In his book, Leviathan, Sir Thomas Hobbes contends that the law of nature and civil law contain each other and are of equal extent. What Hobbes means by this pairing of laws that seem, on the surface, to be so different, is that both nature—that is, the physical world—and society have a natural tendency towards unruliness and it is for this reason that both must be governed and controlled by a single and supreme power in whom absolute authority is invested. Nature, of course, is the broader of the two laws for it is all-encompassing and as such it absorbs both society and civil law. Yet the argument that Hobbes posits and defends in Leviathan is that both types of law operate from and towards the same position, using the same essential mechanism, in order to achieve the same effect: the creation of a stable state that is comprised of numerous entities. Hobbes explains the relationship between the these two types of laws by observing, “[I]f we could suppose a… multitude of men to consent in the observation of justice, and other laws of nature, without a common power to keep them in awe; we might as well suppose all mankind to do the same” (130). In such a case, Hobbes concludes, “there would be… [no] need for civil government” (130). Throughout the text Leviathan, Hobbes offers a variety of examples and explanations to defend his position. The common characteristic linking all of these examples is that Hobbes assumes that nature and society are similar because they are comprised of multiple bodies that are, by their innate nature, irrational, but they are capable of uniting and being controlled if a ruling force exerts its authority over the masses, thereby imposing order.

Plato would, for the most part, agree with Hobbes’ stance about the close and almost inseparable characteristics of the relationship between nature and society. Like Hobbes, Plato articulated the belief that all creatures, whether human or otherwise, are ruled by passion and emotion as opposed to reason. Nonetheless, Plato also believed, as did Hobbes, that the inherent disorder that exists among collectives of any sort could be contained and controlled by imposing order and structure on society. Whereas Plato would have diverged from Hobbesian philosophy, perhaps, was in the means and by what processes he envisioned for achieving such order and structure. Whereas Hobbes advocated the centralization of authority in a single representative, Plato believed that the ruling authority could be a group of people that made decisions as a whole. In fact, in The Republic, Plato laid out his philosophy about the organization of society. Plato asserted that society is comprised of three distinct classes, which he labeled as guardians (rulers), producers, and merchants (63). Plato understood, possibly in a way that Hobbes did not, that society, like nature itself, would continue to expand exponentially if allowed, and that given this fact, a single ruler would be unlikely to establish and maintain social order (61).

De Pizan would likely have agreed with Hobbes to the extent that both conceptualized society using the metaphor of the human body. As de Pizan wrote in The Book of the Body Politic, society ought to “be one polity, like a living body….” (4). de Pizan’s philosophy was more akin to Plato’s though, in that she, like Plato, considered the ruling body of society to be composed of a group of people instead of a single authority figure, and society itself she envisioned as comprised of three main classes: princes, knights and nobles, and universal people (4). The “prince and princes hold the place of the head,” she wrote, and they should be “sovereign” (4), the same word that Hobbes used to describe the head of Leviathan. “The knights and nobles take the place of the hands and arms” (4), while “the other kinds of people,” a broad category to which de Pizan refers somewhat dismissively, “are like the belly, the feet, and the legs,” though she finally concedes that these “sustain all the other estates” (4). de Pizan, like Hobbes, asserted that the head of the body politic needed to be healthy in order to ensure that order would be maintained amongst the rest of the organism’s systems.

One sees, then, how three philosophers who occupied three distinct epochs in history arrived at a similar conceptualization of the relationship between the law of nature and the nature of civil law. All three philosophers concurred that both nature and society were characterized by disorder, passion, and an absence of reason. At the same time, they expressed their belief in the possibility that order and reason could be imposed on a multitude by investing the power of control either in the hands of a specific individual or class. Hobbes, Plato, and de Pizan shared the image of the natural and the social world as an organism, a body, with living, breathing systems and specific needs, capacities, and desires. All three of these philosophers were attempting to address essentially the same questions and all three clearly believed that by concentrating power in the head—both literally and figuratively—order could be established and upheld. The health and clarity of the head or central portion, all three argued, would exert a profound degree of influence over the rest of the body. The metaphor is an apt one, and the reader of all three philosophers and their works can see how Hobbes, Plato, and de Pizan may have arrived at their arguments, simply by looking at the natural world and the society that humans were creating and noting the parallels between the two.

In Leviathan, Hobbes argued that the state of nature is a state of war. Inherently cynical about human beings in general, especially when compared to other fellow philosophers, Hobbes considered humans to be creatures who were predisposed to be violent and ruled by base passions. In this respect, the philosopher was essentially pessimistic and about the nature of human beings and thusly had several ideas on how to regulate these passions and violent tendencies. According to the Hobbesian perspective, people pit themselves against one another in order to secure their own needs and wants. For this reason, a social contract and strict social control are necessary, and for this reason, Hobbes felt compelled to write his treatise, in which he expresses his belief that he is obligated to share with the reader “on all occasions… what things would be amended in [human beings]” (22). By formulating and sharing a vision about how humankind could maximize their potential, what Hobbes hoped to do was prevent the “decay of sense in men waking” (23). One way to combat such decay, Hobbes believed, was to outline his vision of an ideal government that would keep these base human tendencies in check and would guide the collective: an ordered society headed, literally, by a single official in whom complete confidence and authority were vested by means of an explicit social contract.

It may seem paradoxical that if Hobbes believed the state of nature to be aggressive, primal, and bestial he should, at the same time, believe in such a structured government and, perhaps more importantly, that one human (social contract or not) might be somehow able to rise above the common human tendency to act selfishly, violently, and according to passions and wants.  On the surface, such a political and social arrangement seems destined to fail. However, it is important to signal that beyond this first level of Hobbes’s philosophy, there is another level that accounts for many of these questions. It is important to note that Hobbes asserted that human beings, despite being ruled by passion and emotion, also unconsciously desire “a common power to keep them all in awe” (115). Thus, when an authority figure appears and demonstrates himself to be capable of ruling with reason and fairness, the citizens are willing to enter into a social contract—albeit unwritten and unspoken—to permit the individual to rule them and impose authority over them. Hobbes defined his ideal government as a commonwealth that is established and sustained through that social contract. The commonwealth is overseen by a sovereign authority figure who has absolute power. Here, the reader sees how Hobbes brings his philosophy full circle: The investment of such power in this individual is considered by Hobbes to be essential to ensuring social control. Because humans are always on the verge of being out of control, they need a reliable and just external entity to create a sense of order.

Although Plato’s and de Pizan’s ideal governments are somewhat different from those of Hobbes because these two philosophers advocated a ruling force constituted by multiple people rather than a single individual, they, like Hobbes, maintained relatively pessimistic perspectives and the possibility of transferring their intellectual vision of ideal government to a functional, operational model. Plato’s ideal government is, like that of Hobbes, a single and organized body constituted of a multitude of citizens. Plato’s government is somewhat different from Hobbes, however, in that there is not a sole individual charged with governing others, but rather a group; society is divided into three types of groups and social harmony is predicated on each group respecting the boundaries of its roles and functions. The reason that Plato is pessimistic about the possibility of implementing this model for society is because people are dominated by certain passions that lead them astray. Sometimes, Plato acknowledged realistically, even the most strict and stringent social control cannot prevent people from pursuing their passions, even when those passions are maladaptive or harmful to the self or to social order.

Like Hobbes and Plato, the philosopher de Pizan was deeply preoccupied about the idea of establishing social control and she acknowledged that people could be—and were, occasionally—errant in terms of fulfilling the social behavior expected of them, regardless of their position in the social stratification. de Pizan, like Hobbes and, especially, Plato, believed that authority needed to be asserted through military force, but she also emphasized the value of good manners and correct conduct among the ruling class of society (70). Like the other two philosophers who struggled with many of the same questions and issues, de Pizan arrived at the conclusion that “there is no paradise on earth” and “that everywhere has its own troubles” (102). She was not entirely confident that humankind could fulfill the vision that she had established for an ideal government. Nonetheless, de Pizan was confident that rulers who governed poorly and citizens who did not respond to their civic duty according to the social contract would be defamed in the annals of history (103). According to de Pizan’s philosophy about the government of a society, the body politic, much like the human body, has the capacity to defend against illness and infection.

Works Cited

de Pizan, Christine. The Book of the Body Politic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Touchstone, 1997.

Plato. The Republic. New York: Penguin, 2003.