While both men may seem to harbour views of human nature and the ideal society that are polar opposites, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762) share important similarities such as self-preservation as the primary goal of man, the need to give up some rights in exchange for the benefits that can only come from society, and the need for coercion and punishment to keep the people in line. Both works are polemical, with an agenda to convince and frighten their readers into accepting their conclusions. Coming from an era of extreme political turbulence, Hobbes’s longing for stability resulted in his doctrine of the leviathan, a powerful sovereign to control the otherwise endlessly combative individuals. Rousseau responded to him over 100 years later. An Enlightenment thinker and apostle of the French Revolution, he was keen to overthrow Hobbes’s tyrannical ideas but his thoughts by today’s standards would paradoxically seem also to contain strains of totalitarianism.[1]
This study will contrast the two men’s views on selfhood and sociality, using Hobbes’s ideas as its base with Rousseau’s responses as a riposte to Hobbes. Rousseau’s views privilege the individual and he builds his social contract theory around them, while Hobbes is convinced that men need to be saved from their mutually destructive inclinations and a strong leader is the solution. In my view, Rousseau’s approach can more flexibly adapt to the changing needs of society while Hobbes’s strongman leadership may be needed in certain stages of a society’s development but ultimately must give way to a more liberal and pluralistic mode of governance.
For Hobbes, man’s freedom and equality in the state of nature makes for an explosive combination. He asserts that men are more or less equal in the state of nature, with the differences between them easily compensated for through cooperation with others facing a similar threat or through shrewd scheming. When combined with a freedom to pursue their ends, since each man can hope to achieve his aims as much as the other, this results in perpetual conflict.[2] Rousseau on the other hand does not believe man to be naturally equal. Equality between men comes from the social contract, which “substitutes a moral and lawful equality for the physical inequality that nature imposed on man, so that, although unequal in strength and intellect, they all become equal by convention and legal right.” However, it is only in Rousseau’s ideal version of society that such an equality prevails. His motivation in writing The Social Contract stems from the injustice and unreliable state of governance he perceives to be “everywhere”. He writes: “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” These chains are the chains of unjust societies which rob man of their liberty. It is society that can make us fully human such as in his vision of the civil state, but it is also society that can debase us.[3]
Both Hobbes and Rousseau agree that the primary aim of man is self-preservation. For Hobbes, this implies a continual pursuit of security, which involves anticipating the moves of other men, and pre-emptively trying to establish dominion over them through conquest. Since each anticipates that others will be attempting to do the same, when one man manages to accumulate power, the others will try to take it away, leading to a “diffidence” or lack of confidence in one another. Hobbes identifies three causes of conflict: competition, diffidence and glory. All three causes use violence as a means towards achieving the goals of gain, safety and reputation respectively. This leads to “warre, as if of every man, against every man,” where each individual man is unavoidably locked into a prisoner’s dilemma, where all would be better off if they could mutually refrain from attacking, but given the high risk of being attacked, each ends up attacking one another. It is for this reason that Hobbes wrote Leviathan, to shift the calculus such that cooperation gives a more mutually beneficial outcome, though he envisions this can only be achieved through a powerful sovereign to keep the peace through punishment for disobedience.[4] Rousseau however disagrees that war is inevitable in the state of nature, presenting an altogether different paradigm. Men in the state of nature are not enemies, “it is the relation of things and not of men that constitutes war,” he writes. War is an occurrence between states and not between men.[5]
This difference in outlook is due to their differing views of human nature, which in turn could come from the difference in their historical context. Rousseau believes man is good in the state of nature, only becoming bad when corrupted by society. Hobbes is far less optimistic, casting the life of man as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” While both are likewise mistaken in their idea of the solitary natural man, since even primates which are considered ancestors of man had been social animals, both recognise the benefits of society on the human condition. Rousseau sees man elevated from “a stupid limited animal into an intelligent being and a man.” Hobbes is of a more practical bent, thinking about how industry, culture, navigation, trade, construction, education and society can arise after the cessation of war.[6]
With benefits come duties. Hobbes lays out 19 “laws of nature” or “articles of peace” to instruct men how to live peacefully together in society. The first two are foundational to the rest – man should seek peace while reserving the right to self-defence, and to have as much liberty as he would permit others to have.[7] These ideas find resonance in Rousseau’s social contract, where each associated person gives up totally all rights to the community, creating in that way an equality for all. Rousseau however privileges the individual, keeping them firmly at the centre of the logic of the social contract – since each person gives everything to society, each effectively gives himself to no one. One may give up personal rights but gains rights over the others and so overall has not lost or gained rights while benefitting from the power of the cooperation.[8]
Returning to Hobbes, his third law “that men performe their Convenants made” is the basis of justice. For Hobbes, the concept of justice exists only in society, because “where there is no common power, there is no law.” The common power he refers to is the leviathan which ensures covenants are carried out by forcing performance and threatening punishment for non-performance. Such coercion and punishment might seem consistent with Hobbes’s dour view of man, but Rousseau does not shy away from them either.
Rousseau recognises that private interests may differ from the common interest and a member of society may wish to privilege his own interests over that of the “general will”. Those who want to “enjoy the rights of citizens without being willing to fulfil the duties of a subject […] will bring about the ruin of the body politic,” he warns. Hence, “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; […] he shall be forced to be free.” In addition, a person who violates the law is “a rebel and a traitor […] a public enemy.” Sociology professor Robert Bellah interprets the logic of Rousseau’s seemingly illiberal moves as “law is only law when it is enforced. We will be forced to be law abiding, for only thus can we be free. […] If we want to retain our freedom we will have to think of the common good, for if we don’t, then our freedom is lost.”[9]
For Rousseau, a key benefit of joining the civil state is that man gains moral freedom which makes him his own master, where he obeys the law he gives to himself compared to an enslavement to his natural desires in the state of nature.[10] For Hobbes, the benefit is to exchange an endless war in the state of nature for a peace enforced by a powerful ruler. I think Rousseau’s social contract approach with the individual at its heart is more progressive, allowing room for adaptation to match the conditions of society, while Hobbes would require a wise and kind sovereign for best results. A Caligula would trap the people in a situation only marginally better than the state of nature, assuming Hobbes is even correct at all.
Bibliography
Bellah, Robert N. “Rousseau on Society and the Individual.” In The Robert Bellah Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. doi: 10.1215/9780822388135-009.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Hoekstra, Kinch. “Hobbes on the Natural Condition of Mankind.” In The Cambridge Companion Hobbes’s Leviathan, 109–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. doi: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670.005.
Riley, Patrick. “Introduction: Life and Works of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).” In The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, 1–7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. doi: 10.1017/CCOL9780521572651.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. “The Social Contract.” In The Social Contract and the First and Second Discourses, edited by Susan Dunn. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Sorell, Tom. “Hobbes.” In The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-James, 671–81. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002. doi: 10.1002/9780470996362.
[1] Tom Sorell, “Hobbes,” in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, ed. Nicholas Bunnin and Eric Tsui-James (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002), 1–2, doi: 10.1002/9780470996362; Patrick Riley, “Introduction: Life and Works of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778),” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7, doi: 10.1017/CCOL9780521572651.
[2] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 86–7.
[3] Jean Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” in The Social Contract and the First and Second Discourses, ed. Susan Dunn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 169, 155–56; Robert N. Bellah, “Rousseau on Society and the Individual,” in The Robert Bellah Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 266, doi: 10.1215/9780822388135-009.
[4] Kinch Hoekstra, “Hobbes on the Natural Condition of Mankind,” in The Cambridge Companion Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 114–15, doi: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670.005.
[5] Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 160.
[6] Bellah, “Rousseau Society and Individual,” 267; Hobbes, Leviathan, 89; Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 167.
[7] Hobbes, Leviathan, 91–2.
[8] Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 163–4.
[9] Ibid., 166, 177; Bellah, “Rousseau Society and Individual,” 277, 279.
[10] Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 167.
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