Thomas Hobbes on Fear

Abstract: I give a brief summary/account of Hobbes’ notion of “fear” and how it relates to the State of Nature and his account of the establishment of a Sovereign.

For Hobbes, fear is endemic to the human condition: the intention of the Leviathan is to elucidate a doctrine of absolute sovereignty grounded in the scientific method and the universal human fear of death. Unpacking the political implications of this requires a sustained analysis of his theory of how the state of nature (SON) relates to the social contract.

In political terms, the problem Hobbes’ theory of the SON poses might be reduced to this: how to forge stability amidst beings equal in power and prone to conflict? The standards that dominate the nature of our political institutions ought to be derived from the nature of man; but getting to the essential qualities of man requires an analysis of his “naked” state. It requires, in other words, his desocialization. In this way, the SON operates as a thought-experiment, disclosing fundamental traits of human existence and acting as a critique of the naturalness of the state. Where for Aristotle the polis is a fully naturalized consequence of man’s capacity of logos, Hobbes denies the intrinsic sociability of man, instead opting for a treatment of society as a purely conventional and artificial product. Nature, rather than promoting the model of goodness toward which human well-being strives, is an abyss of terrors and fears to be assuaged and protected from. Also in contrast to Aristotle’s commitment to taxonomize different regimes and citizenries, Hobbes is concerned with producing a universal model of sovereign politics, applicable to “all men in all places and at all times.” Contrary to Locke, the sociability of man does not preempt the development of the state: Hobbes’ SON is characterized by violence, brutality and pride, with the state being a spontaneous creation and a denaturalized artificiality.

But there is still equality in the SON (inequality being held as a product of convention), and this equality stands as a problem: in Hobbes’ SON, the lack of a sovereign body means that each man must judge what is best for his own self-preservation. To this end, every man has a right to everything, and this most basic equality is simply the power of men to kill one another when conflicts arise. And conflicts always arise: since men naturally seek out ways to fulfill desires, power becomes the main coin in the SON’s economy. Power, for Hobbes, is the “present means” an individual has in order to “obtain some future apparent good.” (Lev. 150) Given the influence of the natural sciences upon Hobbes’ aims, as well as his mechanistic approach to the study of politics, power operates within Hobbes’ theory as something that has a physicality to it—it may be collectivized and stored up, like latent energy in a machine. This will become important as we unpack his definition of the sovereign.

But before we can do this, we must conclude our analysis of the SON. Since power is equally distributed in the SON (the strong, for instance, do not have precedent, as the weak may bound together and overpower the strong (Lev. 183)), “from this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.” (Lev. 184) Since there exists no power to “over-awe” them all, individuals in the SON suffer from competition, mistrust and glory, transforming the SON into a state of war.[i] Glory, in particular, concerns one’s reputation, and is thus associated with pride.

For Hobbes, justice is a convention of language, and a sovereign is required to set definitions in the adjudication of conflicts. (Lev. 105, 111) As Hobbes argues, “Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice.” (Lev. 188) Justice, he observes, is the fulfilling of one’s covenants,[ii] and without a sovereign body to ensure the parties involved in covenants maintain their mutual responsibility, covenants dissolve. There is, then, no justice in the SON, so while conflicts arise the only available recourse is to the power at hand, shrouded as it is by the fear of death.

To this end, fear of one’s personal death is always immanent, and it is precisely this fear men seek to abandon in the establishment of sovereignty. The sovereign offers this to its subjects: security, order, protection.[iii] It is under this auspice that Hobbes defines “sovereignty” as “One person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants with one another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defense.” (Lev. 228) Individuals spontaneously collectivize in the hopes of narrowing the omnipresence of fear, authorizing a group or individual to exercise absolute power for the security of the community: fear of one’s own death and the desire for this security propel man out of the SON and into civic cohabitation. (Lev. 188)

For Hobbes, while the SON is characterized by violence, there is still reason, and it is the faculty of this reason that define the rules for sovereignty’s peaceful order. Reason thus outlines the “Rights” (or freedoms) and “Laws” (or obligations) of nature: the most fundamental right being the “preservation of ones own nature,” and the most fundamental law derivable from this being the actual commitment to this preservation. (Lev. 189) But where these laws “bind” the reasoned elements of men’s minds, it is fear, being the most powerful of men’s passions, which actually motivates. The sovereign thus becomes the visible manifestation of collective power: it is authorized to over-awe subjects into submission, not eliminating fear but transferring it from the SON and transforming it. (Lev. 252) The sovereign stabilizes fear by way of legitimately exercising it’s “first right,” which is the wielding of police power. The sovereign is thus authorized to place obligations upon subjects—namely, their fulfillment of established covenants—and punish those who fail to abide. Behind this stands the principle that obligations only truly bind when fear is the primary motivation. (Lev. 192) When an individual transgresses, it is a prideful assertion of self-interest, destructive to political stability: to act against a covenant is to act upon a right one has otherwise transferred or relinquished. It is this fear of punishment that the individual’s calculating pride weighs against the costs of transgression. We might say that, while mutual consent contributes legitimacy to the sovereign’s authority, it is fear which actually enables the sovereign to govern and ensure safety.

In an effort to realize security, and by dint of the social contract, each individual mutually obliges himself/herself to lay down certain rights. But these rights are transferred, and the social contract only binding, when order is actually preserved. What this implies is that the political world is in constant threat of civil-war and collapse; vigilance is required against corruption and undoing. This points to a basic inalienable right—and the basis of Hobbes’ incorporation into the liberal tradition: there is no form of contract or covenant that may deny an individual their own pursuit of interested self-preservation. Related to this is Hobbes’ definition of freedom as the “absence of opposition.” (Lev. 261) Where the law is silent, subjects may assert their self-interests as they see fit; liberty is quite literally described in terms of the lack of physical hindrances, again with the implication being that the power the sovereign retains is a power to repress and otherwise physically deny. (Lev. 261, 262, 264)

The implications of Hobbes’ theory for liberal politics are profound. Firstly, Hobbes, in contrast to his ancient predecessors like Plato, developed a model of sovereign legitimacy that takes serious the notion that, to make men “just,” all that is required is the calculation of self-interest and the cost-analyses of benefits vs. punishments. In this way, self-interest can be said to form the basis of Hobbes’ entire notion of justice. This self-interest is not incompatible with the absolute dictates of the sovereign, but, since it authorizes the sovereign in the first place, is in fact represented by and within the sovereign’s commands.[iv] In other words, fear and liberty, peace and subjection are not incompatible, but mutually reinforcing and theoretically consistent. (Lev. 262) If freedom only exists under a sovereign power that retains a monopoly over fear, then it is rational for a subject to submit: fear enables justice. (Lev. 266)

[i] For a discussion of the notion of “over-awe,” see Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 183—this is relevant in the treatment of Burke below. The discussion of mistrust, competition and glory is on the same page.

[ii] Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 202; Hobbes distinguishes a covenant from a contract, as the in the latter the terms of duty are alleviated at the end of its use. Covenants, by contrast, are far more binding.

[iii] Hobbes says explicitly it is for the “safety of the people” See Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 376

[iv] And command the sovereign does. Hobbes, like Schmitt in the 20th century, has a particularly will-based version of legality. The sovereign does not reason so much as it dictates, commands, decides.