TL;DR - a philosophy professor turns a campus massacre threat into an excercise about Hobbes and gun control.

There was an article on Slate this week, that was up briefly and then was buried. Not before I caught it though:

https://archive.is/yMRMd

Basically, someone scrawled a threat on a bathroom wall at WKU and the school shut down because of it. So, an enterprising philosophy professor assigned her students the task of using Hobbes' Leviathan to discuss what Hobbes would say about this mess. Few facts:

-Hobbes wrote Leviathan during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century. The events of the war certainly colored his philosophy. In Leviathan, you see a political philosophy that has been rejected by the western world: a preference for safety over freedom.

-Leviathan was a huge step forward though, because it took the position that Kingship was part of a social contract between the King and those he governed. This was a radical concept for the time, since it removed the divine right of Kings completely from the equation. Hobbes showed that God anointing a King through divine will was unnecessary.

That being said, most of the professor's students gave a predictable reply to the assignment:

Most of the students argued that the instigator had failed to recognize the point of the social contract. We relinquish some of our liberties and form a covenant with a powerful sovereign, in exchange for protection from other mechanically rapacious and desirous beings like ourselves. Only a Leviathan can protect us from the state of nature: the war “of every man against every man,” where life is “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Now, the student's replies were predictable because they are taking a class that, whatever else may be the case, they want to pass. A controversial answer (one the professor disagrees with) isn't likely to get you a good grade. Education isn't about creative thinking, its about conformal thinking. Naturally, the professor gets on her high horse and does a bit of philosophizing (as Bill and Ted would say):

So what is the real origin of civil society? Certainly there can be no justice or injustice without contracts, the breaking of which constitutes injustice. But there are no secure contracts in a state of nature. This means we have to start with something else: a free gift. People give up their liberty as a gift to the sovereign without expecting anything in return, for in a state of nature, there is no overarching power to ensure fair exchange. Nevertheless, the sovereign in fact expresses gratitude, so the gift givers will not repent their good will. Without this gift and that ensuing gratitude, Hobbes writes, “there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust; nor consequently of mutual help.” Every man will remain in a state of war.

Naturally, our professor thinks its time for the gun owners of America to give a gift of giving up their guns. That's why businesses don't hire philosophy majors. I want to go back to a key statement the professor made about the social contract that was glossed over:

Nevertheless, the sovereign in fact expresses gratitude, so the gift givers will not repent their good will.

Now, why is this problematic for the "give up your guns for the greater good" caucus? (or really any form of gun control) Because it implies that the social contract is, gasp a two way street. What happens if the Leviathan conducts herself in such a manner that the people do repent of their good will? Do you expect the people to continue giving the king gifts and "hoping it works out better this time"? Of course not. There's a lot of talk about how the shooter violated the social contract, but, what about those who violated the contract the shooter had with society? If a school shooter decides society hasn't lived up to its end of the social contract, and that he or she repents of his or her choice in making that bargain (or having it thrust upon them at birth) why should they not elect to return to a state of nature? Remember, a state of nature is NOT the worst form of existence imaginable. If, for example, you were a condemned heretic during the Spanish Inquisition, I strongly suspect a state of nature would be preferable to you over your society and it would be so because you felt society had not lived up to its obligation to preserve and support you.

That is the problem with Hobbes' thought process and why this particular philosophy professor's exercise was poorly thought out. Hobbes himself recognized this issue and went to great lengths to indicate the social contract had anti-revolt provisions built into it. People, once they agreed to make a Leviathan, had no formal capacity to overturn the Leviathan's demands, no matter how badly she ruled. It didn't matter if the King was a bloody tyrant, according to Hobbes, you were stuck with it. It didn't matter how many times the King violated the contract with his people, revolt was out of the question. This was the thinking of a time that valued security over liberty.

A bit over a hundred years after Hobbes, the next wave of political philosophy amended the social contract to indicate that the right to rule comes from the consent of the governed, who are free to withdraw that consent and to make a change at any time that suited them. This is what the founding fathers believed, for example. This is what most people in the west believe today. So why can't a school shooter withdraw his consent and decide he'd prefer a state of nature? What have you done to convince him to give you a chance? What have you done to establish your credibility?

School shootings are obviously insane cries made by those who not thought everything about life through. There is, and can be, no justification for them. Despite however badly you think society has violated its contractual obligation to you, that does not give you the right to infringe on the contracts of those who are more satisfied with the service. If you're a professional athlete, for example, and you think the team has done you dirty over your contract, you handle that between you and the team, you don't involve dissolution of other athletes who are happy with their contracts.

The way this feeling of violation of terms usually plays out is that the person involved commits suicide (i.e. the athlete quits the sport). However, no one cares about young males who feel unhappy with the state of their contract deciding they have had enough. Society only cares when that decision involves consequences for others.

Lessons learned:

1) with great power comes great responsibility. If you want to have a discussion on gun control, you need someone who has credibility on the issue to speak about it. If you want a conversation on school shootings, you need someone who knows what its like to be one of the people who commit these crimes. The people on one side, or another, won't listen to someone from the other side.

2) SJWs in society want the benefits of the social contract without the obligations that come with it. They want to be able to shame people, who would be better off in a state of nature, into conformance with civilized society despite give those people no incentive to go along.

3) Hobbes is, in many ways, whack. Despite his significant contribution, read in the light of more modern thought, his philosophy is an open invitation to authoritarianism, and ought not to be used as the impetus for gun control, as you are feeding right into the fear of those who want to keep their weapons.