The Social Contract
Adjudicating between Plato, Hobbes, and Locke
In his Crito, Plato offers one of the earliest portrayals of a consent theory of government authority. The dialogue features a debate between Socrates — recently sentenced to death and cheerfully awaiting his execution — and Crito — wealthy, stubborn, and thoroughly disinterested in listening to reason — over whether Socrates ought to escape Athens and his execution. Socrates asks Crito to consider what the laws, personified, might have to say about this argument, hypothesizing that they might first ask “was that our agreement with you?” immediately pushing to the forefront the idea of a potential agreement between Socrates and the laws.[1] Exploring the terms of this arrangement, Socrates imagines the laws claiming ownership over him — noting that it was through the legal marriage of his parents that Socrates came to exist and through the state-sponsored education system that Socrates gained wisdom.[2] If Socrates was indeed “brought into the world and nurtured and educated by (the laws),” then his relationship with the state is little more than that of a child’s relationship to his parents.[3]
However, such a relationship isn’t one built on consent (after all, we cannot choose our parents). To adjust for this, the laws further argue that by “having experience of the manner in which we order justice and the state,” and still choosing to live in Athens, Socrates “has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him.”[4] In the case of Socrates, the personified laws even highlight that he had the opportunity to see other places through his military service, and still chose to be “the most constant resident in the city,” seemingly contented to remain in Athens.[5]Essentially, Plato’s proposed consent theory rests on the theoretical ability of the governed to leave if they are dissatisfied with the government.
Hobbes doesn’t seek to justify the existence or decisions of a specific state, but instead explores the origins of proper government as a human construct. He asks us to first consider a world without political society. In this place men act in accordance with their nature, rather than some perceived obligation — for there is no moral code existing independent of political society. This means men’s actions are motivated exclusively by their natural passions: their “appetites,” and “aversions.”[6] Of man’s environment, Hobbes tells us that it is defined by scarcity, regardless of what men desire, there isn’t enough to satisfy their “perpetual and restless desire of power after power.”[7] This scarcity leads to competition, whereby “if any two men desire the same thing,” they inevitably “endeavor to destroy or subdue one another.”[8] Thus, the life of man in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” defined by “continual fear and danger of violent death.”[9]
In an interesting twist of fate, Hobbes looks to the very thing that rendered the state of nature so terrifying, human nature, to get mankind out of it. Hobbes takes the same rational capacity and fear of death that led to competition and war, and instead points them towards peace. He writes then, as a first step to building society; each man must “lay down this right to all things,” thus eliminating their capacity to wage constant war on one another.[10] Once this is done, men may come together to begin to form a commonwealth, and “confer all their power and strength upon man, or upon one assembly of man,” who Hobbes calls a “Sovereign.”[11] Hobbes imagines that the only way for this authority to protect his subjects against their own irrepressible nature, allowing them to “nourish themselves and live contentedly,” each man must “give up (his) right of governing (himself),” and “give it to this (sovereign).”[12] Hobbes proposed theory of governmental consent might be summed up in the following: the only for humans to construct a society rid of the terrors of the state of nature is to bestow upon some sovereign authority absolute power to govern them.
Locke takes a similar path to Hobbes, starting from a state of nature and arriving at political society. Initially, Locke sees the human state of nature in a far rosier light that Hobbes, describing “a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they see fit.”[13] Locke’s state of nature is also a state of abundance, whereby individuals may appropriate those goods that they need from the common stock. However, Locke’s state of nature begins to shift as he introduces property; he declares that “every man has a property in his own person,” and therefore, by mixing his “labor,” with goods in the common stock, a person may come to possess those goods in private.[14]
From there, the state of nature begins to look far more like the way Hobbes describes it; it becomes a state of scarcity. Furthermore, Locke tells us that man’s “enjoyment of (his property) is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others.”[15] Again echoing Hobbes, Locke writes that men form civil societies for their “peaceable living amongst another in a secure enjoyment of their properties.”[16] However, Locke differs from Hobbes and Plato in the limited government he imagines. Locke writes that the “great chief end,” of government “is the preservation of their property.”[17] Locke’s proposed civil government has no right to enforce moral norms or care for the souls of the governed as Plato and Hobbes imagine the state does.
Of these three visions of government drawing its power from the consent of the governed, Locke presents a government that best suits my modern sensibilities, as it is limited in both its purview and its powers. However, Locke’s construction of a right to private property rests on shaky ground. Locke’s argument relies on his premise that each person has property in their own body, yet at a previous point Locke had written that men are all “the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise maker,” making men’s bodies, rather than their own property, the property of this maker.[18] Without this premise, Locke’s philosophical argument that every man has a right to private property fails.
Hobbes’ portrayal of the consent theory of government falls to a similar pitfall as Locke. If his necessary premises are granted, then his argument proceeds rather unassailably from his to his conclusion. However, it’s unclear whether we ought to grant Hobbes his premises about human nature. He tells us that human nature in its entirety is self-interested, that our actions are either motivated by desire for some gain or fear of some loss. Though it would be impossible to deny that humans act out of self-interest, Hobbes leaves room for an opponent to question whether self-interest forms human nature in its entirety. What if, we might ask, mankind possessed just a slight amount of altruism or benevolence? Then, “the only way,” for men to “live contentedly,” amongst one another is not, as Hobbes describes, to erect the “Leviathan.”[19] In the case that human nature is more benevolent, we might instead be able to leverage this benevolence into a more limited state, wherein governmental authority draws its power from consent in a manner not based entirely on fear.
Plato’s proposal at first seems to be the most outrageous, filled with long commentary on the parental nature of a state. However, if we ignore this part, and instead focus solely on the “implied contract” Plato offers, we arrive at a far simpler and more convincing understanding of the consent theory.[20] The very structure of the discussion, as a debate with an outrageously personified law, lends itself to the idea that much of the discussion is more meant as an ironic indictment of Crito. Socrates originally argues that it would be morally wrong to flee, as he would be “doing evil in return for evil,” yet Crito doesn’t listen, causing Socrates to turn to his more playful debate with the laws.[21] If we ignore those pieces of the argument that seem more for Crito’s benefit than anything else, we arrive at a simple argument; by choosing to live in a state, one enters into an “implied contract,” that he will respect the authority of that state.[22] Such an argument doesn’t need search for a reason why governments drew their authority from consent in their original inception, as do Hobbes’ and Locke’s. But rather, it explains why governments, regardless of their original position, draw their power from our willing consent.
Bibliography
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994.
Locke, John. “The Second Treatise of Government.” In Political Writings, edited by David Wootton, 261–387. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993.
Plato. “Crito.” In Arguing About Political Philosophy, edited by Matt Zwolinski. Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 2014.
[1] Plato, Crito, 114
[2] Plato, Crito, 115
[3] Plato, Crito, 115
[4] Plato, Crito, 116
[5] Plato, Crito, 116
[6] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 28
[7] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 58
[8] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 75
[9] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 76
[10] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 80
[11] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 109
[12] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 109
[13] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 262
[14] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 274
[15] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 324
[16] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 310
[17] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 325
[18] John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 264
[19] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 106
[20] Plato, Crito, 116
[21] Plato, Crito, 114
[22] Plato, Crito, 114
