Hobbes vs. Rousseau on Man and the State

foreign [Music] is on two totalitarians Hobbes versus Rousseau on the good Society totalitarianism is a political philosophy that gives the public political Authority or authorities total power over human life the state or the ruler or the rulers or the nation has Divine and unlimited and unassailable sovereignty totalitarianism is a rule of subjective human will rather than of objective reason and law will is not subject to law but law is subject to will in totalitarianism the will of the ruler or the rulers whoever they are and however many they are there is no higher law no

objective law to which both the ruler or rulers and the ruled are equally subject there is no natural moral law nothing like what was called the logos in the west by platonists and stoics and Christians and the retire in India by Hindus and the Dao in China by confucians and taoists but as Alexis de Taco pointed out in his classic Democracy in America which is I think the best book anyone has ever written about that subject there are two different kinds of totalitarianism Thomas Hobbes in 17th century England Advocates what the torqueville calls a hard

totalitarianism hard because it was an absolute monarchy there was to be no recourse against the single King The Sovereign and also because it was explicitly based on fear rather than free consent Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the other hand in 18th century France Advocates what the talk Bill calls a soft totalitarianism or a Democratic totalitarianism based on free consent and also because it's Sovereign is not any concrete individual but the general will the social consensus the Zeitgeist the Spear of the times which for Rousseau is equally Sovereign and infallible and divine and absolute and not subject to

any higher standard you may be shocked to hear the phrase Democratic totalitarianism because you probably think that that is an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp or absolute relativism but democracy and totalitarianism are not contradictory terms because they are answers to two very different questions democracy is an answer to the question where wild totalitarianism is an answer to the question how much democracy is an answer to the question where is the public political Authority located and the answer is in the Deimos the masses the majority or the people at large not in a single individual or a

small aristocracy totalitarianism on the other hand is an answer to the question how much authority over human lives does the political Authority have and its answer is total Authority so a democratic totalitarianism is not a contradiction in terms in fact we will see an example of it in the philosophy of Rousseau we also see it in huxley's Brave New World which is not merely a work of fiction but also a work of Prophecy ironically all Advocates of soft totalitarianism or Democratic totalitarianism like Rousseau exalt what they call Freedom we see this for instance in the

Woodstock generation of the 60s the so-called hippies it is suspicious of the power of the state and so it seems to be the opposite of totalitarianism but in setting up as its absolute standard not the law either human law or Divine Law but the will or the feelings of either the individual or the group it chains us with invisible spiritual change to a desperate far more formidable than any Emperor or Tyrant like a caesar or a Hitler our own willful will and foolish feelings not to the enemy without but to the Enemy Within Hobbes Advocates

a hard totalitarianism Because he believes that all men are inherently selfish and wicked and need to be made to act contrary to their nature that is unselfishly and for the common good and this can only be done by fear and force Rousseau Advocates a soft totalitarianism Because he believes that all men are by Nature good and innocent and altruistic and happy and that it is society's laws and conventions and rules that corrupt us and that are the sources of competition and selfishness and evil and misery the only difference between Rousseau's totalitarianism and that of the

Woodstock generation is that for Rousseau it is collective well for Woodstock it is individual but what if all the individuals form a collective as was in fact often done in the name of Woodstock well then we have Russo's totalitarianism of the general will which is his Tyrant which is subject to no law above it beneath the Divine Law nor any human law nor the natural moral law the general will the will of the people who so explicitly says is infallible the Zeitgeist the spirit of the times is Holy it is the Holy Spirit but says

Rousseau this General will is free and consensual and freedom is intrinsically good or is it really we all know and approve Edmund Burke saying about power that all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely but did you ever hear anyone say that about freedom that all Freedom tends to corrupt and absolute freedom corrupts absolutely why not what is the difference between freedom and Power isn't Freedom also dangerous can't we have too much freedom in fact what is the difference between power and freedom let's be concrete and look at specific examples rather than abstract

Concepts all of the following opposites of Power are also opposites of Freedom death disease imprisonment paralysis legal enslavement literal chains ignorance and force they all remove both our freedom and our power why then do we instinctively love freedom and distrust power I think because the identity between freedom and power is true only if both terms are interpreted materially physically if by power we mean physical exterior power and if by Freedom we mean interior spiritual Freedom they are quite different we still have free will even when we are chained as the poet says stone walls do

not a prison make nor iron bar as a cage we can have spiritual Freedom even when we do not have physical power but both Rousseau and Hobbes confuse these two Dimensions the material and the physical in opposite ways Hobbs is a materialist he denies the existence of spirit entirely of any spiritual inner life and therefore he denies free will while Rousseau could be called an advocate of spirituality in the modern subjective sense he denies or ignores objective truth objective moral law and the authority of anything objective that limits or judges his subjective feelings which are

his absolute the ultimate source and standard of everything human for Rousseau is feeling or emotion Hobbs is a perfect example of the confusion and identification of Freedom with power he says that freedom is nothing more than unimpeded movement whether this is the movement of stars or the movement of human Passions Hobb denies that we have a spiritual Soul or mind or free will we are simply a mass of forces animal instincts the strongest of which is fear especially the fear of violent death like Machiavelli Hobbs says that fear is far more powerful than love and

far more practical for a political ruler for as Machiavelli argued others will love you when they choose but they will fear you when you choose for Hobbes freedom is very simple it is control the master has freedom and the slave does not Hobbes is utterly ignorant of the Paradox that in the Master Slave relationship it is the master who is really the slave and the slave who is really free because the master is spiritually enslaved to his need for his slave while the slave is free from any spiritual need for being owned by the master

thus there is for Hobbes no such thing as spiritual Freedom or freedom of choice because for Hobbes there is nothing spiritual at all everything is made of matter including the mind the will the soul and even God Hobbs claims not to be an atheist and says he does not deny God's existence he only denies that God is immaterial Hobbs is very probably really an atheist who is only pretending to believe in God so is to Curry favor with a society in which atheists were out of favor but perhaps not perhaps he's just stupid but honest

rather than clever and deliberately deceptive that is a question Only God can judge that is if there is a God who being spiritual sees into human hearts not just bodies Hobbs and materialism is very consistent throughout all the divisions of his philosophy metaphysically there is no spirit anthropologically there is no soul epistemologically reason is merely the passive recipient of the physical senses psychologically the control of the passions by the reason is not only impossible it is not even desirable morally the only motivators to the good are desires and fears good is simply what we desire

and evil is simply what we fear hobb's philosophy is extremely simplistic and reductionistic and that actually endures it to some people I will not pretend to go into the motives of such people who would actually be very happy to discover that they are only complex robots I just hope they never make the mistake of getting married and above all having children Hobbs wrote of himself that fear and I were born twins Hobbs was born when his mother gave premature birth to him because she was terrified by the invasion of the Spanish Armada Hobbs lived during

England's terrible Civil Wars and afterwards worked for Oliver Cromwell England's most dictatorial ruler like Machiavelli he reasoned inductively from his own experience that politically the key to peace was the centralization of power into a single absolute monarch which he called the Leviathan The Great Beast Hobbes sharply contrasted what he called the state of nature with the state of civil society that is the pre-political with the political he said that the state of nature for man like the state of any material thing is essentially competitive like two kids playing King of the Hill as two Nails

cannot occupy the same hole and one must be removed by force so with man the state of nature is a state of Total War a war of each against each and of all against all a state that he famously called solitary poor nasty brutish and short for it is simply a law of physics that no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time and therefore all material things such as money and power diminish when they are shared when I make you one thousand dollars richer I become one thousand dollars poorer when I

give you my slice of pizza I have only my slice left only spiritual riches like truth and goodness and beauty and wisdom and love multiply when they are shared you do not become stupider when you teach me some of your wisdom or become less good yourself when you help me to become a better person perhaps denies that because he denies the distinction between spirit and matter he is a philosophical materialist when he debated Descartes who believed in mind as well as matter his only answer to Descartes Arguments for a spiritual mind was I have no

idea what you're talking about you are using language that is meaningless your so-called spirit is simply one kind of matter what you mean by the mind if you mean anything real at all is simply the brain I've met philosophers like that today who reduce Minds to brains and brains to computers so people are just computers made of meat they almost convinced me that they are right at least about themselves though not about other people the most surprising thing Hobbes says is that he is not an atheist though he is a materialist for Hobbes God himself

is made of matter presumably God is living on some other planet as I am told Mormons believe obviously Hobbes is God is not the real God so what is this God what is Hobbes absolute everyone has one whenever anyone rejects the real absolute the true God he always goes over to some false god some other absolute some Idol worship never disappears from the human soul it only changes its object the throne Remains the inhabitant changes Hobbes is Idol like that of many people today even many supposedly religious people is politics in my home state the

People's Republic of Massachusetts many Catholics are much more religious about their politics than about their religion they worship either the donkey or the elephant rather than the lamb Hobbs looks to politics to save us and his ultimate reason for all his other philosophical tenets is their political consequences they are judged as true or false by the standard of political correctness for instance Hobbes rejects the commonsensical notion of Essences or essential forms or the essential nations of things including human nature and the nature of morality and thus a natural moral law because he says this doctrine

of separated Essences built on the vain philosophy of Aristotle would frighten Mankind from obeying the laws of their country by the way Hobbs is so fanatically allergic to Aristotle that he here makes the mistake that would Merit an F on a freshman philosophy quiz by confusing Aristotle with Plato it was Plato who taught that the platonic forms or Essences existed separately from matter Aristotle disagreed with him here Hobbes also rejects the theological Dogma that the theological virtues of faith hope and charity can be spiritually infused or inspired into man and he rejects the Dogma that

the soul can exist after the death of the body because these ideas would serve to lessen the dependence of subjects on The Sovereign power of their country so political correctness determines theological Truth for Hobbes in fact the whole second half of hobbs's main work the Leviathan is devoted to attacks on his primary enemy which he calls the kingdom of darkness it is the Roman Catholic Church how perceptive of Hobbes to perceive the identity of his greatest enemy and the greatest champion of human spiritual freedom Rousseau is usually contrasted to Hobbes in at least five ways

first where Hobbes is a pessimist Rousseau is an optimist about human nature man is by nature altruistic and happy not selfish and fearful Rousseau believes only one Catholic dogma the Immaculate Conception but he believes it is true of all mankind not just Mary second whereas for Hobbes the state is the savior Rousseau sees the state not as the Savior but as the source of human misery and Evil man is by nature free and happy and the state moves him out of his natural state of what he famously called the noble savage and changes him from

the state of nature freedom and happiness into the state of artifice slavery and misery third Hobbs is a materialist but Rousseau is or pretends to be very spiritual and religious and also very moral in fact he was one of the most pathologically selfish self-indulgent narcissistic liars and hypocrites in human history but he was a great rhetorician and an extremely effective propagandist he faked conversions between protestantism and Catholicism numerous times to get money from a series of gullible old ladies whom he then abandoned he pretended to Champion marriage and family but never married his mistress and

put all five of his children into orphanages which at the time was a virtual death sentence he did this over the tearful protests of their emotionally abused mother because he said they would interfere with his work fourth while Hobbes exalts science and sense experience and calculating reason Rousseau exalts the heart and feeling and emotion in every possible way Hobbes is what William James calls tough-minded while Rousseau is tender-minded fifth Rousseau exalts freedom and individuality in the inner life while Hobbes exalts fear and obedience to the absolute monarch as the only way to peace and Order

yet these two contrasting thinkers are far more similar than different they share the typically modern assumption in political philosophy that Aristotle and nearly all of the ancient pagans as well as Christians rejected in that both contrast and oppose the individual to the state because both contrast the original natural state of man with the state of Civil Society even though each chooses a different hero and a different villain in this drama both assume that man is not by Nature a political animal as Aristotle had called him to both the state is artificial not natural it is

created by a social contract which creates not merely the particular form of civil and national government whether monarchy or aristocracy or oligarchy or democracy but government itself there's a parallel here with language language itself is innate and Universal and inherent in human nature but different cultures develop different languages similarly public social organization Beyond families and tribes is innate and Universal and inherent in human nature According to Aristotle although different cultures make different social contracts Hobbes and Rousseau seem at first relatively calm and civilized compared with Nietzsche yet they share with Nietzsche a fundamental assumption about

man about human nature that is equally apocalyptic and whose consequences are nothing less than what C.S Lewis calls the abolition of man that man is not by Nature moral at all that the state of morality was invented by Society that the state of nature and the state of Civil Society are to be contrasted the consequence of this assumption may be either the flat Brave New World that Nietzsche despised as the last man or it may be what nature adored as his new God his Superman whom Hitler and the Nazis grotesquely claimed to be but in

either case it is the abolition of human nature the death of man as the consequence of the death of God Nietzsche saw this far better than either Hobbes or Rousseau both of whom exemplify the death of God even though they were not explicitly and confessedly atheists like the contrast between the state of nature and the state of Civil Society there is another typically modern contrast between the individual and the collective or the state in both Hobbes and Rousseau though here too they differ on which is the problem and which is the solution which is the

villain and which is the hero Jacques maritain will attempt to overcome this contrast and opposition in a traditional theistic and domestic way we'll see that in our last lecture the philosophy of the Three Musketeers was all for one and one for all but we do not find either half of that philosophy in either Hogs or Rousseau it's too traditional too commonsensical we do not find in either of those two radicals either of the two most basic principles of Catholic social and political morality namely the principle of the common good and the principle of subsidiarity which

together avoid both the extremes of liberal individualism and totalitarian collectivism the totalitarian collectivism that takes two opposite forms in Hobbes and Rousseau the principle of a common good or communalism not communism is that in the public realm the common good is the end or purpose of the individual good and that the good of a whole Community is the universal destination of private Goods such as property this is the one for all part of the Three Musketeers principle the other principle the principle of subsidiarity or small is beautiful states that larger associations or communities exist only

to Aid and perfect the smaller ones not to take their place families exist for their individuals tribes or extended families for their nuclear families cities for their tribes States for their cities Nations for their states and international organizations for their Nations applied to individuals this is the All For One principle both Hobbes and Russo ignore or scorn that anti-totalitarian principle which is implied in this saying of Jesus you know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lorded over them and their great men exercise authority over them but it shall not be so

among you but whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all for the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many this is Christ's principle of a hierarchy not of power but of service especially to the weak and the poor especially children and most especially The Unborn the most vulnerable of all like today's right-wing individualism and libertarianism and today's left-wing socialism and collectivism I think both Hobbes and Russo would approve

of today's state-sanctioned murder of The Unborn for there is no place for a natural moral law in either of those two philosophies for both the will of The Sovereign in Hobbes and the individual's emotions in Rousseau are absolute and infallible most Americans today are turned off by the hard totalitarianism of hogs but many are suckered in by the soft totalitarianism of Rousseau especially his divinization of freedom freedom is our absolute those who Foster the French Revolution and the American Revolution are our heroes because they fought for political freedom Rousseau didn't live to see the French

Revolution but the revolutionaries loved him and quoted him but what was the result of their absolute tithing of Freedom was it an accident that the French Revolution turned into a reign of terror which for a while made Hitler and Stalin look like compromisers was it an accident that the revolution that absolutized freedom paved the way for the dictatorship of Napoleon was it an accident that the libertarian decadence and freedoms of Germany in the Roaring Twenties paved the way for the Nazis remember that prophetic scene in the movie Cabaret you know the one I mean where

the young Nazi sings Tomorrow Belongs to Me In The Outdoor Cafe and everybody except one old curmudgeon and a few young decadents are swept away and jointed you see the next 15 years of history in that one scene was it an accident that like Hobbs both through so inspired French revolutionaries and the Nietzsche inspired Nazi revolutionaries saw their primary enemy as a Catholic Church when God is dead to a soul or a culture a new God always appears and when a new God Appears a new man also appears a Superman an over man a savior

this is true whether as theists believe Man was created in the image of God or even whether as atheists believe God was created in the image of man what rough Beast now slouches towards Bethlehem to be born Nietzsche Heidegger Rousseau Hobbes and Marx all raised that question it is the Fateful question of our time [Music] [Applause] [Music]