AustLit

Even with confirmed psychological and normative egoism, he argues that contractarianism can create mutually beneficial arrangements for men which will enable them to accomplish more of their goals, determined by their free will, by sacrificing what he sees as a relatively small portion of their freedom in exchange. If we are to pursue our goals in the state of nature, we will hardly ever reach them, if at all. We may be so preoccupied defending our resources and protecting our own lives that we never pursue anything else. In exchanging some of our freedom for a guarantee of a safer and more harmonious environment, that sacrifice of freedom may feel like a gift of freedom instead, for the goals we do choose to pursue will be much more readily accessible to us.

I find this argument compelling in directing us towards cooperation and surrendering of some freedoms for functional society: for example, this kind of arrangement is necessary for functioning courts of law in modern societies. Whether it necessitates a dictatorship is another subject altogether, but to speak fairly of Hobbes, democracy was a rare and relatively unsuccessful political system in his time.

Language becomes important here again, as the formulation of contracts relies on particular words and structures. This is the ethical dynamic of Hobbes' language, where in order to maintain a society on contracts, we must obey certain rules about the promises, claims, and statements we make.

The other important quality to note about Hobbes' social contract theory is its presumption of rational actors. The social contract is agreed to by rational actors, reaching the same conclusion on the basis of logic. This is crucial to the development of modern political theory, where many of the major theories base their arguments on whether or not they support the theory of rational actors.

While earlier I outlined the right of nature, in a man's right to self-interestedness and continuation of his own life, the laws of nature are different. They are the conclusions men reach, via their own logic, which would make them agree that it is better to sacrifice some freedom in return for a guarantee of enforced peace by the state, even where this contradicts their passions (Hobbes 1651: 77-79). In these laws, peace is prioritised, placed morally prior to freedom (Hobbes 1651: 82). This claim eventuates from his exploration of the state of nature.

He also claims that we should pursue a peaceful society, prioritising this over individual liberty; even a malicious dictator is preferable to infighting (Hobbes 1651: 82). Here, we encounter many more places of criticism. Whether it is true that we prefer dictators to freedom seems dubious, though it can be said that many are happy to live under benign and successful dictatorships and have done so throughout history. If maintaining the peace becomes a priority, there seems to be a conundrum of what to do in circumstances where a dictator is behaving violently, for example, having people executed at random.

Hobbes has been famously condemned ever since writing Leviathan, but with its publication he built a foundation for almost all political philosophy in his wake and it brought social contract theory to the forefront, where it has, more or less, remained ever since. The social contractarian part of his theory was influenced by a prior philosopher, Grotius.

Social contractarianism is essential to understanding many famous political philosophers Hobbes influenced. These include Locke; Rousseau; Kant, whose ethical theory is one great series of contracts (O'Neill 2015: 170-185); Rawls, who based his famous original position in contractarianism (Mandle 2009: 38); and Nozick, whose libertarianism uses contracts as the only justification for government power (Nozick 1974).