For Thomas Hobbes, a person living in a pre-legal state, or state of nature, has a natural right to anything one deems useful for survival, including things to which other people have similar rights (L 80). Hobbes calls this set of natural rights “the Right of Nature” (L 79), and argues that as long as we retain these unlimited, overlapping rights there cannot be peace because conflicting rights can lead to war at any moment; therefore, we are naturally willing to contract with others to mutually forfeit rights for peace and increased security (L 80). We systematize this exchange of rights for security by establishing a commonwealth, enacting a civil law system, and empowering a sovereign to enforce the law. This commodification of rights prompts us to question the extent to which we can be considered free once we have “cashed in” our rights for the security provided by the Hobbesian commonwealth. With each right forfeited, are we a little less free? Are we free in one sense in the state of nature and in a different sense in a commonwealth? Are Hobbes’s accounts of freedom consistent with his formal definition of freedom? To answer these questions, I will begin by giving Hobbes’s formal definition of freedom. Then I will discuss the kind of freedom Hobbes attributes to people in the state of nature and how this freedom changes when they become subjects in a commonwealth. Also, I will provide reasons for not considering Hobbesian citizens to be free. These reasons are supported by the “distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation” (HB 30) that Hobbes mentions in his debate with Brahmall, and by doubts we may have about the validity of Hobbes’s fundamental law of nature.

Before discussing how Hobbes’s ideas of freedom apply to natural people or to subjects in a commonwealth, we must begin with Hobbes’s formal definition of freedom. In his debate with Brahmall, Hobbes writes, “he is free to do a thing, that may do it if he have the will to do it, and may forbear if he have the will to forbear” (HB 16). That which we have the will to do is determined by “the last appetite in deliberating” (L 33), and deliberation is to “consider whether it [is better to do an action or not to do an action]. And to consider an action is to imagine the consequences of it, both good and evil” (HB 37). Simply put, if a person is free then he may do what he wills1; a person is not free if he wills something and cannot do it2. Hobbes offers a similar definition of freedom in Leviathan,

By Liberty is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments, which impediments may oft 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. (L 79)

Here I take “liberty” to be synonymous with “freedom,” and “judgment and reason” to be synonymous with “deliberation.” Also note that by this definition, that which prevents one from doing what one wills must be an “external impediment;” technically, if something that is not an “external impediment” prevents you from doing what you will, you may still be free.

The first domain in which to examine Hobbes’s conception of freedom is the pre-legal state, or state of nature. According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a state of war, where people live without security in constant anticipation of attack (L 75). Hobbes attributes the “Right of Nature” to people in this state,

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 life, and consequently of doing anything which, in his own judgment and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (L 79)

Hobbes believes that everything can be judged helpful in securing oneself against potential enemies. If we have a natural right to anything we judge helpful for protection, and everything can be judged helpful for protection, it follows that “every man has a right to everything, even to one another’s body” (L 80). The person in the state of nature is free in the sense of not being externally constrained (Hobbes does not indicate otherwise), and in the additional sense of having rights without considerable limit (granted by the Right of Nature). Clearly, this account of freedom is consistent with Hobbes’s formal definition of freedom.

This state of unlimited individual rights is extremely precarious—so much so that our desire to leave this state is Hobbes’s second law of nature: “every man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself” (L 80). Hobbes calls this mutual laying-down of rights “contract” (L 82). We contract out of our willingness to trade rights for security, and through these contracts we establish a commonwealth and enact a civil law system. We also empower a sovereign to enforce the law, and agree to “[deny ourselves liberty] by owning all the actions (without exception) of the man or assembly we make our sovereign” (L 141). Hobbes remarks that this is how we escape “that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men” (L 78).

Concerning the civil law, there are two types: distributive laws, which determine the rights of subjects (L 185); and penal laws, which “declare what penalty shall be inflicted on those that violate the law” (L 185). Distributive laws state what rightfully belongs to each subject and what does not, and what is lawful for each subject to do and what is not (MC 276). Penal laws give us “evil consequences” to consider when deliberating. These consequences are severe enough to effect compliance with the law and to keep subjects in “awe,” which is Hobbes’s term for the convergence of expectation of compliance with the law. I find it helpful to think that distributive laws positively constrain the rights of subjects because they are prescriptive; whereas penal laws negatively constrain the rights of subjects because they are punitive.

In addition to enumerating civil laws to discover what rights subjects forfeit, we can count the rights that Hobbes says are not forfeited to get another idea of the sense in which Hobbesian citizens are free. Hobbes claims “it is manifest that every subject has liberty in all those things the right whereof cannot by covenant be transferred” (L 141). These rights are derived from the fundamental law of nature, which forbids one to destroy one’s own life, or to otherwise jeopardize the preservation of one’s life (L 79). One of these rights is the right to defend one’s body from harm. Hobbes gives the example of a sovereign commanding a subject not to eat. If the subject were to comply, he would violate the fundamental law of nature; by this reasoning, the subject retains the right to disobey the sovereign’s command. It is illustrative of Hobbes’s conceptions of rights and freedom to carry this example further: suppose the sovereign commands the subject not to eat, and has the subject gagged so the subject is physically obstructed from eating. In this case, Hobbes must say that the subject has the right to eat, but is not free to eat.

In summary, these are factors relevant to understanding the sense in which a subject of a Hobbesian commonwealth can be considered free: to begin with, the subject may have to forfeit his rights to all things upon joining a commonwealth. Once in the commonwealth, the subject also “[denies himself liberty] by owning all the actions” of the sovereign (L 141). The subject’s rights are further constrained by civil laws, some of which constrain the subject’s rights through fear. The few rights retained by the subject must derive from the fundamental law of nature. “As for all other liberties, they depend on the silence of the law. In cases where the sovereign has prescribed no rule, there the subject hath the liberty to do…according to his own discretion” (L 143). Despite these limitations, the freedom of subjects is consistent with Hobbes’s formal definition of freedom because subjects are not externally constrained from doing what they will.

A major fault with Hobbes’s account of the freedom of the subject surfaces in this passage from the Hobbes-Brahmall debate on freedom:

For the distinction of free into free from compulsion and free from necessitation I acknowledge. For to be free from compulsion is to do a thing so as terror not be not the cause of his will to do it. For a man is then only said to be compelled when fear makes him willing to it, as when a man willingly throws his goods into the sea to save himself… (HB 30)

The fault revealed by this passage is that Hobbes’s formal definition of freedom becomes extremely weak if one can be considered free from external constraints but not “free from compulsion,” which is suggested by the language Hobbes uses. The way in which someone is not free is a superfluity if the question is whether one is not free. If compulsion can render one unfree in a significant sense, then Hobbes’s external constraint antecedent (Exy) may no longer be sufficient for freedom, and his formal definition of freedom would no longer account for the freedom of people subject to penal laws (which operate through compulsion).

Later in the debate with Brahmall, Hobbes seems to recant his earlier words about compulsion:

I never said the will is compelled, but I do agree with the rest of the world in granting that it is not compelled. It is an absurd speech to say it is compelled… When the fire heats, it does not compel heat; so likewise when some cause makes the will do anything, it does not compel it. (HB 78)

This strikes us as more of a cute analogy than some sort of proof, and this vacillation suggests that compulsion is a weak spot for Hobbes’s conception of freedom. Although it is possible to consider a person free without considering that person “free from compulsion,” most of us would say that fear can stymie freedom, especially when it is used as a coercive instrument by other agents. Borrowing from one of Hobbes’s examples, if a man throws his things off a ship during high seas for fear of drowning, we might agree that he does so freely. In a different situation, if the sovereign were to order “throw your things off your ship or my soldiers will sink it,” Hobbes would say that the man cannot will not to throw his things off the ship, because this would violate the fundamental law of nature by endangering his life. So, the man will freely comply with the sovereign because he could not have willed otherwise, and he is not physically being forced to comply. Hobbes would also add that the man’s will is not being compelled by fear because fire does not compel heat. Many of us would disagree with Hobbes, insisting that if the man is terrified enough of drowning, then he is not free in the situation involving other agents, even if Hobbes insists that the man is doing what he wills.

An even stronger consideration for why Hobbesian citizens are not free follows from disagreeing with Hobbes’s fundamental law of nature. Benjamin Franklin is attributed with saying, “those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”3 In Liberal society, we believe that it is better to die than to give away many of the rights that Hobbes thinks we happily trade for security. We do not consider Hobbesian citizens to be free because they forfeit some rights that we consider inalienable, just as Hobbes considers the fundamental law of nature to be inviolable. Even though Hobbesian citizens are free in a sense that is consistent with Hobbes’s formal definition of freedom, we have strong reasons not to consider Hobbesian citizens to be free.