On Hobbesian Resistance Theory
| Author | Glenn Burgess |
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1994.tb01674.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1994),
XLII,
62-83
On Hobbesian Resistance Theory
GLENN
BURGESS
University
of
Canterbury, Christchurch
As
many have observed, Hobbes’s political theory contained elements of an inchoate
resistance theory. The present article identifies those elements, and considers their
significance for the general interpretation
of
Hobbes’s thought. It is suggested that
Hobbes’s resistance theory provides evidence of his belief that the artificial common-
wealth was built upon foundations of natural morality. If the sovereign ruler of any
commonwealth infringed natural morality then she might well face the natural
punishment of rebellion, even though in the artificial realm of civil law
this
rebellion
could never be justified.
In
the light of these remarks, the interpretation of Hobbes
given by Howard Warrender is reexamined. Although Warrender’s conclusion that
Hobbes grounded natural morality in the command of
God
cannot be sustained, it is
shown that much else in Warrender’s work remains valid. In particular, his conten-
tion that Hobbes was a genuine natural law thinker seems more defensible when
Hobbesian resistance theory is properly understood.
Hobbesian resistance’ theory does not appear, at first sight, a very promising
subject. When its existence has been recognized at all, it has been consigned to
the very periphery
of
Hobbes’s thought and accorded
no
significance in his
understanding
of
the practice of politics. Yet the undoubted fact that there does
exist within the Hobbesian texts something that we can call resistance theory
does raise questions that should not
be
ignored. It is the argument of this essay
that an appreciation
of
the place
of
resistance theory in the Hobbesian enter-
prise can have implications for our understanding of the overall complexion
of
Hobbes’s thought and can help
us
to understand why
so
many
of
Hobbes’s
contemporary readers found his work subversive of authority.2
I
The term ‘resistance’ as
I
use
it
covers both individual acts of disobedience and group acts of
violence towards the sovereign.
Because
of
the prevalence of private-law arguments for resistance in
medieval and early modern thought, these things were not always clearly distinguished from one
another, though Hobbes did, as we shall
see,
have a
firm
sense
of the differences between them. Very
useful on this subject is an article that has appeared after my own was written:
D.
Baumgold,
‘Pacifying politics: resistance, violence, and accountability in seventeenthcentury contract theory,’
Political Theory,
21
(1993).
627.
For Hobbes’s subversiveness
see
esp. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon,
A Brief View and Survey
of
the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors
to
Church and State. in
Mr.
Hobbes’s Book. Entitled
Leviathan
(Oxford,
1676);
and John Bramhall,
The Catching
of
the Leviathan, or the Great Whale
(London,
1658).
See
the discussion in
G.
Burgess, ‘Contexts for the writing and publication of
Hobbes’s
Leviathan’, History
of
Political Thought,
11
(1990),
675-702.
Note also the doctrines
associated with Hobbes by the University of Oxford in its
1683
‘Judgment and Decree’, conve-
niently reprinted in
D.
Wootton
(ed.).
Divine Right and Democracy: an Anthology
of
Political
Writing in Stuart England
(Harmondsworth, Penguin Books,
1986),
pp.
120-6.
C
Pohtical
Sl&
Akation
1994.
Publishzd
by
Blackwell
Publishers.
108
Cowley
Road.
Oxford
OX4
IJF,
UK
and
238
Main
Slrcel.
Suite
Sol.
Cambndp.
MA
02142.
USA.
GLENN
BURGESS
63
I
Hobbes, in one of his more notorious remarks, said that tyranny was not a form
of government separate from monarchy. It was just that ‘they that are discon-
tented under
Monarchy,
call it
Tyranny’.’
No
kings were tyrants, and
so
were all
kings.
No
king ceased to be a (legitimate) monarch simply by misgoverning; yet
all kings (no doubt) were tyrants in the eyes of at least some of their subjects. In
other words, the use of the term ‘tyrant’ involved not an objective analysis of
political structures but
a
merely subjective response to the experience of monar-
chical rule. For this reason, we would assume resistance to tyrants, still less
tyrannicide, could never be condoned.4 To allow resistance to the sovereign
upon such subjective grounds would be intolerably destructive
of
the founda-
tions of order. The sovereign could never be said to have acted unjustly to his
subjects.’
If the sovereign was never unjust, then where was there room for resistance
theory? The text of
Leviathan
actually suggests three possible paths to resis-
tance. All of them are, with some juggling, compatible with the passage in which
Hobbes declared that the sovereign could not
be
guilty of injustice, though one
of them
seems
to run directly counter to this proposition. All three of these
paths were very closely related.
The first and most straightforward way in which
Hobbes
could contemplate
resistance lay in the argument that, though the sovereign’s commands were
never unjust, there were nevertheless circumstances in which the subject could
justly disobey (and even actively attempt to oppose) those just commands.
Resistance, in this reading, was not legitimated by the sovereign’s injustice, for
he was never unjust. It was legitimated instead by the fact that even subjects
possessed a natural right to protect their own lives.6 This was what Hobbes
referred to, in chapter xxi of
Leviathan,
as ‘the true Liberty of a Subject’, which
consisted of those ‘things, which though commanded by the sovereign, he may
neverthelesse, without Injustice, refuse to
do’.’
This camed the implication that
though the sovereign could always rightly condemn
a
person to death, that
person could always justly do whatever he or she could to avoid death. This was
the case even when the person did rightly deserve death, for the criminal was
only defending his life ‘which the Guilty man may as well do, as the innocent’.8
A
second possible argument for the justification of resistance in a Hobbesian
world, intimately related to the first one, might be a straightforward deduction
from the account given by Hobbes of how civil society (which meant, in effect,
sovereignty) was first instituted. In
Leviathan,
though not earlier, this was
3
Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan
(ed. R. Tuck), (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
IBI),
p.
4
Cf.
Hobbes’s
remarks on tyrannicide,
Leviothan,
p. 226.
*
Hobbes,
Leviothan,
p.
124, also p.
148.
6
There are complications with Hobbes’s view of the renunciation and transfer
of
rights, revealed
especially by the discussion in R. Tuck,
Natural Rights Theories: their Origin
and
Development,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press,
1979), ch.
6.
The
matter is discussed further below. Cf.
J.
Hampton,
Hobbes
ond
the Social Contract Tradition,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1986).
pp.
11422; and
D.
Gauthier, ‘Hobbes’s
social
contract’, in
G.A.J.
Rogers and
A.
Ryan (eds),
Perspectives on
Thomas
Hobbes
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988), ch.
6.
130.
Hobbes,
Leviathan,
p.
150.
*
Hobbes.
Lpviarhan,
p.
152, cf. p. 219.
0
Political Studies
Assodalion,
1994
To continue reading
Request your trial