The Harmful Human Freedom In Hobbes's Work
The state was born out of a contradiction in human nature. On the one hand, man's instinct for freedom and domination over others, and on the other hand, his desire to preserve himself and live a satisfactory life, are incompatible in the state of nature. In the absence of collective authority, the natural laws of justice, modesty, and kindness conflict with the natural passions of human nature that lead us toward selfishness, pride, revenge, and so on.These natural passions hinder the implementation of the natural law order, and then produce chaos, leading to the group in internal trouble and external invasion, so that people living in the group have security problems. Therefore, the power of the sovereign that take over of all the individuals’ decisions becomes irresistible, and all the commands from the sovereign are considered as justice.
Freedom is authentically the right that people are entitled to in a social contact. From Hobbes’ perspective, freedom of humans is harmful. Freedom could cause quarrel, manipulation, and fights since it makes human judge by their own knowledge and intelligence. Hobbes thinks that all human beings are greedy. They have endless desires and find various ways to satisfy them. At the same time, all men are created equally and this means that each person has the ability to kill the other, so that everyone has the same possibility of being killed by others. Hobbes concludes that humans will kill each other for three things: gain, security, and reputation. Imagine that in this situation, due to human nature, if there is a conflict of interests between people, it must be a fight to the death. Hobbes says, if there is no sovereign power to govern these people, the war between people is inevitable. People would ignore each other, despise each other and finally intend to control each other. They neglect mutualistic symbiosis and fight for limited resources because they do not think others are qualified. As a result, people would suffer from the social which consists of suspicion, contempt and violence.
Hobbes also points out the detriment of freedom by claiming that 'every man has every right to everything' in postauted state of nature. Everyone who owns absolute freedom treats himself and others differently and always fights for his own rights first. He ravishes resources from other people. He makes absurd plans to reach his selfish goals. He tries to aggress other people so that he could take over their rights to get benefits. Apparently, no one could live in peace, in justice, in tolerance if all the people have freedom. The only ending of people all having freedom is living in warfare, in fear, in meanness, in poverty. As a result, Hobbes claims 'a war of all against all”as the result of state of nature.
Hobbes' laws of nature are based on the common understanding of mankind. First of all, no one is going to destroy himself. Second, since everyone is afraid of death and wants to keep himself safe, rationality tells them to keep the peace, since attacking others will threaten their own safety. So gradually, the laws of nature, the laws built by human reason, were born.
Hobbes proposed that the principle of the laws of nature is that everyone must find a way to maintain peace and that everyone has the right to protect himself. Because of this principle, man must lay down all his rights in a state of nature, such as the right to kill anyone who conflicts with his interests. And humanity must transfer these rights to one person or group of people to maintain peace. This transfer of rights is a social contract. Unless one's life is threatened, there is no reason for one to break the contract, because the contract is based on human reason.
In order to build a state where there is no more autonomous decisions, Hobbes, by means of a social contract, essentially takes away the right of every man to be free. Hobbes believes that the essence of the state is that a large number of people make contracts with each other, every one of them authorizes the sovereign to make commands, and all of them can abide by them, so as to better maintain the peace. Such a state can fully protect its citizens in peaceful coexistence, and people give up some part of their power to a unified sovereign, so that he can unify the system. This kind of behavior of willing to give up sovereignty and letting unified sovereign take over management is the embodiment of the power of the state.
Therefore, all the people have to behave as the sovereign’s own willing and decisions. Hence, the situation becomes unify so that all men's actions depend on the highest sovereign. By all means, the power of the sovereign is absolutely infinite and inviolable. Without freedom, no one has the right to act against the command, to break rules and laws established by the sovereign. People do not dare to behave differently from the decided plans, to consider his own benefits, to revolt orders, to injure other people or to destroy the political system. Ultimately, the sovereign no more gives common people the freedom to modify politics and act as they are willing to.
The sovereign is absolute sovereignty, even if the sovereign is not perfect. A master whose power in hands decides the fate of the entire country could make mistakes. Therefore, Hobbes also argues that human nature is inherently evil, so that a person who carries the power of the entire state, is also prone to favoritism and abuse. He profits from the domination, and he may think of benefiting his friends and relatives as well. Thus, he would use his power to profit them, too. In addition, when the public interest is in conflict, he will be the first to defend his own interests. However, It is still far better than the so-called 'democratic' society in which every person is bickering and fighting to cause both internal and external disasters, although there are people saying that this centralized system is authoritarian and tyrannical. Hobbes feels that this is the safer way to make individuals gather together and create an harmonious atmosphere, compared with the situation of different people coming up with their own intelligence and ideas in order to acquire excessive profits.
From Hobbes’ point of view, man live for survival, not for the fancy things like chasing life’s sublimation, pleasure and glory which he is 'passionate about' beyond survival. At the same time, people are not expected to think. He does not want people to achieve spiritual enjoyment or independent personality, because thinking itself will only lead people to their own way. Since everyone has an independent personality, it is barely possible to lead people gain trust from each other easily. Leaving all the thinking and decision-making parts to the sovereign can be considered as the best way to easily take over of every individual’s ideology. Having a central political system where decisions are integrated can determine all commands and work out all the other problems as long as every citizen’s life is ensured.
Hobbes believes that the spirit of independence and the soul of freedom in the mainstream can actually do great harm, in a practical sense, in terms of political efficiency and political consequences. Human intelligence is a valuable treasure for most of the people, but in Hobbes's perspective, it is truly the method of attacking or even controlling others of the disaster. It could be a main cause of war. Due to the threat to survival, human intelligence should be considered as the first enemy that all living rational life ought to destroy.
Hobbes' man is not really a 'rational man'. Hobbes' people are irrational. They live in order to survive, to better stabilize their own survival and tranquility, so as to dispatch rationality. Hobbes's country is more like a dictatorship of the people. This sounds paradoxical, but it makes sense in the context of Hobbes' argument. Hobbes' state had a dictatorship because leviathan had absolute power over its people and a great deterrent. However, the leviathan itself is built by a contract between people, and the interests of leviathan itself and those of the people are willing to maintain peace. Moreover, as Hobbes mentioned at the beginning, everyone is an equal individual, and leviathan is the embodiment of these equal individuals. Therefore, any decision of leviathan is equal to the decision of the people themselves.
According to the above description, Hobbes comes up with the final conclusion that the public interest is the state where the public interest is most closely combined, and the interest obtained by the public interest will also be the biggest advance of the interest. Therefore, in a state dominated by a monarch, private interests and public interests, whether prominent or ordinary citizens, should be treated together. Therefore, the state should legislate properly, obey the law and pay more attention to the law, without favoritism and fraud, the state will have orderly regulations, everyone is dedicated to their work, and it will be a peaceful country.
