Hobbes and liberty

Hobbes and liberty:
the subject’s sphere of liberty in Leviathan

Ralph Harrington
BA (Lond.), MSt (Oxon.), DPhil (Oxon.)

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FROM THE APPEARANCE OF Leviathan in 1651, Thomas Hobbes has been widely characterised as a propagandist of absolutist government, a philosopher whose politics ‘are fitted only to promote tyranny’.[1] He has rarely been seen as a thinker concerned with the preservation of liberty, but rather as one who is willing to countenance the sacrifice of liberty in the cause of security. Yet the whole of Hobbes’s political philosophy, his concept of a Commonwealth and the nature of his sovereign, ultimately derive from his understanding of liberty as a central quality of human existence and as a vital factor in shaping the nature of human social and political relationships. His definition of liberty is not straightforward, and his use of the concept varies according to the context in which he uses it; but his view of the essential nature of liberty, the form of political society which can best safeguard it, and the balance of freedom and obligation between subject and sovereign within the state, are fundamentally consistent.

Hobbes’s use of the term ‘liberty’ is ultimately derived from his materialist philosophy, which lays great stress on the concept of ‘motion’ in the physical world. He conceives of liberty in terms of the ability of an object to achieve unobstructed motion, defining it as ‘the absence of externall Impediments’ (I: xxi, 261*), ‘the absence of Opposition (by Opposition, I mean externall Impediments of motion;)’ (II, xxi, 261). This definition applies to anything which can move, to inanimate as much as to living bodies; the essential point is that the impediment to movement is external to the subject concerned. Hobbes’s definition of a free man is ‘he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to doe what he has a will to’ (II: xxi, 262). Thus, a man may be at liberty to decide whether or not to enter the building through an open door; he is able to enter, or not to enter, according to his will; if he decides freely not to enter, he still retains that same liberty in full measure. If, however, the door is locked, his liberty to enter is impeded by the external agency of the locked door. Thus there is a naturally-present quality of liberty in every human being, defined by his or her strength and individual inclinations, which is restricted only insofar as external forces restrict it.

Furthermore, even if an individual acts a certain way because of fear, that act is nonetheless a free act. Hobbes’s assertion that ‘Feare and Liberty are consistent’ (II: xxi, 262) has caused a certain amount of puzzlement and confusion: how freely can a person robbed at gunpoint really be said to be acting when he hands over his wallet? Yet it is consistent with Hobbes’s view that liberty can only be restricted by an external agent. If the robber knocks his victim to the ground and restrains him physically while extracting his wallet from his pocket, then the victim’s freedom has been restricted; but if the victim reaches into his own pocket and hands the robber his wallet out of fear that he will be shot if he does not, he has chosen that course of action freely, while others, no matter how unpalatable, remain open to him; and he has removed his wallet and surrendered it with his own hands and of his own volition. This is an important point for understanding the nature of the covenant which gives rise to Hobbes’s Commonwealth, for its ultimate motivation is fear (‘The Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare of Death’ (I: xiii, 188)), and yet it is freely arrived at by all concerned.

This understanding of the nature of the liberty which is natural to every individual is essential to an appreciation of Hobbes’s conception of human relations in the state of nature, the ‘warre of every man against every man’ (I: xiii, 188). From the proposition that a general agreement exists among all people that death is the greatest evil which could befall anyone, Hobbes derives what he calls the ‘Right of Nature’ which he defines as:

the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereto. (I: xiv, 189)

Thus, all have liberty to do all that they can to preserve their own lives; and furthermore, whatever action someone believes is necessary to preserve his or her own life, is justified – the decision is left entirely to that person’s ‘own Judgment, and Reason’. The ‘Naturall Condition of Mankind’ described in chapter 13 of Leviathan is thus the society in which each individual has complete liberty, to injure others, to steal from them, to deprive them of their liberty, if he or she judges that it would serve the interests of his or her own preservation to do so.

Hobbes therefore argues that in ‘the condition of meer Nature, that is to say, of absolute Liberty’ (II, xxxi, 395), all are equally free: ‘in such a condition, every man has a Right to every thing’ (I: xiv, 190), for his right derives from his ability, unless prevented by others, simply to take what he judges to be necessary for his own survival. It is a state of ‘blameless liberty’,[2] for it is liberty for every individual to act in what he or she judges to be the interests of self-preservation, untrammelled by any code of justice or morality. It is liberty without obligation; and it is the relationship between liberty and obligation which lies the root of the conception of liberty in Hobbes’s Commonwealth. ‘RIGHT, consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbeare; Whereas LAW, determineth, and bindeth to one of them: so that Law, and Right, differ as much, as Obligation, and Liberty’ (I: xiv, 189). In the state of nature ‘nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice, have there no place’ (I: xiii, 188). Without a common law, notions of justice are meaningless, and a common law comes only from the establishment of a common power, which is achieved through the covenant.

The covenant involves an obligation on the part of the subject of to the sovereign, and this obligation creates the liberty which can flourish only in the conditions of security acquired by imposing the same obligation on every other subject. The government is between subjects, not between sovereign and subject; indeed, the covenant can be seen as an agreement whereby the state of nature is abolished for all except the sovereign, who acts as the head of the ‘Artificiall Man, which we call a Common-wealth’ (II: xxi, 263). This ‘artificial man’ acts as everyone formerly acted in the state of nature, under the control of the sovereign, who is empowered to act in any way to ensure its protection and preservation. The subjects lay down the right which they possess in the state of nature to act as they are at liberty to, by transferring it to the sovereign, authorising the sovereign to act in their protection as he judges necessary. Hobbes is explicit that this is not a surrender of natural liberty:

Again, the Consent of a Subject to Soveraign Power, is contained in these words, I Authorise, or take upon me, all his actions; in which there is no restriction at all, of his own former naturall Liberty: For by allowing him to kill me, I am not bound to kill myselfe when he commands me. (II: xxi, 269)

The key word of the covenant is authorise. The subject is always the author of all acts done in order to protect him or her; ‘he that owneth his words and actions, is the AUTHOR … the Right of doing any Action, is called AUTHORITY’ (I: xvi, 218). The ‘Obligation, and Liberty of the Subject’ is derived from ‘the expresse words, I Authorise all his Actions’ (II: xxi, 268). The essence of the covenant is that each individual retains the liberty to defend themselves against attack; but undertakes only to permit action in pursuance of that liberty to be carried out by the sovereign, on condition that all other individuals make the same promise. The right of self-defence is not renounced, but its execution is, in almost all situations, placed in the hands of the sovereign. For a subject thus to lay aside his natural right of self preservation by transferring it to the sovereign inevitably leaves the latter with great powers, and that subject is not justified if he then attempts to resist the exercise of those powers, for ‘To lay downe a mans Right to any thing, is to devest himselfe of the Liberty, of hindring another of the benefit of his own Right to the same’ (I: xiv, 190), whether the other party is the sovereign or anybody else; and to hinder another in the exercise of their right is injustice. Thus ‘nothing the Soveraign Representative can doe to a Subject, on what pretence soever, can properly be called Injustice, or Injury; because the Subject is the Author of every act the Soveraign doth’ (II: xxi, 265).

The power of Hobbes’s sovereign is thus theoretically very great indeed. The sovereign alone can determine the Commonwealth’s laws, appoint and dismiss all ministers and councillors, exercise the right to reward and punish, decide issues of war and peace, determine what ideas and doctrines can be circulated, and decide on succession to supreme power. The civil law of the Commonwealth is simply ‘to every Subject, those Rules, which the Common-wealth hath commanded him’ (II: xxvi, 312): that he is, the law is entirely dependent on the sovereign’s will, and no act by the sovereign can be called unjust or punished by anyone. Yet the subject retains two kinds of liberty under the apparently absolute rule of the sovereign. The first is a form of ‘negative liberty’; anything which the laws do not specifically forbade can be taken as permitted, and subjects are at liberty to do it: ‘In cases where the Sovereign has prescribed no rule, there the subject hath the liberty to do, or forbeare, according to his own discretion’ (II: xxi, 271). Clearly, the extent of his ‘negative liberty’ is decided by the sovereign; Hobbes continues ‘And therefore such Liberty is in some places more, in some lesse; and in some times more, in other times lesse, according as they that have the Soveraignty shall think most convenient’ (II: xxi, 271). Thus, for Hobbes, the liberty left to the subject is defined as ‘that area in which a man is not prevented from doing what he has the will, wit, and ability to do, by external impediments, by civil laws, or by obligations’.[3]

Furthermore, the sovereign’s power is fundamentally limited by Hobbes’s emphasis on the individual’s right to self-preservation. Not only does this underpin the covenant through which the office of sovereign is instituted, it also gives subjects a clear right to disobedience when they judge the commands of the Sovereign to be inimical to their own well-being. Even convicted criminals can take up arms to resist the just punishment of the Sovereign, for ‘they but defend their lives, which the Guilty men may as well do, as the Innocent’ (II: xxi, 112-3, 270). This passage provoked Bishop Bramhall to ask, ‘why should we not change the name of Leviathan into Rebells catechism?’[4] There is indeed a clear difficulty over how far the right of self-defence can be taken without the security of Commonwealth being undermined. The right of self-preservation is, according to Hobbes, inalienable:

… no man can transferre, or lay down his Right to save himselfe from Death, Wounds, and Imprisonment … For man by nature chooseth the lesser evill, which is danger of death in resisting; rather than the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. (I: xiv, 199)

Since it is in the joining together of individual desires for better self-preservation in the covenant that the Commonwealth has its origin, Hobbes can hardly adopt any other position. It is the liberty fully to exercise that right which is transferred to the sovereign, who is authorised to carry out those acts which are necessary for the protection of the subjects by virtue of the covenant between subjects: ‘Every Subject is Author of the actions of his Soveraigne’ (II: xviii, 232). If a great many criminals do join together and resist the sovereign to the point of threatening to overthrow him, what then? Hobbes does not answer the question directly, but the implication throughout Leviathan is that if the sovereign is overthrown by internal rebellion or external invasion, his subjects have the right to forsake him and accept the rule of the new sovereign.

Thus the power of the sovereign is not absolute, but conditional; it is retained for as long as the sovereign can fulfil ‘the end of the Institution of Soveraignty; namely, the Peace of the Subjects within themselves, and their Defence against a Common Enemy’ (II: xxi, 268). The allegiance and obedience of the sovereign’s subjects is dependent only on satisfactory fulfillment of each individual’s need for security and each individual retains the liberty to judge for him or herself when that need has not been fulfilled. ‘The obligation of the Subjects of the Sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them … The end of Obedience is Protection’ (II: xxi, 114, 272).

* References to Hobbes’s Leviathan, given in round brackets in the text, are to the edition cited in the bibliography, and take the form: (part: chapter, page number).

© Ralph Harrington 2005. This work is protected by copyright and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Licence. This means that you can copy, distribute and transmit this work freely as long as it is attributed to the original author; you may not alter, transform or build upon this work; and you may not use this work for commercial purposes.

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Notes

1. David Hume, quoted in R. Tuck, Hobbes, p. 95.

2. G. Shelton, Morality and Sovereignty in the Philosophy of Hobbes, p. 33

3. D. Pennock, ‘Hobbes’s confusing “clarity”: the case of “liberty”’, in K. C. Brown (ed.), Hobbes Studies, p. 106.

4. Quoted in J. Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, p. 199

Bibliography

Works by Hobbes

Leviathan (1651), ed. C. B. Macpherson (London: Penguin, 1968)

Some further reading

K. C. Brown, Hobbes Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965)

C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962)

D. D. Raphael, Hobbes: Morals and Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977)

G. Shelton, Morality and Sovereignty in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992)

J. P. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990)

R. Tuck, Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)

J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes’s System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1965, 2nd edn. 1973)