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Thomas Hobbes and the external relations of states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Murray Forsyth
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Extract

Hobbes' conception of relations between states has attracted attention from two directions. Students of political theory who have focused on Hobbes have from time to time looked beyond their central preoccupations and noted briefly the relevance of his doctrine for the international arena. The external relations of Leviathan are for them on the fringe of Hobbes' theory. Students of international relations on the other hand invoke Hobbes' name frequently as a kind of shorthand for a particular approach to the international world, one that is also associated with Machiavelli, and usually called the ‘realist’ approach. By contrast with the political theorists, they tend to look from the outside into Hobbes’ theory and to ask whether and how far the ‘domestic’ situation of individuals in a Hobbesian state of nature bears an analogy with the ‘external’ situation of states in relationship to one another.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , October 1979 , pp. 196 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1979

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References

page 196 note 1 Warrender, Howard, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford, 1957), pp. 118–20Google Scholar and Gauthier, David P., The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, 1967), pp. 207–212Google Scholar, provide good examples of this tendency. There is also a close similarity in the substance of their arguments.

page 196 note 2 For Hobbes' name used as a shorthand for the ‘realist’ approach see, for example, Wight, Martin, Systems of States (Leicester, 1977), pp. 38–39;Google ScholarStern, Geoffrey in The Bases of International Order (ed.), James, Alan (Oxford, 1973), p. 134;Google Scholar and Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (London, 1977), pp. 24–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the best discussion of the ‘domestic analogy’ between Hobbes’ state of nature and the condition of international relations, see Bull, op. cit. pp. 46–51, and also Bull's article, ‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’, in Diplomatic Investigations (London, 1966), pp. 35–50.

page 196 note 3 Leviathan, Oakeshott, Michael (ed.), (Oxford, 1960), p. 112.Google Scholar

page 197 note 1 This question must also be distinguished from the problem posed by Kant in his Ideafor a Universal History from a Cosmo-political Point of View. Kant here assumed that the same unsociability which forced men to create the state obtained between states, and argued that it was therefore essential to create an international federation in the likeness of a state. His later writings, however, show that he progressively modified this argument, and came to see that logically an international federation would have to be different from a state.

page 198 note 1 The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Tonnies, Ferdinand (ed.), Goldsmith, M. M. (second ed.) (London, 1969), p. 72.Google Scholar The corresponding definition in De Cive, for which I have used the translation entitled, Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society in volume two of Hobbes’ English Works, Molesworth (ed.), is on pp. 9–11. The footnote Hobbes added later to this passage in De Cive is already a modification of his original position, and prepares the way, like several of the other footnotes, for his ultimate standpoint in Leviathan.

page 198 note 2 De Cive, op. cit. pp. 8–9.

page 199 note 1 Leviathan, op. cit. p. 26.

page 200 note 1 De Give, op. cit. p. 12.

page 200 note 2 Ibid. p. 13. The ambiguity of these concluding paragraphs of Chapter One of De Give lies in the fact that Hobbes sees the winning of fellows by constraint as part of the ‘bare’ state of nature and yet also sees the winning of fellows as the way out of the ‘bare’ state of nature. This ambiguity foreshadows that of the commonwealth by acquisition itself: is it but the state of nature congealed, or a genuine step beyond the state of nature? For Locke and Rousseau it was emphatically the former.

page 200 note 3 Ibid. pp. 64–65. The identity of the search for peace, or the exercise of the laws of nature, and the concrete creation of security is also indicated by the later passage in which Hobbes wrote that ”dominions (imperia) were constituted for peace's sake, and peace was sought after for safety's sake”, pp. 166–167. In stressing the identity of the exercise of the natural laws, the formation of pacts, and the creation of security I differ markedly from the position adopted by Howard Warrender in The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. Warrender's constant determination to abstract the purely personal essence of natural law both from its other-directed practical dictates, and from the ” circumstances” of ”sufficient” or ”insufficient security” in which it operates, and to make the individual's interpretation of this purely personal essence the constitutive ‘ground’ of all obligation seems to me to distort Hobbes’ doctrine. Hobbes was not concerned to reduce all obligation to its first starting point, he was concerned to show that the first starting point was only a starting point, that man had to act with his fellow men in order to make the reason that was part of his nature a real power.

page 201 note 1 Ibid. pp. 65–66.

page 201 note 2 Ibid. p. 66.

page 201 note 3 Leviathan, op. cit. p. 81.

page 202 note 1 Ibid. p. 80.

page 202 note 2 Ibid. p. 81.

page 202 note 3 Ibid. p. 81.

page 202 note 4 Ibid. p. 84.

page 202 note 5 Ibid. p. 82 and p. 83.

page 202 note 6 Ibid, p. 82 (‘the life of man, solitary’), and p. 83.

page 203 note 1 This paraphrase is intended to express the essence of the early paragraphs, and above all the fourth, of Chapter XIV, Part I, of Leviathan, i.e. pp. 84–5. There remains however an ambiguity which I feel is incapable of resolution, namely Hobbes’ express statement that the right to all is a result of the condition of war, and his concomitant statement, a little later that “as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing any thing he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war”.

page 203 note 2 Ibid. p. 94.

page 203 note 3 Ibid. pp. 95–96. It is worth noting in this context that the very first law of nature (p.85) states that ”every man, ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps and advantages of war”, This is a highly ‘circumstance-impregnated’ injunction.

page 204 note 1 The kind of non-state allegiances or alliances that Hobbes discusses in Part I, Chapter X of Leviathan deserve to be mentioned, however. Hobbes here writes of the union of powers typified by the state or commonwealth, on the one hand, and ”the power of a faction or of divers factions leagued” on the other (p. 56). In the latter, he points out, the power of the association depends on the will of each particular. Hobbes proceeds to describe in some detail the features of such factions, indicating that they exist naturally, though within commonwealths, sovereigns regulate, and if necessary outlaw them (p. 59, 118, 154). G. B. Macpherson, in his well-known book The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962) considers that the associative relationships which Hobbes describes in this chapter demonstrate that Hobbes was ”more or less consciously” taking the model of a modern exchange economy as his model for ”society as such” (p. 46). Stressing Hobbes’ use of words such as ”value” and ”price” in the chapter in question, Macpherson concludes that in the relationships characteristic of factions: ”A man's power is treated as a commodity, regular dealings in which establish market prices” (p. 37). ”We have here the essential characteristics of the competitive market” (p. 38) etc. Macpherson's interpretation here seems gratuitous, revealing more about his own convictions than those of Hobbes. The relationship characteristic of factions or leagues, as described by Hobbes, is essentially that of unequal or equal alliances, and has at its heart the reciprocal exchange of protection and allegiance. These are not the relationships typical of modern exchange economies, but are similar to those of protective associations like the Mafia (within states) or hegemonial or ‘client’ relationships, like that between the United States and Britain at this moment (between states). For ”protection” or ”allegiance” to be marketable ”commodities” they would have t o be either tangible objects existing outside persons, or intangible qualities offered for a monetary equivalent, and ideally both tangible objects and objects with a value expressed in monetary terms. While Hobbes uses the terms ”price” and ”value” in explaining the nature of the exchange characteristic of factions and leagues, he does not equate protection or allegiance with ”commodities” and with good reason. Power in the sense of the power to protect is not the same as the material objects of power (guns, tanks etc.) bought and sold for a monetary equivalent. It is at heart the judged capacity of a person to protect in a given situation. Allegiance is likewise not at heart something sold for money, but the alignment of a person's will that is made in return for protection.

page 205 note 1 See especially Leviathan, op. cit. p. 119.

page 205 note 2 Ibid. p. 110.

page 205 note 3 Ibid. pp. 110–111.

page 206 note 1 A polemic which is repeated in almost identical language in all three of Hobbes’ political treatises. It is directed not only against the doctrine of the naturalness of political communities but also against the idea that they can be held, together merely by covenant. Hobbes thus wants a covenant rather than nature, and a transformatory covenant rather than an ordinary one.

page 206 note 2 De Give (Opera Latina, Molesworth (ed.), Vol. 2, p. 265) ‘in civitate, imperium rationis, pax, securitas, divitiae, orndtus, societas, elegantia, scientiae, benevolentia.’ As Schmitt observes (Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin, 1963), p. 121), Hobbes, not Hegel, originated the formula of the state as the “empire of reason”.

page 207 note 1 Leviathan, op. cit. p. 112.

page 208 note 1 Ibid. p. 83.

page 208 note 2 De Give, op. cit. p. 169.

page 208 note 3 Elements, op. cit. p. 190.

page 208 note 4 Leviathan, op. cit. 85.

page 209 note 1 Ibid. p. 154.

page 209 note 2 De Give, op. cit. p. 169.