I intend to defend Hobbes from Sir Filmer’s objection that the inalienable right to self-defence is destructive to Leviathan. Filmer argues that this is because the right sometimes justifies the killing of the sovereign. I will show that Leviathan itself (i.e., the sovereign power) and the person who bears the power of Leviathan (i.e., the sovereign) are not identical, and therefore that the right to kill the sovereign doesn’t entail the destruction of Leviathan.
Hobbes argues that there are several circumstances in which it is justifiable for a person to resist their sovereign. In Leviathan 21.12-16 he argues that people have the liberty to disobey a sovereign’s command for them to commit suicide, injure themselves, incriminate themselves, kill another person, or even to do something they take to be dishonorable. And, at 21.17, he argues that a group of people who have committed an injustice together, for which the sovereign has commanded their death, have the right to join together in defence of their lives.
Importantly, the right to resist sovereign power is not invented by Hobbes; it is derived from a persons original right of nature, namely, their right to self-preservation. Hobbes argues that, outside of civil society, humans have this right in spades: they have the unbounded liberty to preserve themselves by any conducive means, including by the use of force and violence against other persons. Thus, the state of nature is a state of war (13.8).
Since war is not conducive to survival, Hobbes demonstrates that all people are bound by the natural law to seek peace. And, since the unboundedness of the natural right gives rise to conflict, Hobbes derives the second law that the right ought to be restricted; that is, one ought to give up some of their natural right if doing so would bring them peace (14.4–5). Now, the conventional way to give up one’s right is to form an agreement or a contract, however, contracts are only possible where there is an authority to enforce them. So, the first contract humans could have made must be, hypothetically speaking, the original contract establishing this authority.
Specifically, Hobbes argues that everyone must have made a covenant with everyone to transfer their natural rights to a single person, the sovereign, who thus legislates using the combined power of this multitude. By their covenants, subjects agree not to impede on any action performed by the sovereign from this power (17.13). This event is the generation of Leviathan.
There is limitation, however, on the extent to which a person can give up their natural right to self-preservation. Hobbes argues that the right to defend oneself from force by force is inalienable because the willful intent to perform one’s covenant is a necessary condition for its validity, and it is impossible to genuinely will something conducive to one’s own destruction (14.8). Thus, it is conceptually impossible to contract away one’s right to self-defence; defending oneself with force is always just in the circumstance of what need only be a percieved threat against life, or of wounds, chains and imprisonment (14.8) This forms the basis for Hobbes justification of the right of subjects to resist any command of the sovereign that is destructive to their person: The original covenant could not have transferred the person’s inalienable right, and therefore they cannot be morally or legally obliged to alienate it (14.29).
Filmer’s Objection
Filmer objects that Hobbes’s inalienable right is destructive to “all forms of government whatsoever and, even to the Leviathan itself” (Objections, XV). He argues that the inalienable right permits any person to kill the sovereign, thus expelling everyone back to the state of nature: “hereby any rogue or villain may murder his sovereign, if the sovereign but offer by force to whip or lay him in the stocks […] thus we at least in as miserable a condition of war as Mr. Hobbes at first by nature found us.” As Filmer puts it, Hobbes’s inalienable right is meant to be a justified limitation on the absolute power of the sovereign. But, it is difficult to see how a sovereign can be said to have absolute authority over her subjects at all if it is just for them to resist or even kill her in any circumstance that they regard as life-threatening. Instead, Filmer defends a universalization of Hobbes’s rule at Leviathan 21.12, namely, that no person has the liberty to “resist the sword of the commonwealth in defence of another man, guilty or innocent.”
Hobbes’s Reply
Hobbes would say that Filmer is wrong because it is impossible for the sovereign power to harm its own subjects, and vice versa. Thus, no right of a subject could be destructive to Leviathan. This rule arises from the inalienable right, for Leviathanis a person (albeit an artificial one) and therefore subject to the same inalienability.
The person of Leviathanand the person of the sovereign are not identical. Hobbes distinguishes between a natural person, whose actions represent themselves, and an artificial person, whose actions represent others (16.1–2). The relationship between an artificial person and the natural persons they represent is of authorization, which is to say that the natural persons authorize the artificial person to act on their behalf. The subject-sovereign relationship of Leviathan takes this form; each subject “owns” the actions of the sovereign, and thus Leviathanis an artificial person: “One person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants made with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence” (17.13). However, the sovereign themselves is a natural person who bears the office of sovereign power; they carry, but are not identical with, the person of Leviathan (17.14).
Hobbes also says that the sovereign power is in the state of nature; meaning it is obliged to self-preservation by the combination of natural powers given up in the covenant. This implies that the artificial person of the sovereign, like any natural person, cannot will its own destruction. And, since its will belongs to all those party to the covenant, it must also be impossible for a sovereign to will the destruction of its own subjects, or for someone to genuinely will the destruction of their own sovereign power. Therefore, all apparent cases of resistance against the sovereign which are justifiable on Hobbes’s account must not actually be cases of conflict between the sovereign power and a subject of the Leviathan.
In such apparent cases, one of two things must be true: Either (A) the force against the guilty subject must be something other than the sovereign power, or (B) the guilty person must not be a subject of the commonwealth. Neither of which implies Filmer’s worry, namely, the destruction of the commonwealth.
(A) can have the illusion of a genuine conflict between the subject and their sovereign if one conflates the artificial person of Leviathan with the natural person who bears its power (as I believe Filmer does). But Hobbes writes that “whosoever beareth the person of the people, or is one of that assembly that bears it, beareth also his own natural person” (19.4). So, if the natural person of the sovereign threatens the life of another person from without their sovereign power, it would be just for the person to kill the sovereign in self-defence. By doing so, they have not impeded the will of the sovereign qua Leviathan, but only the sovereign qua their natural person.
A person who is not in a commonwealth is in the state of nature, and since the artificial person of Leviathan behaves as though it is in the state of nature, all such persons are its enemies. Therefore, even if (B) is a conflict with the sovereign qua Leviathan, it must be a conflict between the sovereign and a person in nature. But an instance of (B) could have the illusion of a genuine conflict between the sovereign power and a deviant subject if one of them has done something to end the relationship (i.e., to break the original covenant). Hobbes writes at 21.21: “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.” Therefore, if the sovereign power, for whatever reason, impedes a person’s inalienable right, that person’s covenant is broken and they are no longer obliged with the rest of the commonwealth to obey them. Moreover, if a person uses any part of the natural right they had authorized to Leviathan (such as to kill another person), they have withheld Leviathan from the power to protect them, and thus the person has broken their covenant to the rest of the commonwealth (15.5). Both scenarios put the person back into the state of nature, where they are now an enemy of Leviathan. And since justice is literally defined by Hobbes as the keeping of covenants (15.2), and since there are no covenants in nature, only the persons act of breaking the covenant can be said, strictly speaking, to be an injustice. This explains why he says at 21.17 that any subsequent act of resistance against the sovereign is “no new unjust act,” for it would be external to the institution of justice altogether.
. Lastly, the breaking of the covenant does not result in the destruction of Leviathan in either (A) or (B) because the original covenant is between every person and every person, meaning the obligation of every other person to every other person holds notwithstanding the violation of anyone else’s obligation. Hobbes says that the death of the sovereign qua their natural person can cause the dissolution of Leviathan, but only if they have not selected an heir (21.21). I think this renders Filmer’s objection otiose, for any natural person is “free” to kill any other natural person, including the sovereign, as a matter of physical fact. Therefore, even if Leviathan is destroyed after the sovereign is killed, the cause of its destruction is not the killing, but the fact that there was no heir to assume the power after. In any case, Filmer must be wrong to say that the inalienability of the right to self-defence is destructive to Leviathan because it permits that any person may kill the sovereign, as Hobbes’s sovereign is not to be identified with any particular (that is to say, natural) person who is capable of being killed, or whom the deviant is capable of killing. Leviathan is, after all, the Immortal God.
Comment
In fact it might be impossible for the sovereign power (recall, not the person) to break the covenant, but the only reason for the sovereign power to attack a person is if they have broken the law, whereby they have broken the covenant anyway.
Nadia Miller 