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July 16, 2008
It is well known that Hobbes defined liberty in negative terms---he holds that citizens have liberty insofar as they are not physically prevented from acting as they would like.What is less well known is that he links this political liberty to the right of nature. Thus in Leviathan Hobbes says:
THE RIGHT OF NATURE . . . is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of his own life, and consequently of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (Leviathan, XIV, 1)
In the next paragraph, Hobbes explicitly defines liberty:
By Liberty is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments, which impediments may often take away part of a man's power to do what he would, but cannot hinder him from using the power left him, according as his judgment and reason shall dictate to him. (Leviathan, XIV, 2)
So political liberty in the negative sense, which is the liberty that is central to Hobbes' political theory, is related to right of nature.So liberty is not just liberty as the absence of corporal impediments since the The right of nature is the liberty to preserve ourselves.
This is the right to do whatever one sincerely judges needful for one's preservation; yet because it is at least possible that virtually anything might be judged necessary for one's preservation, this theoretically limited right of nature becomes in practice an unlimited right to potentially anything. Hence we have conflict.
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