Human Nature and Political Design: Hobbes, Machiavelli, and the Problem of Order
- Arda Tunca
- Jun 20
- 9 min read
Introduction
This article explores how key early modern thinkers, especially Hobbes and Machiavelli, conceptualized human nature and structured political institutions in response. At the core of their philosophies lies a common problem: can durable political order arise from a flawed and often conflicted human nature? And if so, what kind of institutional design is required?
In the previous article of this series, we focused specifically on Spinoza and Montesquieu to highlight a meaningful convergence in early modern political thought: the shared concern for designing institutions that ensure the durability of the state.
Both thinkers view human passions as a fundamental challenge to political stability, one that cannot be eradicated but must be shaped through institutional design. Their political theories focus not on eliminating passions, but on structuring the state so that these inevitable impulses are directed in ways that sustain collective order and allow for the development of rational cooperation.
While Spinoza emphasized the development of reason through civic participation, Montesquieu stressed structural moderation through the separation of powers. Their views are covered in detail in our earlier pieces:
We now turn to Hobbes and Machiavelli, who offer contrasting approaches to the same problem.
Hobbes: Order Through Fear and Sovereignty
Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651), presents a pessimistic account of human nature. He describes humans in the state of nature as fundamentally driven by fear, desire, and a relentless pursuit of self-preservation. Left to their own devices, individuals inevitably enter into conflict, producing the infamous "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes).
Hobbes writes in Leviathan: “...in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel: competition, diffidence, and glory. The first, maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. ...and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Hobbes does not conceive of reason as a moral or normative faculty. He treats it as a purely "instrumental capacity," a faculty for calculating means to self-preservation. In the natural condition, where no common authority exists, individuals are governed by fear, desire, and mistrust. Reason’s only function here is to recognize the need to escape what Hobbes famously describes as bellum omnium contra omnes.
To overcome this state of anarchy, Hobbes proposes the "social contract," whereby individuals relinquish their natural rights to all things and authorize a sovereign with absolute power. This sovereign,whether monarch, aristocracy, or an assembly, must be "indivisible, irrevocable, and absolute," because any division of authority invites a return to civil war.
Sovereignty, in Hobbes’s system, is not justified by consent as a democratic ideal but by necessity: it is the only mechanism that can ensure security and peace in a world of fundamentally unstable passions.
Political order, then, is not built on virtue or the cultivation of moral character but on "fear and coercion." The goal of Hobbesian politics is not to make people better but to prevent them from destroying one another. In this view, liberty is redefined: it is not the classical ideal of participating in collective self-rule, but the security that results from submission to a stable and enforced legal order.
As Hobbes puts it, “the liberty of subjects lieth therefore only in those things which in regulating their actions, the sovereign hath praetermitted”. Thus, liberty exists "within the bounds of law," not in resistance to it. Obedience is not servility but the precondition for survival.
Hobbes argues that once individuals enter into a social contract, they irrevocably transfer all rights (except the right to self-preservation) to a sovereign power. This power must be absolute, unquestionable, and not subject to review by the people. Otherwise, civil conflict would resume.
In Leviathan, he explicitly states: “The sovereign’s actions cannot be unjust, for it is by his judgment that good and evil are defined.”
This is directly at odds with democratic ideals, where authority is derived from the ongoing consent of the governed, and rulers are accountable to the people.
While Hobbes does allow that the sovereign can be an assembly, what he calls a “popular” form of government, this does not imply participatory democracy. Once the assembly is instituted, its decisions are binding and permanent, and citizens have no right to alter or resist. Representation is legal, not deliberative. It’s a transfer of authority, not a sharing of it.
Again in Leviathan, he states: “The multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth... This is the generation of that great Leviathan.”
Unlike later thinkers such as John Locke or even Spinoza, Hobbes categorically denies any legitimate right to rebel against the sovereign—even in cases of misrule. This further distances his model from democracy, which typically recognizes the right to political dissent or reform.
Hobbes redefines liberty not as collective self-governance, but as “freedom from external constraints” within the space allowed by law. This is a “negative conception of liberty,” and it stands in contrast to the “positive liberty” embraced by democratic theorists like Rousseau or Montesquieu, where freedom is exercised through political participation.
Hobbes’s political system is "absolutist," designed to quell instability, not to foster civic engagement. While it permits a “form of representative government,” it is not democratic in spirit or substance. His priority is “security through coercion,” not “freedom through participation.”
Contemporary Examples That Echo Hobbesian Thought
A country that most closely resembles Hobbes’s political ideas, particularly his vision of a strong, centralized, and absolute authority that suppresses internal conflict to maintain order, would likely be an “authoritarian or autocratic regime.” While no modern state fully embodies Hobbes's Leviathan, some countries exhibit features that resonate with his core principles.
Sovereign Power: The supreme, unquestionable authority of the Kim dynasty mirrors Hobbes’s idea of an indivisible and absolute sovereign.
Suppression of Dissent: Political dissent is brutally punished, aligning with Hobbes’s idea that peace requires the suppression of passions that lead to conflict.
State Above All: Individual liberty is nearly non-existent. Security is provided at the cost of total submission, very Hobbesian in character.
Authoritarian Control with Legal Rationality: Under the rule of the Communist Party, especially under Xi Jinping, China maintains tight control over public life while emphasizing social stability and the collective good.
Surveillance and Suppression: The social credit system, censorship, and state security policies reflect Hobbes’s notion of controlling passions and maintaining order.
Governance: China's governance is also technocratic and economic-performance-oriented, which goes beyond Hobbes’s narrow view of sovereignty as primarily suppressive.
Strongman Rule: Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of power, suppression of opposition, and centralization of authority evoke Hobbes’s warning that divided power breeds chaos.
Security over Liberty: Emphasis on stability and national unity, even at the cost of personal freedoms, resembles Hobbesian logic.
I have to stress an imperative caveat. Hobbes “was not an advocate for tyranny” for its own sake. His ideal sovereign was meant to “secure peace,” “not exploit the people.”
He was reacting to the English Civil War and “the horrors of anarchy,” “not proposing oppression as an ideal.” Thus, regimes that are violent or corrupt without justifying their rule through peace and order “depart from Hobbes’s intention,” “even if they mirror his structure.”
Machiavelli: Harnessing Ambition and Conflict
Niccolò Machiavelli, especially in The Prince (1532) and Discourses on Livy (1531), paints a different picture. He agrees that humans are self-interested, ambitious, and often deceitful. But unlike Hobbes, Machiavelli does not believe these traits must be fully suppressed. Instead, he views them as inevitable and potentially productive if properly managed.
In Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli offers a radical departure from the classical ideal of political harmony. He views the tension between the grandi (the nobility) and the popolo (the common people) not as a pathology to be cured but as a structural feature that, if correctly managed, sustains the health of the republic.
Machiavelli writes: “I say that those who condemn the tumults between the nobles and the plebs appear to be blaming those things that were the primary cause of Rome’s retaining liberty.” This is a direct reversal of Aristotelian teleology, where the “polis” aims for “concord (homonoia),” and Hobbesian logic, which equates peace with the absence of discord.
For Machiavelli, liberty (libertà) is not achieved through “the suppression of social conflict” but through its “institutionalization.” He argues that republican freedom is best preserved when political structures allow class antagonisms to express themselves within legal bounds. The “Tribunate” in Rome, for instance, was established to give the “plebs (common people)” a constitutional mechanism to resist patrician overreach.
Far from destabilizing the republic, the tribunes “were the guardians of Roman liberty”, Machiavelli claims. This model presumes that human beings are inherently ambitious, self-interested, and competitive, a shared assumption with Hobbes, but with opposite normative conclusions.
Whereas Hobbes sees unregulated competition as the precursor to a destructive civil war (requiring absolute sovereignty to suppress it), Machiavelli considers conflict an essential force in regenerating civic virtue and checking power.
In Machiavelli’s thought, “virtù” refers not to moral virtue in the classical or Christian sense, but to the qualities of strength, decisiveness, and adaptability that enable individuals, especially rulers, to shape fortune (fortuna) and maintain power. In The Prince and Discourses on Livy, virtù encompasses political courage, strategic foresight, civic responsibility, and the capacity to act effectively in unstable circumstances.
Rather than being bound by conventional morality, a leader with virtù knows when to act with force, deception, or even cruelty if necessary to preserve the state. For Machiavelli, virtù is the creative force through which humans can impose order on the unpredictability of political life.
“I judge it true that fortune is the arbiter of half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less” writes Machiavelli in The Prince.
Thus, virtù is fundamentally about “mastery over necessity,” the ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances while safeguarding liberty and political stability.
“A republic where there is greater equality is more stable, but where inequality persists, only conflict can prevent its degeneration into tyranny,” he implies throughout the Discourses.
In Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli emphasizes the “social and political consequences of unequal power,” which certainly includes wealth disparities, but “not in the structured or systemic economic sense” used by later thinkers like Rousseau or Marx.
Machiavelli is explicit about “class distinctions,” particularly between the grandi (nobility) and the popolo (common people). He praises the establishment of “tribunes” as a way to represent the people and resist aristocratic dominance, showing his concern for political inequality: “The ambition of the powerful is so great, and their thirst for domination so insatiable, that they never rest until they have subjected everything to themselves.”
Although Machiavelli does not provide a formal economic analysis, “wealth and property are frequently tied to power” in his work. He often associates the grandi with greed and the desire to protect privilege, while the popolo seek liberty and security.
In Discourses, he writes: “It is not gold or silver which makes a state rich, but the number of citizens who live modestly and industriously.”
This implies that “economic moderation and wide participation in the economy” contribute to republican health. Therefore, extreme economic inequality, by enabling domination, undermines liberty.
While Machiavelli’s framework is “primarily political,” it “implicitly includes economic inequality” insofar as it reinforces power asymmetries. He “does not advocate economic redistribution,” but he clearly believes that unchecked inequality, of any kind, threatens republican liberty and invites tyranny.
As Quentin Skinner elaborates, Machiavelli’s theory of liberty is neo-Roman: liberty is not non-interference in the liberal sense, but the “non-domination” that arises when no single actor or class monopolizes power.
Machiavelli’s normative ambition is not “harmony” but “dynamism.” Republican institutions must channel conflict through legal procedures, such as assemblies, veto powers, and checks on magistrates, to transform class competition into a generative process. These are not mechanisms of stability for its own sake but tools to secure a participatory balance in the “res publica.” In this sense, Machiavelli’s political anthropology is agonistic, closer to later theorists like Chantal Mouffe than to social contract thinkers (Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, etc.). He views discord as productive, provided it is managed structurally rather than violently.
In contrast to Hobbes, who sees fear of death as the primal political motivator and demands the pacification of all ambition through sovereign coercion, Machiavelli believes fear can be politically mobilized in multiple directions—toward tyranny, yes, but also toward public vigilance and civic commitment. It is not the suppression of fear that guarantees liberty, but the cultivation of conflictual institutions that ensure no group can dominate unilaterally. Liberty, for Machiavelli, is born in struggle, not in stasis.
Comparison Table: Four Views of Human Nature and Political Design
Philosopher | View of Human Nature | Role of Reason | Political Mechanism |
Spinoza | Passionate but improvable | Cultivated collectively | Participatory democracy, civic education |
Hobbes | Fearful, self-preserving | Instrumental only | Absolute sovereignty |
Machiavelli | Ambitious, deceptive | Pragmatic | Institutionalized conflict, republicanism |
Montesquieu | Variable, sociable, limited | Moderated by structure | Separation of powers, civic virtue |
Each philosopher responds differently to the basic problem of how to construct order from flawed human nature:
Hobbes begins with fear and ends with sovereignty. His state suppresses the passions that lead to chaos.
Machiavelli starts with ambition and designs a system to direct it toward civic freedom.
Spinoza, as previously discussed, proposes that reason and cooperation can be cultivated through democratic participation.
Montesquieu, too, looks at passions and self-interest, but proposes checks and balances to prevent their domination.
Despite their differences, all agree that lasting political institutions must not presume human virtue. They must either suppress passions, as in Hobbes, structure them, as in Montesquieu and Machiavelli, or transform them, as in Spinoza.
Conclusion
Human nature is not a marginal concern. It is the cornerstone of political design. Hobbes and Machiavelli offer darker views of humanity but diverge sharply in their institutional remedies. While Hobbes suppresses, Machiavelli redirects. Together with Spinoza and Montesquieu, they form a spectrum of early modern responses to the question: how can order be built on an imperfect foundation?
Their ideas remain essential as we confront modern challenges to democratic resilience, state legitimacy, and institutional design.