Possiblities continued

I thought that the idea that came at the very end of the class discussion of Hobbes was very interesting: the point that the sovereign speaks as the people. In essence, he is the people, he is Leviathan. So if we magnify that idea to the world, how many people can agree with each other to give up their individual rights? How big can Leviathan be? Is there a limit on how many people one person can trust?

Owen suggested that Hobbes wrote Leviathan to scare people out of the English civil war, so was Hobbes suggesting that Leviathan’s ideal size would be approximately the size of England? With the communications systems of the time, that is about the maximum geographical area that could be reached in a week by the sovereign? A month? Would the ability to communicate effectively with the masses that have made a commitment to a sovereign be the limiting factor on the size of a Leviathan? Hobbes does not discuss the communication methods between the sovereign and the subjects, but implies that such communication would be necessary. For example, one of the rights of the sovereign is the right of judicature. How can one man hear all conflicts and judge them in a sovereign country the size even of England? Is that logistically possible even with today’s communication facilities?

So, say this is expanded to the whole world. Are there many sovereigns with one sovereign sovereign, or is there one sovereign for the whole world? In Hobbes’s time, this would be impossible, but now, as long as he never slept, one sovereign could, hypothetically, rule the world. But what of cultural differences? Would these also have to be erased? To universally escape Hobbes’s State of Nature (if, as one could argue, we were in it), would every person, in addition to committing to the same social contract, have to commit to a uniform type of living and culture?

Or, if this was expanded to the whole world, would it be sovereign versus sovereign, therefore creating a state of nature on a larger scale (since a sovereign is really a representation of a bunch of people, then sovereign v. sovereign would be state of nature all over again – I think ProfPTJ mentioned this in class)? The very inclusion of exile as a punishment (160) implies that there is world outside of the commonwealth – what does this world look like? How does the commonwealth interact with its surroundings? I think it would strive for expansion, but, as with physics and insects, at some point you get too big to support your weight and your exoskeleton breaks.

I bring this up not out of facetiousness but rather as an examination of the viability of Hobbes’ ideal. The concept of social contracts makes ever more sense as I read Locke, but perhaps it is my Lockean upbringing that makes it difficult to see reality in Hobbes’s Leviathan.