Ultimately We're all Hobbesian

Readers of Hobbes should be able to take away many lessons from the 17^th century English political philosopher; but above all Hobbes’s Leviathan makes the claim that the core motivator of human beings is fear.  By proposing an original state of nature, Hobbes explains how fear and a desire to survive brought us from that state to our modern society.  Today many people disagree with the writings of Hobbes and believe that human society is, and should be, the result of more than just the fear of death.  Many people, like John Locke, believe that human beings naturally know what is right and what is wrong.  Locke believes that society arises because human beings naturally want to make the administration of justice and the protection of property easy, and in a world without government every individual would have to be their own protector.  Conversely Hobbes believes that government arose to protect people from danger, and people’s willingness to be governed hinges on the government’s ability to scare the people into submission while providing the service of protecting them.

 

This debate is reemerging; in the wake of 9/11 Americans are reevaluating what is important to them.  The debate between Locke and Hobbes is a debate on what is deeply important to human beings.  Locke argues that human beings have deep seeded interests in property while Hobbes argues that fear is the basis of all human society.  Howard Schweber is a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  In the above interview he says that a person’s beliefs, in regards to this issue, can be summed up be honestly asking yourself “what would you be willing to give up your own self interest and security for?” 

Today this debate has been reframed using modern vocabulary; now we debate if national security should take precedent over civil liberties.  After 9/11 the government began to take action to protect it’s citizens, as any government should.   However they were eventually met with opposition that they were going to far to protect Americans.  This is a pivotal moment in history, which will bring about a deeper understanding of what we as Americans truly value.  Professor Schweber makes the case that there are two camps that are debating on this issue.  On the one hand there are those who argue that we live in a fluid world and we must be willing to make sacrifices in order to survive.  The other camp believes that civil liberties should only be violated in the direst of circumstances.  This debate reveals the true nature of us as people in that both parties are not disputing that civil liberties must take a back seat to security, they are only debating what constitutes an adequate threat that justifies there suspension.  Ironically, debate has yielded consensus; we as people have proven that in the face of danger we will do whatever it takes to survive. 

Possibly the most debated issue today, in terms of rights vs. safety, is the question of torture.  In the wake of 9/11 torture was used by the United States government to gleam valuable information that could prevent future attacks, or provide information on who was responsible for past attacks.  When the use of water boarding became public knowledge, Americans came down on both side of the issue.  Beyond the questions of what defines an act of torture, and if torture is even an effective interrogation method, this debate can be summed up economically.  Ultimately people must decide if they believe that torture provides benefits that outweigh it’s costs.  Advocates of torture point to success stories in which torcher yielded valuable and useful information while those opposed comment on the legal and moral costs of torcher.  They say that by violating laws that we have put into practice, both nationally and internationally, we lower our ability to claim to be a moral nation and fight battles like the “war on terror” in which we claim we are fighting against evil.  Regardless of your position on this issue, it is clearly an issue on how much one truly is willing to do in the face of fear.

We live in a dangerous world, and at times our leaders face questions of our survival; they have tortured in our name in order to protect us, and the interests of our nation.  We are then left to question the value of such actions.  Is torture acceptable in the face of danger, when survival is at stake?  Should civil liberties be secondary to safety?  Today most people agree that they should, the true debate lies in the question of what circumstances should produce such a relationship.  As we move further away from 9/11 more and more people are coming to oppose torcher.  However, if you look at the world we live in today you’ll see institutions produced by fear.  Government divisions from the intelligence community to the TSA have adapted to protect us from new threats, but that protection carries costs.   Even though we may debate the validity of their actions in a certain circumstances there is a consensus that circumstance do exist in which sacrifices must be made in the name of security.  These moments reveal the truly Hobbesian nature of most people; many of us are wiling to undergo extra screening at airports, and even sacrifice morality, if it means we will be safe from danger.  The question of when such actions become acceptable is a personal belief, that sooner or later most people are forced to answer.