Hobbes and Pufendorf on Natural Equality and Civil Sovereignty

Abstract

The idea that human beings are equal by nature must be one of the best-known features of Hobbes’ and Pufendorf’s political theories. It is equally well known that these writers were no supporters of democratic or republican ideals. Yet, not uncommonly, their notions of natural equality have been read as expressions of egalitarian sentiments similar to those that have come to characterize western political thought since the American and French revolutions. To take just one example, in her much cited study, Jean Hampton speaks of Hobbes’ ‘egalitarian beliefs’ as principally similar to beliefs that have later inspired ‘movements designed to achieve political equality for racial minorities and for women’.1 While this level of egalitarianism is seldom associated with Pufendorf, his doctrine of natural equality has been seen as affirming a universal value of humanity that anticipates later doctrines of universal human rights.2 This tendency to find early traces of egalitarianism in Hobbes’ and Pufendorf’s political theories has led some commentators to accuse them of fraud. Behind this charge has been the belief that the doctrine of natural liberty and equality was — to cite one well-known prosecutor — ‘the emancipatory doctrine par excellence, promising that universal freedom was the principle of the modern era’.3 When Hobbes and Pufendorf proceeded to justify authoritarian government, slavery and the subjection of women by assuming individual attributes and social conditions which made it necessary for people to give their consent to such arrangements, an inherently egalitarian idea was being used for non-egalitarian purposes.