The 1789 Discourse: Constant VS Hobbes

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Thomas Hobbes gave us the state in the form of the “Leviathan.” A Biblical monstrosity that is unstoppable and all powerful. It lives in a grim reality where might is and makes right. Hobbes saw revolution and war rip apart the European continent and saw this terrifying concept as the source of protection. 

The opposite comes from the French-Swiss writer, Benjamin Constant. While Hobbes can be seen as a realist and pessimist, Constant gives the opposite impression. Constant is a romantic in every way. He was a writer of romantic novels, a thinker of the Romantic tradition, and a personal romantic. Yet his works and writings play an essential role in the development of liberal thought and may be more relevant than ever in contemporary American discourse in the face of government tyranny.

While many people, including liberals themselves, associate liberalism with the expansion of government to provide greater services for its citizenry. They often forget that the original and key component of liberalism is the focus on protection from the state and government. Constant and other liberal thinkers of the time were concerned about the tyranny of stemming from the  European monarchies. The Revolutions in France and the Americas were fundamentally liberal experiments to envision and create new societies and governments based around enlightenment ideals and liberal principals. 

Chief amongst them was a democracy that would not interfere and violate the lives of its citizenry in the manner that European monarchies regularly did. Constant criticized both the Jacobin and Bonapartist Regimes due to their authoritarian natures. But it is his analysis and criticism of the Jacobin Regime where his political theories and philosophical analysis really shines.

Just as the Hobbesian state is one that rejects an utopian view of society, Constant argues that the utopian view of the Jacobites is flawed as they are trying to resurrect the freedoms and ideologies of a perfect past. 

The ideals of the past could not be applied to the contemporary world. The sense of community and participation that ancient Athens and Rome relied on cannot be replicated in a society that is modern, large, and complex. 

The Jacobites- by trying to build a new society based on the old Romans and Greeks, were doomed to failure. The old values of the old democracies and republics were not applicable to the new liberal ones that were forged by the revolutions.

For Constant, the ancient regimes were ones where equality meant that all were equally  powerless in front of the government and law. He called this the Liberty of the Ancients and he contrasted this with the Liberty of the Moderns. This new liberty revolved around the principles of civil liberties, the rule of law, and freedom from excessive government interference.

At first this seems antithetical to the Hobbesian model. 

This does not necessarily have to be the case. Constant’s liberal government still relies on a sovereign, whether it is a constitutional monarchy or a parliament. Constant still keeps the state, he just places limitations on it. The Hobbesian state is still necessary to prevent chaos and violence as the core flaws of human nature have not been eradicated. The Hobbesian state is one based completely on strength and Constant places limits on it.

This is relevant as liberals debate their future in the world. Liberals need to remember that civil liberties and protection from the government are their key principals. 

When liberalism expanded the government to encompass the New Deal and the Progressive Movements, it was not with the goal of expanding the state, but rather to more easily facilitate Constant’s ideals. Liberals do not subscribe to a Marxist understanding that history is formed and based around class struggle. Liberals are supposed to realize that the world is one that is brutal and nasty and that a powerful state is the only source of peace and that this leviathan needs to be reigned in so its citizenry could be happy and free. An utopia has never existed and will never come. 

Protection from the government and the promotion of civil liberties has also come back into the minds of the public as the Trump Administration uses federal agents in unmarked vans to abduct protesters in Portland and shows no signs of slowing down I.C.E. raids. 

This should move people need to remember the inherent liberal values of the American Revolution. As more and more people come to grips with the unflattering and dark realities of many of America’s historical figures, they need to find a way to divorce their ideas with the person.

 Thomas Jefferson may have been a cruel and racist slave owner, yet he put into the spirit of the nation the very ideals that may save the descendants of those he enslaved. Jefferson and James Madison, in spite of their own personal faults, put into the founding documents of the nation the rights of individuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These ideals are based around the concept of individuals having the right to be protected by the Hobbesian state while also being protected from many of its darker abilities. The dream of some “liberals” in abolishing the state and police and bringing forth an utopia is one that is not rooted in the liberal tradition. The liberal is one that dreams of protection from the Hobbesian state, not one who seeks to abolish it. 

This means that modern Americans have the right to enjoy protection from the police while also being protected from the abuse of power by police. 

That is the core part of the free and democratic republic that Jefferson, Madison, and Constant dreamed and imagined. 

The past is one that was cruel and brutal- but so will the future. Even if racism goes away, another problem will take its place in the vacuum. 

This is why the Hobbesian state is still needed and relevant. Yet Constant’s idealism is needed to. Just as the state protects us from anarchy, it is only liberal values of rule of law and protection from intrusive government that protects us from the state. It is this middle ground between Hobbes’s realism and Constant’s idealism that liberals need to find and emphasize.