Preamble — This is part of my response to an essay exam on some of the early contract theorists (Mostly Hobbes and Locke). One of my other short essays, which I haven’t (yet?) posted, explains exactly how I think one becomes obligated by reason to obey the sovereign. I haven’t posted it because the footnotes are obnoxiously voluminous, and I want to rework it a little. The short version is that one has a rational obligation to preserve the security of one’s life, and then usually also to preserve one’s life itself. It is for this reason that one institutes the all-powerful sovereign, to set up a secure state wherein one can safely interact with others; in order to preserve this state, and to avoid the sovereign’s retribution, one obeys the sovereign. My argument was actually a little more involved than that brief sketch, and possibly worth reading on some special account of the meaning of the phrase “worth reading,” so if I can make it a tidier read I may post it at some point. But, for the purposes of the following essay, one institutes and obeys the sovereign in order to stay alive.
The Sovereign in War — It is clear from Hobbes’ writing that he did not consider it necessary for the sovereign to be a world-sovereign, and as such war could be a feature of the sovereign’s command. Hobbes specifies for instance that the sovereign can appoint ministers for special administration in war, and also that if the sovereign is captured in war that the commonwealth cannot independently capitulate. It is necessary to show, therefore, that reason continues to obligate one to obey in warfare between civil societies. I contend that situations can arise with significant frequency during war wherein this obligation is at best on unsure ground.
One cannot rationally cede to the sovereign one’s own life or complete physical liberty, given that the purpose of covenanting to institute a sovereign is the preservation and furtherance of one’s pursuits through the achievement of basic security of life (or preservation of one’s life, depending on how one reads Hobbes).
Simultaneously, in a war between commonwealths, a minister of the sovereign (or the sovereign himself) may order a soldier (or group of soldiers) into a situation which they are unlikely to survive. For instance, a small group of soldiers might be ordered to cover the retreat of the larger force, to mount a dangerous frontal assault while the rest of the force flanks, or to lead an assault against an emplacement. It could hardly be said that the first allied soldiers to set foot on the beaches of Normandyhad a good chance of survival. It is also plausible that in a smaller number of circumstances a minister of the sovereign would order a soldier (or soldiers) into a situation in which death would be virtually certain, and that this too would be a normal feature of warfare.[1] If the reason which obligates one to obey the sovereign is that by obeying the sovereign one’s life is preserved or secured, it seems that under these circumstances predictable to the commonwealth and sovereignty that this reason no longer applies; therefore, there may be (significant) situations in which one is not obligated to obey the sovereign.
Hobbes would presumably reply that a war of all against one instigated by the sovereign against a deserter is worse than a war against one hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand enemy soldiers. This begins to sound less plausible, however, if one considers the immediate risk to one’s life involved in jumping out of a trench into a wall of artillery, machine-gun fire, and nerve gas.[2] Still, let us suppose that (by some carefully derived statistic) the danger to one’s life (from the Sovereign) is greater than the danger involved in leaping from the trench. What I suggest is that there is a threshold of danger to one’s life where the precise level of danger compared to other levels of danger ceases to matter. With security of life as the primary reason for which one obeys the sovereign, there is a certain point at which the degree of danger posed makes life so uncertain that no greater degree of danger makes one’s life less certain, because one’s life is thoroughly uncertain. So, if one leaps from the trench toward an enemy’s emplacement, one’s life is completely uncertain, no less so than if the sovereign instigates a war of all against one. If one is forced to choose between these two options, then, one has no reason to choose one over the other, and consequently is not obligated by reason to obey the sovereign.
However, Hobbes hypothetically replies – The power of the sovereign is such he may not only render one’s life completely uncertain, but may render one’s death certain. Now one is obligated to leap over the trench, because one cannot rationally accede to one’s certain death, in as much as life is the prerequisite for the pursuit of one’s appetites.
So one must leap the trench despite the high likelihood of death; however, it remains to be seen whether one must accept certain death in warfare on the order of the sovereign (for instance, to throw oneself on a grenade). If it is only highly likely that the sovereign will (successfully) kill a soldier who refuses such an order, then the certainty of death presumably trumps the order, such that one is not obligated by reason to obey it. On the other hand, if (because of the omnipotence of the sovereign) either option (obey or not obeying) means certain death, then one is again at an impasse. Reason cannot recommend one over the other, and so reason does not obligate one to obey the order.
Now, if the sovereign wishes to obligate the soldier to obey, the sovereign must determine some appetite or desire of the soldier to interfere with the fulfillment of, one which is not dependent on the soldier remaining alive, and which is moreover sufficiently desired to outweigh all other appetites which might be fulfilled by the soldier remaining alive. The only option is for the sovereign to take hostages from the soldier’s family and friends, and to punish the soldier by killing or grievously harming them. Self-sacrifice is consistent with Hobbes’ picture of human nature.[3] One could through empathy take the ends of another as one’s own and still participate in the war of all against all, because one would still act to fulfill the other person’s appetites and react in fear of that person being harmed; furthermore, one would still not have any basis on which to trust the person for whom one is acting empathetically, and that person would have no guarantee that one would continue to act on their behalf. What Hobbes picture of the war of all against all cannot accommodate, however, is reliable self-sacrifice, and it is reliable self-sacrifice that is necessary for a system of hostages to be effective. [4] The monarch, in order to make use of hostages, would have to assume that people could count on each other to act on one another’s behalf, and in effect would himself trust the soldier to act self-sacrificially. If human beings can indeed rely on each other to sacrifice their own lives and interests for bonds of affection, or even ideology, then there is no reason to institute a sovereign to whom one owes absolute obeisance. To be sure, there would still be some strife, danger and privation in the state of nature, but the same is true under a sovereign to whom one owes absolute obeisance; the state of nature would not be absolutely intolerable such that anything else would be preferable.
We see then that Hobbes’ picture of the commonwealth includes the possibility of war, and that situations could arise in war where a member of the commonwealth would no longer be obligated by reason to obey the orders of the sovereign. The one form of recourse (the taking of hostages) by the sovereign to maintain authority is unavailable to Hobbes, because it is not consistent with the grounds on which one is obligated by reason to establish a sovereign.
Postamble — While I am obviously willing to accept that my argument is flawed on numerous grounds, there is one flaw that came to my attention even as I was writing it. This flaw is my total lack of first-hand familiarity with warfare, never having myself landed at Normandy, jumped a trench, or participated in a diversionary charge. Though these are empirical claims, I presuppose without direct evidence (other than a sketchy familiarity with historical forms of warfare) the degree of danger involved in these actions. Moreover, though I “argue” briefly for it, in essence I presuppose that situations where a commander orders a soldier to (virtually) certain death are plausible; in point of fact, I do not know this, and by “suppose it to be plausible,” mean simply that I need it to be true for the purposes of my argument. Nonetheless, I think this a “plausible” challenge to applicability to the Sovereign’s authority-in-all-relevant-situations.
-J. Judd
[1] A normal feature of warfare, that is, rather than the sovereign forcing his subjects into a state of complete uncertainty/certain death during, but for no reason necessitated by, the war.
[2] It is also worth noting that, if there is a war between commonwealths, there are probably places to flee outside the dominion of one’s current sovereign, lessening the certainty of punishment by the sovereign.
[3] Hobbes might not have thought so, but I submit that (on the scale suggested up to this point) it is.
[4] We might add to human hostages the possibility of the sovereign destroying the soldier’s life’s work, etc. That is, we might expand the genre of this option to taking hostage anything valued external to the soldier’s survival (with other humans as the most likely candidate). The effectiveness of this would still be inconsistent with the “war of all against all,” because if the creator can reliably value his work over his own life, there is no reason others could not also reliably value it, providing a basis for reliability outside of the sovereign’s power.
