Philosophy Sunday! Today Morgane tackles Hobbes, one of the main founders of modern political thought.
Hobbes is a British political thinker renowned for his theory of Leviathan: he imagines a utopian social order in which the people voluntarily surrender their freedom to act to their sovereign – Leviathan. Hobbes conceives of the world, society and man in a “mechanistic” way, comparing their functioning to that of a machine.
To the extent that, in the state of nature, men have an equal right to everything, they find themselves in a state of permanent war, instability, insecurity and total misery. They are reduced to ensuring their own survival, and can only devote themselves to this single task. In this state of permanent vigilance, relaxing with a spliff is out of the question. It is by organizing themselves in society and respecting the laws set down by a government that men gain access to various social and cultural practices, of which marijuana consumption is one.
Because he establishes that “man is a wolf to man” in the state of nature, it is justified according to Hobbes for peoples to cede their freedom to Leviathan, without whose influence widespread war would reign.
Civil disobedience is therefore unacceptable according to this philosopher (except in cases where the citizen’s life is threatened: he can then use all his strength to preserve it). If weed had been prohibited in his time, or if Leviathan had decided that its consumption was contrary to the proper functioning of his state, its use could not have been tolerated by Hobbes.
However, the philosopher also wrote: “Freedom lies in the silence of laws”. This means that the area of private life over which the law issues no commands is left completely to the discretion of citizens. Since the use of cannabis was not legislated at the time, we can infer that, from a political point of view, Hobbes was at least indifferent to what individuals did or didn’t do with it.
Morgane
