Reni (R): So, Mr. Hobbes, what is your idea about humans and civilization?
Thomas Hobbes (TH): I do believe that humans are equal. But humans are also egocentric and what each person cares about the most is his well-being. The problem is, when all humans are equal and free and egocentric, what you get is constant battle amongst individuals so that they can get what they want. That’s why people need civilization. Without it, one individual is under constant threat of other individuals. People wouldn’t feel safe. Yes, humans would then be bound by rules and such, and wouldn’t be able to do everything that we like to do. In other words, they might not be as free as they were before, but at least one can go about his life without having to worry whether someone would sneak up on him, kill him, and take his belongings just because that other person felt like it.
R: I get the point. And when you’re living in a world where so many other people exist, it’s only normal that you have rules of some sort so that you can live in harmony. But something is amiss here. Your portrayal of human nature is so ... negative. Surely humans aren’t that bad? Most people don’t just go ahead and steal from others when they feel like it, do they?
TH: If there aren’t any laws to refrain them from doing so, who knows? I’m not so sure about that....
R: You say it as if humans were only capable of acting decent if there were laws and society that restrained them. It means that once someone is freed from those constraints, he is free to do whatever he wishes to do, and I disagree with that. I have a hypothetical situation I wish to present here. Let’s imagine that there were two people who were lost somewhere in a snowy mountain. God knows when they’d be rescued. Supplies were running low and one of those two, not having enough physical endurance to bear it, died. From an egoistic point of view, it wouldn’t be shocking if the person who remained chopped his partner’s body up and ate him for supper. I mean, who would miss the chance of having extra protein in that circumstance? Yet, to think about consuming human flesh, even when one were in the verge of death due to hunger, is gruesome. This is despite the fact that that person was not bound by laws of society. There were only the two of them--he and his dead friend. Were he to eat his friend’s body, nobody would know. What I’m trying to say here is that humans aren’t as bad as you depict them to be. And there’s another thing. Based on your argument, civilization, society, and rules exist simply to protect an individual from other individuals. It means that individuals that don’t pose a threat for others are not bound by laws of society. In addition to that, there would be no need to protect such individual with those laws. Am I right?
TH: Well, that’s why there are individuals referred as “guardians” in the case of children and mentally disabled people, right? They might not pose threats for other individuals, but were someone to have the nerve to mess with them, their guardians would not like it one bit. That being the case, they do have the right to be protected by laws.
R: Yes, but that logic doesn’t work in the case of the person and his dead friend in the snowy mountain. The dead guy didn’t have a “guardian”. If the living person were to follow your logic, eating his dead partner wouldn’t be classified into wrong deed, would it? The dead person didn’t pose a threat and thus was outside the scope of laws and moral consideration. But eating a dead person is not right, whatever logic you may use. That’s why I disagree with your notion about human nature and social agreement being the only code that defines right and wrong.
