To gain perspective on today’s politics, I have set out on a journey. I haven’t settled on a title yet, but I’m thinking something like “Make Political Philosophy Cool Again.” Here’s where we’ve been so far:
- Introduction. (Given the nature of our current information disruption and what I was seeing in both left-leaning and right-leaning media bubbles during the Biden years, I decided to change the direction of my blog. It seemed to me we needed more wisdom and perspective and fewer rage-inducing simplifications.)
- Part 1: Euthyphro, The Spirit of Liberty, TV Lawyers and more.
- Part 2: Antigone: Rule of Law or my Conscience
- Part 3: Democracy, Oligarchy, and Tyranny.
- Part 4: Socrates and the Subversive Element
It’s always best to begin at the beginning, but each part was designed to stand alone, so don’t be afraid to jump right in. I promise you’ll find it fascinating. 🤓 = 😎.
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Do the People Want a King?
In an interesting passage from the biblical Book of Samuel (8:4) the Israelites wanted a king.
What happened was this: During the era after the death of Joshua, the ancient Israelites were ruled by a series of charismatic leaders often called “judges” but who were not actually judges in the legal sense. They were heroes and prophets upon whom rested “the spirit of God” and who led single tribes or groups of tribes to free Israel from what the Encyclopedia Judaica calls “periodic foreign oppression.”
Then one day, the Israelite elders approached Samuel, who was one such leader, and asked him to appoint a king so that the Israelites could be “like other nations.”
Samuel didn’t like it. Neither did God, who viewed the request for a king as a rejection. God told Samuel to warn the people against the dangers of a king, so Samuel said to the Israelites:
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
Despite such harsh warnings, the Israelites said, “Nay; but we will have a king over us; That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”
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Exchanging Loyalty for Protection
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) offered a theory of how government (as he knew it) evolved.
According to Hobbes, originally people lived in state of nature characterized by violence and fear. Because some people are predators who seek to dominate others, in a state of nature everyone lived in a constant state of preparedness for battle. Life in the natural state was “nasty, brutish, and short.” The state of nature was so mired in uncertainty and fear that there was no place for industry or innovation because “the fruit thereof is certain.” To illustrate that we naturally live in fear of each other, Hobbes offers the example that we lock our doors.
According to Hobbes, to escape the fear and uncertainty of life in a state of nature, people entered a “contract” and agreed to live under an absolute monarch in exchange for protection.
Doesn’t that sounds a bit like the arrangement the ancient Israelites wanted?
Aristotle famously said, “Man is a rational animal.” For Aristotle, people formed governments because it was the rational thing to do. Hobbes rejected this idea. For Hobbes, it was all about fear and the desire for protection. (At the time, Aristotle was the reigning authority in political philosophy, so coming right out and saying Aristotle was wrong took some chutzpah).
You might say that Hobbes was offering a theory for how feudalism developed in Europe in the early middle ages.
As Hobbes might tell the story, after the fall of the Roman empire when there was widespread chaos and fear of bandits and invaders, the people agreed to a contract: They would live under the rule of a nobleman or lord in exchange for protection. (Obviously the idea that people decide en masse to put themselves under the dominion of an overlord is far-fetched and Hobbes intended this as a sort of metaphor or explanation for how governments come to be.)
Hobbes was the first to talk about government as a social contract. As he understood the contract, the agreement was between the people, who decided among themselves to defer decisions to a single leader. The king was not bound by the contract and therefore had absolute power.
Poking holes in Hobbes’s theory is not difficult.
No doubt that after the fall of the Roman empire, there were people who were ruled by their fears and were happy to accept their positions as serfs in exchange for protection, but it seems to me just as likely that many serfs were coerced into servitude, and then their children were born into poverty and servitude. In other words, it’s possible that the first noblemen were the strongest warriors best equipped to protect the others. It’s also possible that the first overlords were just successful bandits.
Moreover, not all people or cultures end up trading life in the natural state for life under a king. For example, archaeologists tell us that in the absence of a strong central government on the North American continent, the indigenous people lived in democratic units and governed themselves.
“[Indigenous people] were governed through negotiations among clans. Clans were made of people from across society. Clan membership was inherited from mother to child. Clans were — and still are — the social glue holding these peoples together. . . Muscogee people have practiced democratic decision making in similar council houses for at least 1,500 years.”
To be fair, Hobbes didn’t have the benefit of the research of modern archeology or the means to study cultures around the world. He offered an explanation that accounted for what he knew: How powerful European kings eventually arose from the chaos after the Roman Empire collapsed.
By the time Hobbes was born, what had happened in Europe was that, over the centuries, the first overlords consolidated power. Kings — who became kings through various means including political maneuvering and a show of strength — defined their borders and united overlords in their service. These kings and overlords demanded loyalty from the serfs on the land. Yes, they offered protection in exchange for loyalty, but it seems to me that protecting their serfs was basically the same as protecting their own dominions.
Hereditary succession developed partly as a way to create stability. The nobleman claimed that his right to rule came from God and that his right to rule was passed to his heirs. As a result, people always knew who the king was, and (generally) who the next king would be. When a king died without heirs, chaos often ensued as those with a claim jockeyed for power.
The idea that the power of the kings came from God later became known as the divine rights of kings. Charles I of England claimed that, according to scripture, Adam was the first king and the kings and queens of England (and evidently all the European monarchs) were Adams’ direct descendents. (Yeah I know. It makes no sense, but it’s a good story if you want to secure the loyalty of the people by making them believe that God selected you to be the king.)
Remember when Socrates said that people in his ideal Republic must be tricked into doing what is in their best interest. They are told Big Lies to keep them in their places. Socrates was on to something about how rulers secure their power.
By claiming that monarchies began by means of a contract between the people, Hobbes essentially rejected the doctrine of the divine rights of kings. In fact, Hobbes believed people were equal, which was why in a state of nature there was chaos as people sought to protect their own interests.
Exchanging loyalty for protection is the bargain offered by today’s autocrats. The formula is to identify (or create) an enemy and then claim to be the person best equipped to defeat the enemy. The strongman offers to go out before the people and fight their battles. In exchange for protection, the people pledge their loyalty.
Given that Hobbes was advocating for absolute monarchy during an era when powerful kings and queens ruled Europe, you wouldn’t think his work would have aroused fury — but it did. According to Yale professor Steven Smith, “to the churchmen he seemed a godless atheist. To the monarchists, he was a dangerous skeptic and freethinker. To those who believed government should be more democratic, he was a defender of tyranny. (Hobbes, by the way, defined “tyranny” as “a ruler who you don’t like.”)
The Freedom to be Left Alone
In addition to being the first to talk about government as a social contract, Hobbes also redefined liberty in a way that still resonates for a lot of people.
Hobbes pointed out that the ancient Athenians living under a democracy viewed liberty, not as belonging to the individual, but belonging to the polity or democratic city. The Athenians believed themselves free because they were members of a democracy and thus ruled themselves. Hobbes didn’t think they had much personal freedom. For one thing, they were compelled to take part in government. “Democracy” literally means “rule by the people,” so, as the Athenians understood it, the people were required to perform the functions of government.
Imagine trying to compel people today to perform public services and actually run the government. Lots of people don’t even want to show up for jury duty. Millions don’t vote. Millions pay no attention to politics. They just want to be left alone.
Being compelled to perform government functions wasn’t all of it. Hobbes pointed out that the citizens were also compelled to obey whatever laws the majority agreed to pass. The phrase “tyranny of the majority” hadn’t yet been invented, but Hobbes alluded to the idea: Living under majority rule can result in injustice and tyranny if the majority agree to pass tyrannical laws. Modern critics of democracy describe it this way: Majority rule is the equivalent of two wolves and a sheep voting on the dinner menu.
For Hobbes, liberty and freedom belong to the individual, not the collective. For Hobbes, liberty means freedom from constraints and freedom to live your life as you please. He believed that a person was more likely to have greater personal liberty under an absolute sovereign, who was more likely to give people a zone in which they were free to act. Basically, if you don’t annoy the king, the king won’t annoy you — as long as you “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”
Hobbes also believed that kings needed to be popular and their interests were often aligned with the interests of the people, so people were more likely to get laws that benefitted them than, say, if a political party they despised gained control in a democracy. A sovereign, according to Hobbes, should govern for the benefit if all people, rich and poor. Because the majority will look out for their own best interests, Hobbes evidently thought this kind of fairness was more likely under an absolute sovereign.
Similarly, Hobbes believed that peace and social unity could be best achieved under the rule of a king who keeps peace and insures the common defense. In fact, he thought peace and harmony were more likely to be achieved if the king had absolute power over all things: the church, university curriculums, and everything.
Hobbes was probably right about one thing: The way to have stability and peace and end all outward strife and settle all arguments once and for all is for all people to agree to live under the absolute authority of a single person, who alone makes laws and judges those who break them, who decides which ideas have merit, and who approves all curriculums. If reducing strife and political conflict is the goal, absolute monarchy is the solution. If ending all strife and personal differences is the goal, totalitarianism is the solution.
Not everyone, though, wants to live in a world in which we all believe the same things, think the same things, and defer to a single authority.
Do People Today Want a King?
I suppose we can first ask, “Do people like democracy?” I suspect that a lot of people — even those who claim to like democracy — in fact, don’t.
People of Hobbes’s era often distrusted democracy because their models — the ancient Greek democracies and the Roman republic — failed, which didn’t bode well for democracy in general.
Scholars offer various reasons for why the Athenian democracy failed. Athens committed itself to unpopular wars — which it lost. The economy crashed, leading to domestic unrest. Leaders were accused of corruption. When Athenian democracy failed, it was initially replaced by an oligarchy, which gave way to the rise of Alexander the Great.
The Roman republic (a representative democracy) began in 509 BCE when the people of Rome replaced their monarchy with elected magistrates. The republic lasted almost five centuries until internal political turmoil pulled it apart. From the turmoil arose Julius Caesar, who made himself emperor.
Here are a few reasons people might not like the kind of democracy we have now:
- As I mentioned in the last blog post, slow, difficult change is the price we pay for stability. The slow pace can frustrate people. Autocracy, in contrast, is swift (“Off with her head!” said the Queen of Hearts.)
- Democratic institutions and agencies are created by — and run by — mere humans. Therefore, they will never work perfectly. Judges will get it wrong. Agencies will screw up. Laws will have unintended consequences. There will always be flaws in a democracy. Some people cannot tolerate imperfection so they reject the entire “system.”
- You won’t always get your way. In fact, if you are consistently in the voting minority, you may never get you way and you will end up living under a government not to your liking (or that you despise).
- There is a cacophony out there. People follow different religions, embrace different ideas of what America is and should be, and disagree about how America should be positioned internationally. The problem has been exacerbated by the rise of partisan cable news channels and Internet bubbles, which keep people who tune in or participate riled and fearful. (For what I mean, click here.) People who want harmony either settle into hermetically sealed bubbles with like-minded people or they avoid politics altogether.
Andriy Chirovsky explained it this way: “Democracy is messy. Authoritarianism is neat.”
People who have watched their country fall into the hands of a political party they despise representing ideas they think are wrongheaded might indeed prefer a rule-breaker who is willing go before them and fight their battles.
Learning to Love democracy with all of its warts and shortcomings
Next up: John Locke, who rejected the idea of divine rights of kings, had ideas for correcting the failures of the ancient democracies, and inspired the American colonists, who most certainly did not want a king.
Didn’t I tell you that a series of blog posts on political philosophy would be fascinating? 🤓 = 😎
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A small announcement: My upcoming book, Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals: The Story of the Bill of Rights, was named a Junior Library Guild selection. I haven’t received my certificate yet, or the little medal that goes on the books, but I have been assured that it is on its way, and it will look like this: 
Also the first major book reviewer (Kirkus) was extremely positive. “Final verdict: insightful, thought-provoking, and timely.”
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