- First, the individual is an atom isolated from other individuals and from any kind of social or natural context. Each human individual has a nature prior to and independently of society.
- Second, if this individualism is possessive, then it is characterized by unlimited desire. Humans are determined by their desires and passions. So if two or more individuals desire the same thing, then conflict is inevitable.
- Third, Hobbes assumes a natural equality among human individuals. This doesn’t mean that everyone has the same powers or that no individual has more of any power than another. All it need mean is that even the most powerful among us is unable to so completely dominate others that he or she can lock a guarantee on peace and security.
Justice for hobbes
In Chapter XV of the Leviathan, Hobbes defined justice:
From that law of nature, by which we are obliged to transfer to another, such rights, as being retained, hinder the peace of mankind, there followeth a third which is this, that men perform their covenants made: without which, covenants are in vain, and are but empty words; and the right of all men to all things remaining, we are still int he condition of war. And in this law of nature, consisteth the fountain and original of justice. for where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to everything; and consequently, no action can be unjust. But when a covenant is made, the to break it is unjust: and the definition of injustice, is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust, is just. T. Hobbes. (1651).
Leviathan: Edited with an Introduction by C. B. MacPherson Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, p. 201-202.
Rousseau's criticism
Rousseau (1712-17178) provides an insightful criticism of Hobbes. He argues that Hobbes did not dig deep enough in his effort to reach human nature prior to its reconstitution by civil society. The acquisitive desires that Hobbes uses to describe Human nature in its pre-social form are actually, themselves, the products of civilization itself. They are introduced along with the notion of private property. Rousseau sees this as a degeneration from original human nature, the noble savage whom he views romantically.
[Hobbes] had wrongly injected into the savage man's concern for self-preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws necessary. The evil man, he says, is a robust child. It remains to be seen whether savage man is a robust child....Moreover, their is another principle that Hobbes failed to notice, and which, having been given to man in order to mitigate, in certain circumstances, the ferocity of his egocentrism or the desire for self-preservation before this egocentrism of his came into being, tempers the ardor he has for his own well-being by an innate repugnance to seeing his fellow men suffer....I am referring to pity, a disposition that is fitting for beings that are as weak and as subject to ills as we are; a virtue all the more universal and all the more useful to man in that it precedes in him any kind of reflection, and so natural that even animals sometimes show noticeable signs of it. Rousseau, "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Part One," in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Basic Political Writings. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett (1987): 53.
