We know that early internalists use Aristotelian science of ethics and Socrates' individual virtues as the foundations for their argumentative ideas regarding internalism; however, Hobbes is one of the modern philosophers who does not favor individual virtues because he believes that in a natural state which is a state of scarcity, human beings as individuals are free and equal, and they inevitably have trends to preserve themselves and to compete with one another over scarce resources. Thus, to Hobbes, to live in peace is to establish laws or contracts that enable human beings in seeking peace and in doing justice to one another. In Chapter 15 of Leviathan, Hobbes talks about a fool who resembles the fool described by Glaucon in Socrates' Republic in one main point that they both think that there is no justice. To see why Hobbes brings up this topic of the fool and for what reasons that it makes the circumtances of the fool's thoughts relate to his political science, and to find out if Hobbes is an internalist, we need to analyze what is said by him about the fool; thus the following paragraphs will be responsible for undertaking this purpose.
First of all, I think I should mention the most important ethical principle that Aristotle as a follower of Socrates' ethics uses that the internalists also use as their ethical guide; that is reasoning which requires a virtuous internalist to have in order for him to become virtuous. Based on this requirement, Hobbes thinks that a fool can misuse of it to promote the kind of justice that satisfies his own preservations that are considered as an aim to seek goodness and happiness which in turn satisfies Aristotelian virtue. Hobbes' idea of the fool is obviously diffferent from Glaucon's fool because Glaucon's fool does not have any knowing of what the right goodness or happiness is except being forced by external power for being unjust. The reason that Glaucon takes as his motivation for doing injustice is because "someone who has power to do this, however, and is a true man wouldn't make an agreement with anyone not to do injustice in order not to suffer it" (Plato, 35). What Glaucon means is that a powerful person will do injustice because he cannot suffer the injustice that others do to him; thus he must do the same thing that others do because he doesn't believe that there is justice within a society where people are willing to do unjust things for their own benefits. So, one would do unjust things if he or she has the opportunity to do it.
Unlike Glaucon's fool, Hobbes' fool thinks that if something is considered to be good by one person, it is also considered to be good by another; thus if someone who does good things to preserve himself well then there is nothing harmful to another person for that reason. For example, if I want to eat a good meal, and if I can afford it, can what I do harm other people? Of course not, because other people do the same thing I do; that is to want to obtain good meals for themselves. Thus, there are no unjust actions that one do that can harm others. Hobbes writes:
...there could be no reason why every man might not do what he
thought conduced thereunto, and therefore also to make or not to make,
keep or not keep, covenant was not against reason, when it conduced to
one's benefit. (Hobbes, 90)
Hobbes' fool then question that whether injustice may exist with the reason that requires every man to do his own good? Since as explained above that when a man do good things for himself, that action is not considered as an unjust action because every man is entitled to be able to take care of his or her life good because no one would be better to take care of our lives than ourselves. Thus there is not injustice involving in doing one's own goods.
Hobbes' fool even doesn't care whether other people have power or not or whether they will do injustice or not since he can obtain good things for himself or do just things for himself without intervening with others' lives. And in such a society where "it is impossible to receive hurt by it and if it be not against reason, it is not against injustice, or else justice is not to be approved for good" (Hobbes, 90). So, we see that Hobbes' fool uses reasoning to protect himself when he says that "there is no such thing as injustice" because what he means is that it is not against reason to do one's own good, and it is not an unjust action to take care good of one's own life. But the reason why Hobbes wants to show the fool's story is to show that the fool's idea is false when he says that there is no injustice.
What Hobbes means is that the fool is not wise when he thinks that there is always justice in a society and that all every one does is just things. By not knowing that people are malicious and will do unjust things when they have opportunities to do them, the fool will suffer injustice caused by other people. Thus, to protect equal rights of every man in a society, laws must be established, or contracts must be established in order to demand people to do just actions to one another.
To Hobbes, although a fool is an internalist who thinks that doing one's own good things is a just action because it is not against reasoning, I don't think Hobbes himself is an absolute internalis because he doesn't believe that people themselves are honest, and therefore he cannot be classified as an ethical internalist since internalists believe in their self-education to become virtuous people. And Aristotle is the first internalist who thinks that one should obtain virtue by himself based on the definition of virtue as the excellent activity of the soul for a soul is something inside one's mind; thus, he must obtain virtue as the activities of his own soul, and therefore, this condition makes him become an internalist. But Hobbes objects this idea by saying that every one is more likely to compete one another over scarce resources and therefore is not able to comply with the rules of the soul. Consequently, Hobbes has a trend to become an externalist because he believes in the external conditions such as scarce resources, competitions, others' own power to commit injustice, etc. as the main conditions that can affect the just people from doing just actions.
However, if we consider that Hobbes is a philosopher who uses reason to help obtain natural laws that are beneficial to a society then we can accept him as an internalist since a traditional or ancient internalist is one whose judgments for doing justice is to use reasoning, a condition that makes use of the advantage of the soul. "Political philosophers in the natural law tradition maintain that reason dictates for each of us the basic laws that ought to govern our dealings with other persons. Hobbes embraces these tradition, for his time, radical view of human reason. For Hobbes, reason is an instrument or a tool allowing human beings to satisfy their appetites more effectively." (Hurley, 275)
In conclusion, I think Hobbes is in between an internalist and an externalist because although he uses reasoning to obtain new laws that are known in another term as "contracts", he still thinks that external conditions can prevent human beings from being virtuous or just, and that human beings must be controlled by covenants, or laws in order to avoid doing unjust things to one another. In other words, he is the kind of a modern internalist who objects the traditional ways of obtaining justice through self-education and is the one who accepts obligations as a means to compel human beings to do justice.
Works Cited
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
Hurley et al. History of Philosophy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.
Plato. Republic. Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Ed. C.D.C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.
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