The Discourse of Sovereignty, Hobbes to Fielding

The State of Nature and the Nature of the State

Stuart Sim, David Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351891493
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

In this new study the authors examine a range of theories about the state of nature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, considering the contribution they made to the period's discourse on sovereignty and their impact on literary activity. Texts examined include Leviathan, Oceana, Paradise Lost, Discourses Concerning Government, Two Treatises on Government, Don Sebastian, Oronooko, The New Atalantis, Robinson Crusoe, Dissertation upon Parties, David Simple, and Tom Jones. The state of nature is identified as an important organizing principle for narratives in the century running from the Civil War through to the second Jacobite Rebellion, and as a way of situating the author within either a reactionary or a radical political tradition. The Discourse of Sovereignty provides an exciting new perspective on the intellectual history of this fascinating period.

Part I
Revolution to Republic

Chapter 1
Hobbes: Absolutism and the State of Nature

'And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'.¹ Hobbes' famous words in Leviathan about the condition of mankind in the state of nature reverberate down the centuries, communicating as they do a keen sense of the fragility of the social bond that separates us from that desperate condition. There was every reason to draw attention to that fragility in a time of civil war, when the breakdown in central authority in England left individuals uncertain as to where political legitimacy lay, and conflicting political narratives competed aggressively for their attention. Hobbes' drastic prescriptions to resolve the 'disorders of the present times' are well known: absolute sovereignty, preferably in the person of a monarch, who could not be divided against himself, and absolute obedience on the part of the state's subjects, who could not question the sovereign's actions (or would be severely punished if ever they dared to do so). The sovereign's remit even extended over the practice of religion, with obedience to his will being demanded in this area no less than in the political: an aspect of Hobbes' thought which helped to fuel the charges of atheism brought against him soon after the publication of Leviathan in 1651. In this instance the state of nature really did dictate the nature of the state, with absolutism being presented as a remedy to the all-too-human tendency to regress to a pre-social condition of the 'warre of every man against every man'.² The Hobbesian nation state is designed to deal with perceived defects in human psychology rather than proceeding from any idealistic motives: 'expediency, not morality', as Christopher Hill has noted, constituting its real basis.³ One might say that the writing of Leviathan is first and foremost a damage limitation exercise on behalf of an inherently flawed mankind, and Hobbes is deeply pessimistic as to what happens when we leave individuals to their own devices.

Not everyone was as pessimistic about either human nature or the mid-century political situation as was Hobbes. Millenarians, of whom there were no shortage in this turbulent period, saw the collapse of the existing social order as a prelude to the second coming, where fallen human nature, would finally be redeemed.

For Levellers and Diggers, the same event held out the possibility of a new social order with expanded powers for the individual vis-á-vis institutional authority. In the case of the Ranters, these powers were to be more or less unlimited and subject to no official curb. Abiezer Coppe's writings give us some notion of what to expect in this latter regard, with their threats to 'overturn, overturn, overturn' all established authority in a ruthless levelling exercise.⁴ Hobbes' ideas about human nature struck a chord nevertheless, and continued to influence thought well into the eighteenth century (in some respects right through to the present day), even if later seventeenth-century monarchists were more likely to draw on Sir Robert Filmer's theories for inspiration than those of Hobbes - a topic we shall explore in more detail in chapter 5. Henry Fielding's jaundiced vision of human nature, as well as his prescriptions as to what to do about it to make social life tolerable, owe at least something to Hobbes and the notion of the appetite-driven, essentially self-seeking individual (aversion being the other defining trait to note of this figure). It is also worth pointing out that some commentators see more of Hobbes' ideas in the practice of the Restoration regime than that regime is prepared to admit openly. This is despite the later popularity of Filmer in monarchical circles in the 1680s, and the fact that Charles II refused permission for Hobbes' late work Behemoth (a diatribe against the Long Parliament) to be published for fear it would stir up yet more unwelcome controversy. Catherine Gimelli Martin, for example, has argued that, under the Restoration regime, 'the Anglican clergy adopted an essentially Hobbesian position' when it came to the relation of church and state.⁵ Samuel I. Mintz has noted the impact of Hobbes' ideas on the 'libertines' of the Restoration period, although he also maintains that such figures generally misinterpreted what their supposed mentor was saying, in order, as Hobbes' contemporary critic John Eachard put it, to 'furnish themselves with some of your little slender Philosophical pretences to be wicked'.⁶ Mintz may conclude that 'Hobbes' influence on his countrymen during his own lifetime and for almost a century after was negative', but that influence can be detected none the less.⁷

But Hobbes is doing more than commenting on the particular political situation of his time, he is putting forward a theory of human nature which has implications for our entire social system. The Hobbesian individual has a natural disposition towards anti-social behaviour that must be checked for the public good: as Hobbes put it as early as 1642 in De Cive, we are motivated, 'either for Gain, or for Glory; (i.e.) not so much for love of our Fellowes, as for the love of our Selves'.⁸ Authoritarianism, far from being the evil that someone like Winstanley or Coppe pictures it to be, holds the key to our collective salvation in the Hobbesian scheme of things, therefore, in the limits that it imposes on what we might be moved to do 'for the love of our Selves'.

Hobbes' model of human nature precludes him from seeing anything worth preserving from the pre-social state. Without curbs on his behaviour, the individual in the state of nature, no matter what his powers, is condemned to a life that is 'solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short'. The individual is pictured as dominated by his appetites (Hobbes is often accused of being a determinist in this respect), a state of affairs that inevitably leads to conflict over resources with the rest of his fellows: a process later to be dubbed 'possessive individualism' by the political philosopher C.B. Mac-pherson, for whom it is a characteristic of a free-market society of the kind that England was already turning into in Hobbes' day.⁹ Although short-term gains might be made by the more powerful individuals, no-one is ever powerful enough to protect themselves, and the resources they have gained in conflict with others, indefinitely. Looked at in the mass we are not so dissimilar from each other:

Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.¹⁰

The message is that none of us can ever consider ourselves safe as long as this natural condition prevails: absolutism rescues us from the anarchy of personal sovereignty.

Civil society, as Hobbes observes in his earlier statement of his political philosophy, De Cive, has its origin in 'the mutuall fear [men] had of each other'.¹¹ Even in civil society we continue to fear each other's natural drives; hence, as Hobbes notes, we arm ourselves on journeys and lock our doors at night. Our fellow human beings are never completely to be trusted, and will revert to pre-social type given the slightest opportunity to do so: as De Cive pithily summarises the situation, 'except they be restrained through feare of some coercive power, every man will distrust and dread each other'.¹² Hobbes argues that we cannot help ourselves from following these drives: 'The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them'.¹³ Again, one can see how the charge of atheism would come about, given such a morally-neutral view of human action. To his contemporaries it must have seemed as if Hobbes was turning a blind eye to the fall. We are to be restrained for our own good, therefore, and only an absolute sovereign has the power to ensure that such restraint can be enforced and the experience of distrust and dread at least minimised. Although it is intriguing to note that this political absolutism, as Mintz has pointed out, puts into doubt the existence of 'such absolutes as divine providence, good and evil, and an immortal soul'.¹⁴

We move out of the state of nature by making a contract to transfer our natural rights (to survive, to protect ourselves, etc.) to a central sovereign authority. Such a transfer, initiating what has been called 'alienation social contract theory', is considered by Hobbes to be unconditionally binding: 'In Contracts, the right passeth, not onely where the words are of the time Present, or Past; but also where they are of the Future'.¹⁵ Once that sovereign authority is in place we have no right to contest its wishes, since it is presumed to represent the will of us all:

as if every man should say to every man, I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner. This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN.¹⁶

While Hobbes does allow the possibility of an Assembly (such as Parliament) wielding sovereign power, he is temperamentally drawn to the monarchical concept as the best method of achieving his objectives. Power is for Hobbes indivisible, and a monarch is proof against any slippage in this respect, since 'in Monarchy, the private interest is the same with the publique'.¹⁷ Assemblies, on the other hand, are only too likely to break up into warring factions, and factions problematise succession, putting the commonwealth's very future at risk. It might be objected that indivisibility raises the spectre of the arbitrary exercise of power, but Hobbes sees this as a negligible threat compared to those attendant on the absence of a strong central power. Where absolute sovereignty is wanting, civil discord will follow, and from Hobbes' perspective no-one gains from that state of affairs.

Sidney and Locke will later reach the opposite view about sovereign power, arguing that its divisibility will better ensure the survival of the common wealth. The executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government are separated out in the theories of these thinkers, a formula subsequently adopted in the American political constitution. Such a system of checks and balances is precisely what Hobbes is striving to avoid, however, and the abuse of power it is designed to prevent is for him hardly an issue at all. If one starts from Hobbesian premises about human nature, checks and balances can only be regarded as destabilising influences on the proper exercise of sovereign authority within the common wealth.

Ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Editors Preface
• Introduction: From Revolution to Rebellion
• PART I: REVOLUTION TO REPUBLIC
• PART II: RESTORATION TO REVOLUTION
• PART III: POST-RESTORATION AND THE HANOVERIAN SETTLEMENT
• Conclusion: The Narratives of Sovereignty
• Bibliography
• Index