Ciceronian Review

Lloyd's Hobbes VI

The right of self-defense:

The Laws of Nature include a right to whatever one judges necessary to one's own life.  That right is certainly present in advance of the compact establishing the sovereign, and in some form survives the compact.  (A person has the right to resist execution, according to Hobbes, so there is some self-defense or self-preservation right that survives into the commonwealth.)  Assuming such a right, one would want to get an idea of the limits.  What does it mean to 'defend one's own life'?  Does the right countenance taking whatever is necessary to stay alive?  Is stay alive to mean survive?  In other words, how does one keep defend one's life from encompassing a right to what will enable a better life than otherwise. I don't think it will work to try to set out some baseline of survival, for which one can take what is necessary, but not more.  (Aside from the nutty flavor of such an undertaking -- how many calories is one entitled to take -- I don't see how the baseline remains in a single place, with a single description invariant over time.)  Would the right include probabilistic elements -- right to what is likely necessary, or necessary to some set of chances?  These are routes to the right of self-defense swallowing everyone's claims to, well, anything at all.  Right back to right of all to all, it would seem, save that the latter does not survive the compact and the former does.  Or have I missed it, and this right too is what one gives up for the sovereign? 

Reciprocity suggests that can’t take stuff from others we don’t want taken form us.  If that is so, then how does ‘right to defend his own life’ work at all?  I can do what I judge necessary to stay alive, which must include taking from others.  Surely I don’t also commit to not taking from others because I don’t want them to take from me.  

Lloyd writes here (239-40) in terms of "sincerely needful for self-defense."  I can see why that phrase gets into the discussion, but not a justification.  Nothing about the Laws of Nature or the derivation or the compact suggests a justification for a limit of the right of self-defense to what is "sincerely needful for self-defense."  First off, it is a version of the honest belief trade; honest is just an emphasis and here sincerely is just a bit emphasis.  Second, if it has content, it has to roll back to private judgment and it stays there.  That means the right is to whatever one thinks one needs.  No constraint or limit there.  And the right remains after the sovereign joins us.  But private judgment cannot be allowed to operate on such a level post-sovereign and the right makes no sense if it is determined by the sovereign.    

Paul

Rand Paul's interviews since winning the Republican nomination in Kentucky led to a flurry of discussion of libertarian attitudes towards the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act.  At Crooked Timber, a series of posts about libertarianism and conservatism and standing on principle, all focused on civil rights.  I am happy to see the discussion, but it often seems to miss the real story.  The difficult stances of libertarians are not limited to civil rights, race, and public accommodations.  If Dr. Paul is a libertarian, someone should be asking him about the FDA, Consumer Product Safety Commission, etc.  For him, these are areas the state should not be active in.  Why would there be a safety agency for mines or oil drilling under a libertarian theory?  Shouldn't he be squarely for disestablishing such agencies?  When you get to it, what does he have to say about the fact that he is licensed?  State control of professions should be on the bad list.  How does he explain his exploitation of that injustice (which is how he ought to describe it?)  The problem of practical accommodation of principle can and should be pressed in the present, about things alot less emotionally freighted than civil rights and Jim Crow.

I don't know what Paul's views are on these topics.  It is a bit sad that none of the press seem to understand the degree to which libertarians condemn the social structures of the country.  They don't even seem to get that Paul has to accept racial covenants on land.  And sex for employment. 

Lloyd's Hobbes V

    At 192 Lloyd claims that is it analytic that one may define humans to include a desire for self-preservation.  Did Hobbes believe that?  Why? It is plain that plenty of people do not desire self-preservation -- suicides come to mind, and there are plenty of others who lose interest in themselves.  Are such creatures not human?  As there is no biological difference sufficient to mark such folk as not human (whatever it is that gets one into the camp), I don't see what the meaning of 'analytic' is in this context.  In general, human beings, like the other biological creatures, typically care for self-preservation, but I don't see how one gets anything stronger.  And, to the extent Hobbes' political theory or his Laws of Nature, calls for something stronger, the theories are failures.  Not just because the definition is so off mark -- it is not just the ill who give up life or fail to take meaningful steps toward self-preservation.  One of the explanatory goals for a Hobbesian theory has to be how the subjects are induced to go off to war for the happy sovereign (or anyone else).  The psychology of commitment to community (of some significant kind) is important to this sort of theory.  (It is a theory that is supposed to be more or less deductive -- anyone thinking properly should follow to the proffered conclusions, which include a duty of ultimate self-sacrifice.  Because it is a reasoned argument, can't make use of biology to get sacrifice for family (and thence some conflation of family with a wider group or transfer of loyalty, etc.).) 

A bit earlier, in discussing the duty to resist an usurper 147 note 13), Lloyd misses a small argument -- the duty to resist cannot be complete (cannot require resistance to the end) because if that were so the usurper would always have an overwhelming incentive to extirpate the conquered.  The duty to resist an usurper (or invader) has to be limited.  At some point, there would be a duty to submit to the usurper, as that is the way to stay alive and to get back peace.     

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Lloyd's Hobbes IV

    For Hobbes, state of nature is, most importantly, “a state in which ‘private judgment’ is the measure of good and evil.”  (120)  ‘Private judgment is the measure of good and evil’ seems to mean that there is no external decision process for adjudication of disputes concerning good and evil.  There is no reliable (?) means to determine and settle what counts as good and evil.  (I assume that good and evil is meant somehow relative to human beings, but I am not entirely sure.  It has to be relative to something or one loses the ‘x if good F’ analysis.)  In any event, we get out of the state of nature when good and evil are not a matter of private judgment.  That is, when the compact gives rise to a sovereign, or the sovereign, who then has the right (?) or power (?) to determine good and evil (which the sovereign does through the right to adjudicate any disputes concerning good and evil).

    Now the sovereign is not itself subject to the social compact because it is not a subject at all, it receives unfettered power to adjudicate obligations and conflicts.  The sovereign is not subject to any contractual obligations – the social contract is among the subjects strictly.  So the sovereign has only natural duties, i.e., only the duty to adhere to the Laws of Nature.  (135)  Sovereign has the duty to instruct subjects on the import of the Laws of Nature, and to issue authoritative interpretations of the Laws of Nature.  (135). 

    Why would the sovereign b subject to the Laws of Nature?  The reasoning process which demonstrates or discovers is dependant on a set of conditions which do not apply to the sovereign.  (I am not clear what the right words are – there is ambiguity about the status of the Laws of Nature – on the one hand they are demonstrated through reasoning and so might be creations of mind, and on the other, they seem to be discovered by reasoning and to have normative force whether thought of or not.  There is a moral realism streak in the work.)  My point is not that the state of nature is gone – for the sovereign it appears not to be off the map as it for the subjects.  The sovereign is still in a world where private judgment (the sovereign’s) is the sole measure of good and evil; and also there is no longer the Right of All to All, which looks to be essential to the development of the Laws of Nature.  Because the subjects are bound to obey the sovereign, the theorem of reciprocity would not apply with respect to the sovereign, and so the sovereign does not get entwined in the considerations which drive the Laws of Nature. 

    The sovereign would have a duty to instruct the subjects on the Laws of Nature and to issue interpretations (which are authoritative because the sovereign’s).  But would those not just follow out of self-interest of the sovereign, interest in maintaining position?  

    So then to the dictum which captures the Laws of Nature:  “Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.”  (137)  Getting that to apply to the sovereign will depend on how we describe the doing.

Lloyd's Hobbes III

At 83 Lloyd says that "good" for Hobbes means "x is a good F", and so there is no commitment to good simpliciter.  As a result, good is discoverable by reason "in virtue of its falling under a general concept." Hobbes is also committed to a fact of the matter about moral good.  He seems a moral realist.  The Laws of Nature are then grounded in part on good for human beings?  I think that is how it would go, but that seems not nearly enough for the realistic language elsewhere.  Or is it that moral good falls under some aspect of truth -- and not the "x is a good F" idea.  This piece, like the materialism, seems not to fit with the central political theory.  Are the Laws of Nature good in the sense of good rules for human beings?  That surely does not fit with the religious foundations, which clearly commit to moral realism. 

Maybe I am just misunderstanding this piece.  Maybe one could be a realist about "x is a good F".   Probably can get to that if one thinks there is a fact of the matter re such propositions, i.e., it is true that x is a good F.  That seems possible, but the religious aspect still does not work, and that is central to the Hobbes political theory.

Kagan

Balkin's comments on the process to date are right.

Lloyd's Hobbes II

    Back to the state of nature - I am still struggling to get straight just what the conditions are for the Hobbesian state of nature.  It is not Locke's state of nature, which is pretty much just life without a state.  Hobbes had something different in mind.  He excluded children for example, and the state is of adults fully formed at the outset.  They interact in social ways, yet there are no obligations among them; or no obligations except those derived from reason alone.  At least no covenants giving rise to obligation.

    Children have obligations to parents, and so are never in a state of nature.  Children have obligations of gratitude and maybe obedience.  But how could an infant have an obligation (or a child) if, as Hobbes seems to say, obligation derives from voluntary action?  At 74 we are told that obligations are voluntary undertakings.  An infant is not even competent to act in a way that makes sense of voluntary action.  Is the voluntary action then later, when an older child or adolescent?  Is it that the child has on obligation just in virtue of the dependence relation?  If that is so, then why is obligation limited to human beings and not all other animals?  Is that solved by the stipulation of history – Hobbes was of his time and so saw only human beings as reasoning? 

    Back to childhood obligations.  Is voluntary for Hobbes just whatever is not physically compelled?  That is about the only way I can see that voluntary undertakings are required to give rise to obligations and children have obligations to their parents.  That is an oddly low standard, and I am unsure how it could be consistent in the end with the notion that obligations later give rise to a sovereign.   

            As no one is ever in a Hobbesian state of nature, and it is not even clear how such a state gets described sensibly (I admit it, I still have no good understanding of "social" means in the context of this state of nature, because all such interactions seem to include a variety of agreements which, by definition, are excluded.)  We do not have any reliable understanding of what creatures in that state would think or do, it does not appear that generation of a political obligation can work.  More to it, generation of political obligation from a state of nature is along the lines of political theory for elves. 

State of Nature

The state of nature for Hobbes is a state where there is human life without obligations but with natural duties.  Obligations are voluntary undertakings.  So says Lloyd at 74 and again at around 230.  While there are no obligations in the state of nature, people still interact in ordinary social fashions.  And then, in partial explanation of the 'mushroom' remark (Hobbes' theory is for men appearing full grown like mushrooms), at 77 we get an explanation of why the state of nature excludes children.  Children have obligations to their parents (Or is it natural duties?  That works under the natural duties account given by Hobbes).  But how could children ever have obligations to anyone?  Obligations derive from voluntary action, which surely could not apply to an infant.  Perhaps to children old enough to care for themselves, who then have some choice about accepting parental gifts and care.  Being in a dependent relation cannot be enough, as that cannot confine the resultant obligations to human beings.  All sorts of other animals live through dependent relations, so they too would have these obligations. 

But that is mostly a sidelight.  The interesting piece is understanding what is taken out to get to the state of nature, which has no historical content.  It is not intended as a genealogical explanation or justification of the sovereign (I was going to say  'state' but that would be wrong).  Apparently, it is just political obligation that is removed, and then we see if we can derive a justification for a sovereign.  Political obligations cannot be voluntary obligations.  We assume ordinary social interactions among people in the state of nature.  But a recognizably ordinary social community would include things like promises and contracts and exchanges, other economic interactions, personal undertakings, and so on.  How would all of that occur if there was no obligation?  What sort of social interaction assumes the absence of promises.  Is the idea that there are promises and contracts, for example, but no enforcement of them or no regular enforcement?  I don't see how that could work.  No enforcement mechanisms and still have promises or truth-telling?  That is not plausible.  Is it instead that there are no formal mechanisms that enforce?  I suppose that is possible, if one is sufficiently narrow-minded about what would count as a formal mechanism.  (Most enforcement of rules of social interactions are not subject to any effective formal enforcement, but rely on a host of informal mechanisms.)  That would risk destroying the interest in deriving a sovereign from a state of nature.  Keep in mind that the description is for a set of individuals, not interacting groups, so being able to talk of obligations to fulfill agreements is not a small thing. 

Maybe I am misunderstanding the notion of sovereign in this scheme.

Death of Modesty

It took some time to get to the United States, but Modesty Blaise is no more.  At least, the creator of the great Modesty Blaise is no more.  Peter O'Donnell died last week.  I have long been a fan of the Modest Blaise novels.  I always found them fun.  You might think of it this way: Modesty is to Bond (the new Daniels version) as Simone de Beauvoir is to Sartre.

Unfortunately, none of the novels are available in the US, except through used book stores.  You can get them new in India, however.  

There are two Blaise films -- skip the Monica Vitti film; the later one is much more like the novels.

Recounting the Dead

Every year around May 1, I. Somin renews his call for turning the day into a memorial for victims of communism:  Victims of Communism Day, May Day being a big holiday under the Soviet regime and generally celebrated by Communist Parties worldwide.  (Somin does not much care that May Day as labor celebration long before the Soviet Union, or that in the US May Day is largely celebrated as Law Day.  But that is not important.)  The basis for the idea is that Communist regimes killed a tremendous number of people in the 20th century.  No dispute from me that the regimes did in fact kill very large numbers, particularly of their own citizens.  100 million is not an unreasonable estimate.  What puzzles me about the suggestion is that it seems to be about the number of dead.  That is puzzling because Somin is,  I think, a libertarian.  It is an odd sort of libertarianism that has the numbers count.  And once we start with counting the numbers, it all gets very sticky. 

Libertarianism built on a consequentialist groundwork is odd, and hard to do.  It requires a bunch of empirical assumptions that are hard to justify.  One could try a rights consequentialism, or something of the general sort, but it really gets to be sort of faith based.  And caring so much about the number would not fit even then.  If the numbers count for how bad or evil, then why would the numbers not count throughout?  And why not balancing, and so on.  Libertarianism is after all about some set of core rights and liberties which don't get set off against other interests.

Another sticky part is the comparison of numbers.  Why would it be just numbers and not proportions of populations.  War now kills much larger numbers of people, in part because there are so many more people about now (or were in the 20th century).  So getting bigger numbers is not so hard to do.  Would not relative numbers or proportions be the better sort of gage?  That would give a better historical measure (or set of measures).  In this context, consider a summing up of number of dead from capitalism or imperialism, and so on.  (The historical numbers for the slave trade are pretty impressive.

Another sticky part about the numbers is that 100 million is a very big number of dead.  But  there are competitors in the number of dead category -- transportation deaths, etc.  What is the category for the dead who will count?