Modernity’s Second Coming in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals.
A cursory examination of the ideas in Thomas Hobbes’ and Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophies leaves one with the impression that they are polar opposites. As the paragon of the modern state, Hobbes positions himself squarely in the crosshairs of Nietzsche’s coruscating critique, not only of the Enlightenment but of the entire project of reason itself. Closer consideration, however, reveals that the faculties of Hobbes’ and Nietzsche’s thought bear a striking resemblance. Taken in conversation, Hobbes’ Leviathan and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals are but two sides of the same coin. In this essay, I argue that Hobbes’ project of freeing political society from the constraints of nature can actualise its democratic potential only by preserving and extending our creative capacity to act, not by restraining it. Cross-reading Nietzsche with Hobbes can develop a conception of politics and the role of reason within it that can exalt man’s capacity for greatness without compromising peace and security in society.
This paper will first examine Hobbes’ reflections on the ‘natural condition of mankind’ and his assertion that a fear of death forms the basis not only of the state but for a moral standard systematised in the ‘laws of nature’ (Hobbes 74). I will then examine Nietzsche’s conception of man in the ‘prehistory’ and the series of value inversions that led to the formation of the ‘bad conscience’ (Genealogy 85). Situated in this context, exploring the dialectical perspectives on reason espoused in both systems of thought becomes possible; Hobbes’ exaltation of human reason as the force that emancipates man from the limits of nature and Nietzsche’s as the convoluted product of a protracted slave morality that keeps man subjugated by his guilt and suffering. To this end, I argue that the human ‘will-to-power,’ as Nietzsche conceives it, can exist in conversation with, and even be strengthened by, Hobbes’ thought. With all this in mind, I will make a final case for the emancipation of mankind from nature that can address the limitations of Hobbes’ thought and the implications therefrom without simultaneously necessitating the complete expulsion of the modern project.
Classical deconstructions of political modernity posit Hobbes at its helm. This is because Hobbes’ theory contains a radical equality not present in the work of other thinkers of his time. This equality is made clearest in Hobbes’ articulation of the ‘natural condition of mankind,’ specifically that nature ‘hath made men so equal’ that ‘when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable’ (Hobbes 74). The driving force of this equality is ‘diffidence,’ which itself stems from a ‘restless desire [for] power’ to acquire the means to ‘live well,’ which the individual ‘cannot assure … without the acquisition of more’ (74, 58). Accordingly, this competition ‘inclineth [the individual] to contention,’ obedience, and, most of all, survival, stemming from a ‘fear of death’ (58, 74-75).
The conditions that arise in the ‘state of nature,’ wherein individuals are so driven by their self-preservation that they exist in perpetual conflict, are so intolerable that transcending it becomes the central object of Hobbes’ theory. Life in this state for Hobbes is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,’ and the ‘war of all against all’ that it breeds is antithetical, even hostile to any possibility of freedom or ‘hope in attaining our ends’ (74-76). One should not conflate this conception of nature with despair, however. This bleak reality articulated by Hobbes instead contains a profound democratic potential: it is precisely because all individuals are subject to this constant fear of death that they become fundamentally equal. From this equality emerges the implication that mankind need not accept this bleak state as its predestined fate. Rather, through the exercise of reason, man can construct systems of political life that allow him to transcend the violence of nature under the protection of authorities and structures that he dictates and controls.
What makes this theory so radical is that it implies there exists no emancipatory force for mankind so strong as its capacity for reason. To this end, an epistemological discussion is in order. For Hobbes, ‘REASON [sic] … is nothing but reckoning,’ a logic of ‘adding and subtracting,’ ‘of the consequences … agreed upon for the marking [sic]and signifying [sic]of our thoughts’ (22-23). In Hobbes’ methodology, he employs this ‘arithmetic’ form of reason to ‘subtract’ the established order of mankind from itself; it is only when human nature has been broken down to its finest grains, its most violent and primaeval form – i.e. civil war – that it can then ossify a creation so transcendent as to defy those forces of nature that imposed its once inescapable fate (23-24). This is a philosophical stipulation that is disputed, yet paralleled, in Nietzsche’s thought, but a further discussion of that is to come.
These acts of creation, by the ‘art of man,’ produce Hobbes’ ‘great Leviathan called a Commonwealth’ through ‘covenants’ and contracts (3, 82). These contracts logically necessitate a transfer of the individual’s ‘right of nature,’ which drives self-preservation, to an ‘artificial man’ in the form of the Sovereign, because, without this transfer of right, the state of nature will continue and there can be ‘no security to any man’ (80-81). Inherent in the logic underlying the performance of a covenant between the individual and the Sovereign is a proto-ethical duality, one that is not present in the ostensibly amoral state of nature but ingrained in the ‘keeping of promises’ and the ‘violation of faith’ that the structure of a contract necessarily implies (82). From this basis emerges a moral code, ossified by Hobbes’ ‘laws of nature,’ which sets out moral standards and conditions that hold justice, gratitude, complaisance, equity, etc. as the foremost values not merely of individuals, but of citizens of a shared Commonwealth (94-99).[1]
Critically, these moral conditions are not informed by any higher authority but that which is created by mankind itself. It is here, in this prototypical articulation of the modern state, that the full revolutionary potential of Hobbes’ theory lies. Though the fruits of the Hobbesian project were the first to succeed in employing reason to emancipate man from the limits of nature, the creation of that ‘great Leviathan’ also left man to reckon with the wrath of the forces that birthed it (3). The success of the modern state and mechanical sciences came with its own set of implications, among them, continual progress, the mastery of the earth, and the revival of a Protestant eschatology that posited work as a means of justifying suffering. The implications of modernity are thus dialectical: while it was this all-powerful reason that emancipated man from certain death in the state of nature, that grand promise it offered could also be misused to ensure man would become weakened and tamed.
It is here where Nietzsche’s critique becomes instructive. Nietzsche grounded the origin of modernity on bases that were similar to Hobbes’. In his view, man in his natural state possessed ‘old instincts of freedom’ that included ‘hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in charge, and destruction’ (Genealogy 85). Such a capacity for malevolence kept ‘prehistorical’ individuals in a state of ‘forgetfulness’ (57). The story of man’s formulation of reason was thus that of the ‘paradoxical task’ of breeding ‘an animal with the right to make promises’ (57). Though Nietzsche, unlike Hobbes, did not assert that this inclination was a natural response to prehistorical conditions that were intolerable, he recognised that the precondition to the formation of a society was a necessity for human beings to become ‘calculable, regular, necessary … to be able to stand security for his own future’ (58). From this necessity proceeds the ‘internalization [sic] of man,’ a process of ‘awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility [sic], the consciousness of this … power over oneself and over fate’ in which man developed a ‘soul’ or ‘conscience’ (84, 60). [2]
When, through this process of reason, man formed ‘communities,’ he simultaneously entrenched himself in a ‘creditor-debtor’ relationship (63, 88). In experiencing the ‘advantages of a communality’ such as being ‘protected … in peace … without fear of … hostile acts,’ the individual not only ‘first measured himself against another,’ but measured himself to the community that protected him, and thus develops both a ‘fear of the ancestor’ and a ‘consciousness of indebtedness’ to the community (70-71, 89). This guilt grew so ‘monstrous’ that it became the defining condition of mankind, invoking an everlastingly poignant suffering met with an everlastingly inadequate atonement (89).
In this reason-induced condition of society, Nietzsche argues emerged ‘the last man’ (Zarathustra 9). The comforts of modernity and its logic of constant progress first unleashed by Hobbes were allowed to run so free that it condemned mankind to a perpetual guilt-ridden existence and stripped him of the capacity to create ‘dangerously’ (Genealogy 43). This ‘last man’ has lost the ability to ‘give birth to a dancing star,’ lost every sense of ‘love … creation’ and ‘longing’ due to his capacity for ‘consciousness,’ for reason-gone-haywire (Zarathustra 9-10). In this world, Nietzsche argues man ‘no longer possessed his former guides’ and was ‘reduced to thinking, inferring, reckoning, co-ordinating, cause and effect’ and, as a result, developed a culture of narcissism that crushed the human ‘will-to-power’ – man’s capacity to create ‘over and beyond’ himself (Genealogy 84, 79).
Implicit in Nietzsche’s character of the ‘last man’ is a compelling democracy that calls upon the individual to navigate the suffocating ‘ressentiment’ that the excesses of reason have produced, in service of a project to revive the greatness of human life, lest man allows modernity’s golden promise to be stamped out before his helpless eyes using the very tools that he furnished (73). I nevertheless argue, however, that Nietzsche’s critique of progress itself invariably discounts those aspects of the human capacity for reason that first enabled man’s transcendence from nature, a state that is not only inhospitable to the exercise of reason, but one in which reason cannot exist at all.
In examining my construction of reason thus far as an equaliser and liberator of potential, one is inclined, rightfully, to articulate the dangers of that claim. Indeed, the early modern project of transcending nature with reason has enabled the view that the earth, and all its natural inhabitants, are mere objects to be mastered. This has sanctioned the most extreme forms of violence against the earth and other forms of life in the name of ‘scientific progress.’
To properly address this assertion, I must once again turn to the implications of Hobbes’ theory. His conception of nature stipulates that ‘in such condition there is no place for industry … no culture of the earth … no arts, no letters, no society, and … continual fear and danger of violent death’ (Hobbes 76). To remain in constant fear of those incommodities of man’s natural behaviour leaves no room for reason and, consequently, creation of any sort, because reason is a force that is necessarily life-giving, and its precondition is life and the continuance thereof.
The incipient object of reason is to create beyond a natural state that would entail certain death, because a form of life beyond mere birth, procreation, and death cannot exist in a state that is so violent, and the ability to create ‘over and beyond’ oneself cannot be composed when preoccupied with fears of death (Genealogy 79). The Leviathan, in its most fundamental form, was precisely that creation that gave man a life that, though flawed, at minimum contained the potential for greatness by guaranteeing an environment of security within which that potential could be fairly exercised.
While reason, and indeed the powers of the Leviathan it created, can and have been used to sanction terrible forms of violence, the modern conception of reason does not stipulate its use toward ends that are benevolent nor violent, it merely releases the potential for action in one direction or the other. The ends for which reason is employed are subject to the judgement of individuals, whose actions can be critiqued through the exercise of those same faculties applied in the opposite direction. Moreover, those same faculties that inflicted violence on the earth have also enabled man to exact forces that are restorative and life-giving. To do away with reason entirely, and to dispose of the potential that the modern project promises, solely because it could, rather than will, be used for violence is to rob the individual not only of the capacity to act violently but to act at all. To conclude: without reason, what does man, in his perpetual incapacity, have at all?
Nietzsche’s implication that progress has led man to meaninglessness is also true. The modern project, as conceived by thinkers like Hobbes, succeeded in guaranteeing the potential for greatness, but it did not incite action in one direction or the other. In Nietzsche’s vacuous world, the capacity to create, best served by reason, still exists and can be revived. Taken together, the project of ‘creating dangerously’ that Nietzsche sets out is not incompatible with the Hobbesian formulation of reason; if anything, the two are inseparable from one another (Genealogy 79). It is only when Hobbes and Nietzsche are read in conversation that reason can be realigned toward more ambitious, transcendent ends without simultaneously endangering the structure that enables its continual reformulation. Restoring man’s ‘greatness,’ therefore, rests not on an outright rejection of either project but on a process of reorienting towards those uses of reason and creation that work in service of transcendence.
[1] For my analysis, it suffices to discuss not what those laws of nature, as a moral system, entail but merely how they emerge in the context of the social contract. See Leviathan p. 79-100 for further reading.
[2] A further discussion of the emergence of guilt, and noble-slave morality is instructive but goes beyond the scope of this analysis. See Genealogy, p. 71, 33-35 for further reading.
Works Cited
Hobbes, Thomas, and E. M. Curley. Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668. Hackett, 2007.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Kaufmann. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Modern Library, 1995.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Walter Arnold Kaufmann. On the Genealogy of Morals. Vintage Books, 2011.
line of best fit 