Recently, we’ve been treated to a short piece by Jason J. Campbell, "On the Evils of Privatizing America's Prison System." His focus is limited, but it illustrates why the idea of privatization, especially when applied to services typically reserved for, and provided by, the State (such as the administration of prisons, in this instance), is inherently a bad idea. It is such a bad idea whenever it crops up, because it’s essentially immoral, violating the all-important fiduciary relationship that ought to exist between any well-conceived polity and its citizens.
Consider a state-of-nature theory by Thomas Hobbes:
In such a condition there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing . . . no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
So runs the famous passage from Hobbes' Leviathan, describing the condition of humankind prior to the development of a civil society. Ever since, Hobbes’ portrayal has been identified as a model of state-of-nature theories whose express purpose was to provide an account of the transition of a society from its pre-political form to one with a fully established and fully functioning polity –- an account, you might say, of the formation of the state. I say “a model” because Hobbes’s was but one version with many others to follow –- most notably, by such philosophers as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, even Hegel.
There's no reason to subject Hobbes’s description to severe criticism as regards its factual content or accuracy. It’s common knowledge that the account he provides is based, in part at least, on the anthropological reports of his time; but it’s also true that some of those reports (of the North American Indians, for instance) were considerably less negative about the state of nature and led other of Hobbes’ contemporaries to a different conclusion entirely –- namely, “a picture stressing a high degree of order and solidarity resting on kinship, tribe, even complex confederations of tribes” (The Social Philosophers by Robert Nisbet, p. 27). It’s doubtful, however, that Hobbes would have been swayed by ethnological reports to the contrary. Empirical validity, as we shall soon see, was the least of his concerns.
Article comments
1 - Cindy
There's no reason to subject Hobbes’s description to severe criticism as regards its factual content or accuracy.
lol
2 - roger nowosielski
That was to take care of your objection, remember.
3 - Cindy
Yes, I see. :-)
4 - roger nowosielski
Dave changed my intended meaning somewhat, but I think the point gets across. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone into that much detail here, but I felt there was a need to set things straight. It's a boring piece, a preamble. The next segment is where the argument begins.
5 - Cindy
“he must qualify nominalism enough to give sovereignty solid ontological standing; but he must retain it enough first to give the sovereign free rein to define the common rules and second to undercut attempt by discontented subjects to appeal above the sovereign to a higher power”
Tell me if I am understanding this. First he decided what should be, and then he went about trying to figure out how to justify his own viewpoint?
6 - roger nowosielski
No - he accepted nominalism because it had become by then the dominant philosophy and school of thought: namely, that you couldn't take sense-data (do you know what I mean by that?) for granted or even know for certain they exist (because it all could be an illusion). So the signs and omens - e.g., in Nature - which served before as proof and evidence of God's existence - had to be discarded, too, as being unreliable and ultimately signifying nothing.
So Hobbes's problem was to be able to assert the ontological status (existence) of God - he needed that because "sovereign" itself was a replica on earth, and you couldn't argue for the sovereign's authority while the status of God was left hanging - despite the nominalism's dogma to the effect that whatever is knowable is subject to "definitions."
I'll reread the text and will try to provide a clearer statement.
7 - roger nowosielski
But in a sense, you're right. He knew where he wanted to go and had to do a lot of maneuvering in order to get there.
8 - Cindy
My understanding is that Kings were "ordained by god". Now Hobbes is trying to validate this?
Why is he doing that in particular? I mean, why not some other idea?
9 - Cindy
Do you see what I'm asking? What made him go in that direction? Was it the thinking that came before him? Was it his own bias?
10 - roger nowosielski
The divine right of Kings, the idea, I do believe that came later - when it was deemed necessary to justify the authority of Kings further down the line. (But you could argue, I suppose, that Hobbes was the precursor of the idea.) But first you had to establish the concept of sovereignty independently as it were (although on analogy with how you'd have to do likewise for God) - and that's what Hobbes's project was.
There was of course the theocratic tradition/phase of government - from the Hebrew/biblical history -
but I'm not certain whether Hobbes was familiar with it or whether he even drew upon this.
11 - Cynthia
Concerning the north american indians, would you say that they are living peacefully in a state of nature (disproving Hobbes state of war theory) or by forming tribes with some sort of organization (chief, hunters, gatherers ...)they had transitioned to some sort of body politic?