Hobbes in The Dark Knight

I’m willing to bet more than 80% of the classmates in out Political Science class have seen The Dark Knight, if not at least one of Christopher Nolan’s epic trilogy. If you haven’t seen any of them, then you should really stop reading this and watch the trilogy, by any means necessary.

Every man for himself.

Last week, Professor Manty discussed in class about Thomas Hobbes and his work, the Leviathan. Hobbes was a famous English philosopher back in the seventeenth century and is known for his social contract theory. In the Leviathan, Hobbes believed in an absolute monarchy, where the citizens of that nation would relinquish their rights that they were born with and give it to the monarch, in return for a guaranteed protection. That is essentially what Hobbes social contract theory means. He also believed deep down, people were selfish and would disregard the safety and beliefs of others to be able to pursue their own self-interests. If Hobbes were alive during this century, he’d say it’s a “dog eat dog” and “every man for themselves” world we live in. He believed that the role of the monarch, or government, was to keep law and order since he did not believe people were capable of governing or protecting themselves. Last but not least, since Hobbes believed that people had no rights and gave it up at birth for protection, they couldn’t rebel or protest if the government were abusing their powers.

Hobbes stated that the state of nature of man is going to be violent and we, as a race, are naturally fearful. We want to avoid death and do not wish to die young. I don’t know about you, but dying young is my first fear in life.

"A world without rules"

In the film The Dark Knight, Batman is the masked vigilante who doesn’t follow the rules of the law enforcement by making sure the citizens of Gotham follow the law, and punish those who break it, even though he is also not following the laws. He prevents the city from falling into chaos, just like he did in the first movie Batman Begins by stopping Ra’s al Ghul from delivering the bomb to Wayne Towers that would’ve brought the city into ruins. The Joker on the other hand is complicated to say the least. He just wants to see Gotham in ruins for no reason behind it. You know a bad guy is really bad when he doesn’t have a personal agenda or vendetta for the destruction he wants to bring.

In a scene near the end of the movie, the Joker tells Batman: “To them, you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now. But when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper. See, their morals, their code... it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you, when the chips are down, these... these civilized people? They'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.” What Joker says correlates with what Hobbes said that deep down, people would disregard others for their own self-interests.

A scene that gives an example of this was the boat scene where you had all the convicts on one boat, and civilians on the other. The Joker provided each of them the detonators for the other boats bomb, which I believe is an example of Hobbes description that people care more about their own safety than others. But at the end thankfully, neither of them pressed it and Batman took down the Joker. Both the Joker and Batman instills fear into the citizens of Gotham, with Batman instilling fear to prevent them for doing bad things or they will be punished, while the Joker enforces fear for the heck of it.

The question is though, who would you rather see in the alleyway?