Hobbes' Ideal State

 

Hobbes describes the state of nature as a brutal place where people constantly fight with each other. This is because there is no common power that can prevent people from fighting. According to Hobbes, this justifies the legitimacy of the state, but it is not enough for Mill. Mill views liberty of expression as an essential quality and according to him, the state should provide it to its subjects. These thinkers offer a different reason for why states' legitimacy should be justified. However, with Weber’s contemplation on this subject, it is unveiled that a mixture of these reasons forms the most effective justification, that is a state’ legitimacy can be justified only if it establishes order, peace and allows its citizens to be free to express their opinions and, the state’s ruler should use ethic of conviction and ethic of responsibility to dictate which opinion should base the decision. In that way, people who don’t have a constant fear of death will produce ideas, and express them, with two ethics the ruler can evaluate such ideas and come up with the most appropriate decision.

As Weber states, in the pre-modern society, there is a monarch yielding the power of the state by himself (Weber 37). This obscures the process of colliding ideas with each other, as there is only one idea that is forced to accept paving the way for tyranny and dictatorship. Given that Mill views liberty as essential in the formation of individuality, and sees it as the underpinning of improvement Mill may find pre-modern states’ legitimacy unjustifiable. According to him, there cannot be an authority that can dictate whether something is truly correct or not, and if there were, dissident ideas regardless of their correctness can be utilized to test the traditional ideas. Ultimately, Mill does not view the source of improvement as people’s inherently superior reasoning, he argues that it is people’s ability to rectify their corrigible mistakes that blazes the trail for improvement. Thereby, to have different ideas on one subject and debate them freely, a democratic government is needed so that society can be freed from tyranny. Therefore, one of the reasons why Mill may find pre-modern states unjustifiable could be this tyranny that a pre-modern state brings with itself. In a way, Mill’s reasoning asserts that states’ vital function is to liberate the individual from oppression so that individual improve himself, and hence society. In a way, it can be accepted that Mill justifies the legitimacy of the state because of its ability to allow its citizens to express their opinions. To elaborate, Mill views liberty as vital because he claims that the source of humanity's superior intellectuality stems from their ability to rectify their “mistakes by discussion and experience” (Mill 22). This unveils liberty’s importance; liberty provides the individuals the ground to practice their superior intellectuality, on the other hand, any restriction on ideas destructs such ground. While this portrays the state as vital, it does not present the most effective justification for its legitimacy of the state.

To further elaborate, Hobbes's contemplation on the function of state should be perused. Hobbes concentrates on the idea that all people have the inherent disposition to strive to survive. It is this innate concern people have that planted the seed for the state to develop. According to Hobbes, there is no concept of justice if there is no covenant to follow. Consequently, the absence of justice sets the ground for individuals to take whatever course of action they find most rewarding including killing and stealing portraying nature as a very cruel and anarchic state. This eliminates any chance to have consistent happiness, survival rate or prosperity. More importantly, this also fetters people from indulging themselves with art, literature, philosophy, economy which are the core instruments for improvement.  This resonates with Mill’s idea that the state allows people to do whatever they want and this can underpin the basis for improvement. Nevertheless, Hobbesian thinking differs from Mill’s in the sense that Hobbes doesn’t take liberty as the core prerequisite for improvement, he views salvation from constant anxiety that the individual might die as the prerequisite for improvement because it is such anxiety that prevents the individual from improving. While this does not confute Mill’s articulation of liberty, it approaches the issue from a fundamental layer. Such an approach even justifies the legitimacy of a pre-modern state because according to Hobbes, states’ true function lays in the state's power to protect its citizens from self-destruction and outer forces. Thereby, Hobbes’ contemplation presents a more rational and practical standpoint, and because of that, it justifies any state’s legitimacy by proposing an irrefutable reason. However, does its irrefutability dictate it to be the most effective way of justifying the legitimacy of the state?

Weber’s empirical description of the state and the ways it can be justified reflects how Hobbes’ and Mill’s contemplation project themselves to the modern world and the combination of three thinkers present the most effective justification of the states’ legitimacy. Weber argues that the modern state begins to exist “wherever the monarch sets in train the process of dispossessing the autonomous, "private" agents of administrative power who exist in parallel to him” (Weber 37) meaning the distribution of power gives birth to the modern state. This empirical claim echoes Mill’s suggestion on how a state should be governed, he argues that every idea should be taken into account, and even if they are not true they can highlight what is accepted as truth, “if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error” (Mill 19) collisions carry utmost importance in finding the idea that is closest being truth, and Mill argues that states’ ability to allow individuals to collide their ideas justifies the legitimacy of the state. However, it does not propose the most effective justification merely because people need to subsist before expressing their opinions. Weber proposes that the three justifications for states’ legitimacy, bureaucratic, charismatic, and traditional are mixed in the modern state. To justify the states’ legitimacy, three thinkers’ contemplation should be mixed. For people to live without constant fear of death, a sovereign is needed to establish order, but this alone does not prosper the state into a modern society. As Mill establishes, people have the tendency to oppress the minority and their dissident opinions, so a state is needed so that such opinions can subsist, so that improvement can manifest itself. However, there cannot be absolute liberty of expression, because every individual cannot partake in decision making. In other words, even if there is the liberty of expression, it is not practical as some ideas can mask other ideas. This raises a fundamental question: Who can dictate which idea is worth listening to? Weber’s ethos of responsibility and ethos of passion can present themselves as the most effective tools in choosing which idea is worth listening to. The ruler should use the ethic of conviction to choose the most appropriate opinion proposed by people and he also should use the ethic of responsibility to apply this opinion without disrupting the order of the state. Given that the state makes use of these three conditions, it offers the most effective justification for its existence.

In conclusion, the modern state’s most effective justification lays its roots in three different conditions. Weber would find this argument to be interesting as he also argues that the state is a mixture of different types of justifications. A modern state, can utilize traditional justification and also the legal justification that depends on rationality rather than customs. The state’s mission is to establish peace and ground in which people can express their ideas, and its core mission is to have a leader that can evaluate those ideas with the ethic of conviction and responsibility.