Foundations of Ethics

Hobbes thinks - as some of us have argued - that a totally self-interested person has reason to want to belong to a community. There might be losses involved, but the gains will very likely to outweigh them.

Baby-sitters, for example, to allow the younger breeder a share of the life of Riley.

So Hobbes argues that even when we think of people as concerned with their own interest and their own interest alone still they will have an interest in joining together with others in a sort of community.

Thomas Hobbes

1588-1679

Born in Malmesbury Wiltshire

Introductory note by Garth Kemerling.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy on Hobbes

Leviathan thanks to the terrific Etexts@Adelaide

That is tantamount to saying that in conjunction with others they will have an interest in setting up some rules which constrain them from time to time. The individual signs up to these rules - accepts certain constraints - because if the others do the same he or she will benefit overall. A rule forbidding theft will constrain me from snatching the iPod you are listening to, but it will also constrain everybody else from making off with things I am enjoying. I calculate that this would be on balance good for me. Rules forbidding 'theft' - ie rules establishing what theft is - create the institution of property. As a totally self-interested individual I calculate that such an institution benefits me, because it creates some of the things I enjoy as mine, my property, and allows me to enjoy them in peace, without the constant anxiety that they may be taken from me at any moment and the misery when they are gone.

So I have a reason to say to my neighbours, in short: let's all respect property.

In saying this we are in effect making a promise. We are saying to everyone else: if you respect property, so will I.

A contract is a sort of promise, and this broad approach to understanding the nature of morality is called the contract theory. Morality arises out of a kind of contract self-interested people make to each other.

1. Having said that certain points need clarifying. Who exactly is the contract between? An individual and each of the others? (This would mean that actually there were many contracts not just one.)

2. Does it matter that there is no reason to think that there actually was a moment in history at which a contract or contracts of this kind were actually entered into? Is it good enough to think of the contract theory as saying it's as if people contracted in this way?

3. Does it matter that if there is no existing moral framework 'promising' has no meaning? So you can't set up a moral framework by making promises.

(3) is perhaps the most basic. Can you promise before morality is established? Or to try and put it in a way that doesn't sound so would-be historical: Can promising be thought to be 'prior to' morality?

Can you promise except within a framework of morality?

The thought is that the essence of promising is committing yourself to doing something which may not be in your immediate interest. Can you do that in the absence of morality? The thought is you need the framework of morality to be in place before promise making becomes possible, so it can't be a promise that creates morality.

Convention

Balloon drop and fireworks at Republican National Convention

Thanks to DMP

The whole idea of a contract as the basis for morality rests on the possibility of relying on someone doing what you are proposing to do yourself. 'Being moral' is only in your interest if other people are moral. And this applies to each individual in the community. Refraining from taking what you want when you want it is only in your interest if other people are going to refrain in return.

The term that is reached for in this special situation is 'convention'. People may be understood to be establishing a convention in pursuit of their own best interest, a convention whereby each individual does follow moral rules in the expectation that others will do so too.

If that expectation is fulfilled, the convention is likely to go on holding. If it meets with disappointment, the convention is likely to break down.

Law enforcement

Once a community has established a convention individuals pursuing self-interest will have a reason to think of flouting it. So long as others are respecting my property and can be counted on continuing to do so, it's in my interest to take what I want.

Hobbes argues that what people will have to agree on, if they want a community, is setting up an enforcer.

But then, if there needs to be an enforcer, the promise people need to make is a bit different. The enforcer will enforce by setting up a series of sanctions. He or she or it will be saying: If you break the rules which make communal life possible, you will get done.

That is, there will have to be set up explicit rules and a mechanism for exacting penalties for non-compliance: the law, the courts, the police, the executioner.

But then the problem arises, the rules will have to be articulated explicitly, and that only after you've found some way of determining what exactly the rules should be. It's clear what the rules will be there for - to make communal life possible - but that leaves an awful lot of detail to be settled.

Hobbes thinks the way to do this is to get the Enforcer to see to it. His/her/its job is to make sure the benefits which only communal life can bring continue to be made available.

It's almost as though what you need to do is to hire an Enforcer and keep paying It so long as It does its job.

But you can't really do that on your own. So perhaps we should say what you need to do is to say to everybody else: "Let's appoint an Enforcer. And if we do, I promise I will go on paying my share of the Guy's salary, if everybody else does - just so long as he is doing the job we are hiring him for."

The trouble is, putting in place a lawmaker, police force, court system, executioner - all these things rolled into one single Sovereign Power - is not a lot like hiring a plumber.

Once you have got It in place, it becomes really difficult to explain that you have some concerns about the quality of Its work and with regret are having to let It go.

In fact the only chance of getting rid of such a Leviathan would appear to be everyone in the community ganging up on It and by brute force getting rid. But it would have to be very brute since the Enforcer itself has a great deal of that Itself .

But even this has its difficulties, since if individuals are capable of such a concerted action as that it shows there is a community there after all, and proves the Enforcer had been making a go of the job entrusted to It at the outset...

So what exactly is the 'promise' we are supposed to make to set up communal life? Hobbes seems to say it is a promise to each other which says: If we set up this Guy as the Sovereign I will do what It says so long as you lot do.

But what kind of a promise is that? Once the Sovereign is in place I'm going to have to do what It says whether I want to or not - since I have put all the power to make me into Its hands.

Does it all boil down to this - there is no 'legitimacy' that is not force. Attempts will be made to disable pretenders to Sovereignty unless they appear to serve the individual's interests. Any successful pretender will rule until they are removed by force.

If this is the terminus of Hobbes' line of thought, can it be stopped at any point, and the idea of contract as the source of legitimacy - for law and for morality - be rescued?

The 'just' society

The scenario explored by Hobbes, assuming human beings are basically selfish, and then imagining how even people of that kind might nevertheless come together to form a community, has been taken into more detail to develop an answer to the question What would be a just society?

What is justice? - a resonant formula. Its suggested that in the scenario of selfish individuals coming to terms with each other to the benefit of all we can establish an answer to it.

Justice is not the whole of morality, but it is a big part of it, don't you think? If a person behaved justly, would that leave anything to be desired?

You could say for example it would be just for food for example to be distributed or redistributed so that everyone had the same amount - equality.

How to discount prejudice?

There is a tradition which says we should approach this question of justice by asking what we, ie rational people, would agree to if we were 'unprejudiced'.

This tradition tries to get us to think what it would be like to set up a community, or society. To return to Hobbes' scenario, imagine we were hermits and that we came to see the benefits to us of getting together with others. Exactly how would we organise things if we decided to get together?

If you were big and strong and I was not the two of us might come to a very unjust arrangement - like me doing all the work and you enjoying the life of Riley. (It might still be in my interest to get you into partnership because getting in with you might save me from a fate that was even worse, like concrete boots.)

But if we are trying to think what a just arrangement would be, we shall have to find some way of getting rid of things like you being strong and me being a weed. We must put ourselves behind a 'veil of ignorance'.

Let us try and imagine two people coming together not knowing anything about each other - and not knowing anything about themselves. Suppose you don't know I'm a weed. In fact for all you know, let us imagine, compared to me, you might be the weed. What arrangement will we agree on then, assuming we are rational?

In those circumstances, it is suggested, rational people would say 'half and half' - we will share the work and we will share the life of Riley.

Then I might think, hang on, I might fall ill and won't be able to work. What then? (And you will think the same.) We might agree then that there should be something put in place for that possibility - like a national insurance scheme for example. We will both put a bit aside each week in case either of us need a bit more of the Riley because we can't work.

So generalising a bit what the so-called contractarians suggest is that you can work out what a just society will be if you ask what arrangements individual rational people would agree on, in circumstances where they know nothing about each other, or indeed about themselves!

Of course it is important to keep hold of the fact that they are not supposed to be asking What would be just for this society we are forming? They are asking what would it be rational for me to agree to, if I was in this state of ignorance about them and me.

(If the question they were imagined to be answering was What would be just? we would be going round in circles. This tradition, contractarianism, is trying to answer what justice is. It's no good saying it is what people would think would be just.)

There's a term of art for the situation we are trying to imagine here, where people have yet to form a society and know nothing about themselves or their prospective partners. It is called the original position, a term used by one of the tradition's modern champions, John Rawls.

First question perhaps is then, Do you think there's anything in this? Does it sound like a promising idea?

Does it matter that Rawls and the others are not talking history at all? They are not saying anything happened like this, hermits deciding to get together and having a conflab about the principles they should agree to.

Imagine round your table you are hermits trying to hammer out an agreement to make possible communal living.

Can you agree about anything? Try and find something really concrete you could put on the final communique:

Of course if anyone can't get agreement, that doesn't go on the list. You are looking for agreement.

Try and bear in mind you start from a position of no owning. Everybody has things in the cave they use and things they try and prevent others making off with, but in the non-communal state - prior to any rules being acknowledged - there isn't such a thing as ownership or property. So one of the things you have to start with is perhaps How to distribute things? What is to be whose?

One particular question How would you distribute the land thereabouts? Or would you leave that unowned?

If you think, well we shall have to have a policeman, and someone to clean the public lavatories, you are not permitted, round the table, to make any assumptions about who will actually get to do these jobs. You have to make the decisions about having them, and deciding how to appoint them, without knowing who will end up doing them. For example, it might be you.

So you should only agree to making someone clean the lavatories if you would be prepared to do it yourself. So you might say, I would be prepared to be the cleaner if I got properly rewarded.

Rawls' answers

John Rawls 1921-2002

Thanks to El Catoblepas

Rawls says: you would agree to tolerate as much interference as anybody else was prepared to tolerate:

"Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others." Rawls, A Theory of Justice, excerpt in Sterba, p. 228.

Imagine first everybody with the same share of goods. Then any alteration of this would only be justified if everybody got more goods than they had. (Some will get lots more, some will get a bit more, but noone will get less.)

The utilitarian objection

It's said No, because for a utilitarian it will sometimes be right to allow a few to become worse off so long as the majority get better off.

Behind the veil of ignorance, not knowing where in society you will end up, as a rational person you will only support a measure which introduces inequality of goods so long as it doesn't make some people worse off. Inequalities in goods are only justified if they effect more goods for everybody.

Is this the 'trickle-down' thesis propounded by the right? Allow the well-off to get better off and everyone will get better off. The increase in wealth will 'trickle down'.

There is another condition that Rawls thinks the rational person behind the veil would want to put in place: any inequality in goods should be attached to positions and offices open to all.

"Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all."

Self interest

Another problematic assumption we are required to make by Rawls as we participate in the thought experiment: the assumption that in setting up a community I want only to further my own interests.

Hobbes

How to reap the benefits of communal life