… that’s a problem for modern political science, because — put briefly but not unfairly — all modern political science rests on the idea of the Social Contract, which is false. And not just contingently false, either — it didn’t get overtaken by events or anything like that. It’s false ab initio, because it rests on false premises. It seemed true enough — true enough to serve as the basis of what was once the least-worst government in the history of the human race — but the truth is great and shall prevail a bit, as I think the old saying goes.
Hobbes didn’t actually use the phrase “social contract” in Leviathan, but that’s where his famous “state of nature” argument ends. In the state of nature, Hobbes says, the only “law” is self defense. Every man hath the right to every thing, because nothing is off limits when it comes to self preservation; thus disputes can only be adjudicated by force. And this state of nature will prevail indefinitely, Hobbes says, because even though some men are stronger than others, and some are quicker, cleverer, etc. than others, chance is what it is, and everybody has to sleep sometime — in other words, no man is so secure in so many advantages that he can impose his will on all possible rivals, all the time. We won’t be dragged out of the state of nature by a strongman.
The only way out of the state of nature, Hobbes argues, is for all of us, collectively, to lay down at least some of our rights to a corporate person, the so-called “Leviathan”, who then enforces those rights for us. So far, so familiar, I’m sure, but even if you got all this in a civics class in high school (for the real old fogeys) or a Western Civ class in college (for the rest of us), they probably didn’t go over a few important caveats, to wit:
The phrase corporate person means something very different from what even intelligent modern people think it does, to say nothing of douchebag Leftists. In the highly Latinate English of Hobbes’s day, “to incorporate” meant “to make into a body”, and they used it literally. In Hobbes’s day, you could say that God “incorporated” (or simply “corporated”) Adam from the dust, and nobody would bat an eye. I honestly have no idea what Leftists think the term “corporate person” means — and to be fair, I guess, they seem to have no idea either — but for us, we hear “corporation” and we think in terms of business concerns. Which means we tend to attribute to Hobbes the view that the Leviathan, the corporate person, is an actual flesh and blood person — specifically, the reigning monarch.
That’s wrong. Hobbes was quite clear that the Leviathan could be a senate or something. He thought that was a bad idea, of course — the historical development of English isn’t the only reason we think Hobbes means “the person of the king” when he writes about the Leviathan — but it could be. So long as it’s the ultimate authority, it’s the Leviathan. For convenience, let’s call it “the Leviathan State”, although I hope it’s obvious why Hobbes would consider that redundant.
Second caveat, and the main reason (I suppose) it never occurred to Hobbes to call it a social contract: It can’t be broken. By anyone. Ever. It can be overtaken by events (third caveat, below), but no one can opt out on his own authority. The reason for this is simple: If you don’t permanently lay down your right to self defense (except in limited, Rittenhouse-esque situations that aren’t germane here), then what’s the point? A contract that can be broken at any time, just because you feel like it, is no contract at all. And consider the logical consequences of doing that, from the standpoint of Hobbes’s initial argument: If one of us reverts to the state of nature, then we all do, and the war of all against all begins again.
Third caveat: The Leviathan can be defeated. Hobbes considers international relations a version of the state of nature, one there’s no getting out of. If pressed, he’d probably try to attribute Charles I’s defeat in the English Civil War to outside causes. Indeed at one point he comes perilously close to arguing something very like that New Donatist / “Mandate of Heaven” thing we discussed below, but however it happened, it is unquestionably the case that Charles I’s government is no more. Hobbes bowed to reality — he saw that Parliament actually held the power in England, whatever the theoretical rights and wrongs of it, so even though the physical person of Charles II was there with him in Paris, Hobbes took the Engagement and sailed home.
Severian, “True Conclusions from False Premises”, Founding Questions, 2021-11-22.
March 16, 2025
QotD: The “Social Contract”
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