Two recent threads have brought up, for me, a simmering tension in conservative philosophy.
In one, started by newchrasher it’s asserted that the experience of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina proves the necessity ofr gun rights. The logic being that chaos broke out in New Orleans, and many New Orleans citizens have guns, and thus private gun owhership prevents chaos. (Which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. To me the recent events confirmed what I’ve always stated in gun control debates, namely that a strong police presence is the key to deterring crime, but that’s not what this debate is about.)
The second thread in question is the one entitled Katrina may be a boon to conservatives philosophically. That one started by linking to a column by George Will, in which he cited the works of Thomas Hobbes in discussing the situation in New Orleans. The collapse of organized society, he says, was a precise demonstration of Hobbes’ concept of “The War of all Against All”, and confirms Hobbes’ response of calling in a strong leader who uses overwhelming force to maintain law and order.
Of course the law and order streak has always run deep in conservative thought. Hobbes, on the other hand, has not. If we’d polled conservatives for their favorite philosophers a month ago, he probably wouldn’t have cracked the top ten. But after Katrina he seems to be enjoying a resurgence, and somewhat fewer people would now identify him as a stuffed tiger in a comic strip.
Hobbes’ master work, Leviathan, amply demonstrates the truth of Mark Twain’s defintion of a classic: a book which everybody praises and nobody reads. But as one of the few who’s slogged to the end of it (though I admit to skimming some parts) I’m qualified to summarize.
Hobbes begins with the state of nature, and an argument about human behavior. Humans have desires: food, water, shelter, physical safety, and so forth. The desires of different people often come into conflict. Violence is the result. Hobbes believed that that the human mind was bound to seek out what it desired and use logic to determine how to achieve those desires, thus making the conflict inevitable. It was impossbile, in his view, for people to simply decide not to fight each other. Conflict breaks out as surely as gravity pulls objects downward.
This is a problem. Humans are happier with peace, security and prosperity, which they can’t get in the state of the nature. To solve the problem, Hobbes calls in the titular Leviathan, a leader of high stature who rules with an iron hand, forcing all subjects to refrain from turning violent.
Hobbes’ greatest emphasis falls on what sort of governing there should be, and there he’s not ambiguous. It should be stern and unforgiving. The ruler’s power must be absolute. Nothing, not even minor individual liberties, can be preserved; everything must fall under the just sway of the ruler. To just about anyobdy living today this would seem extreme, but Hobbes thought it necessary. Let the leader’s authority slip even slightly, and you tumble back to nastiness, brutishness, and shortness.
In particular, he considers and rejects the idea that each individual can simply provide safety for themselves. Hobbes viewed that as absurd. An individual, left to their own devices, cannot be secure that their present and near-future needs will be met, so they must turn to violence. And that, of course, is the exact opposite of the reasoning used to justify gun rights. So we have a contradiction.