BY JOHN GRAY
IDEAS
When Thomas Hobbes described life in a state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” he penned one of the most celebrated sentences in the English language. The 17th century philosopher asserted that without “a common power to keep them all in awe,” human beings fall into a state of nature—a condition of anarchical warfare and lawless predation. ▶
Hobbes’ analysis resonates powerfully at the present time, when states are failing in many parts of the world, leaving chaos and crime in their wake. Increasingly, his pessimistic vision seems vindicated by a far-reaching decline in the security human beings need in their everyday lives.
Yet paradoxically, Hobbes was also an optimist. Using their reason, he believed, human beings could lift themselves out of brutish conflict. Humankind could enjoy what in his masterpiece Leviathan(1651) he called “commodious living”—a civilized life of peace, prosperity, and culture through a social contract that would create a ruler all would obey. The power they brought into being—which could be a king or a republican assembly—would be unbounded in its powers, but its authority was limited to maintaining peace. No one had a divine or natural right to rule, and if the sovereign failed to protect its subjects, it could be overthrown. In focusing on individuals and their well-being, Hobbes was a liberal, possibly the only one worth reading today.
Hobbes’ insight that conflict is the default human situation has many lessons to teach us. One is that toppling tyrants does not secure liberty. In Iraq and later Libya, the West imposed regime change in the belief that it would lead to democracy. The result in both cases was the breakup of the state. The hard truth of which Hobbes reminds us is that politics is not a binary choice between freedom and tyranny.
HOBBES ALSO HELPS USunderstand the transformations in democracies during the 21st century. In a succession of crises, governments have moved from claiming to extend human freedom to promising shelter from danger. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2007–08 financial crisis saw Western governments expanding their power to levels unknown since the Second World War. The process continued in the policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The state assumed responsibility for the physical and mental health of the population. Not liberty but safety has become the overriding imperative. In sparing their citizens the anxieties that go with freedom of thought, the new Leviathans
