Hobbes and Leibniz on the Nature and Grounds of Slavery

During a period when transatlantic slavery was still being racialized, Hobbes and Leibniz represent stark alternatives on the nature and justification of slavery. This article investigates Leibniz’s encounter with the Hobbesian position on slavery (servitus), drawing out the racial implications. Throughout his political works, Hobbes defended voluntary servitude by transforming a legacy of Roman jurisprudence that had come to be encapsulated in the law of nations (jus gentium). Hobbes defended the justification that a master could possess slaves as de jure property with the rights to buy or sell them. In Sur la notion commune de la justice, Leibniz argued against Hobbes that slave-owners’ rights should be limited. He also defended his own paternalistic justification of slavery, reinterpreting Aristotelian natural slavery. Leibniz claimed that some persons merit guidance as slaves by nature, yet legitimate possession of persons can only go as far as a usufruct. In contrast, Hobbes had rejected the normative logic that any person could rationally merit enslavement but maintained that masters could totally possess the body of captive slaves for as far as their power extends.