The basic Hobbesian idea in favour of the establishment of monocratic states is that the basic nature of human beings is to be self-serving and hence, a much more powerful external force (that is, more powerful than itself) would be needed to force individuals to form societies. However even at the surface level, this argument does not seem complete. The idea that humans are essentially self-centred does hold some water in that many modern sociological and psychological studies have shown as much. But this is not all – there is more at work here because if the formation of human society was so against human nature then it should never have formed, or rather, it should never have grown to the size and complexity that it has today. In other words, any form of government is built on this cohesive factor of human society as much as the divisive nature of individual psychology.
This paper will argue that, regardless of the form of government, there are basic human ‘appetencies’ (to use Hobbes’s term) which always remain the same and therefore, the form of autocracy which Hobbes spoke of and the powerful central government which Madison hoped to build are, at least on a conceptual level, identical. To fully appreciate these positions, one has to understand clearly what Hobbes meant when he used terms such as ‘autocracy’ and ‘democracy’ as well as Madison’s conception of them. Hobbes lays out his idea of the sovereign most clearly in Book II, chapter 18 of his book Leviathan, titled ‘Of the Causes, Generation and definition of a Common Wealth’. Here he lays out his conception of how the Sovereign, or autocrat would draw his power to rule (Hobbes, 118-120).
Hobbes arrived at his conception of the sovereign as the person to whom, the masses ‘surrender’ their rights and by so doing, allow themselves to be governed as equals under the eye of the sovereign. There are several points which are very interesting here. Firstly, Hobbes stated that the people would ‘surrender’ their rights to the sovereign, meaning there was some element of free will at work. If there is free will at this stage, why is it not called a democracy? Hobbes addressed this point explicitly when he stated that the ‘plurality of voices’ would be amalgamated into a single voice, which is that of the sovereign. From this, we can deduce Hobbes’s idea of democracy – that it is exactly what its name says, ‘rule by the mob’. To Hobbes, democracy would not and could not work because it implied giving an equal voice to all individuals without first ‘equalizing’ them. In other words, the strong would simply ‘out-shout’ the weak and the democracy would devolve into a kind of ‘rule of the loudest’.
The second point of interest is Hobbes’s idea of what the sovereign is. Although the sovereign is an individual, he is, as Hobbes put it, the soul of the entire community. The community itself, after the individuals had surrendered their rights, would be one single artificial human being called ‘Leviathan’. Given Hobbes’s idea of the soul and how the sovereign is to act, the role of this person is keep Leviathan together and ensure that the people do not harm themselves or others as a result of trying to fulfil their basic appetences (Oakeshott, 63). Therefore, the sovereign is not just a ruler, but also a legislator who equalises the people and judge who keeps them equalised. In this way, Hobbes’s Leviathan bears a striking resemblance to many forms of more ‘enlightened’ government, especially because of the ideas of individual agency and the primary function of the ruler as a keeper of peace.
When James Madison came into office as the fourth President of the United States of America, he understood the situation of his country better than most others. He knew that the confederacy of states could not last long because, like Hobbes’s individuals, each state had its own agenda – several states held slavery as one of their prime tenets, and several others were already on the verge of abolishing slavery. To unite all these states under one umbrella government would not simply be important, it was vital for the survival of the new nation (Hamilton et.al., 43).
Soon after the Revolution, it became clear that a weak center (including a Congress that did not even have the right to levy taxes) could not possibly survive in the post-revolution years, let alone guide a fledgling nation to unity and stability. The original piece of legislation – The Articles of Confederation, were hugely unpopular and led Madison to his position that the only way for the nation to prosper was to find a way to establish a powerful central government which would help guide the nation forward, not only as a representative body to voice the opinions of the people in a common forum, but as a legislator, executor and judiciary in its own right. Madison was well aware of the many forms of government available which thinkers from Europe had theorised on and of all the possibilities, only one point seemed to have been essential to him – that an ‘enlightened’ democracy be preserved. This is a point which numerous commentators have thought about as the American system is a complex ‘sprawling’ system even at Madison’s time (Kollman, 39). His vision of enlightenment entailed that the people had a constant voice in the decision making of their government.
However, the government itself would be an autonomous entity which would look after the well being of all its citizens. This seems to indicate that while it was possible for the government to enact laws to control its people, similar to the sovereign, the deciding factor was the continued involvement of the people.
This point needs to be further clarified through reference to the exact mechanism of the American government. One of the clearest statements of this mechanism is Madison’s own response to John C. Calhoun’s attempts at misrepresenting Madison’s views to further his own career. He stated clearly that the rule of the constitution was sanctioned by the consent of the people – a consent which mandates the giving up of certain rights in order to preserve society at large. This bears a striking resemblance to Hobbes’s idea of the masses giving up their individual power for the greater good of the Leviathan. This creates an almost perfect one-to-one equivalence between the Hobbesian idea of the sovereign’s rule by summing up the individual wills of the people and the Madisonian view of the government being a tool to aid the unified voice of the people (Daniels & Everett, eds, chap. 3).
The question now becomes whether or not the sovereign and the president can be identified as equivalent as well? Madison’s view of the Republic’s president is quite clear – the president is an office, not an individual. It is filled by the person whom the people believes is the best fit to rule the nation. However, Hobbes’s views on the Sovereign, is not so clear. Although Hobbes apparently criticises the monarchic system stating that it would induce people to complain that they were trapped in a tyrannical system, he lays out an equivalent criticism of all forms of government as well (Hobbes, 130). The sovereign, therefore, cannot actually be any one of these systems. The best solution to this problem seems to be to think of the sovereign (in spite of Hobbes insisting that it is a single, flesh and blood individual) as an office in the same way that the president’s role, though fulfilled by an individual, is actually the manifestation of an office. In this way, Madison’s president can be thought of as a Hobbesian sovereign.
The only fundamental point of difference between the two is that while an American president holds his office for four years, the sovereign, by all accounts, holds his office in perpetua. In other words, the president is merely a limited sovereign. Finally, a little more must be said about the problem of equating the Leviathan to the American electorate (which is essentially the multiplicity of voices which comes together to form the singe American polity). Hobbes conceived of the Leviathan as an artificial human being with the sovereign as the ‘soul’ or the decision maker. Within the strong, central government which Madison envisioned, it would be the states which had the greatest say in who the president was. The states themselves would simply be a conglomerate of the many individual voices within it and would hence qualify as Leviathans within themselves. Many commentators, like Gordon S. Wood, noted that the Republican form for government placed a huge strain on individuals to be ‘moral’ – to subdue their personal aspirations for the good of society (Wood, 103-5). In this way, the American central government is essentially, a Leviathan built on several other Leviathans!
This just leaves the moral question of whether a person views the ‘state of nature’ as a ‘positive’ or ‘good’ state which is to be prolonged and preserved piecemeal within the larger umbrella of government or it is a negative state which is to be pruned and fitted into a governmental machine which would then select the best parts to preserve and eradicate the rest. Either way, the basic fact of the matter remains – both Hobbes and Madison did strongly believe that individuals ought to be collected into wholes so that the power of the mighty would not overwhelm the weak and the greatest good for the greatest number of people could always be a guiding light for decision making.
Work Cited
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