國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
133
Chapter 5:
The Hobbesian Tradition
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
134
In the school of Political Realism, there is no tradition as pervasive as the
Hobbesian tradition. To most theorists of international relations, the assumption of anarchy which is derived from Hobbes‟ most famous and most crucial assumption of
state of nature has become the basic presumption of their theories and accounts. The Hobbesian tradition is so dominant in the school of Political Realism that Hedley Bull
even equals the entire Realist school to the Hobbesian tradition (Bull, 2002, p. 23).
Milner suggests that in much “current theorizing, anarchy [which is the application of Hobbes‟ assumption of state of nature] has once again been declared to be the fundamental assumption about international politics” (Milner, 1991, p. 67).
In this chapter, we are going to discuss this dominant tradition of Political Realism.
The most distinct element in this tradition, and of course most important, is Hobbes‟
assumption of state of nature. And since it has already been the dominant tradition of Political Realism, the primary goal of this chapter is to present the variety and richness inside the tradition. Therefore, how do scholars apply Hobbes‟ philosophical accounts to international relations will be expounded. Together with the traditional Hobbesian successors, successors of a different approach of interpreting Hobbes will also be presented in this chapter.
It is equally important to identify legacies of other Realist traditional progenitors in Hobbes‟ philosophy as to introduce his successors. When scholars try to strengthen
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
135
their theoretic persuasiveness, Hobbes‟ accounts are often quoted for showing their accounts‟ political root. Because Hobbes seems to be a catch-all philosopher from whom it is easy to extract endorsements. But such endorsements extracted are often inaccurate and imprecise. Hobbes is a profound philosopher but he also borrows ideas from other philosophers. As in this chapter, this thesis will show how other traditional inaugurators‟ characteristics are inherited by Hobbes. After finishing reading
discussions of this chapter, scholars are expected to identify the inherited composition in Hobbes‟ theory and his own distinct feature.
This chapter initiated with the introduction of Hobbes‟ basic political thoughts in his most representative and most-discussed work Leviathan. After that, a distinct
approach of reading Hobbes will be present. This thesis introduces a solipsistic approach of Hobbes‟ philosophy. Accounts in Leviathan that support this approach will be traced and so will other important scholars‟ remarks. Then, the major work of
this chapter which is to locate the theoretic elements inherited by Hobbes and to exemplify Hobbes‟ successors will follow. This chapter will be concluded with the
remark that confirms the theoretical richness and diversity inside this dominant tradition of international Political Realism.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
136
Basic Accounts
Hobbes‟ political philosophy is characterized by his assumption of state of nature.
The assumption of state of nature is presented along with Hobbes‟ exposition of the
origin of state. He assumes that it was in a state of nature before states came into being. “During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe,
they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 70). In such a condition, which he calls it the state of nature, men suffer from “continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the live of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 70). In
this dire and miserable state of nature, everyone is equipped with the right and obligation to protect themselves from the potential harm causing by others. Here comes the part discussing human nature. Why would somebody be harmed by others if there are no one provides protection? Why people cannot cohabit with each other peacefully? The answer is that they are inherently incapable of doing so.
As suggested earlier in this thesis, Hobbes inherits parts of Augustinian accounts in his theory. Therefore, the unquenchable and hardly-controllable human lusts complete the depiction of the dismal scene of state of nature. That is to say, human nature is indispensable for a Hobbesian version of state of nature. Because of the misery of living in such condition, people are driven by their nature to do injuries to
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
137
each other. An Augustinian Hobbesian point of view would focus on the wickedness and lustful drives inside men. However, there is also the possibility reading Hobbes differently but still holding on the same traditional tread with other varieties in the Hobbesian tradition, such as a solipsistic perspective, which will be expounded more in the later part. In the realm of international relations today, the Augustinian Hobbesian accounts are the most common image when scholars apply Hobbes‟ insight to international relations. The interaction of the assumption of state of nature and the Augustinian perspectives on human nature is easy to imagine and appreciate since it has been always the intuitive and conventional Realist wisdom. It is a straightforward and convincing approach to interpret Hobbes for explaining the international relations.
Since both the surrounding and human nature are malicious, their interaction cannot be too ideal, most Realists would so suggest.
Influenced by Augustine, Hobbes believes that human beings‟ lusts and desires
are insatiable and ceaseless. There exists no ultimate good to satisfy a man‟s desires all at once. Therefore, a man‟s felicity of this life is not only to satisfy his all kinds of desire but also continually doing so. “That the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy
once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire” (Hobbes, 2006, pp. 54-55). Sprung from man‟s nature, ambition and
covetousness are the two kinds of passion that most significantly cause discord among
‧
men. Hobbes suggests that “their effects cannot be hindred, but by extraordinary use of Reason, or a constant severity in punishing them” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 167).
Although men‟s reason is crucial in resisting these animal passions, reason is not
always incumbent—yet, those passions are (Hobbes, 2006, p. 167). Reflecting from this point, an analogy of that a state, like a natural human being, cannot be satisfied by moderate amount of power is thus derived. Similar to human beings, states are believed of possessing those animal passions, and their lusts are equally unquenchable.
Unless a state has achieved the status that its future satisfaction of desires is assured, it would not stop struggling for more power.
Another important assumption to make Hobbes‟ philosophy works on international level is the assumption of equal capacity of every individual. According to Hobbes,
“Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe” (Hobbes, 2006, pp. 68-69).
Because even the weakest has the strength to kill the strongest, no one is safe enough to live at ease. Everyone is a potential threat to everyone‟s survival. In order to have better satisfaction of their desires, individual atomic human beings
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
139
tend to assemble together to augment their chance of survival and enjoyment.
Conflicts between individuals and individuals turn into conflicts between collectives and collectives. A scene of war is naturally expected in this state of nature. This way of discoursing is of benefit for international scholars who focus on the structural factor. Reflecting on the idea of approximate equity of capacity among states, structural theorists generally deny the agential power of individual states. The structural influence of state of nature is thus more focused. That people not only have similar lusts but also equal capacity makes dissentient confrontations a constant scene in a state of nature. Without the assumption of atomic agents‟
equality, a state of nature might have an appearance of hierarchy instead of anarchy.
Therefore, human beings are doomed to conflict with each other because of their nature and their approximately equal capacity. Whereas reason often ceases to restrain human lusts and people often gang up to achieve the better satisfaction of their lusts, the most effective and natural way to avoid the mutual destruction in the state of nature is to give up their natural right of harming others. Individuals, according to Hobbes, are equipped with the natural right to do harms to others in order to protect themselves from imminent or potential harm. This born right is the source of mutual destruction. By reason, people eventually realize the value of peace and its
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
140
corresponding virtues (Hobbes, 2006, p. 72). In order to escape their ultimate mutual destruction, they end up acknowledging that they have to give up certain rights, especially the right to protect oneself by hurting others. To have everybody voluntarily give up their right to protect themselves by the way of harming others, Hobbes believes that it has to assure everybody that they are well-protected and everyone else also gives up the same amount of right (Hobbes, 2006, p. 73).
A state is the answer. People authorize a people or a group of people to judge on behalf of themselves (Hobbes, 2006, p. 96). A state is thus established. Hobbes
believes that establishing a state (common-wealth) is the foresight of our human beings‟ own preservation, that is, of getting themselves out of the miserable condition of war, “which is necessarily consequent … to the nationall Passions of men, when
there is no visible Power to keep them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of their Covenants, and observation of these Lawes of Nature55” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 93). People covenant to establish a state to escape from such a dire situation. To establish a state which is powerful enough to protect the covenanters and make sure covenants are carried, a sovereign wielder must be equipped with absolute power. Covenanters thus agree with each other that they give up their certain rights of nature in exchange with their civil rights.
55 Such as “Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and [in summe] doing to others as wee would be done to”
(Hobbes, 2006, p. 93).
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
141
A Solipsistic Approach
This part of chapter intends to expose the solipsistic hue in Hobbes‟ perspectives
on human nature. As we have mentioned above, accounts on human nature help
Hobbes to complete his broad picture of the state of nature. Then, since the appreciation of human nature is a linchpin point in Hobbes‟ political thought, the
tuning of it could be expected to bring about a quite different deduction. Theorists of international relations borrow Hobbes‟ assumption of state of nature to explain the
relations among states. Seeing the apparent fact that there is no central authority above individual sovereignty states, the international relations are similarly analogized as being in the Hobbesian state of nature. The anarchical feature of international relations is accepted by most international scholars as the most basic theoretic presumption. But the assumption of state of nature is not the sole element being extracted from Hobbes‟ accounts. Since sovereign states are personalized as individual human beings in the state of nature, they are like natural men before states coming into being living in a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short condition and having a war everyone against everyone. Accordingly, states are depicted as interest-maximizing egoists in the jungle of international relations who restless pursue more power to meet up their ceaseless growing of desire.
That is the most straightforward and intuitive appreciation of Hobbes‟ political
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
142
thoughts on an international level. But is there any other possibility to read him differently? Can we extract some diverse viewpoints which are distinct from this rather simple deduction while maintaining the Hobbesian traditional characteristic at the same time? The answer is yes. Assuming the assumption of state of nature is the defining element in the Hobbesian tradition, we do not want to spend time on debating its nature since it would result in obscuring the idiosyncrasy of the tradition.
The problem is that can we understand the individuals subjected to its impact differently? This thesis argues that individuals in Hobbes‟ state of nature are not
necessarily interest-maximizing egoists, but also can be solipsists56. Hobbes lists three principal causes of quarrel in human nature—competition, diffidence, and glory (Hobbes, 2006, p. 70). Not like the Augustinian Hobbesian Realists who focus on the zero-sum and lustful competition among states, a solipsistic approach would turn their
attention to diffidence of human.
Hobbes‟ philosophy begins with the empiricism suggesting that “the knowledge of Fact, it is originally, Sense” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 35). “[A] man can have no thought,
representing any thing, not subject to sense” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 16). Without divine intervention, human beings cannot be certain of what is actually being there except the fact that he knows he exists. We sense, or, are affected by, the motion of objects
56 The Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines solipsism as “the belief that only one‟s own experiences and existence can be known“ (Cambridge Dictionaries Online).
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
143
and then we acquire conditional knowledge about them. Absolute knowledge is always unattainable because the outside world is acknowledged and constructed originally from our senses (Hobbes, 2006, pp. 35-36). Conditionally from our sense, firstly of ourselves, and especially of our existence, individual beings construct the
outside world in our own cognizance.
Philosopher Michael Oakeshott‟s interpretation of Hobbes‟ political thought is
widely accepted as influential and cogent. He shares the same idea with this thesis that Hobbes‟ understanding on the nature of man is basically solipsistic. As Oakeshott suggests, Hobbes‟ “civil philosophy is based, …, on a philosophy for which the world
is composed of individuae substantiae” (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 60). Every individual is an atomic unit “whose relations with other individuals are purely external” (Oakeshott,
1975, p. 61). “He begins with sensation; and he begins there, not because there is no
deceit or crookedness in the utterances of the sense, but because the fact of our having sensations seems to him the only thing of which we can be indubitably certain”
(Oakeshott, 1975, p. 19). Each human being is an individual shut up. “He lives in the
world of his own sensations and imaginations, desires and aversions, prudence, reason and religion. For his thoughts and actions he is answerable to none but himself”
(Oakeshott, 1975, p. 32). Therefore, solipsists‟ knowledge of the outside world is finite and self-referential. “The nature of man is the predicament of mankind. A
‧
knowledge of this nature is to be had from introspection, each man reading himself in order to discern in himself, mankind” (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 31). Analogically, being in
what kind of an international surrounding seen by a state is actually projected by its
self-reference.
As a result, a solipsist‟ moral conception is also self-referent. For a solipsist,
“whatever is the object of a man‟s desire he calls Good, and whatever he hates he calls Evil” (Oakeshott, 1975, p. 30). Because of the solipsist nature of man,
disagreement is natural and sure to happen when men contact with each other (Baumgold, 2009, p. 199). Hobbes suggests,
”the same man, in divers times, differs from himself; and one time praiseth, that is calleht Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil: From whence arise Disputes, Controversies, and at Last War. And therefore so long as man is in the condition of meer nature (which is a condition of War,) as private Appetite is the measure of Good, and Evill: and consequently all men agree on this, that Peace is Good, and therefore also the way, or means of Peace, which … are Justice, Gratitude, Modesty, Equity, Mercy, & the rest of the Laws of Nature, are good; that is to say, Morall Vertues; and their contraries Vice, Evill” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 89).
As quoted above, Hobbes argues that the original purpose of covenanting a state is for peace. Moral virtues originate from man‟s poignant awareness of the value of peace.
Because men are self-centered and self-referent solipsistic units, discord of preference is doomed to result in disagreements, conflicts, and eventually wars. Hence, Hobbes‟
assumption of that being in a state of nature signifies the war every man against every
‧
Deborah Baumgold also echoes with Oakeshott maintaining that “Hobbes „s basic assumption about human nature is a form of solipsism57. He holds that our thinking is necessarily self-referential, which need not be equivalent to holding that we are
necessarily self-interested (egoistic)” (Baumgold, 2009, p. 189). If we take this solipsistic approach of Hobbes‟ philosophy on board, the egoistic assumption
concerning human nature and accordingly the nature of states by contrast falls short of all-time applicability. Commonsense Realists believe that states are rational interest-maximizing egoists. This way of discoursing states‟ behavior in state of nature focuses on the moral defects in human nature. The egoistic assumption suggests that states conflict with each other because they are selfish, self-interest
maximizing, and always lustful for more. Hobbes sure does suggest the corrupted side of human nature and he does inherit Augustine‟s legacy like we have expounded, but
57 Hobbes‟ solipsism is also revealed when he is expounding the absolute authority of a sovereignty wielder. There are two situations that one man has to obey another‟s command, Hobbes suggests: when the man who gives commands is authorized by the man who obeys, or by God. But ”[h]ow can a man without supernaturall Revelation be assured of the Revelation received by the declarer? … it is evidently impossible” (Hobbes, 2006, p. 160). That is, how can a man be assured of another man‟s declaration saying that he is authorized by God? It is impossible to be assured of such declaration because men are solipsistic units unable to know the true nature of the outside world, not to mention another atomic unit‟s mind. (By the way, sovereignty wielder‟s orders are to be obeyed because, according to Hobbes, it is a natural law.) When confirming the absolute authority of the sovereignty wielder Hobbes once again reflects on the solipsistic nature of man.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
146
that is not how Hobbes approaches the matter here, at least not for scholars who see from a solipsistic angle. Instead, in front of the backdrop of state of nature, they assume, solipsism is what Hobbes relies on understanding the interplay among states on the international stage.
Oakeshott suggests that the so-called egoism is actually “only the individuality of a creature shut up, without hope of immediate release, within the world of his own imagination. Man is by nature, the victim of solipsism; he is an individual substantia
distinguished by incommunicability” (Oakeshott, 1975, pp. 58-59). “Solipsism can extend into egoism, but need not do so” as Baumgold suggests (2009, p. 197). What
Baumgold and Oakeshott suggest is that we take one step backward understanding
individuals as self-referential instead of merely self-interested (2009, p. 196).
Explaining individual states‟ nature from a solipsistic Hobbesian view, a diverse
Explaining individual states‟ nature from a solipsistic Hobbesian view, a diverse