition to the fact that darkness not only introduces lies, but destroys truths), which appears to appear as a result of Galileo's discoveries. He claims that even there are demonstrable truths, those who are in darkness will condemn the enlightened who try to teach them, thanks to the doctrines of the Church. The reason these fools give is that it goes against true religion, however, if they are demonstrable truths, how can they go against what God says? However, Hobbes has no problem with the suppression of some truths if necessary, that is, if they tend to disorder the government by giving rise to rebellion. If this were the case, he believes that it is better to be silenced and to punish his preachers, even if these measures can only be taken by the sovereign.
4. Intervening and changing traditions and history is also damaged in the light. Hobbes proposes who benefits from these deceptions. He explains the case of Cicero, which states that one of the most cruel judges in Rome was a great man; for in the criminal cases where the witness's testimony was not sufficient, it was customary to ask the accusers cui bonus, that is, what benefits they got from the case. This is because among the most obvious mobiles you can see are the benefits. Hobbes concludes that of all this, the beneficiaries are the Church and its hierarchy.