WEBVTT 00:00.590 --> 00:05.990 PROFESSOR: So we have two basic agenda items today. 00:05.990 --> 00:10.570 The first is to finish up briefly our discussion of 00:10.570 --> 00:13.010 punishment from last lecture. 00:13.010 --> 00:17.810 And the second is to start with the third unit of the 00:17.810 --> 00:22.250 course, that is the unit that's concerned not with our 00:22.250 --> 00:25.480 status as individuals trying to cultivate a kind of 00:25.480 --> 00:31.170 internal harmony, nor with our status as individuals in local 00:31.170 --> 00:36.310 relations with others of a moral or immoral sort, but 00:36.310 --> 00:40.800 rather with our status as members of a community. 00:40.800 --> 00:44.030 And you'll remember from Plato's Republic, the text 00:44.030 --> 00:47.290 with which we begin and with which we'll end the course, 00:47.290 --> 00:51.060 that Plato sees there being a direct parallel between the 00:51.060 --> 00:55.240 individual and the community, between what's mandated for 00:55.240 --> 00:58.560 the harmonious soul on the one hand, and what's required for 00:58.560 --> 01:00.980 a community to stay stable on the other. 01:00.980 --> 01:04.450 And one of the tacit themes that will underlie our 01:04.450 --> 01:09.140 discussion in this final unit of the course are the ways in 01:09.140 --> 01:12.310 which that parallel is manifest. 01:12.310 --> 01:17.760 Now to some extent our discussion of punishment 01:17.760 --> 01:22.410 provided a microcosm of this transition. 01:22.410 --> 01:26.380 You'll recall that in the first lecture on punishment we 01:26.380 --> 01:29.350 looked at three questions. 01:29.350 --> 01:33.110 We tried to articulate in a fairly precise sense what we 01:33.110 --> 01:36.840 meant by the notion of civil punishment. 01:36.840 --> 01:42.420 And then we looked at two families of justification for 01:42.420 --> 01:43.790 civil punishment. 01:43.790 --> 01:49.110 A family of deontological or desert oriented theories on 01:49.110 --> 01:50.100 the one hand-- 01:50.100 --> 01:53.910 theories that look at what somebody deserves. 01:53.910 --> 01:56.270 And on the other hand, we looked at some 01:56.270 --> 01:57.760 consequentialist theories-- 01:57.760 --> 02:02.030 theories that try to justify punishment on the basis of its 02:02.030 --> 02:03.530 consequences. 02:03.530 --> 02:08.340 And for each of those theories, we asked ourselves 02:08.340 --> 02:12.630 how reasonable the justifications are that they 02:12.630 --> 02:16.180 offer and what source of behaviors do 02:16.175 --> 02:17.975 they seem to mandate. 02:17.980 --> 02:22.240 And here we had the same sort of structure that we have 02:22.240 --> 02:24.540 found throughout the course. 02:24.540 --> 02:28.380 On the one hand, an articulation of a principled 02:28.380 --> 02:33.730 framework for understanding a large segment of human 02:33.730 --> 02:39.830 behavior that tries to lay down rules and guiding 02:39.830 --> 02:43.870 principles by which we ought to structure behavior. 02:43.870 --> 02:46.660 And on the other, we had intuitions 02:46.660 --> 02:48.920 about particular cases. 02:48.920 --> 02:54.270 And we found that here, as elsewhere, for many of you at 02:54.270 --> 02:57.070 least, certainly for the students in my section and for 02:57.070 --> 02:59.780 the students in the sections of the TAs that I've spoken 02:59.780 --> 03:05.270 to, that there was a challenge reconciling on the one hand, 03:05.270 --> 03:10.450 the philosophical framework that seemed truly compelling 03:10.450 --> 03:14.650 and on the other hand, the psychological factors that 03:14.650 --> 03:18.760 seemed to be pulling us in one direction or another with 03:18.760 --> 03:21.430 regard to particular cases. 03:21.430 --> 03:25.390 So what we looked out at in our a discussion on Thursday 03:25.390 --> 03:30.400 were some attempts to provide systematic explorations of 03:30.400 --> 03:34.670 some of these psychological phenomena: factors that seemed 03:34.670 --> 03:38.970 to exacerbate people's desire to inflict punishment, at 03:38.970 --> 03:42.470 least most people, most of the time, in Western society. 03:42.470 --> 03:45.270 And factors that tend to mitigate it. 03:45.270 --> 03:50.530 And we also talked a bit about the role of moral luck in 03:50.530 --> 03:54.090 underlying lying our responses to punishment. 03:54.089 --> 03:58.139 What I want to turn to in the first part of today's lecture 03:58.140 --> 04:00.930 is the residual question that we had in the context of our 04:00.930 --> 04:02.580 punishment lecture. 04:02.580 --> 04:06.870 Namely, to look at the question of how on the one 04:06.870 --> 04:11.790 hand civil punishment works, and on the other, how 04:11.790 --> 04:16.560 punishment works in a much more personal context. 04:16.560 --> 04:20.610 So you'll recall that-- sorry, I guess we don't have the 04:20.610 --> 04:22.430 final version of these slides up. 04:22.430 --> 04:22.940 OK. 04:22.940 --> 04:26.710 There was to have been a slide here-- which is not this one-- 04:26.710 --> 04:29.620 that connected our theories of punishment to our discussion 04:29.615 --> 04:30.695 in Alan Kazdin. 04:30.700 --> 04:33.560 What we have instead is an earlier slide, where I 04:33.560 --> 04:37.160 suggested a connection between the work of Alan Kazdin on the 04:37.160 --> 04:39.520 one hand and Aristotle's Nicomachean 04:39.520 --> 04:40.350 Ethics on the other. 04:40.350 --> 04:43.740 You'll recall that when we were trying to think about the 04:43.740 --> 04:49.230 question how do we cultivate virtue, I suggested that one 04:49.225 --> 04:54.345 of the places to look in your contemporary culture at the 04:54.350 --> 04:59.800 question "how do we help people become that which we 04:59.800 --> 05:05.340 hope they will be?" are in scientifically informed, 05:05.340 --> 05:09.070 compassionate, parenting guides. 05:09.070 --> 05:14.190 And it is, I think, an interesting question to ask 05:14.190 --> 05:16.510 with respect to punishment. 05:16.510 --> 05:21.070 So you'll recall that when we had the slide with four kinds 05:21.070 --> 05:24.540 of justification for punishment in the earlier 05:24.540 --> 05:28.540 lecture, we had on the one hand the utilitarian and the 05:28.540 --> 05:30.410 desert-based theory. 05:30.410 --> 05:35.550 But we also had, at the bottom of that slide, two motivations 05:35.550 --> 05:39.710 for punishment that look on the one hand at the victim and 05:39.710 --> 05:43.920 on the other hand at the perpetrator, and aimed somehow 05:43.920 --> 05:47.970 to reconcile their situation. 05:47.970 --> 05:51.570 And what those motivations for punishment suggested is that 05:51.570 --> 05:56.310 with respect to the victim, what matters is restitution 05:56.310 --> 06:00.940 and with respect to the perpetrator, if we are truly 06:00.940 --> 06:05.160 forward-looking, what matters is rehabilitation. 06:05.155 --> 06:11.295 And the question is whether those motivations are 06:11.300 --> 06:15.700 sufficiently forceful and sufficiently powerful to 06:15.700 --> 06:18.550 capture what we're looking for from 06:18.550 --> 06:21.850 punishment in a civil context. 06:21.850 --> 06:26.650 It seems fairly clear that those motivations are at least 06:26.650 --> 06:31.120 close to sufficient in a personal context. 06:31.120 --> 06:35.860 And it's to that question that Alan Kazdin's discussion in 06:35.860 --> 06:41.180 the context of this encoding of cultural practices in the 06:41.180 --> 06:43.250 parenting guide that we read. 06:43.250 --> 06:49.750 So Kazdin points out that if your goal is something akin 06:49.750 --> 06:54.380 you to rehabilitation, if the goal of punishment is what 06:54.380 --> 06:59.090 forward-looking theories suggest, that is the changing 06:59.090 --> 07:02.980 of future behavior on the part on the individual who has 07:02.980 --> 07:07.920 violated social norms in such a way that you can predictably 07:07.920 --> 07:12.650 expect them to behave prosocially, then it's 07:12.650 --> 07:17.110 incredibly important not merely to articulate what sort 07:17.110 --> 07:23.790 of behavior is disallowed, but also to provide an 07:23.790 --> 07:29.450 articulation of what sort of behavior is desired. 07:29.450 --> 07:32.810 "Instead," says Kazdin, "of thinking of your child's 07:32.810 --> 07:36.760 behavior in terms of what you don't want, start thinking in 07:36.760 --> 07:39.400 terms of what you do want. 07:39.400 --> 07:43.780 When you get rid of a behavior by rewarding its opposite, the 07:43.780 --> 07:49.900 effects of the getting rid are stronger and last longer than 07:49.900 --> 07:53.280 if you punish the undesired behavior." 07:53.280 --> 07:56.590 And all of you had the opportunity to think about 07:56.590 --> 08:00.530 this structure of practice in the opening 08:00.530 --> 08:02.780 segment of the course. 08:02.780 --> 08:08.960 The very idea of focusing on what it is that you hope to 08:08.960 --> 08:13.100 cultivate as a habit in yourself, and then engaging in 08:13.100 --> 08:18.670 behaviors that allow that sort of practice to become 08:18.669 --> 08:23.339 instinctive to you, was one of the central lessons of the 08:23.340 --> 08:26.000 first unit of the course. 08:26.000 --> 08:28.830 The best way we learned to build up a behavior that you 08:28.830 --> 08:32.230 want is through reinforced practice. 08:32.230 --> 08:37.440 And Kazdin goes on to suggest, in the context of punishment, 08:37.440 --> 08:41.490 that punishment teaches what not to do. 08:41.490 --> 08:45.810 It says that particular behavior is unacceptable. 08:45.810 --> 08:50.570 But a behavior is one among a panoply of 08:50.570 --> 08:52.820 possible modes of action. 08:52.820 --> 08:57.450 And simply ruling out one of them doesn't guarantee that 08:57.450 --> 08:59.930 what will replace it is something prosocial. 08:59.930 --> 09:03.450 So he writes in a very specific context of fighting, 09:03.450 --> 09:06.020 if you punish your child for fighting with her brother, it 09:06.020 --> 09:07.990 will indeed stop that fight. 09:07.990 --> 09:10.750 The next time there's a conflict between them though, 09:10.750 --> 09:13.890 fighting will still be in the daughter's repertoire, the 09:13.890 --> 09:15.360 default setting. 09:15.360 --> 09:18.540 You haven't done anything about changing that. 09:18.540 --> 09:22.350 Explaining in words that fighting is bad won't change 09:22.350 --> 09:24.410 the state of behavior either. 09:24.410 --> 09:27.870 You need to develop another way of behaving. 09:27.870 --> 09:30.800 You need to promote the positive opposite to get 09:30.800 --> 09:34.230 another response locked in. 09:34.230 --> 09:39.800 Now the question is whether there is any possibility of 09:39.800 --> 09:46.760 generalizing this profoundly correct lesson about what one 09:46.760 --> 09:50.450 does in deeply personal interactions 09:50.450 --> 09:54.080 to a societal context? 09:54.080 --> 10:00.110 As I pointed out when we read Plato's Republic, it begins 10:00.110 --> 10:03.850 with the suggestion that if you want to understand the 10:03.850 --> 10:06.240 structure of the soul, you need to understand the 10:06.240 --> 10:07.990 structure of society. 10:07.990 --> 10:11.200 And if you want to understand the structure of society, you 10:11.200 --> 10:14.520 need to understand the structure of the soul. 10:14.520 --> 10:21.170 In some ways, asking the apparently absurd question 10:21.170 --> 10:25.680 "does a parenting guide have anything to teach us about the 10:25.680 --> 10:30.260 criminal justice system?" is to ask the fundamental 10:30.260 --> 10:34.290 question of Plato's Republic-- 10:34.290 --> 10:39.560 does what we do when we engage in the most intimate and 10:39.560 --> 10:45.210 personal of attempts to cultivate in others behaviors 10:45.210 --> 10:49.270 that will allow them to thrive-- 10:49.270 --> 10:54.980 does thinking about that teach us anything about how society 10:54.980 --> 10:58.940 ought to structure its institutional practices? 10:58.940 --> 11:04.000 And Kazdin gives some indication that he is thinking 11:04.000 --> 11:06.560 at least implicitly along those lines. 11:06.560 --> 11:09.690 He writes, "Punishment can fail for many reasons. 11:09.690 --> 11:13.570 One of them is that reward for misbehaving is often more 11:13.570 --> 11:17.550 immediate and reliable than punishment." And goes on to 11:17.550 --> 11:22.030 suggest, not in detail, but just as a hint, that a look at 11:22.030 --> 11:23.910 the criminal justice system's normal 11:23.910 --> 11:26.220 operations makes that clear. 11:26.220 --> 11:29.930 If you steal, you get what you stole right away. 11:29.930 --> 11:34.960 You are therefore reinforced in a very local sense in the 11:34.960 --> 11:38.230 bad behavior by an immediate reward. 11:38.230 --> 11:42.740 If you experience a delayed punishing consequence, that 11:42.740 --> 11:46.010 punishment is doomed to failure as a method for 11:46.010 --> 11:47.840 changing behavior. 11:47.840 --> 11:52.570 What's required if punishment is to have a totally deterrent 11:52.570 --> 11:57.960 effect is somehow for the calculation of the cost of the 11:57.960 --> 12:02.360 punishment to enter in at the moment of practice. 12:02.360 --> 12:05.700 Kazdin writes, "One must eliminate the immediate 12:05.700 --> 12:09.850 reinforcer for the punished behavior if possible, and 12:09.850 --> 12:12.140 that's hard to do." 12:12.140 --> 12:18.080 You'll recall long ago, we had a picture of Ulysses trying to 12:18.080 --> 12:19.750 get past the sirens. 12:19.750 --> 12:23.630 It was a beautiful 19th century portrait of Ulysses on 12:23.630 --> 12:28.290 a ship, tied to a mast, with the rowers beside him, with 12:28.290 --> 12:30.070 their ears blocked. 12:30.070 --> 12:34.150 And that was a slide that we looked at in the context of 12:34.150 --> 12:39.100 how you overcome immediate temptation. 12:39.100 --> 12:41.920 And we talked about, in our discussion of Nozick on 12:41.920 --> 12:47.210 principles and our discussion of Ariely on procrastination, 12:47.210 --> 12:53.320 what sort of strategies there are for recalculating or 12:53.320 --> 12:59.140 recalibrating our assessment of potential immediate payoff. 12:59.140 --> 13:04.650 Thinking about punishment in its broadest sense gives us a 13:04.645 --> 13:07.615 way of thinking about that question 13:07.620 --> 13:10.350 from yet another direction. 13:10.350 --> 13:16.130 And, as you'll see, that issue is going to reemerge very soon 13:16.130 --> 13:19.670 when we start thinking about Hobbes. 13:19.670 --> 13:22.270 So I leave this puzzle-- 13:22.270 --> 13:26.610 or this multi-part puzzle-- for you, as a question. 13:26.610 --> 13:29.580 Punishment illuminated for us, on the one hand, the 13:29.580 --> 13:33.380 distinction between utilitarian and deontological 13:33.380 --> 13:34.820 moral theory. 13:34.820 --> 13:38.520 It got us thinking about the symmetric or asymmetric 13:38.520 --> 13:41.050 relation between praise and blame. 13:41.050 --> 13:44.760 And it gave us yet another venue for thinking about the 13:44.760 --> 13:48.880 relation between the personal and the societal. 13:48.880 --> 13:54.890 So with that, I want to move to the general topic of 13:54.890 --> 13:57.320 today's lecture. 13:57.320 --> 14:02.190 So the fundamental question of political legitimacy, as you 14:02.190 --> 14:05.640 know from the brief reading that you did before the 14:05.640 --> 14:12.940 Hobbes, is the question of why it is ever legitimate for 14:12.940 --> 14:17.970 there to be such thing as a state. 14:17.970 --> 14:24.920 It is an astounding fact about 21st century human existence 14:24.920 --> 14:28.880 that of the roughly seven billion people who live on 14:28.880 --> 14:35.180 this planet at this time, nearly all of them are subject 14:35.180 --> 14:42.480 to rules and regulations that are imposed on them by a 14:42.480 --> 14:44.340 governing body-- 14:44.340 --> 14:46.020 a government-- 14:46.020 --> 14:51.590 as a result simply of their having been born within the 14:51.590 --> 14:56.750 confines a particular territory. 14:56.750 --> 15:04.730 It's worth thinking for a moment about why and perhaps 15:04.730 --> 15:09.640 whether that fact is legitimate. 15:09.640 --> 15:11.200 And this question-- 15:11.200 --> 15:13.780 what makes the state legitimate-- 15:13.780 --> 15:17.830 is the one that we'll address in the context of this final 15:17.830 --> 15:19.760 unit of the course. 15:19.760 --> 15:25.640 So let's begin by going back to a passage right before the 15:25.640 --> 15:28.280 one that we focused on so intently at the beginning of 15:28.280 --> 15:31.440 the term from Plato's Republic. 15:31.440 --> 15:34.780 So you will remember right before the discussion of the 15:34.780 --> 15:40.810 ring of Gyges, Glaucon provides an account of what he 15:40.810 --> 15:45.290 calls the nature and origins of justice. 15:45.290 --> 15:47.410 And here is what he said. 15:47.410 --> 15:53.850 He says, "They say to do injustice is naturally good 15:53.850 --> 15:57.800 and to suffer injustice is bad, but that the badness of 15:57.800 --> 16:02.070 suffering it so far exceeds the goodness of doing it that 16:02.070 --> 16:05.080 those who have done and suffered injustice and tasted 16:05.080 --> 16:10.190 both, but who lack the power to avoid suffering it, decide 16:10.190 --> 16:13.110 that it's profitable to come to an agreement with each 16:13.110 --> 16:19.170 other to neither do injustice nor to suffer it." 16:19.170 --> 16:22.240 So the picture is this. 16:22.240 --> 16:26.310 Suppose we have two shepherds. 16:26.310 --> 16:31.860 And the one steals the other's horses. 16:31.860 --> 16:37.590 From that, he gets pleasure of say 15. 16:37.585 --> 16:42.475 At the same time, the one whose horses were stolen 16:42.480 --> 16:48.720 experiences a dissatisfaction, first 15 at the loss of his 16:48.720 --> 16:52.550 horses and then an additional displeasure 16:52.550 --> 16:54.900 at having been robbed. 16:54.900 --> 16:58.590 So he turns and steals the other horses-- 16:58.589 --> 17:01.139 sorry, that was supposed to be more nicely animated. 17:01.140 --> 17:02.290 There we go. 17:02.290 --> 17:06.770 --feeling the pleasure of 15, where his opponent feels a 17:06.770 --> 17:09.900 displeasure of 25. 17:09.900 --> 17:16.230 So the thought is that both recognize that in a situation 17:16.230 --> 17:22.100 where stealing is the norm, both have the potential to end 17:22.100 --> 17:26.740 up worse off than they would have had they just stuck with 17:26.740 --> 17:28.990 their original property. 17:28.990 --> 17:34.080 As a result, suggests Glaucon, they come together and they 17:34.080 --> 17:40.450 form some sort of interpersonal agreement. 17:40.450 --> 17:43.790 Moreover, they institutionalize it. 17:43.790 --> 17:46.980 As a result says Glaucon, "they begin to make laws and 17:46.980 --> 17:51.450 covenants and what the law commands, they call lawful and 17:51.450 --> 17:54.680 just. This," says Glaucon, 'is the origin 17:54.680 --> 17:56.370 and essence of justice. 17:56.370 --> 18:00.250 It is intermediate between the best and the worst. The best 18:00.250 --> 18:03.570 thing to do injustice without paying the penalty. 18:03.570 --> 18:07.150 The worst to separate without being able to take revenge. 18:07.150 --> 18:12.710 Justice this is a mean between two extremes." 18:12.710 --> 18:19.520 What we have in this 2,000 year old text is a preliminary 18:19.520 --> 18:24.510 articulation of what has come to be known as the social 18:24.510 --> 18:28.820 contract tradition in political philosophy. 18:28.820 --> 18:36.190 This is the view that it is because in some sense living 18:36.190 --> 18:44.140 in a society structured by laws is advantageous for all 18:44.140 --> 18:49.290 of us, that the state is legitimate. 18:49.290 --> 18:54.690 On this picture, what makes it reasonable that seven billion 18:54.690 --> 18:58.420 people on this planet live their lives as a result of 18:58.420 --> 19:01.720 having been born in a particular place under the 19:01.720 --> 19:05.650 auspices of a particular government, what makes that 19:05.650 --> 19:11.190 legitimate is the fact that as an aggregate and in fact as 19:11.190 --> 19:15.930 individuals, they are better off than they would be without 19:15.930 --> 19:18.430 that structure having been in place. 19:18.430 --> 19:23.690 And that is the fundamental argument that lies behind the 19:23.690 --> 19:29.150 text that we read from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. 19:29.150 --> 19:34.380 So Hobbes, as you know from reading the text, lived 19:34.380 --> 19:38.700 roughly at the time of Shakespeare. 19:38.700 --> 19:42.170 He lived from 1588 to 1679. 19:42.170 --> 19:45.970 So just as he was born, Shakespeare's first works were 19:45.970 --> 19:46.770 being produced. 19:46.770 --> 19:47.870 And you can see-- 19:47.870 --> 19:50.510 sorry, they should stay next to each other for a moment-- 19:50.510 --> 19:53.060 that they wear the same outfit. 19:53.060 --> 19:55.730 My animation is very active today. 19:55.730 --> 19:57.870 So, Hobbes was British. 19:57.870 --> 20:01.130 He's best known for his work in political philosophy, but 20:01.130 --> 20:04.480 he also did work in linguistics and mathematics. 20:04.480 --> 20:09.120 And it's important to realize as you think through the ways 20:09.120 --> 20:13.110 in which the text that we read is extraordinarily systematic, 20:13.110 --> 20:17.220 that Hobbes was highly influenced by the idea that it 20:17.220 --> 20:22.470 would be possible to derive very broad principles of 20:22.470 --> 20:27.630 political theory from very basic facts about human 20:27.630 --> 20:28.920 psychology. 20:28.920 --> 20:33.490 And the idea was to base the reasoning here on something 20:33.490 --> 20:36.580 like the geometrical method, where you start with a few 20:36.580 --> 20:40.640 very simple axioms, you have some rules of derivation, and 20:40.640 --> 20:44.920 from them you can build up rather elaborate systems. In 20:44.920 --> 20:49.480 particular, Hobbes thought it would be possible to derive 20:49.480 --> 20:53.510 political philosophy from thinking about psychology, to 20:53.510 --> 20:57.030 derive psychology from thinking about physiology, and 20:57.030 --> 21:01.720 to derive physiology from thinking about physics. 21:01.720 --> 21:04.900 Facts about the physical world constrained facts about 21:04.900 --> 21:06.060 physiology. 21:06.060 --> 21:09.280 Those in turn constrained facts about psychology. 21:09.280 --> 21:12.410 And those in turn determined the nature 21:12.410 --> 21:14.350 all political theory. 21:14.350 --> 21:18.790 So the text that we read for today is primarily concerned 21:18.790 --> 21:23.030 with these two last stages. 21:23.030 --> 21:28.900 The text we read is from Hobbes' 1651 book Leviathan. 21:28.900 --> 21:33.620 And I reproduced this frontispiece here because we 21:33.620 --> 21:40.170 are, all of us right now, sitting about 100 yards from a 21:40.170 --> 21:43.200 copy of this first edition. 21:43.200 --> 21:47.870 And when I taught this class as a small seminar, one of the 21:47.870 --> 21:51.040 most exciting things that we did was to take a field trip 21:51.040 --> 21:56.380 to the Beinecke Library and to see this in person. 21:56.380 --> 22:00.080 And all of you as Yale students are free to walk over 22:00.080 --> 22:03.920 there and to make an appointment to look at this. 22:03.920 --> 22:07.710 What's amazing about the frontispiece is both the 22:07.710 --> 22:10.560 visual imagery on the bottom and the visual 22:10.560 --> 22:12.320 imagery on the top. 22:12.320 --> 22:17.780 So Hobbes, remember, is concerned with providing a 22:17.780 --> 22:22.370 philosophical basis to justify the secular state. 22:22.370 --> 22:27.040 And on the bottom what he has is a juxtaposition of the 22:27.040 --> 22:31.240 tools of the secular state with the tools 22:31.240 --> 22:33.950 of religious authority. 22:33.950 --> 22:37.200 So he's talking about the relation between the castle 22:37.200 --> 22:42.730 and the church, between the might of weaponry and the 22:42.730 --> 22:44.630 might of religion. 22:44.630 --> 22:48.180 What's relevant for our discussion here is this 22:48.180 --> 22:50.810 incredible image on the top-- 22:50.810 --> 22:56.950 the image of the sovereign composed of hundreds of 22:56.950 --> 23:02.640 individuals, each of whom has, on Hobbes' picture of things, 23:02.640 --> 23:08.440 rationally decided to give up his for her right to 23:08.440 --> 23:13.380 self-authority on certain questions in order to 23:13.380 --> 23:17.150 guarantee the stability of society. 23:17.150 --> 23:23.780 So let's ask the question, how does Hobbes get to this 23:23.780 --> 23:25.200 conclusion? 23:25.200 --> 23:28.900 And what are the fundamental questions 23:28.900 --> 23:31.320 he's trying to answer? 23:31.320 --> 23:35.370 So, as I said, he starts out with a discussion simply of 23:35.370 --> 23:38.400 what human reasoning looks like. 23:38.400 --> 23:40.260 What's our sensory system like? 23:40.260 --> 23:42.760 How does language allow us to communicate? 23:42.760 --> 23:48.200 And he goes on from there to talk about human psychology 23:48.200 --> 23:52.880 and the legitimacy of the state, concluding with a very 23:52.880 --> 23:56.880 broad discussion of the relation between the civil 23:56.880 --> 23:59.850 state and religious law. 23:59.850 --> 24:02.980 The questions he's asking are the questions we're going to 24:02.980 --> 24:06.460 ask for the next four lectures. 24:06.460 --> 24:10.370 What makes the state legitimate? 24:10.370 --> 24:15.880 Hobbes' answer is having a civil state, having civil 24:15.880 --> 24:22.110 society, is the only effective means of what he calls 24:22.110 --> 24:24.290 commodious self-preservation. 24:24.290 --> 24:27.190 And I'll say a bit about what that amounts to. 24:27.190 --> 24:32.000 And the second question, what can we do to guarantee the 24:32.000 --> 24:33.800 stability of the state? 24:33.800 --> 24:37.670 And Hobbes' rather controversial answer here is 24:37.670 --> 24:41.610 that it's only by means of putting in place some sort of 24:41.610 --> 24:46.860 absolute sovereign, only by abdicating a certain amount of 24:46.860 --> 24:51.180 personal freedom, that the state's continued existence is 24:51.180 --> 24:53.030 guaranteed. 24:53.030 --> 24:57.020 So how does the argument go? 24:57.020 --> 25:01.560 We started our reading for today with the incredibly 25:01.560 --> 25:08.600 famous passages from Book I, Chapter 13, of Leviathan, 25:08.600 --> 25:12.860 where Hobbes make the following argument. 25:12.860 --> 25:19.620 He says, with respect to the possibility of stealing one 25:19.620 --> 25:22.710 another's property and potentially taking one 25:22.710 --> 25:28.250 another's lives, human beings are relatively equal. 25:28.250 --> 25:34.210 They are physically equal in the sense that each of them 25:34.210 --> 25:40.520 has the live possibility of killing and of being killed. 25:40.520 --> 25:45.180 And they are mentally equal, intellectually equal, in the 25:45.180 --> 25:52.110 sense that human beings on the whole are capable of using 25:52.110 --> 25:56.560 experience to learn how to navigate their environment. 25:56.560 --> 26:00.970 And in a somewhat coy argument, he suggests that 26:00.970 --> 26:04.800 everybody thinks himself to be somewhat clever, and that the 26:04.800 --> 26:08.090 best evidence of rough equality is that each is 26:08.090 --> 26:11.730 contented with his share. 26:11.730 --> 26:16.760 From this comes the first premise of the Hobbesian 26:16.760 --> 26:24.660 argument, that when we have this sort of rough equality in 26:24.660 --> 26:29.110 physical and intellectual strength, there is an 26:29.110 --> 26:35.050 "equality of hope in attaining our ends." Everybody can 26:35.050 --> 26:39.630 reasonably expect that pursuing their own 26:39.630 --> 26:42.120 self-interest will not 26:42.120 --> 26:47.150 necessarily be a futile endeavor. 26:47.154 --> 26:52.464 Since, however, self-interests conflict-- 26:52.460 --> 26:56.520 since, roughly speaking, I want to get as much as I can 26:56.520 --> 27:01.550 get and you want to get as much as you can get-- 27:01.550 --> 27:06.410 Hobbes suggests that the result of this rough equality, 27:06.410 --> 27:09.590 this expectation of the possibility of achieving one's 27:09.590 --> 27:15.960 goals, coupled with the fact that goals of this sort often 27:15.960 --> 27:23.880 involve taking of property, we find three sources of conflict 27:23.880 --> 27:26.120 among individuals. 27:26.120 --> 27:30.430 The first Hobbes calls competition, where the goal is 27:30.430 --> 27:36.070 I want to gain control of stuff over which you currently 27:36.070 --> 27:37.530 have control. 27:37.530 --> 27:41.420 Note that this use out the term 'your stuff' at this 27:41.420 --> 27:44.520 point is still metaphorical. 27:44.520 --> 27:45.240 Right. 27:45.240 --> 27:49.100 There's no such thing, says Hobbes, as property in the 27:49.100 --> 27:50.480 state of nature. 27:50.480 --> 27:54.210 I want to control things that you control. 27:54.210 --> 27:57.560 And the consequence of that, says Hobbes, is that I will 27:57.560 --> 28:02.080 engage in violent behavior to get things that are now under 28:02.080 --> 28:04.210 your control. 28:04.210 --> 28:09.670 The second cause of conflict in the state of nature is the 28:09.670 --> 28:13.370 preemptive version of this. 28:13.370 --> 28:19.110 The recognition that I want to keep control of those things 28:19.110 --> 28:23.850 over which I have control, with the resulting action that 28:23.850 --> 28:29.600 I may preemptively strike to preserve my possessions. 28:29.600 --> 28:32.450 So the first is simply about the acquisition of objects. 28:32.450 --> 28:36.510 The second involves an application of intelligence, a 28:36.510 --> 28:40.910 recognition that someone might try to acquire things over 28:40.910 --> 28:44.370 which I have control and that in order to prevent that, I 28:44.370 --> 28:46.550 need to act preemptively. 28:46.550 --> 28:51.320 And the third, says Hobbes, is this uniquely psychological 28:51.320 --> 28:56.790 feature of human being, reminding us yet again of our 28:56.790 --> 28:59.190 fundamentally social nature. 28:59.190 --> 29:02.030 And that is what Hobbes calls glory. 29:02.026 --> 29:05.306 The goal here being reputation. 29:05.310 --> 29:07.050 I seek your admiration. 29:07.046 --> 29:14.256 And in so doing, I engage in violence to earn your respect. 29:14.260 --> 29:19.120 Hobbes thinks that in the state of nature, this sort of 29:19.120 --> 29:22.560 conflict is inevitable. 29:22.560 --> 29:27.880 In particular, when there is an assumption of rough 29:27.880 --> 29:32.890 equality and an assumption of a desirous self-interest, the 29:32.890 --> 29:37.310 result will be a war, says Hobbes, "of every man against 29:37.310 --> 29:42.510 every man." Not necessarily a hot war in the sense of 29:42.510 --> 29:49.040 violence going on at every moment, but a recognition that 29:49.040 --> 29:56.220 at any given moment that which feels secure, might be lost. 29:56.220 --> 30:02.710 And we known from living at a time when terrorist threat 30:02.710 --> 30:09.650 induces in many of us a feeling of standing fear, how 30:09.650 --> 30:16.600 dangerous to the psyche it is to feel that one cannot be 30:16.600 --> 30:21.030 certain or safe in one's surroundings. 30:21.030 --> 30:28.080 Interestingly, the threat of things going wrong has almost 30:28.080 --> 30:35.010 as powerful a psychological effect in anticipation as the 30:35.010 --> 30:38.430 actuality of things going wrong. 30:38.430 --> 30:42.470 The result of this, says Hobbes, is that there is no 30:42.470 --> 30:46.360 industry, no culture, no navigation. 30:46.360 --> 30:51.070 He writes rather poetically, "in such condition there is no 30:51.070 --> 30:55.490 place for industry because the fruit thereof is uncertain. 30:55.490 --> 30:58.960 And consequently, there's no culture of the earth, no 30:58.960 --> 31:02.240 navigation, no use of commodities that may be 31:02.240 --> 31:07.480 imported by sea, no commodious buildings, no instruments of 31:07.480 --> 31:11.710 moving and removing such things as require much force, 31:11.710 --> 31:14.650 no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, 31:14.650 --> 31:18.180 no arts, no letters, no society, and what is worst of 31:18.180 --> 31:24.120 all, continual fear and danger of violent death." 31:24.120 --> 31:28.680 It's important to think about how many features-- 31:28.680 --> 31:34.100 in fact, all the features of your daily life-- 31:34.100 --> 31:39.140 rely on an assumption of a certain kind of stability, a 31:39.140 --> 31:42.080 certain kind of predictability. 31:42.080 --> 31:45.260 And without that kind of stability and predictability 31:45.260 --> 31:48.270 says Hobbes, there's continual fear and 31:48.270 --> 31:50.010 danger of violent death. 31:50.010 --> 31:54.400 And life is, this being the most famous quote from Hobbes' 31:54.400 --> 31:59.220 Leviathan, --life is "solitary, poor, nasty, 31:59.220 --> 32:02.960 brutish, and short." 32:02.960 --> 32:08.750 Hobbes goes on to suggest that this rather unpleasant picture 32:08.750 --> 32:15.290 of human psychological tendencies that he's painted 32:15.290 --> 32:22.860 in this famous passage is one which is rather widely shared. 32:22.860 --> 32:28.330 He asks you to think about whether when you travel, you 32:28.330 --> 32:34.110 lock your doors and whether when you leave the library, 32:34.110 --> 32:36.930 you bring your computer with you. 32:36.930 --> 32:40.880 He doesn't ask about the computer, in those words. 32:40.880 --> 32:47.490 But in pointing out the tendency of people to protect 32:47.490 --> 32:51.500 themselves with respect to their property and their 32:51.500 --> 32:57.390 person, he asked "whether you do not as much accuse mankind 32:57.390 --> 33:04.050 by your actions as," says Hobbes, "I do by my words." 33:04.050 --> 33:07.710 So that's the beginning of the argument in 33:07.710 --> 33:09.740 favor of the state. 33:09.740 --> 33:14.660 Rough equality, a tendency to want what others also want, 33:14.660 --> 33:19.300 and a consequent state of war. 33:19.300 --> 33:23.700 Hobbes steps back for a minute then and makes 33:23.700 --> 33:26.960 two important caveats. 33:26.960 --> 33:31.740 The first is that he points out that in order for his 33:31.740 --> 33:34.080 argument to work-- 33:34.080 --> 33:37.770 remember his argument is going to be that the reason it's 33:37.770 --> 33:42.790 legitimate for seven billion people to be under the 33:42.790 --> 33:46.690 political control of state is because if they weren't, they 33:46.690 --> 33:49.190 would be worse off. 33:49.190 --> 33:53.240 Hobbes says that argument works regardless of whether 33:53.239 --> 33:55.299 the state of nature is actually 33:55.300 --> 33:57.640 something that happened. 33:57.639 --> 34:01.129 The argument doesn't turn on historical fact. 34:01.130 --> 34:05.410 The question, says Hobbes, is what manner of life there 34:05.409 --> 34:11.739 would be were there no common power to fear. 34:11.739 --> 34:16.159 And he points out-- 34:16.159 --> 34:19.519 so that's the first point that he makes there. 34:19.520 --> 34:25.870 He then goes on to point out that most of the things which 34:25.870 --> 34:31.910 we take for granted as part of how we organize our lives 34:31.909 --> 34:35.959 would be absent without the existence of social 34:35.960 --> 34:37.610 structures. 34:37.610 --> 34:43.460 The notions of justice and injustice, says Hobbes, are 34:43.460 --> 34:45.620 social notions. 34:45.620 --> 34:49.410 They depend on there being rules which can be violated 34:49.410 --> 34:53.270 and some rules which can be upheld. 34:53.270 --> 34:58.130 Likewise, in exactly the way that I flipped up four slides 34:58.130 --> 35:03.470 ago, there it is in the state of nature no notion of 35:03.470 --> 35:07.130 ownership or legal control as such. 35:07.130 --> 35:13.330 All there is is possession by force. 35:13.330 --> 35:17.490 So that's the nadir of Hobbes' argument. 35:17.490 --> 35:19.500 It's really bad news. 35:19.500 --> 35:23.920 It's solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. 35:23.920 --> 35:29.080 And the question now becomes what could possibly allow us 35:29.080 --> 35:32.300 to escape from such a situation? 35:32.300 --> 35:37.010 And Hobbes suggests in the conclusion of Chapter 13 that 35:37.010 --> 35:39.780 there are three sorts of motivations that might help 35:39.780 --> 35:42.860 people get out of this circumstance. 35:42.860 --> 35:47.480 One is a natural fear of death. 35:47.480 --> 35:51.910 The second is a "desire of such things as are necessary 35:51.910 --> 35:54.710 for commodious living." Those are all the sorts of things 35:54.710 --> 35:56.440 that we just talked about. 35:56.440 --> 36:00.600 The things that come only from predictable possibilities of 36:00.600 --> 36:02.010 cooperation-- 36:02.010 --> 36:07.900 buildings, learning, comfort, stability. 36:07.900 --> 36:12.960 And finally says Hobbes, there is a hope-- 36:12.960 --> 36:16.530 the counterpart of the equality held with regard to 36:16.530 --> 36:19.270 the state of nature earlier on-- 36:19.270 --> 36:24.190 that "by one's industry," it would be possible to obtain 36:24.190 --> 36:26.510 those things that are necessary for commodious 36:26.510 --> 36:30.480 living if only there were stable circumstances to allow 36:30.480 --> 36:33.610 the efforts to persist. 36:33.610 --> 36:38.050 So we move now to the fundamental argument of 36:38.050 --> 36:41.620 Hobbes, which involves, in the excerpts we read, the 36:41.620 --> 36:46.280 derivations of what he calls the first, second, and third 36:46.280 --> 36:48.340 laws of nature. 36:48.340 --> 36:52.150 So what I want to do first is to introduce you to Hobbes' 36:52.150 --> 36:53.380 terminology for this. 36:53.380 --> 36:56.340 And then I'm going to give you the first, second, and third 36:56.340 --> 36:57.360 laws of nature. 36:57.360 --> 37:00.750 And with that we'll close the lecture. 37:00.750 --> 37:04.870 So Hobbes talks about rights on the one hand 37:04.870 --> 37:07.450 and laws on the other. 37:07.450 --> 37:11.660 A right of nature, which Hobbes thinks is fundamental, 37:11.660 --> 37:15.340 and we will hear about this again when we do our reading 37:15.340 --> 37:20.480 from Robert Nozick for next Thursday, is the idea 37:20.480 --> 37:25.340 articulated in the founding documents of the nation in 37:25.340 --> 37:30.960 whose boundaries we now sit, that each human being is 37:30.960 --> 37:36.780 fundamentally in some profound sense free. 37:36.780 --> 37:42.900 Each human being has rights, that Hobbes explicitly calls 37:42.900 --> 37:51.110 inalienable, to engage in whatever way he or she can to 37:51.110 --> 37:53.450 self-preservation. 37:53.450 --> 37:57.660 That's a fundamental assumption of Western 37:57.660 --> 38:00.570 political philosophy. 38:00.570 --> 38:07.560 Liberty, on Hobbes' picture, is a rather narrow notion. 38:07.560 --> 38:13.040 All he means by this is the lack of external impediment. 38:13.040 --> 38:17.330 Hobbes considers contracts that are entered into out of 38:17.330 --> 38:22.000 fear to be nonetheless binding. 38:22.000 --> 38:25.200 The third term that we need from Hobbes to understand the 38:25.200 --> 38:29.540 rest of the argument is the idea of a law of nature. 38:29.540 --> 38:37.520 And this is where the trick of Hobbes' reasoning takes place. 38:37.520 --> 38:40.880 Hobbes says that while it's true that all of us have 38:40.880 --> 38:46.200 fundamental rights to liberty, it's also true that there are 38:46.200 --> 38:52.100 things which are binding upon us as a result of reason. 38:52.100 --> 38:57.010 There are general rules which reason can lead us to 38:57.010 --> 39:01.640 recognize, that specify what is forbidden and what is 39:01.640 --> 39:04.020 required to preserve life. 39:04.020 --> 39:10.030 And that once we discover that these sorts of things are 39:10.030 --> 39:15.630 required to preserve life, it becomes mandatory 39:15.630 --> 39:19.510 for us to do them. 39:19.510 --> 39:26.870 So the idea of law of nature is the idea that we can 39:26.870 --> 39:31.030 determine what it would be that would allow us to 39:31.030 --> 39:32.550 preserve our lives. 39:32.550 --> 39:36.760 And that it then becomes mandatory for us to do that. 39:36.760 --> 39:41.370 So whereas a right is a kind of freedom, a law is a kind of 39:41.370 --> 39:43.020 constraint. 39:43.020 --> 39:47.730 So what are the laws of nature according to Hobbes? 39:47.730 --> 39:51.390 The first law of nature he derived as follows. 39:51.390 --> 39:55.460 He says, as we know from Chapter 13, that the natural 39:55.460 --> 39:59.520 condition of human beings is a war of all against all. 39:59.520 --> 40:04.630 But that as we know from the right of nature, each of us 40:04.630 --> 40:08.980 can do whatever it takes to preserve ourselves, including 40:08.980 --> 40:11.130 harming others. 40:11.130 --> 40:17.580 The result of this is a lack of security for all of us. 40:17.580 --> 40:24.950 Once we recognize this, says Hobbes, reason tells us it is 40:24.946 --> 40:31.306 a general rule of reason that we are required to "seek peace 40:31.310 --> 40:34.790 if there is a chance of obtaining peace. 40:34.790 --> 40:40.630 And, if not, to engage in war." 40:40.630 --> 40:43.220 So the first law of nature, according to 40:43.220 --> 40:44.750 Hobbes, has two clauses. 40:44.750 --> 40:46.540 It has a peace clause-- 40:46.540 --> 40:48.150 a must clause. 40:48.150 --> 40:50.900 If there's a chance of cooperation, you're required 40:50.900 --> 40:53.460 to do it-- seek peace and follow it. 40:53.460 --> 40:56.560 And a war clause, which gives you a permission. 40:56.560 --> 41:02.310 If you cannot have a guarantee of peace, you may defend 41:02.310 --> 41:07.730 yourself by all means we can to defend ourselves. 41:07.730 --> 41:14.190 Now, the first law of nature raises a puzzle because it 41:14.190 --> 41:17.980 asks us what it would take for there to be a chance of 41:17.980 --> 41:20.120 obtaining peace. 41:20.120 --> 41:24.220 The peace clause only kicks in if other people are doing the 41:24.220 --> 41:26.580 same thing as you. 41:26.580 --> 41:31.910 And the second law of nature gives voice to how that first 41:31.910 --> 41:35.180 clause is to be satisfied. 41:35.180 --> 41:37.890 Hobbes says you need to be willing to lay down your 41:37.890 --> 41:41.430 rights to the extent that others are willing to do the 41:41.430 --> 41:46.080 same with the aim of promoting a peaceful state. 41:46.080 --> 41:49.500 You need, says Hobbes, to "content yourself with as much 41:49.500 --> 41:53.180 liberty against others as others have 41:53.180 --> 41:56.400 against you." Now. 41:56.400 --> 42:02.550 what we will talk about in the next lecture is a problem that 42:02.550 --> 42:05.090 arises from this picture. 42:05.090 --> 42:09.400 If other men will not lay down their right as well as you, 42:09.400 --> 42:14.140 there is no reason for you to divest yourself of this. 42:14.140 --> 42:19.180 For to do that would be to expose yourself to prey, 42:19.180 --> 42:22.770 "which no man is bound to," rather than to dispose 42:22.770 --> 42:24.830 yourself to peace. 42:24.830 --> 42:30.140 That is the first law of nature says: Look, without 42:30.140 --> 42:36.180 cooperation, without peace, life is miserable; it's 42:36.180 --> 42:40.110 solitary, nasty, brutish, and short-- 42:40.110 --> 42:44.930 so self-interest demands that you seek peace if you can. 42:44.930 --> 42:48.750 The second law of nature tells you: you should seek peace 42:48.750 --> 42:51.750 insofar as others are willing to do so. 42:51.750 --> 42:56.240 But the problem that we will address in the form of the 42:56.240 --> 43:02.340 prisoner's dilemma is that without some sort of central 43:02.340 --> 43:09.310 coordination, it will always be rational for everybody to 43:09.310 --> 43:13.920 drop out of the cooperative situation. 43:13.920 --> 43:18.250 And it's in light of that Hobbes gives 43:18.250 --> 43:22.070 voice to his solution. 43:22.070 --> 43:25.210 The third law of nature according to Hobbes is that 43:25.210 --> 43:28.860 you need to perform your covenants. 43:28.860 --> 43:33.890 That is, you need to do what you have promised. 43:33.890 --> 43:37.770 And in order for you to do that, you need to have the 43:37.770 --> 43:41.780 guarantee that others will also do as they promise. 43:41.780 --> 43:45.160 Covenants, he says, are invalid if you fear that the 43:45.160 --> 43:46.960 other party may renege. 43:46.960 --> 43:51.010 So to have covenants, there must be enforcement. 43:51.010 --> 43:56.160 In particular, says Hobbes, there needs to be some sort of 43:56.160 --> 44:01.060 coercive power that will compel men equally to the 44:01.060 --> 44:06.040 performance of their covenants, by the terror of-- 44:06.040 --> 44:08.770 I told you punishment was coming back-- 44:08.770 --> 44:13.820 some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the 44:13.820 --> 44:17.360 breach of their covenant. 44:17.360 --> 44:22.700 So Hobbes' solution is the following: He says men 44:22.700 --> 44:25.500 naturally love liberty and dominion over others, they 44:25.500 --> 44:28.100 recognize that the cost of this is the miserable 44:28.100 --> 44:29.590 condition of war. 44:29.590 --> 44:32.330 The only means of getting themselves out of this is 44:32.330 --> 44:37.510 through the introduction of a restraint among themselves in 44:37.510 --> 44:40.430 the form of a commonwealth. 44:40.430 --> 44:48.720 And because we are unlike ants and bees, cooperation can't be 44:48.720 --> 44:52.530 achieved without this external constraint. 44:52.530 --> 44:59.500 Conclusion, says Hobbes, is that each of us must say, 44:59.500 --> 45:04.490 hypothetically and voluntarily, "I authorize and 45:04.490 --> 45:09.850 give up my right of governing myself to this man or to this 45:09.850 --> 45:14.490 assembly of men on this condition that thou give up 45:14.490 --> 45:20.310 thy right to him and authorize his actions in like manner." 45:20.310 --> 45:27.330 That is, says Hobbes, it is only when individuals form 45:27.330 --> 45:34.710 themselves into a society whereby in return for giving 45:34.710 --> 45:38.700 up freedom, commodious living is possible. 45:38.700 --> 45:44.450 It's only then that most of the things that we take as 45:44.450 --> 45:50.000 definitive of human society and human experience even 45:50.000 --> 45:52.420 become possible. 45:52.420 --> 45:58.620 What we'll look at next lecture is a schema for 45:58.620 --> 46:02.230 thinking about the dilemma that Hobbes thinks we find 46:02.230 --> 46:07.750 ourselves in, and ask whether Hobbes' solution, the 46:07.750 --> 46:13.120 imposition of an external sovereign, is indeed the only 46:13.120 --> 46:18.450 solution to the puzzle which he poses to us in the form all 46:18.450 --> 46:21.400 his argument about the state of nature, the first and 46:21.400 --> 46:24.000 second laws of nature, and finally the 46:24.000 --> 46:25.510 third law of nature. 46:25.510 --> 46:27.780 So I'll see everyone on Thursday.