Rawls vs Hobbes: Social Contract & Justice

Comparison Overview

Hobbes and Rawls are the bookends of the social contract tradition. Writing three centuries apart, both used the idea of a hypothetical agreement among rational individuals to justify political authority and the principles of a well-ordered society. But they used the same device to reach radically different conclusions.

Hobbes, writing in the midst of the English Civil War, used the social contract to argue that only an absolute sovereign could prevent society from collapsing into the war of all against all. The social contract is a pact of submission: individuals surrender their natural rights to a sovereign in exchange for security. For Hobbes, the fundamental political problem is the fear of violent death, and the solution is the Leviathan.

Rawls, writing in the twentieth century, used the social contract to argue for principles of justice that would structure a society of free and equal citizens. The original position, with its veil of ignorance, is a device for ensuring that the principles of justice are impartial — not biased toward any particular group or conception of the good. For Rawls, the fundamental political problem is not survival but fairness: how can citizens who disagree about the good life agree on terms of social cooperation?

Key Differences

The most fundamental difference between Hobbes and Rawls concerns the problem they are trying to solve. Hobbes's problem is the problem of order: how to prevent society from collapsing into violence and chaos. The state of nature is a war of all against all, and the only escape is the creation of an absolute sovereign whose power is unlimited and irrevocable. The social contract is a bargain: individuals surrender their natural right to all things in exchange for peace and security.

Rawls's problem is the problem of justice: how to design the basic structure of society so that it is fair to all citizens, regardless of their social position, talents, or conception of the good. The original position is not a state of nature but a thought experiment designed to ensure impartiality. The veil of ignorance prevents the parties from knowing their social class, natural talents, or personal values, forcing them to choose principles that are fair to everyone.

This difference in the problem leads to a difference in the parties. Hobbes's individuals in the state of nature are driven by fear, competition, and the desire for glory. They are rational in the narrow sense of being able to calculate the means to their ends, but they are not moral beings. The laws of nature — the rational precepts that counsel peace — are merely prudential rules that bind only in conscience, not in action, without a sovereign to enforce them.

Rawls's parties in the original position are rational agents who are motivated to pursue their own conception of the good, but they are also reasonable — they are willing to propose and abide by fair terms of cooperation. The veil of ignorance ensures that they cannot tailor the principles of justice to their own advantage, so they must choose principles that are acceptable to all.

Hobbes's View

Hobbes's political philosophy is a systematic attempt to derive the necessity of absolute sovereignty from the nature of human beings and the condition of the state of nature. In the state of nature, there is no common power, no law, and no justice. Each individual has the natural right to do whatever they judge necessary for self-preservation, but because resources are scarce and individuals are roughly equal in strength and intelligence, the result is a war of all against all.

The laws of nature — the rational precepts discovered by reason — counsel peace. But these laws are not self-enforcing. As long as there is no common power to compel compliance, individuals cannot trust each other to follow the laws of nature, and the state of war continues. The only way to achieve peace is to create a common power through the social contract: each individual agrees to transfer their right of self-government to a sovereign who will enforce the laws of nature through the fear of punishment.

The sovereign created by this contract is absolute. The sovereign's power is unlimited, indivisible, and irrevocable. Subjects have no right to resist the sovereign, because the sovereign is not a party to the contract and cannot be accused of violating it. The only exception is the right to resist when the sovereign directly threatens the subject's life — a right that Hobbes acknowledges because the natural right of self-preservation cannot be alienated. Hobbes's Leviathan is a terrifying figure, but Hobbes insists that even the worst tyranny is preferable to the chaos of civil war.

Rawls's View

Rawls's political philosophy is a systematic attempt to derive principles of justice from the idea of a fair agreement among free and equal citizens. The original position is a hypothetical situation in which rational agents, motivated to pursue their own conception of the good, are placed behind a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing their social class, natural talents, psychological propensities, and personal values. They do not know their race, gender, or generation. The veil of ignorance ensures that the principles of justice are chosen under conditions that are fair to all.

Rawls argues that, under these conditions, rational agents would choose two principles of justice. The first principle — the liberty principle — requires that each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with similar liberties for all. The second principle has two parts: fair equality of opportunity (positions and offices are open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity) and the difference principle (social and economic inequalities are permissible only if they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged).

Rawls's theory is designed to show that a just society is possible — a society in which citizens cooperate on fair terms, each respecting the rights and dignity of all. The social contract, for Rawls, is not a historical event but a device of representation that embodies the fundamental idea of society as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal persons.

Contemporary Relevance

The Hobbes-Rawls comparison illuminates the range of the social contract tradition. Hobbes shows how the contract can be used to justify absolute authority; Rawls shows how it can be used to justify liberal democratic principles. The difference between them is the difference between a politics of fear and a politics of hope.

In contemporary political thought, Hobbes's influence is most visible in realist political theory, which argues that the fundamental problem of politics is the problem of order, and that justice is a luxury that can only be pursued once order is secured. Rawls's influence is most visible in liberal and egalitarian political theory, which takes the fundamental problem to be the design of institutions that are fair to all citizens.

The tension between these two approaches is not merely theoretical. In the face of terrorism, pandemic, climate change, and economic crisis, the Hobbesian question — how much authority must we grant the state to ensure our security? — competes with the Rawlsian question — how can we ensure that the burdens of crisis are shared fairly? Neither question can be ignored, and the relationship between them remains the central challenge of modern political thought.