Philosophers

Would Hitler be a just sovereign according to Hobbes?

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As a Hobbesian might say about sovereigns, "absolutely" not.

The "justice" of sovereigns is, more seriously, a curious issue in Hobbes and more complicated than it may at first appear. One might be tempted to say that because the Hobbesian sovereign is an "absolute" sovereign, that anything he or she does is "just." In other words, one might say that whatever the sovereign commands is for Hobbes by definition "just."

But justice in Hobbes might be thought of in two ways: "civil" and "natural." In terms of civil justice (the justice defined by actual laws and dictates made by governments), one question concerning Hitler's conduct would be whether or not it was unjust of him to violate the terms of international law and the various treaties his government negotiated--for example, the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviets and the peace treaty Hitler's representatives negotiated in bad faith with Neville Chamberlain. Arguably, however, for Hobbes, the sovereign is not bound by civil law in his or her dealings with foreign sovereigns. That's because with regard to other sovereigns the sovereign remains in the "state of nature" and at war. For Hobbes there is no true international civil order and no civil obligation for sovereigns to obey "civil laws" they have negotiated among absolute sovereigns.

Even, for the most part, with regard to his or her own subjects, the Hobbesian sovereign is above the particularities of civil law that subjects are obliged to obey. So, were George W. Bush a Hobbesian sovereign, there would have been no injustice in his violating the FISA laws (though subordinate government agents would have been unjust in violating those laws, unless specifically ordered by the sovereign to do so). There is, however, one very big condition a sovereign must meet in dealing with his or her subjects; and thinking about this overriding condition draws our consideration of Hitler as a just or unjust sovereign beyond the simple dictates of positive civil law into the realm of natural law and natural justice.

Hitler can, I think, be thought of as unjust in Hobbesian terms, if not for violating civil law, then for violating the terms of natural justice. Keep in mind that Hobbes's overriding concern is that the sovereign provide for the security of his or her subjects. That is, the objective of making a social contract and setting up a sovereign is to end the ''war of all against all' and secure a lasting peace. In undermining the peace and security of German citizens by rounding them up, imprisoning them, and putting them to death, Hitler then obviously violated the the social contract and the most basic objective of Hobbes's political thought. Indeed, Hobbes maintains that as a matter of natural law one ought to honor the contracts one makes. (In this sense, Hitler's violation of treaties might in a natural sense--though again not a truly civil sense--be thought of as unjust).

Hitler's actually promoting war and advancing wars against foreign powers that subjected Germans to violence at the hands of the Allies can also, I think, be thought of as a violation of the objective of securing peace. It's just this difference on the issue of war, in fact, that most starkly marks the difference between Hobbesian philosophy from the thought of Nazi theorists like, for example, Carl Schmitt. For Hobbes war is an evil to be overcome, but for National Socialists, war (or, anyway, the struggle against national enemies) is not only an inevitable but also a beneficial dimension of political life. Hobbes in contrast to the Nazis writes, for example, that "every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it." On the basis of his making war on his subjects and actually promoting war with other nations, then, Hitler was decidedly unjust to his own subjects and to others. (Hitler was not bound by a social contract to protect the lives of the non-Germans he killed, but his conduct towards foreigners can still be thought of as unjust according to natural principles of justice.)

Hitler's racist ideology of Aryan supremacy also violated the principles of natural equality Hobbes recognized. Hobbes maintained and Hitler did not that every human (every "man," at least) is "equal by nature." And according to Hobbes, as a matter of natural justice, when civil society is established, subjects ought to be treated equally before the law--no one should, Hobbes writes, "reserve to himself any right, which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest."

Among the Hobbesian provisions of natural justice Hitler violated, then, we may count (1) violating the social contract by attacking members of the German social contract; (2) violating all kinds of people's natural right to self-preservation; (3) promoting war; and (4) failing to recognize people's natural equality.

For all these reasons, then, Hitler was in Hobbesian terms an "unjust" sovereign.

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