Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Locke 1; Hobbes: (Widerspruch: Naturzustand; Individuum: Recht auf Selbsterhalt nicht als I., sondern durch Bedrohung durch andere); Locke: Bedrohung durch Hunger; Dialektik: Sklave - Herr (H.: Dilemma: Aristokrat - Bürger) -> Lösungsversuche der Nachf.

Kurzinhalt: Locke begins like Hobbes: the first need and therefore man's fundamental right is that of preserving his life. But what threatens his life? Locke answers: not other individuals, but rather hunger. This is the original difference between Locke and Hobbes.

Textausschnitt: CHAPTER IV
Locke, Labor, and Property

39a As we have seen, the reason for the appearance of the state of nature as a key notion of political reflection stemmed from the necessity of producing an incontestable obligation to obey. Perhaps the most striking feature of Leviathan's power is that it is incontestable: its "absolute" or "unlimited" character signifies that in principle no objection to it can be raised. And the central difficulty in Hobbes's doctrine can be formulated as follows: can one define and construct a human power in such a way as to make it, in principle and in fact, invulnerable to criticism? Hobbes thinks that he overcomes the difficulty by basing his reasoning on a reality—the fear of violent death—stronger than any reasoning. But then he confronts two major problems. (Fs) (notabene)

39b Hobbes's reasoning ends where it began: with the fear of death. This is the motive for Leviathan's construction and remains the principle of his effectiveness once he is constituted. Ultimately the subjects conduct themselves peacefully because they are afraid of the sovereign. Certainly from Hobbes's perspective, this fear is incomparably more circumscribed than the original fear; far from contradicting the elementary conditions of a decent human life, it is its elementary condition. In this regard, one can speak, along with Michael Oakeshott, of "homeopathic" fear. For, if the desire for self-preservation is the source of Leviathan's legitimacy in the state of nature, the fear that Leviathan then inspires, however "homeopathic" it may be, can be the basis of a new legitimacy. This is so true that, according to Hobbes himself, I have the right to preserve my life even against Leviathan's orders, if these orders put my life in danger. In other words, the search for security that founds Leviathan's unlimited power will subsequently found its limitation. (Fs)
39c But if it is necessary to start from the state of nature to construct the legitimate political institution, did Hobbes correctly describe that state? Is the state of nature essentially a state of war? Certainly civil war is a good approximation of the war of all against all, but is civil war the truth of political life? Or is it only an exceptional circumstance from which nothing can be inferred for organizing "ordinary" social and political life? And can human nature really be reduced to the desire for power? These are questions that necessarily reintroduce controversy into an approach whose goal had been to suppress it. All these questions can be summed up in one: what is truly the "natural condition of mankind," what is "the most natural in man"? To this question, as we shall see, Locke and Rousseau will give answers very different from that of Hobbes. But first we have to see how Hobbes's interpretation of the state of nature elicits its own refutation. (Fs)

40a What is the meaning of the jus in omnia, the right over everything, that belongs to every individual in the state of nature? It means that each individual is in himself an indivisible whole whose unique rule of conduct is to preserve his life. But why does the need for self-preservation mean he has a right over everything? Because, says Hobbes, he is perpetually threatened, actually or potentially, by others, because the relationship linking him to others is one of hostility. The jus in omnia is born from the intersection of two essentially distinct ideas: the absolute moral independence of the individual, and his hostile relationship with other individuals. Of these two ideas, the latter is the more important: it is because hostility is universal that self-preservation is the unique principle of action taken by the individual. Put in stronger terms, it is because the hostile relationship is universal that each person is an individual, that is, an indivisible whole closed in on himself, morally self-sufficient, thinking only of preserving his life. What is "the most natural" in the "natural condition of mankind" is not the independent individual as such, it is the war of all against all that gives him birth. In other words, the individual exists only through a kind of negative sociability, that of war. The unlimited right he has is only an effect of this war. Consequently, the individual does not truly have this right; it appears only when he is threatened by death. In the state of nature it is continuously possessed, since there the mortal threat is continuous, and it reappears in the civil state, even against Leviathan, when the mortal threat arises. (Fs) (notabene)
40b Thus one sees how Hobbes elaborates, with an extraordinary power of suggestion, a new idea of the body politic: power is an ingenious device constructed by powerless individuals for protecting their rights. He does not succeed, however, in carrying out this idea completely. Individuals in the state of nature are not truly individuals entitled to rights intrinsically belonging to them, and power constructed in this way is not really a protector of their rights since it can protect them only insofar as it threatens them. The program of what later became liberalism is thus laid out. It will entail giving the Hobbesian idea of political power its full scope by modifying its beginning and its end. The individual in the state of nature will acquire intrinsic rights, and power will be limited to the protection of individual rights. This will be Locke's approach. Locke begins like Hobbes: the first need and therefore man's fundamental right is that of preserving his life. But what threatens his life? Locke answers: not other individuals, but rather hunger. This is the original difference between Locke and Hobbes. For the latter, death first threatens in the form of the hostile other man; for the former it threatens in the form of hunger. (Fs) (notabene)

41a Hobbes is remarkably reserved about the role of hunger in the state of nature, even if he mentions as being obvious that in it, men are "poor." The fact of war and its consequences overshadow war's motives, hunger among them. From the moment that fear engenders fear war feeds on itself, and the question of its "origins" indeed appears to be secondary. Hobbes in fact suggests two origins: first, rivalry for the possession of "goods" (rivalry based on "scarcity," "economic" rivalry); then pure rivalry, based on the desire for power, prestige, reputation ("moral," "political," or "spiritual" in origin). In the state of nature, these two types of rivalry are indistinguishable since they have the same effects. If I take my neighbor's herd, it can be to nourish myself or because I want to possess the larger herd. Which of these two versions of rivalry is more important for Hobbes? Apparently the latter: Hobbes explicitly defines the desire for power, the desire to be first, as the fundamental human passion to which the others can be reduced. And yet if one judges by the effect, the former is more important. If men accept Leviathan, it is for guaranteeing their security, the condition, Hobbes points out, for all "industry." Accepting Leviathan's "protection," they escape the risks implied by the unending quest for more power. And here we see the moral ambiguity of the Hobbes's vision, which also makes it so bewitching: men defined explicitly as "aristocrats" (struggling for power, honor, or prestige) behave at the decisive moment like "bourgeois" (making certain that their security comes first). (Fs; tblStw: Politik)

41b Hobbes's successors will endeavor to remove this ambiguity. Locke, by an elegant simplification, will simply erase rivalry, or at least its original character. In the beginning, there were no relationships among men, not even hostile ones. As for Rousseau, he accepts the Lockean point of view and pushes it even further by making original man a solitary, happy brute. But at the same time he takes Hobbes's "psychology" very seriously. In his Second Discourse, he describes how the individual, beginning as a solitary brute, becomes greedy for riches, power, and prestige. To remove the ambiguity of Hobbes's "psychology," he is the first to have recourse to a history. It was left to Hegel to provide the most convincing solution: the motor of historical development lies in the original situation described by Hobbes. The two "moralities" fighting each other in the state of nature lead to the distinction between two types of men: those who prefer prestige to security, and those who prefer security to the risks that the pursuit of prestige entails. What Hegel would later call the "dialectic of the master and slave" is already contained in the Hobbesian state of nature, and in this dialectic all of mankind's history.1 (Fs)