The Crusading State of Nature

It’s nice to be able to turn on the television everyday and be confident that you won’t see ravenous hoards of people stealing from and killing one another on the local news. However, for understanding Thomas Hobbes’ political theory this isn’t exactly helpful. In our society today it becomes increasingly hard to find examples of Hobbesian political theory and nearly impossible to find any examples of Hobbes’ state of nature.

The daily news may be violent but the odds of seeing anything truly Hobbesian is slim to none.

So to find any good examples of these things it is helpful to look further back in history, even to a time before Hobbes. One time period that provides some great examples of both Hobbesian political theory and his understanding of the state of nature is during the Middle Ages in Europe, specifically the time of The Crusades.

Hobbes is a man who does not have a lot of faith in the true nature of human beings.

I am currently taking a history seminar on The Crusades and this time period provides great real world examples of Hobbes’ theories. However, before I delve into these examples it’s important to quickly summarize Hobbes’ state of nature and overall political theory.  Hobbes’ state of nature is structured around the belief that people are inherently selfish. With this in mind Hobbes believe that without a central government society will become “warlike” and people will ultimately do whatever it takes to better themselves with no regard to others.  Then we move into his political theory as Hobbes believe people, as a result of living in this anarchy, will give away some of there freedom for security and consent to the rule of a sovereign. This sovereign acts as the ultimate ruler in the society and every decision he/she makes is final and not to be contested.

Now that we have clearly defined Hobbes’ state of nature and political theory we can look at how it is shown in The Crusades, in this case specifically the time surrounding the First Crusade. Before the start of the First Crusade the Frankish Empire was in turmoil. France, without a king to govern the land, was a violent and chaotic mess. Frankish lords embodied the true Hobbesian state of nature as they selfishly romped around the empire waging war against each other in hopes of gaining more land. This “warlike” society continued for years until, just as Hobbes would expect, the lords and all the people they ruled consented to a Sovereign, in this case God.

The Crusaders consented to God as their sovereign and channeled their senseless into violence God condoned and in return he would give them spiritual security.

In reality the sovereign was Pope Urban II as he was the one who made the call for the First Crusade, but in the eyes of his society he was simply the conduit by which God communicated what he wanted. God wanted the Europeans to reclaim the Holy City of Jerusalem from the Muslims. Since this was the sovereign’s decision the people had to comply and went on to conquer Jerusalem for God. Although it may seem unclear as to what security the crusaders received by consenting to this sovereign I assure you they did receive some security. The odd thing about this is that they received spiritually security.  By consenting to God/Pope Urban II as their sovereign they were promised that they would be remised of all their sins and in turn go to heaven when they died as long as they followed the rule of their sovereign and went on the Crusade. In the time of the Crusades, this sort of security was even more important to crusaders then the security of their mortal lives.

The First Crusade provides a perfect example of Hobbesian theory as it displays a “warlike” society that ultimately ends up consenting to a sovereign in exchange for security. Obviously it is better that we don’t have to many examples of Hobbesian political theory in our society today and I believe most modern people think that humans aren’t inherently selfish. However, there is a reason we still study Hobbes today and examples like this one from the Crusades show us that although it is not as prevalent in modern society Hobbes’ theories still have a fair amount of support.