Defending the Hobbesian Right of Self-Defense

The question about innocent bystanders has been hotly debated in legal and philosophical circles. For example, see Larry Alexander , "Justification and Innocent Aggressors," Wayne Law Review 33 (1987): 1179-89; Michael Gorr, "Private Defense," Law and Philosophy 9 (1990): 241-68; and Jeff McMahan , "Self-Defense and the Innocent Attacker," Ethics 104 (1994): 252-90.

Jeremy Waldron , "The Morality of Criminal Law: A Symposium in Honor of Professor Sandy Kadish: Self-Defense: Agent-Neutral and Agent-Relative Accounts," California Law Review 88 (2000): 715.

Quentin Skinner, for example, has little to say about the basis and import of Hobbes's claim that subjects necessarily retain a right of self-defense in civil society. Indeed, the term "self-defense" does not appear at all in his book, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

For example, see A.P. Martinich , Hobbes (New York : Routledge, 2005), 117-22.

Two notable exceptions are Claire Finkelstein , "A Puzzle About Hobbes's Right of Self-Defense," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2000): 332-61; and Eleanor Curran , Reclaiming the Rights of the Hobbesian Subject (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Both Finkelstein and Curran take themselves to be defending Hobbes on this issue.

Gordon Schochet , "Hobbes and the Voluntary Basis of Society," in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, edited by Mary Dietz (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 62; Deborah Baumgold , Hobbes's Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 29, 30; and James R. Martel , "The Radical Promise of Thomas Hobbes: The Road not taken in Liberal Theory," Theory and Event 4 (2000): 34.

Jean Hampton , Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 197; and Glenn Burgess , "Hobbesian Resistance Theory," Political Studies 42 (1994): 74. See also, Richard Tuck , Natural Rights Theories ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 120-2. Interestingly, Tuck in a later work claims to no longer see such a contradiction; see Richard Tuck , Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 309.

Hobbes's works are cited by chapter and paragraph number, using the following editions of his texts: Thomas Hobbes , The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic , ed. Ferdinand Tönnies ( London, Frank Cass & Co, 1969 ); Thomas Hobbes , On the Citizen [De Cive], eds. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Thomas Hobbes , Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994); Thomas Hobbes , De Homine in Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company , 1991).

For a good example, see Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 304-7.

See Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 317. Hobbes does not always include the right of self-defense qualification when he discusses the social contract. The most striking omission of the right of self-defense is found in his first description of the social contract in Leviathan, where he does not mention the right of self-defense at all (Leviathan, 17.13).

It is debatable whether Hobbes is better understood as offering two arguments or two versions of the same argument. In Leviathan, they appear in the same chapter, but the psychological impossibility argument comes a number of paragraphs after the conceptual impossibility argument. Moreover, while there is significant overlap between them, they represent sufficiently different lines of reasoning. Thus, I hold that it is helpful to treat them separately. Other commentators, notably Claire Finkelstein and Jeremy Waldron, have also separated these arguments, though they name them differently than I do. Claire Finkelstein terms them the "argument from benefit" and the "argument from involuntariness"; and Waldron calls them the "argument from the unintelligibility of a covenant renouncing self-defense" and the argument from the "impossibility of renouncing the right of self-defense."

J.W.N. Watkins , Hobbes's System of Ideas ( London: Hutchinson & Co., 1973 ), 93; and Mark Murphy , "Hobbes on the Evil of Death," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 82 (2000): 36-61. The claim is echoed in many of the canonical commentaries on Hobbes; for example, see Leo Strauss , The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 121.

Hampton , Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, 15; and Gregory Kavka , Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 80-81.

Waldron , "Self-Defense: Agent-Neutral and Agent-Relative Accounts," 721.

Sharon Lloyd , Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 250-4. A number of others have also made the argument that Hobbes should not be interpreted as endorsing a view of human psychology in which death is always the greatest evil (e.g., Bernard Gert , "Hobbes's Psychology," in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 163; and A.P. Martinich , Hobbes: A Biography ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 365).

Kavka , Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, 25; and Burgess , " Hobbesian Resistance Theory," 69.

Perhaps this is too quick. There seem to be at least two things that can be said in defense of the standard interpretation on this point. First, at least some of these auxiliary rights might be explicable on the standard interpretation-those that are exercised in response to the threat of physical harm or death. One might, for example, think that the right to resist imprisonment could be derived from the right of self-defense, because accepting imprisonment arguably means subjecting myself to others who have the power to determine whether I live or die. I am doubtful this strategy can succeed. As Finkelstein notes: " it might not take very much to induce me to abandon this right [to resist imprisonment]. There is probably some large sum of money someone could offer me that would make me regard abandoning it as worthwhile, especially if the imprisonment were of limited duration" (Finkelstein, "A Puzzle About Hobbes's Right to Self-Defense," 339). Alternatively, one could argue that Hobbes viewed the "self" expansively in a way that encompassed both a person's loved ones and reputation. However, while Hobbes does, at times, speak in this way, I think we should resist this interpretation. He neither develops nor defends it anywhere; nor is it clear how one would draw precise boundaries around such a "self" to get a right of self-defense off the ground. Of course, a longer discussion of Hobbes's true liberties of subjects is required to completely dispel these worries. However, such a discussion would take me far a field of the central line of argument in this paper. However, I hope that it is clear that such applications of the right of self-defense are not straightforwardly accommodated by the standard interpretation. I am grateful to Kinch Hoekstra for pushing me to think about these points.

Finkelstein , "A Puzzle About Hobbes's Right of Self-Defense," 338.

These claims are drawn out in the text as follows: "Upon this ground a man that is commanded as a soldier to fight against the enemy, though his sovereign have right enough to punish his refusal with death, may nevertheless in many cases refuse without injustice, as when he substituteth a sufficient soldier in his place; for in this case he deserteth not the service of the commonwealth. And there is allowance to be made for such natural timorousness, not only to women (of whom no such dangerous duty is expected), but also to men of feminine courage. When armies fight, there is, on one side or both, a running away; yet when they do it not out of treachery, but fear, they are not esteemed to do it unjustly, but dishonorably. For the same reason, to avoid battle is not injustice, but cowardice. But he that enrolleth himself a soldier, or taketh imprest money, taketh away the excuse of a timorous nature, and is obliged, not only to go to the battle, but also not to run away from it without his captain's leave" (Leviathan, 21.16).

Hobbes adds a puzzling, and perhaps troubling caveat at the very end of this discussion in which he says that "when the defense of the commonwealth, requireth at once the help of all that are able to bear arms, everyone is obliged." This makes it sounds like ordinary subjects can be obligated to fight under certain circumstances. While I would argue this is not, in fact, the correct way to take Hobbes's point, I'll set aside this wrinkle for the purposes of this paper. For an interesting discussion of this case, see Kavka , Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, 424-33.

Deborah Baumgold , "Soldiers and Subjects: Hobbes on Military Service ," History of Political Thought (1983): 71.

There are further questions about how to understand Hobbes's description of the second purpose of the social contract, namely, "a more contented life." It is clear that Hobbes thinks that the purpose of the commonwealth is not simply to ensure the mere survival of its subjects, but it is not at all clear what more is required or what Hobbes thinks is a more contented life. For interesting discussions of this issue see Kavka's Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory and Curran's Reclaiming the Rights of the Hobbesian Subject. For the purpose of the current paper, however, I set this issue aside. After all, we must first establish the narrow right of self-defense before we discuss the additional requirements Hobbes might have had in mind.

Sharon Lloyd makes a similar point saying, "the stability of the mighty commonwealth which has the power to punish us without our cooperation, does not depend on our willingness to refrain from attempting to defend ourselves" ( Sharon Lloyd , Hobbes's Self-Effacing Natural Law Theory," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001): 298.

Hobbes invokes these three principles (the reasonable expectations principle, the fidelity principle, and the necessity principle) at various points in justifying the right of self-defense. However, it is plausible to think that each one of them alone could establish the claim. There are further questions about the use of these principles to establish the true liberties of subjects. Developing these applications of the right of self-defense seems to require the use of different principles at different times in order to establish the various rights. However, developing these lines of argument goes beyond the scope of this project.