Hobbes Notesheet

It is in the selfish individual's interest to say: 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. Who exactly is the contract between?

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?

3. Does it matter that if there is no existing moral framework 'promising' has no meaning?

(3) Can promising be thought to be 'prior to' morality?

Convention

According to this approach, 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.

What do you think?

Law enforcement

Once a community has established a 'convention', individuals pursuing self interest will have a reason to think of flouting it.

Hobbes argues that to cope with this what people will have to agree on setting up an enforcer.

But then 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.

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 a Sovereign I will do what It says so long as you lot do.

But what kind of a promise is that? Once the Enforcer 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?

It's 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.

What is justice?

Is it just to distribute resource equally?

Or according to need?

Or according to desert?

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 Imagine we were isolated individuals but that we came to realize the benefits to us of getting together with others. Exactly how would we organise things if we decided to get together?

What the so-called contractarians suggest is that you can work out what a just society would 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!