The Democratic Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes is widely seen as a man who dedicated his life towards defending the indefensible, the totalitarianism of a dictatorship modelled in the form of a state with almost unlimited authority. He was, as they say, a monarchist whose only answer to problems was the employment of fear. However, was it not the same author who wrote that the state is and should be the result of man coming together to establish a community based on consent? For Hobbes, the state is the consequence of a democratic awakening of the people, interested in protecting themselves and at the same time, the rest of us.

The state, old Thomas says, must abide by the contract agreed upon by and between people. To do otherwise would be to break the contract that led to there being a state created in the first case. The state commands maximum authority, but it does so thanks to a radical instance of democracy. Of course, Hobbes did claim that dictatorship to a ruthless point was legitimate and necessary for the preservation of peace and the possibility of harmony. Would he continue to do so four centuries on, as I write, is another question that perhaps we cannot possibly know. This position, however, must not ignore the fact that the development of such a state for Hobbes was rooted in democracy itself. To understand Hobbes - to completely appreciate his work and be able to boast that one understands his arguments - we need to first and foremost comprehend the arguments of the philosopher on his own terms, as too often others try hard not to do. 

Some point out that Hobbes argued the state should be ready to use ‘the sword’, or force, in order to moderate potential conflicts between people. It is true: Hobbes absolutely did call for a state which was more than prepared to dish out punishment to prevent citizens from breaking their contract. Is that not the same force that is dealt those who do not submit to the laws of our modern democracies? Hobbes simply argued that because the state had come to be through grassroots democracy, according to a social-contract that was rational and aimed to prevent our lives and our interests from being invaded and infringed upon, it would be absurd and unjust to allow for such a contract to be broken by individuals who choose to act in their own way, outside of the contract signed by all, and when they benefited from it since birth.

It goes without saying that Thomas Hobbes was not a ‘Liberal Democratic’ thinker in any meaningful sense. He does advocate a totalitarian regime where everybody has a political obligation to support it unless the state fails to meet its own political obligation, that which arose out of the social-contract decided in the first place. But at the same time - he is a democratic thinker exactly because Hobbes shared the belief that people do and should consent to the government which dares to act in their name. Nevertheless, at the same time, the sovereign authority too has a responsibility to uphold its own side of the contract, promising to protect the political structure which helps to preserve life and security of people on earth. In other words, the British thinker holds that individuality should be cherished and is at the centre of his viewpoint. It was separate individuals who voluntarily decided to work together for the benefit of all – not a state, not one man, or a minority group of men – that decided the creation of a Leviathan would be witnessed by the world. 

It seems then that Thomas Hobbes was far more democratic a thinker than his enemies would wish

the people of our planet to believe.  At the root, the very foundation of Hobbes’s argument is the belief that the people should rule and that the people do rule, because it was they, and nobody else, that gave us the state or the ‘Leviathan’ in the first place.