Hobbes-Forschungen [1 ed.] 9783428419555, 9783428019557

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HOBBES.FORSCHUNGEN

Hobbes-Forschungen Mit Beitrigen von Mario A. Cattaneo . J auine Chanteur • Ion Contiades Winfried Dallmayr . Winfried Förster· Julien Freund W. H. Greenleaf . Martin Kriele . Reinhart Klemens Maurer . K. R. Minogue • S. I. Mintz . Raymoud Polin Manfred Riedel . Reinhard Stumpf .

Fran~ois

Tricaud

Michel Villey . Howard Warrender . F. O. Wolf herauagegeben von

Reinhart Koselleck und Roman Schnur

DUNCKER & HUMBLOT / BERLIN

Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks der photomechanischen Wiedergabe und der übersetzung, vorbehalten @ 1969 Duncker & Humblot, Berlln 41 Gedruckt 1969 bei BerUner Bud!.druckerel Union GmbH., Berltn 61 Prtnted in Germany

Vorwort Im Herbst 1967 fand ein internationales Hobbes-Kolloquium statt, zu dem das Institut für Politische Wissenschaft der Ruhr-Universität Bochum eingeladen hatte. Die eingesandten Vorlagen werden auf gemeinsamen Wunsch hin veröffentlicht. Hobbes' philosophischer Entwurf hat prognostischen Gehalt. Er nimmt am Beginn unserer Neuzeit reale Entwicklungen der modernen Gesellschaft vorweg und provoziert damit Fragen, deren überraschende Aktualität immer neue Antworten herausfordert. Die Hintergründigkeit und Zukünftigkeit seiner Philosophie bietet eine breite Skala von Aspekten, die methodisch und thematisch unter sehr verschiedenen Gesichtswinkeln aufgezeigt werden können, wie auch immer sie auf die rationale Einheit seines Systems zurückverweisen. Dementsprechend sind auf dem Kolloquium verschiedene Wege verfolgt worden: historisch-philologische, rechtshistorische Methoden und natürlich systematische Zugriffe im Rahmen einer philosophischen oder einer geschichtlichen Theorie. Die Vorlagen gruppieren sich - trotz zwangsläufiger überlappungen - um die vorgeschlagenen Themen: Fragen der Interpretation, der Herkunfts- und Wirkungsgeschichte sowie der Sprachkritik (prof. J. W. N. Watkins wird seinen Beitrag als Antrittsvorlesung an der London School of Economics erscheinen lassen); Fragen der politischen Theologie und der politischen Theorie, insbesondere zum Verhältnis von Individuum und Staat; schließlich Fragen nach der Beziehung von Recht und Politik. Einige der kritischen Diskussionsbeiträge sind in die gedruckte Fassung eingegangen. Der Charakter des Kolloquiums bleibt also erhalten. Insofern unterscheidet sich der vorliegende Band von der Aufsatzsammlung, die H. C. Brown als "Hobbes Studies" (Oxford 1965) ediert hat, und an die hier in mancher Hinsicht angeknüpft wird. Im Anhang wird außerdem versucht, einen möglichst vollständigen überblick über die Hobbes-Rezeption im deutschen Sprachraum zu geben. Die Vielfältigkeit und Gemeinsamkeit der mit Hobbes gestellten Probleme sowie der Anspruch der von ihm angebotenen Lösung verlagerten die Auseinandersetzung um seine Philosophie von vornherein auf eine internationale Ebene. Auch die heutige Rezeption beruht

Vorwort

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nicht nur auf der Aneignung entlang der begrifflichen übersetzung im Laufe der Zeit. Sie bleibt ebenso verwiesen auf die jeweils gleichzeitige Brechung in den verschiedenen Sprach- und Geschichtsräumen, in denen wir heute zusammenleben. Wir danken vor allem der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, deren finanzielle Hilfen uns erlaubten, die ausländischen Gäste einzuladen. Ebenso sei unser Dank an die Landesfinanzschule von Nordrhein-Westfalen ausgesprochen, die uns Schloß Nordkirchen/Westf. für das Treffen zur Verfügung stellte. Für die Assistenz bei der Tagung sei gedankt Herrn Jochen Hoock, Herrn Klaus Jürgen Pfeifer, Frl. Gisela Rahlenbeck, Herrn Dr. Heinrich Siedentopf; für die Korrekturlesung: Herrn Manfred Hahl, Frau MarieClaire Hoock, Frl. Gabriele Latte, Herrn Reinhard Stumpf. Herbst 1968 Reinhart Koselleck Roman Schnur

Inhalt W. H. Greenleaf

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation ..

9

Julien Freund

Le Dieu Mortel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

33

Samuel I. Mintz

Hobbes and the Law of Heresy: A New Manuscript .............................. 53

Fran!;ois Tricaud

"Homo homini Deus", "Homo homini lupus": Recherche des Sources des deux Formules de Hobbes .................... 61

Winfried Förster

Thomas Hobbes und der Puritanismus..

Ion Contiades

Zur Verortung des Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes und das Osmanenreich ........... 91

Manfred Riedel

Zum Verhältnis von Ontologie und politischer Theorie bei Hobbes .............. 103

F.

o. Wolf

71

Zum Ursprung der politischen Philosophie des Hobbes ........................ 119

Raymond Polin

L'Obligation Morale et Politique chez Thomas Hobbes ............................ 133

Howard Warrender

A Postscript on Hobbes and Kant ...... 153

K. R. Minogue

Hobbes and the Just Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 159

Michel Villey

Le Droit de l'Individu chez Hobbes ...... 173

Mario A. Cattaneo

Hobbes Theoricien de l'Absolutisme Eclaire ...................................... 199

Martin Kriele

Notes on the Controversy between Hobbes and English Jurists ..................... 211

Janine Chanteur

Note sur les Notions de "Peuple" et de "Multitude" chez Hobbes ................ 223

8

Inhalt

Fran!;ois Tricaud

Quelques Questions Soulevees par la Comparaison du "Leviathan" Latin avec le "Leviathan" Anglais .................... 237

Reinhart Klemens Maurer

Stellungnahme zu einigen Referaten des Hobbes-Kolloquiums .................... 245

Winfried Dallmayr

Hobbes and Existentialism: Some Affinities ................................... 259

Reinhard Stumpf

Hobbes im deutschen Sprachraum - Eine Bibliographie ............................ 287

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation By W. H. Greenleaf, Swansea The late J. L. Austin, observing that work of original merit tends to produce a flow of interpretative studies which, in their turn, are themselves elaborately glossed, described this process as TheLaw ofDiminishing Fleas. What fo11ows begins indeed simply with comment on the commentaries which have been written about Hobbes, but I want to use this parasitical survey to raise some issues of methodological interesV. First of a11, then, I describe what I take to be the main lines of interpretation of Hobbes's theories which have emerged and the relationship between them; and, after this, I discuss some of the problems raised for intellectual history by this diverse exegesis. 1.

There seem to be three main types of interpretation of Hobbes's ideas. I call them the 'traditional case', the 'natural-Iaw case', and the 'individualist case'. Of course, these are (in a way) artificial categorisations and each encompasses a range of internal variation. But none is a mere abstraction and their distinctive characters can be discerned in the actual history of Hobbes scholarship 2. And in describing these points of view, my object is not to explain each in detail but simply to outline their main and contrasting features. The traditional case, or orthodox interpretation of Hobbes, is that he is a materialist imbued with the ideas of the 'new' natural science and that he methodically applies its themes and procedures (the laws governing bodies in motion and their deductive elaboration) to the elucidation of a civil and ethical theory cast in the same mould. Thus, on this view, Hobbes's notion of obligation is founded on his egoistic psychology which itself rests on the naturalistic presuppositions. Duty is a matter of prudence, the rational pursuit of self-interest, the motion of appetite 1 In any event, Hobbes is a most apposite case to exemplify Austin's Law: See Swift's 'On Poetry: A Rhapsody', 11. 319 ff. t For purposes of this discussion I draw specifically, and somewhat narrowly, on the literature in English. It would be most interesting and useful to learn whether a similar pattern of interpretation occurs in the commentaries on Hobbes by scholars writing in other languages.

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and aversion. Of course, this is hardly a genuinely moral theory at a11; it is a descriptive rather than a normative account of human behaviour3 • Now, this is certainly something like the interpretation put upon Hobbes's thought by a good many of his contemporaries. Most of them believed that such naturalism and materialism necessarily involved a rlemeaning view of mankind, condoned cynical and selfish behaviour, and led directly to atheism, determinism, ethical relativism and a host of other evils a11 of which were destructive of the very foundation of Christi an society 4. At the same time, it is now c1ear that there was a substantial body of opinion wh ich found a good part or a11 of Hobbes's ideas who11y congenial and did so precisely because of their uneompromising naturalistic character5 • Cowley lauded Hobbes as the 'great Columbus of the golden lands of new philosophies' and, in particular, many continental savants and philosophes aeknowledged their debt to hirn. This company inc1udes figures such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Diderot and d'Holbach; while Bayle openly recognized Hobbes as 'the greatest genius of the seventeenth century'. In this country, the utilitarians found his writings a major and most authoritative source of ideas, not least because of the vigour with which his naturalistic manner was applied to the elimination of philosophie al nonsense. It was not an aecident that Grote and Molesworth initiated a scheme for the publication of Hobbes's complete works: the projeet was an indication and acknowledgment of their school's indebtedness6• And, in a positivist dominated age, it would be natural for Hobbes to be regarded as one of the earliest and greatest forerunners of the scientifie attitude to things in general, as a thinker who provided a magnifieent expression of the naturalist doctrine. For Marx and his followers, Hobbes is a pioneer materialist and mechanist (as weIl as one who expounds the principles of bourgeois society). The traditional Hobbes has, then, never been without infl.uence. Yet it is an interesting feature of the modern literature that it would have 3 The argument that obedience to the Leviathan is a duty because his commands have been authorized by individuals through the covenant suffers from the difficulty that the moral obligation thus attached to observance of the covenant is itself unexplained in ethical terms. 4 J. Bowle, Hobbes and His Critics (London 1951) and S. 1. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge 1962) describe in detail this contemporary reaction to Hobbes's writings, the former dealing largely with the political, the latter with the metaphysical and moral, aspects of criticism. 5 Mr. Quentin Skinner has done much recently, and with a wealth of learned reference, to establish this wider perspective. See his "History and Ideology in The English Revolution", Historical Journal, VIII (1965), pp. 151178 esp. pp. 170-1; "The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought", ibid., IX (1966), pp. 286-317; "Thomas Hobbes and his Disciples in France and England", Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII (1966), pp. 153-167. e G. Grote, Minor Works (ed. Bain; London 1873), pp. 59-72, esp. p. 67.

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation

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been difficult (until fairly recently) to find a clear and complete acceptance of this view outside the text-books or similarly brief analyses. However, it is obvious enough that some of the general historians of philosophy and political thought do expound the traditional picture of Hobbes in their synopses. Two instances must suffice. Höffding says that Hobbes 'instituted the best thought-out attempt of modern times to make our knowledge of natural science the foundation of aU our knowledge of existence. The system which he constructed is the most profound materialistic system' of the modern world and effected a break with 'Scholasticism similar to that instituted by Copernicus in astronomy, Galilei in physics, and Harvey in physiology'. Thus he put the study of ethics and politics on a 'naturalistic basis'7. Again, Sabine suggests that Hobbes's formal conceptions of man, ethics and politics are intended to be part of 'an aU-inclusive system of philosophy formed upon scientific principles'; so that political philosophy is treated 'as part of a mechanistic body of scientific knowledge' and elaborated by the application of the general principles of mathematical thinking 8 • And there are numerous other short or very short studies which to a great degree express the same point of view9 • Furthermore, this traditional interpretation has of late been asserted in two fuU-Iength works on Hobbes. Possibly these books constitute a deliberate reaction against the various criticisms of the traditional view which, as we shaU see, have become more frequent in recent years. The first of these works is R. S. Peters's Hobbes 10 , the other is M. M. Goldsmith's Hobbes's Science 01 Politics ll which is the most recent work on the subject to appear in this country. Professor Peters holds that Hob7 H. Höffding, A History of Modern Philosophy (tr. Meyer; London 1900, repr. 1924), I, 264. 8 G. H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (London 1949), eh. XXIII. e e. g. W. J. H. Campion, Outlines of Lectures on Political Science Being Mainly a Review of the Political Theories of Hobbes (Oxford 1894), pp. 11-12; W. A. Dunning, A History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu (New York 1905, repr. 1961), pp. 264-5; J. Dewey, "The Motivation of Hobbes's Political Philosophy" in Studies in the History of Ideas (New York 1918), I, 88-115 esp. pp. 103, 107; A. G. A. Balz, Idea and Essence in the Philosophies of Hobbes and Spinoza (New York 1918), pp. 4-5, 7; B. Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (1934, repr. London 1962), p. 91; G. N. Clark, The Seventeenth Century (Oxford 1947), p. 221; G. P. Gooch, "Hobbes and the Absolute State" (1939) repr. in Studies in Diplomacy and Statecraft (London 1942), esp. pp. 343, 344, 362, 370; P. Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London 1954), eh. XIII esp. p. 167; C. Hill, "Thomas Hobbes and the Revolution in Political Thought" in Puritanism and Revolution (London 1958), eh. 9; K. Minogue, "Thomas Hobbes and the Philosophy of Absolutism" in D. Thomson (ed.), Political Ideas (London 1966), p. 49; Q. Skinner, "The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought", loc. cit•• pp. 313-7. 10 Harmondsworth, 1956. 11 New York and London, 1966.

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bes's 'great imaginative idea' was 'the geometrical deduction of behaviour of man in society from the abstract principles of the new science of motion'. He thus tried 'to explain the behaviour of men in the same sort of way as he explained the motion of bodies'12. He was, therefore, what he claimed to be, a revolutionary, because he tried to free political philosophy from orthodox theological and moral trammels and to see man 'as part of the mechanical system of nature'IS. Professor Goldsmith also cleaves very closely to the traditional point of view. 'Hobbes attempted to create a scientific or philosophical system on the assumptions and methods of Galilean science. He attempted to show that a science of natural bodies, a science of man, and a science of political bodies could aIl be elaborated systematically.' And, on these fresh methods and assumptions, Hobbes 'proposed a new understanding of political society'14. However, a number of the works which expound Hobbes's ideas broadly in terms of this traditional approach only do so with important reservations. For example, neither G. C. Robertson nor SirLeslieStephen wholly sustained the view that Hobbes (whatever he may have intended) was in fact a completely systematic naturalist in his approach to morals and politics. They both accepted that it was Hobbes's explicit purpose (as Robertson put it) to 'bring Society and Man ... within the same principles of scientific explanation as were found applicable to the world of Nature'IS. Yet they also believed that, whatever Hobbes's intentions, there were important discontinuities in the system so that the supposedly aU embracing natural philosophy did not completely hold together. In particular, they feIt that the whole thing was a somewhat ex post facto affair and that Hobbes's political ideas at least were likely to have been formed before he knew of or espoused the scientific philosophy of motion. Further, it seemed likely that these political notions were considered by Hobbes more in terms of their practical relevance than their theoretical adequacyl~. The same general attitude is reflected in Frithiof Brandt's crucial study. It is argued there that while Hobbes may have been the first and most consistent philosopher of mechanism, there were nevertheless clear limits to the completeness of his argument. Brandt stresses 11 13

Peters, op. cit., pp. 22, 78 (italics in original).

Ibid., p. 81. Cf. p. 86. Goldsmith, op. cit., pp. 228, 242. 15 G. C. Robertson, "Hobbes", in Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th ed., 1881), XII, 39 b. Cf. ibid., p. 33 a-b, also his Hobbes (Edinburgh and London 1886), pp. 43-4, 45, 76; Leslie Stephen's Hobbes (London 1904), pp. 27, 71, 73, 79--81, 139, 143, 163, 173. 18 e. g. Robertson's Hobbes, pp. 57, 65, 138, 209, 216 and in Enc. Brit., XII, 33 a, 34 a; Stephen, op. cit., pp. 112-3, 125, 127, 173-5, 194-5,208-9. Cf. also Peters, op. cit., p. 138. J. W. N. Watkins has recently pointed out that Robertson, at least, did not know of Hobbes's Short Tract on First Principles until the text of his commentary was complete (Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas [London 1965], pp. 29, 40). 14

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpreta.tion

13

the significant admission made by Hobbes that civil philosophy could be treated independently of the physical doctrine of motion (and indeed more certainly) by building on an introspective basis, on a direct analysis of the mental phenomena known to every man17• In sum, then, the nature of the traditional case is clear; but it has rarely been accepted by serious scholars in anything like a complete form. It was recognized that Hobbes's explicit purpose and his achievement do not tally; and it has been feIt necessary to point out how far and in what ways he fell short of a thoroughgoing scientific philosophy. He attempted the impossible in trying to combine an ethical with a naturalistic approach 18 ; moreover, his political ideas were probably not deduced from the mechanical-materialist premisses 1U ; and he admitted that, in the case of the study of man, this was not necessary or even desirable. Yet it is a tribute to the strength of the traditional case that such düficulties did not, for so long, lead to any generally recognized conceptual revision. Hobbes was usually seen as an unsuccessful positivist rather than as a thinker who was not really of this kind at all. People were prisoners of the established view. It was not perhaps until the 1930's and after that there emerged in this country substantially revised interpretations which pictured Hobbes's way of thinking in a quite different light. What I call the natural law case is the first of these reformed attitudes. Its theme may be summarized in two propositions. First, that the apparently scientific cast and mechanical-materialist basis of the entire range of Hobbes's mature thought are quite misleading as indications of its real character. Secondly, that the true nature of his ethical and political thinking derives essentially from the Christian natural law tradition. There are, indeed, two major variations on this point of view. The less radical version (usually called the Taylor thesis after the well-known Platonic scholar A. E. Taylor who first confidently expounded it in this country) holds that there are two independent, incompatible, and (so to say) equally basic elements in Hobbes's thought: his ethical ideas and his scientific philosophy. The other version suggests that the naturalistic 17 Thomas Hobbes's Mechanical Conception of Nature (Copenhagen and London 1928), p. 244. Cf. A. Child, Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico and Dewey (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1953), pp. 271-83. 18 Cf. T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (repr. London 1948), §§ 46-7. 18 C. B. Macpherson, in his The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford 1962), an interesting marxist variation of the traditional case, suggests that it is not possible to move from Hobbes's view of man as a mechanical system to the political theory without further assumptions tenable only in respect of bourgeois society, ibid., pp. 15-16, 18.

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philosophy and language are simply the fashionable guise in which Hobbes dressed up those aspects of his basically Christian and medieval ideas which lent themselves to such expression. On neither view is the naturalist philosophy everything or even the major part. The Taylor thesis, then, rests on the suggestion of a basic dichotomy in Hobbes's thought between his scientific and ethical ideas. This notion springs from the impression that there are passages in Hobbes's works, especially those dealing with ethical issues, in which he uses language wholly at odds with his supposed naturalism and egoism and which refiect a genuinely moral (and not merely prudential) theory of obligation20 • Taylor thinks Hobbes's conception of the laws of nature is central and argues that he sees them not as rules of expediency but as moral imperatives deriving from divine command21 • So 'a certain kind of theism is absolutely necessary to make the theory work'22. Taylor says the point he is really anxious to make is that 'Hobbes's ethicaZ theory is commonly misrepresented and unintelligently criticized for want of sufficient recognition that it is, from first to last, a doctrine of duty, a strict deontology'23. In general, Professor Warrender follows the Taylor thesis: that, in addition to the theory of prudential motivation, there is a concept of moral obligation running through Hobbes's whole account and applicable to man both in the state of nature and in civil society. And this duty is itself based on an obligation to obey God in his natural kingdom, an obedience based on fear of divine power 24• In sum: 20 A. E. Taylor, "The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes", reprinted in K. C. Brown (ed.), Hobbes Studies (Oxford 1965), p. 37. Cf. Taylors' much earlier discussion Thomas Hobbes (London 1908), pp. 44-5. !1 Taylor's suggestions are: (I) Hobbes always describes the natural laws as dictates, as having an imperative character, and as obliging even in the state of nature. The obligation to obey the sovereign derives from the prior obligation to keep covenants. (U) The civil sovereign is himself subject to a "rigid law of moral obligation" though answerable in this respect only to God. (lU) Natural law is the command of God which is the basis of obligation to that law. See Brown, op. cit., pp. 40-50. 22 Ibid., pp. 49-50. 23 Ibid., p. 54 (italics in original). 24 H. Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: his Theory of Obligation (Oxford 1957), pp. 7, 10. Warrender's view of the role of God and so of the basis of the obligation to obey natural law seems to have varied somewhat. A point of view which is, in many significant respects, very similar to Warrender's had been put forward earlier by S. P. Lamprecht, "Hobbes and Hobbisrn" , American Political Science Review, XXXIV (1940), pp. 31-53. Cf. the introduction to his edition of De Cive (New York 1949), pp. XV-XXX. Similarly, there is an interesting anticipation of Warrender's suggestion that the natural law exists before civil society but only obliges when certain sufficient validating conditions prevail, in R. Falckenberg, History of Modern Philosophy from Nicholas of Cusa to the Present Time (tr., London 1895), p. 78. At Bochum, Warrender denied that, because he sees Hobbes as a natural law theorist, he is committed to associating hirn with the medieval Christian

Hobbes: The Problem of Intoopretation

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Hobbes's theory of political society is based upon a theory of duty, and his theory of duty belongs essentially to the natural law tradition. The laws of nature are eternal and unchangeable and, as the cornmands of God, they oblige all men who reason properly, and so arrive at a belief in an omnipotent being whose subjects they are ... Thus the duties of men in Hobbes's State of Nature, and the duties of both sovereign and subject in civil society are consequences of a continuous obligation to obey the laws of nature in whatever form the laws apply to the circumstances in which these persons are placed25 •

Hobbes's ethical theory is not, therefore, merely one of self-centred prudence. The 'reason why I can do my duty is that I am able ... to see it as a means to my preservation; but the reason why I ought to do my duty is that God commands it'26. To Warrender, then, 'Hobbes was essentially a natural-Iaw philosopher', even though he mayaiso have criticized many aspects of this type of thinking as traditionally established, especially in respect of the vagueness or abstractness of its tenets and of the problems of interpretation thereby involved27 . Of course, this interpretation makes at least the apparently ethical aspect of Hobbes's doctrines more orthodox and medieval than was possible in terms of the traditional case. Taylor's paper was first published in 1938. But it would be wrong to suppose that recognition of Hobbes's affinity with medieval styles of thought had gone unrecognized before then. In fact, it had been remarked many times. Very early in the history of modern Hobbes commentary, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen observed that his manner was half-old and half-modern28 . And in 1914, in a most interesting though (I think) little known paper, J. E. G. de Montmorency argued that Hobbes's major claim to pre-eminence was his revival of the 'whoie medieval conception of the Law of Nature' the obligation to obey which is attributed to the force of 'a religious and external power'29. But I suppose the most extensive analysis of the tradition: he would stress rather Hobbes's aeceptance of prescriptive and universal principles derived from Stoic and Roman Law thinking. Professor Villey suggested a similar affinity. And it might be better to subclassify the "natural law case" according to the kind of emphasis given and the type of natural law in mind. 25 Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (ed. cit.), p. 322. It is an essential part of Warrender's argument that the laws of nature only oblige to action in circumstances of "sufficient security", ibid., pp. 58 ff. 2S Ibid., pp. 212-3 (italics in original); cf. pp. 97-100. 27 Ibid., pp. 323-8. Cf. Warrender's "Hobbes's Conception of Morality", Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, XVII (1962), pp. 436-7. On Hobbes's innovations in naturallaw theory see also F. A. Olajson "Thomas Hobbes and the Modern Theory of Natural Law", Journal of the History of Philosophy, IV (1966), pp. 15-30. 28 Horae Sabbaticae (2nd series; London 1892), pp. 3,14. 2g This paper is printed in Great Jurists of the World (ed. MacDonnell and Manson; Boston 1914), pp. 195-219.

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suggestion that Hobbes's thought has medieval foundations was carried out by J. Laird30, whose conc1usion was that, in fighting his political and philosophical battles, Hobbes invented and employed no new weapons but only re-arranged and to a small extent refashioned the old. 'In matters of metaphysics, it is permissible to suggest that while Hobbes's voice had all the modernity of the new mechanics, his hands - that is to say, his technique - were scholastic, and even Aristotelian. In ethical and political theory, however, voice and hands were both medieval ... The truth is that his fundamental notions on these matters were those of the Civil and of the Common Law .. .'31. And even Hobbes's erastianism, utilitarianism and the like may be discerned in the traditional ethics, stoic, civilian, canonical and scholastic32 • The ground was well prepared, then, when Taylor published his now well-known paper. But it is one thing to suggest that Hobbes's ideas are partly or from some aspects conventional in this way. It is to take a somewhat longer step in this direction to argue that his position is throughout basically medieval and essentially Christian and scriptural in an orthodox sense. But this seems to be suggestion of Professor F. C. Hood in his recent The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes 33• Hood thus takes the step which Warrender delicately dec1ines. Hood's argument is that Hobbes's scripturally-based belief in a divine moral law was logically and biographically prior to his naturalistic concerns, and that his civil philosophy and mechanical conception of nature were simply the expression, in the scientific terms then coming into fashion, of only those parts of his religious moral thought which were susceptible of such translation34• It is only natural, therefore, that there should be a basic problem or contradiction in Hobbes's thought: for his construction of the commonwealth in mechanistic terms depends in fact on 'an obligation of conscience which cannot itself be put on a naturalistic basis'35. It is obvious, then, that this natural law revision involves a radical transformation of the traditional view of Hobbes. From being a modern 30 Hobbes (London 1934). In 1922 G. E. G. Catlin, in his Thomas Hobbes as Philosopher, Publicist and Man of Letters (Oxford), had remarked on the conventional nature of much of Hobbes's work and material; and in 1930 the importance of Hobbes's early scholastic training was stressed by Z. Lubienski, "Hobbes's Philosophy and its Historical Background", Journal of Philosophical Studies, V (1930), pp. 175-90. 31 Laird, op. cit., pp. 57-8. Cf. de Montmorency, loc. cit., pp. 205-7, 209-12, 217-9. 3! Laird, op. cit., pp. 58, 79. Hobbes's concern with traditional metaphysical problems and his indebtedness to scholastic styles of thought has, too, been recently reaffirmed by J. Jacquot "Notes on an Unpublished Work of Thomas Hobbes", Notes and Records of the Royal Society, IX (1952), 188-95. 33 Oxford, 1964. 34 Ibid., pp. 4-5, 13, 14, 23, 32, 40-1, 253. as Ibid., pp. 229-30.

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation

17

in the naturalistic style he becomes, in essential respects, a medieval of the great tradition. His thought is seen as moral and not scientific in character. At the same time, the natural law case has not gone uncritized. One obvious point is that Hobbes's own deliberate intention, repeatedly stated, was to present a political and ethical theory firmly based on the principles of nature scientifically conceived and thus (he assumed) unchallengeabie. Further, a good many of his contemporaries seem to have understood only too weIl that Hobbes was proceeding in the naturalistic manner. Indeed, if an orthodox stress on moraliawand divine command was an essential feature of his ethical doctrine, why was such a critical and horrified fuss raised when he published his views? Again, if (as Warrender specifically holds) the operation of the moral law depends on the existence of certain validating conditions why are these not embodied in the law? And does not their necessity rather dilute its moral character36? Moreover, it may be suggested that Hobbes cannot be conceived to have thought of the naturallawas a divine command binding on all mankind, because this necessitates knowledge of God as author of this law and it is difficult to see how, on Hobbes's terms, this knowledge could be acquired. Natural knowledge (Le. knowledge of hypothetical causal relations) cannot give it for natural reason leads only to recognition of a first cause; and faith is not something given to all. In any case, it is not God's omnipotence but acceptance of His authority which makes His commands binding. And where are the authentie accounts of His precepts37 ? FinaIly, there is the third type of Hobbes interpretation, the individualist or nominalist case which also appears in two different but related forms. One version may be associated with the work of Professor Leo Strauss, the other with that of Professors Oakeshott, Watkins38 and Glover. But each point of view shares, as common ground, a rejection of both the traditional and natural law attitudes. There is agreement with the natural law revisionists that the modern naturalistic appearance of Hobbes's thought is deceptive and that his political and moral 38 J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas: a Study in the Political Significance of Philosophical Theories (London 1965), pp. 88-9. 87 M. Oakeshott, "The Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes", in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London 1962), pp. 273-283. There are many other detailed discussions of same of the problems about obligation and the role of God in Hobbes's thought e. g. S. M. Brown Jnr., "The Taylor Thesis: Some Objections", in Hobbes Studies (ed. cit.), pp. 57-71; T. Nagel, "Hobbes's Concept of Obligation", Philosophical Review, XVIII (1959), pp. 6883; D. D. Raphael, "Obligation and Rights in Hobbes", Philosophy, XXXVII (1962), pp. 345-52; J. Plamenatz "Mr. Warrender's Hobbes", in Hobbes Studies (ed. cit.), pp. 73-87. 88 See n. 50 below.

2 Thomas Hobbes

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theory was not dependent on his materialism or developed mainly by the use of scientific method. At the same time, however, exponents of tbis third sort of understanding do not accept the positive side of the natural law case, that Hobbes's political and ethical thought is only properly seen in the great natural law tradition; indeed, they regard Hobbes as having explicitly and firmly repudiated that tradition. But here the difference of historical perspective between the two branches of this individualist case emerges. Professor Strauss argues that Hobbes's political and ethical philosophy breaks completely with the great tradition (of Aristotle, scholasticism and natural law) but not because his philosophy was basically naturalistic. If his viewpoint had been of this latter kind he would have seen all inclinations and appetites as morally indifferent. But, on the contrary, he singles out two passions for crucial emphasis of a moral kind: vanity, the fundamentally unjust force which makes men blind; and fear of violent or shameful death, the basically just force which makes men see a way out of the predicament created by their pride3V • It is in his stress on the 'right of nature' of each individual, the right of selfpreservation dicta ted by the fear of violent death, that Hobbes both breaks with moral orthodoxy and makes a stand against naturalism. For hirn, justice is embodied in the rational defence and pursuit of this basic right; and it is this 'specific moral attitude' which is the real, and very original, foundation of his thought40 • In this light, Hobbes may indeed be said to be making an important contribution because it is precisely the assumption that the starting-point is natural right (theprimacy of an absolutely justified subjective claim) and not, as hitherto, natural law (the primacy of obligation to an objective order) which distinguishes modern from earlier political thought41 • Further, Strauss argues that the scientific mode of discussion and presentation, so characteristic of Hobbes's major and later works, is misleading insofar as it obscures this real basis of his thought, his new moral point of view about 'right' and the passions. Moreover, Strauss suggests that this ethical attitude was formed before Hobbes discovered Euclid and modern science; it can be discerned in bis early writings and, in diminishing strength, beneath the sv L. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: its Basis and Genesis (Oxford 1936), pp. 27-9, 130. 40 In the second edition of his book Strauss gives priority in this respect to Machiavelli. But this is simply a prefatory observation which is not there elaborated at all. Though see Strauss's remarks in "On the Spirit of Hobbes's Political Philosophy", Revue Internationale de Philosophie, IV (1950), esp. pp. 414-8. U Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, pp. XIV, 5, 6-7, 155-160. Cf. Sir Ernest Barker's foreword, ibid., p. VIII; also Strauss's "Quelques remarques sur la science politique de Hobbes apropos du livre recent de M. Lubienski", Recherches Philosophiques (1932), esp. pp. 613--4.

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpreta.tion

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layers of the essentially aUen naturaUsm with which he c10thed his mature works. In fact, the way Hobbes uses scientific ideas depends on his essentially humanist premiss; while, at the same time, these ideas also come to act as an intellectual mould which forces the basic moral insight and what ftows from it into a difficuIt shape causing discrepancies and logical defects42 • Hobbes's attitude depends, then, on neither modern scientific naturalism nor the metaphysics of natural law. It is based on a notion of individual right which itself rests on an understanding of the human passions derived from a knowledge of men and confirmed by self-examination. Strauss's thesis is clearly very important but does involve difficuIties of both an analytical and historical kind43 • The main point in respect of the former centres on criticism of Strauss's discussion of right and moral obligation. It is asked, for instance, why the feit need to preserve one's self is also a duty; why rational conduct (i. e. conduct which is consistently compatible with self-preservation) is mo rally obligatory. The cause or motive of a man's endeavouring to secure peace may be adesire for self-preservation; but such a cause cannot be a justification of a moral kind for so acting, because in itself a motive of this sort has no ethically prescriptive force 44 • Some of the historical comments are also of the same critical type. For example, it is suggested that the evidence available to determine Hobbes's pre-scientific view is rather scanty; also that Strauss does not take sufficient note of the implications of Hobbes's Short Tract on First Principles (c. 1630) and faUs to see that Hobbes's view of man's passions and will is, even at this early date, closely bound up with his views about nature and causation45 • However, more important than this negative type of observation is the main historical criticism of Strauss's 1936 discussion: that it rests on a faulty perspective. It is largely suggestions about how this defect may be remedied (so as to achieve a more historically satisfactory picture of 41 Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, pp. XIV, XV, 12, 29-43, 74, 7981, 166-7, 170, ch. VI passim. 43 Strauss's later discussion of Hobbes, in Natural Right and History (1963), is in some significant ways different from his earlier view. In particular, his perspective is wider and more satisfactory, largely, I suppose, as a result of the comments of critics such as Oakeshott. Yet he has speciftcally rejected the suggestion that Hobbes's political ideas are best seen in the context of the "anti-idealistic" medieval tradition: see "On the Spirit of Hobbes's Political Philosophy", pp. 406-8, 411, 421-2. Oakeshott's original criticisms are to be found most fully stated in «Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes", Politica II (1936-7), pp. 364-379. See also his later discussion, "Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes", in Rationalism in Politics (ed. cit.). Another brief critical examination is to be found in Watkins, op. cit., pp. 30-4. " Oakeshott, "The Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes", loc. cit., pp. 265-6. " Oakeshott "Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes", p. 371; Watkins, op. cit., pp. 239-41, 250-1.

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Hobbes) that constitute the positive contribution of the second version of the individualist case. And basically the idea is that Strauss has a defective view of both the scientific and philosophical traditions, and generally of the intellectual environment in which Hobbes lived and the manner of his mental development. Those who may be categorised as contributing to the second version of the individualist case accept, with Strauss, that neither the traditional nor the naturallaw interpretations is satisfactory. But these writers do not agree simply with the Strauss thesis that Hobbes's basic position rests on an essentially modern moral attitude to the will and passions of man, an insight which is to be distinguished from or even contrasted with his use of scientific ideas and methods. Instead, the alternative suggestion is made that Hobbes draws on medieval notions of a particular kind, indeed on a long-established and essentially philosophical manner of thinking in terms of which his moral views and his understanding of the natural world are alike comprehensible. So the tension that Strauss detects in Hobbes is no more than a flaw in his own analysis deriving from an unsatisfactory historical viewpoint and a failure to appreciate the philosophical style which Hobbes employs. This defect leads, for instance, to a false equation between Hobbes's interest in the natural world and his discovery of modern science", while another of its misleading aspects is the idea that there was only one medieval tradition of thought, that based on natural law, and that if Hobbes does not think in its terms then he belongs to no tradition at all. The question that arises at this point is obvious. What is the nature of Hobbes's tradition, of this conception of philosophy and reasoning in terms of which every one of his characteristic doctrines is said to be formulated? In fact, this tradition is variously described. For example, Oakeshott refers at different times to the revival of Democritean-Epicurean thought, late scholastic nominalism, the averroism of Scotus and Occam, fideism and the philosophical scepticism of the libertins, certain brands of medieval and early modern theology with their roots in Augustine, and the Hebraic tradition of creative will47• And it must be 48 As Oakeshott points out, at no stage of his intellectual career did Hobbes have any patience or sympathy whatsoever for experimental science: "Thomas Hobbes", Scrutiny IV (1935-6), p. 268; "Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes", loc. cit., pp. 373--4. 41 e. g. "Thomas Hobbes", Scrutiny IV (1935-6), pp. 267-9, 272; "Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes", loc. cit., pp. 375-6; review of Strauss in Philosophy, XII (1937), pp. 240-1; intro. to Leviathan (Oxford, [1946], pp. XIV-XVII, XX-XXI, XXV-XXVII, XLV, LII-LIII, LV; "Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes", loc. cit., pp. 255 nl, 291. On Oakeshott's general theme that the only true context in which to see a masterpiece such as Leviathan is the unity of the entire history of philosophy and a specific strand or tradition of this history, see intro. to Leviathan (ed. cit.), pp. VIII-XIII.

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said that his discussion of this vital matter is similarly somewhat fragmentary and scattered. But the basic suggestion is obvious: thdt the nature of Hobbes's ideas and whatever unity and system they achieve is best seen in the context of a long-established and still extant tradition of philosophical thinking48. This will be found to lie behind the concept of individual right and the theory about the will and passions of man (especially the role of pride and fear) correctly emphasized by Strauss. This tradition can also be seen as the foundation of his interest in and understanding of the natural world so that it is wrong simply to relate his view of things in this respect to modern science. For instance, he sees things on the analogy of a machine not because he is a scientific mechanist but because his conception of causal reasoning unavoidably turns whatever he looks at (including man and society) into a mechanism. And he is an individualist not because he chooses to begin with the sanctity of individual right but because his nominalism involves the view that only substantive individuals exist as subjects of philosophical inquiry49. J. W. N. Watkin's recent book seems to adopt a similar standpoint arguing specifically that the essentials of Hobbes's political theory are logically related to his philosophical way of thinking and that, in this respect, Hobbes was firmly placed in the late medieval tradition of Paduan Aristotelianism50 • And in the (so far) most satisfactorily documented and well-argued account of this sort of theme, Professor W. B. Glover has suggested that Hobbes's thought is best seen as aversion of Christian philosophy and theology in the Augustinian and Reformist tradition which had strong fideist, nominalist, sceptical and voluntarist elements of the kind we associate with Hobbes 51 • And there have been 48 I suppose that this tradition as it flourished in Hobbes's time is best described by Hiram Haydn in his The Counter-Renaissance (New York 1950). On the background see also M. H. Carre's Phases of Thought in England (Oxford 1949); his Realists and Nominalists (Oxford 1946), esp. eh. IV on Occam; and G. de Lagarde's La Naissance de l'esprit laique au declin du moyen age (2nd. ed., Paris, 1956 ff.). At Boehum, Professor Watkins rather took exception to my speaking in this way of Hobbes and a tradition of thought as though the latter had of life of its own and Hobbes was only to be seen as an exemplar of this "suprapersonal phenomenon". But, of course, a tradition of thought is not like this at an: it is simply a category of interpretation and explanation that emerges from a study of individual writers between whom affinities may be detected. 4V Leviathan (ed. cit.), pp. XIX-XXI, LV. &0 Watkins, op. cit., e. g. pp. 9, 13, 66. Cf. Watkins's essay in Hobbes Studies (ed. cit.) p. 238 n. 2. It should be noted that during discussion of this paper at Boehum, Professor Watkins said he thought I had misconceived his point of view by categorising it in this way: he feIt (as I understood hirn) that Hobbes's affinity was rather with the naturalistic style of thought, the traditional case as I have called it here. 51 "Human Nature and the State in Hobbes", Journal of the History of Philosophy, IV (1966), pp. 293-311; also his essay in Hobbes StlJdies (ed. cit.), pp. 141-168.

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numerous other discussions of Hobbes's works which have, in part at least, seen him in a similar sort of context and which, taken together, constitute an impressive, if scattered, array of evidence and argument to support this type of interpretation5!. In sum, then, there are at least three different types of Hobbes interpretation. One which sees him in terms of modern science, another which asserts instead his link with the Christian natural law tradition, while the third rests effectively on the view that his entire range of thought derives from scholastic nominalism. These are points of view which in turn emphasize Hobbes as positivist, as moralist, and as philosopher.

H. There are two main questions raised by this variety of interpretation. Clearly one is about the adequacy of these different views of Hobbes's thought and, I suppose, must lead to asking which is the most satisfactory. But there also arises a broader issue concerning the lessons that can be learned- from this diversity of opinion about the study of political ideas generally and, indeed, about intellectual history as a whole. This second matter is best taken first because it raises the perspective necessary to deal with the initial question. And this general problem really 11 D. Krook, in "Mr. Brown's Note Annotated", Politieal Studies I (1953), pp. 216-227, and "Thomas Hobbes's Doetrine of Meaning and Truth", Philosophy, XXXI (1956), pp. 3-22, stresses Hobbes's radieal and uneompromising metaphysieal materialism; L. I. Bredvold brings out Hobbes's fideism, seepticism and nominalism and the medieval and classieal origins of these doetrines in his Intelleetual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor 1934), esp. chs. 2 and 3, also pp. 25, 37, 47, 50-3, 58, 73 ff.; F. A. Lange saw Hobbes primarily as a bold nominalist, The History of Materialism and Critieism of its Present Importanee (1865; 3rd ed., London 1925), I, 270-1; Phyllis Doyle argued some years aga that many of Hobbes's eentral eoneeptions belong to an established Augustinian-Seotist-Calvinistie tradition of theology and philosophy and derived, specifieally, from the Arminian eontroversies of the sixteenth eentury; that is, that his views were formed within the Christian fold but were not wholly orthodox, "The Contemporary Background of Hobbes's 'State of Nature' ", Eeonomiea, VII (1927), pp. 336-55; W. J. Ong has noted Hobbes's indebtedness to Ramism and suggested that he owed much more to the rigorous operations of this doetrine than to Galileo and Euelid, "Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetorie in English", Trans. Cam. BibI. Soc., I (1949-53), pp. 260-9; Ola/son, art. eit., pp. 27-8 suggests that Hobbes's views of God and the Law of Nature are like those of the "voluntaristie theologians of the fourteenth eentury" and put him in the tradition that sterns from Seotus and Oeeam. One of the diffieulties of the naturallaw ease is that ü Hobbes was orthodox in natural law terms why was there such an outery against him by his eontemporaries? This reaetion is explieable if it is realized that views belonging to this other medieval tradition of philosophy and theology were themselves often regarded in Hobbes's time with horror, deseribed as "atheism" and so on. See e. g. the account of Alexander Rosse's critieisms in Bowle, op. cit., pp. 64, 70-l.

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concerns what is involved in the study and interpretation of a political 'text' (this being either a single book or series of writings by one man, or a whole body of work produced by, say, a given school or period of thought). The first thing to recognize is that political thought (like any other kind) exists at many different levels of articulation and generality. At the lowest (though not necessarily the least complex) plane there is the apparently unrefiective following of a customary or habitual procedure where the rationale is present but not worked out or consciously in the mind of the agent. Then there is action that is intended, say someone deciding how to vote so as to serve his interests best; an official taking adecision in a particular case or, more widely, discussing alternative courses of action and recommending a broad line of policy. And the process proceeds to wider and more abstract levels of generality. A politician, in a parliamentary debate, considers a question in the context of national or group traditions and purposes or of party ideology. A commentator or pamphleteer reviews a current issue in terms of political principles of some kind or other; and this sort ofdiscussion tips over into what we call political theory, that is, the examination of general concepts such as 'obligation', the 'state', 'rights', 'common good' and so on. Finally, at the highest level of abstraction, politics is seen in the context of a philosophy, a recommendation about how to look at the world as a whole; though (as at all the other levels) the degree of articulation and completeness which is achieved may vary considerably53. Of course, these are notional distinctions: any given thinker may run up and down the scale as suits his purpose, ability or inclination. Burke's writings, for instance, spread over a large part of the continuum. Sometimes he plays the role of political analyst dealing realistically with a specific issue, then he invokes broad constitutional principle, then he is the party ideologist, while, at other times, he takes flight into the ethereal regions of transcendent moraliawand divine purpose immanent in the history of the world. If he never tries to reach the highest level of abstraction, he is, in the history of political thought, one of the masters of the middle range. Those who have achieved and consistently maintained themselves on the ultimate height are relatively few in number. But clearly Hobbes is one of them and what we now have to ask is how to interpret and assess political thought when it is expressed with this degree of abstraction. And I take it as undeniable that what is sought is, in some way, unity, system, coherence, for this is what explanation is (in this context); a 53 Cf. Oakeshott, intro. to Leviathan (ed. cit.), pp. VIII-IX. The general view I adopt here is a common one among idealist thinkers.

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method which (as I see it) is a perfect exemplification of the principle of economy: one seeks the simplest possible overall account. Bacon has this in mind when he says somewhere that knowledge is worthiest when charged with the least multiplicity. Moreover, it seems obvious that, because it is thought which is being studied by thought, we can never in the end rest content with either an uncritical chronology or an unorganised congeries of ideas. Take the history of thought in any of its forms: this can itself never be satisfactory so long as it is presented as a mere succession of intellectual events, an unresolved variety. A more general and permanent entity has to be found. And such a history must itself be logical, assurne and discern the existence of some form of order in what may at first sight appear chaotic. It must tell a credible story. The perhaps unlikely shade of Wittgenstein may be invoked to this Hegelian effect. For in the Tractatus he says that thought can never be of anything illogical for, if it were, we should have to think illogically54. It is not, of course, that any order or pattern discerned in the history of ideas Is necessary independently of the process in which it is implicit or preordained in any teleological or purposive sense. There is no element of inevitability which will enable the logic of the past to be projected into future. But if intellectual history does not reveal its story as systematic, it is not itself thought: 'contingency must vanish' on the appearance of this kind of inquiry55. Of course, we know (at the commonsense level) that people thinking out problems vary in the degree of success they achieve, get confused, contradict themselves, and so on. This is obvious. But the object of the student of this thought is not only to report these deficiencies but to account for them and so to transcend them. It might be urged that this view is misleading, that the test of any historical picture is whether it conforms to the facts (e. g. of society) not whether it is consistent and credible merely. But this objection itself rests on a misconception. Consistency alone is, I agree, not enough; it can exist in a shadow world of mere ideas. The coherence sought must be a coherence which we are obliged to believe by the nature of the evidence. Yet this evidence is not something given, autonomous, objective. There is no such thing as an historical 'fact' in and of itself independent of 'interpretation', and used to judge an interpretation. A fact presupposes a world of ideas, an existing interpretation, something achieved in such a context and not something merely given. Any historian begins not with brute, objective facts about the past but with a body of present material seen in a certain light but which, thus seen, seems to lack cohe54 § 3.03 Cf. §§ 3.031-2 and Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (4th ed., London 1962), I, 246 n. 45. 55 Hegel's Lectures on th~ HistoI7 of Philosophy (tl;', Halc;lan~ anr;l Simson; Hon~on 1963)~ I, 36-7~

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rence. And what he tries to do is to give this material a greater relative degree of coherence by looking at it in a different way, a process which will necessarily involve altering the manner in which the so-called facts have hitherto been regarded. The only historical facts are the interpretations. So to talk about the historical task as seeing influences and the connexions between two given events, ideas or persons, may be misleading56• This is because there are no independent entities to be connected in this way. Further, if the possibility of their relation is seen then its nature is already determined. To think of the possible influence of Hobbes on Locke (if this is a feasible thing to do) is to see both as belonging already to the same or a cognate world of ideas: they share something in common, a certain intellectual ambience. Not influence but affinity is the key word here. And I utterly fail to see why this view should be regarded as 'simply without content'57. It is wholly concrete and proper to say, for example, that there is a connexion between the generaloutlook of Sir Robert Filmer and Edward Forset; or Hooker and Locke, or (to be outrageous perhaps) Burke and Rousseau. No question of influence need arise: it is simply that there are certain similarities in manner of thought which appear to the mind of the observer. And it is merely pejorative to say this arises from ignorance of the detail concerned; though I suppose the critic might give the lie direct and say, 'But this is quite unhistorical'. So be it: but it is a curiously confined view of intellectual history that such a critic sustains. And, of course, it is not that one is always driven to more and more tenuous frameworks of interpretation - at least not in any individual case. One does not say that, for instance, Burke was a political philosopher - but that his ideas (which never achieve this level of systematic abstraction) may, perhaps, be best seen reflected in the mirror of such a philosophy. One constructs this reflecting element, this abstraction, oneself, but does not suppose that Burke did. And I tend more and more to the opinion that, in this pursuit of coherence, in the end one never criticizes. If one gets the cultural context right, if ways of thinking are recreated sympathetically, then one never refutes but always sustains. I belong to the 'tout comprendre' school of thought. It is, no doubt, a satisfying exercise to some (professor Plamenatz provides a most sophisticated example) to detect in a political text apparent inconsistencies and dubious argument. But I feel that any5t Cf. Q Skinner, "The Limits of Historical Explanations", Philosophy, XLI (1966), 199-215. This is also why I find rather odd the suggestion often made that political philosophy is an answer given to the challenge of contemporary political problems and can only be understood as the outcome of a given social situation. There are no given social or political "facts" which can be used to explain or assess the (merely epiphenomenal) ideas. 57 Ibid., p. 211.

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one possessed of a genuine historical sense could not rest content at this often complex but nonetheless historically superficial level of analysis. He would feel it necessary to go beyond the supposed defects, to transcend them by fuller investigation. We might take as motto one of the maxims of Vauvenargues: 'pour decider qu'un auteur se contredit, il faut qu'il soit impossible de le concilier&8.' And Hobbes hirnself, interestingly enough, makes some most cogent remarks about this kind of question in the '!ittle treatise' of 1640, The Elements of Law 5'. He is discussing how men worked upon one another's minds by the use of language and says that, thought words are the signs we have of other people's opinions and intentions, it is, nevertheless, often difficult to interpret them correctly because of what he calls 'diversity of contexture, and of the company wherewith they go'. So it follows, he thinks, that 'it must be extremely hard to find out the opinions and meanings of those men that are gone from us long ago, and have left us no other signification thereof but their books; which cannot possibly be understood without history enough to discover those aforementioned circumstances, and also without great prudence to observe them'. Moreover, Hobbes goes on, whenever there appears to be a contradiction of some sort in a man's writings (and assuming he is no longer 'present to explicate hirnself better') then the reader is properly to assurne that the opinion signified most clearly and directly by the author is the one intended and that any apparently contradictory view arises either from an error of interpretation on the reader's part or from the writer's not seeing any reason to suppose a contradiction at all80• I think that in principle these are sound words and ought to be taken to heart by all who practise the art of intellectual history. We must, then, search for coherence or system in the ideas or ways of thinking that we study, both in particular cases or 'texts' and in the general continuum we call the history of thought as a whole. Yet although we are always looking for coherence or system, we are not always searching for the same kind of thing. And I would distinguish two main ways of achieving the object, one which can be called a 'biographical' and the other a 'rational' way of making thought intelligible. The appropriate understanding of the role of biographical factors may often be a way in which system can be introduced into varied expres11

II,279 .

.. (ed. Tönnies; Cambridge 1928), pp. 52-3; cf. p. 98. 10 Ibid., I, XIII, 8; English Works (ed. Molesworth), IV, 7-5. Cf.: "If you will be a philosopher in good earnest, let your reason move upon the degree of your own cogitations and exper1ence; those things that be in conrusion must be set asunder, distinguished and every one stamped with its own name set in order; that 1s to say, your method must resemble that of the creation." CE. W. vol. I, p. XIII).

Hobbes: The Prob1em of Interpretation

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sions of thought. It may be that in a man's work aseries of inconsisteneies or even contradictions exist which appear unresolvable at the intellectual level, but it is sometimes possible to reach a lower degree of coherence by taking account of the author's personality or situation. This is, I suppose, the only way to achieve a unity in the political and philosophical works that Locke produced; and, again, Professor Oakeshott suggested (in one place) that some of the difficulties in Hobbes's writings are perhaps to be put down to the same sort of factor 81 • But, of course, this kind of explanation will be invoked only when any more 'rational' mode of making thought intelligible fails. So far as this latter mode is concerned, I would like to suggest, tentatively, that there are three different types of system which may be in view. The first might be called the synthetical or syntactical type of system, by which I mean a completely connected set of ideas linked by an overall method of explanation or analysis. This could be deductive in form, an attempt being made to derive a consistent set of conclusions or propositions from a given series ofaxioms, and this is done, c1assically, in the geometrical mode. Hobbes (or rather the traditional Hobbes) is a good example. Another instance, reflecting a related but different way of doing the same sort of thing, is Aquinas with his massive, architectonic structure of thought. On the other hand, this kind of system could be pursued by a method of c1assification, resting on the apparent recurrence of common features in what is observed and enabling the coherence of speeies and genera to be introduced. To this may be added some notion of a dynamic relationship between the types. Such are the comparative analyses of different systems of government which mayaIso be seen succeeding one another in ordered succession (monarchy into tyranny into aristocracy into oligarchy and so on). The next type may be called the discrete mode of systematization. This involves the application to different areas or topics of a given style of analysis and discussion without attempting to relate the conc1usions achieved in each case into a whole. Plato is a good example of this. In each of the Socratic dialogues a similar method of analysis is applied to different topics (justice in the Republic, pleasure in the Philebus, knowledge in the Theaetetus) but there is no explicit attempt to unite a11 this to81

"Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes", loc. cit., p. 287. Cf. J. F.

Stephen, op. cit., pp. 14,34; Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953),

p. 199. Of course, if it was Hobbes's purpose to equivocate then he did not cover up very well so it may be just as reasonable to suppose that he was not simply trying to be circumspect but expressing a view which was known to be heretical. On this see Mintz, op. cit., p. 44.

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gether as part of a general metaphysic. It is the persistent application of a given understanding of philosophical thinking which gives whatever unity or system is achieved to a body of writings framed in this way. The third type of system I call dialectical and what I mean is, I expect, clear from the name. This kind of system emerges when a manner of argument proceeds progressively by what may appear to be contradictory conclusions to higher levels of understanding which also encapsulate what is already achieved. Hegel and a number of the idealists provide obvious instances. A sub-version of this type of system may assurne an historicist form when the progressive pattern of development is seen, not in terms of the understanding, but is discerned in nature or in history itself, as in Augustine, Comte or Marx. And it may be the case that one looks for some sort of unity in the progressive unfolding of ideas or different levels of consideration in the books of a particular writer whose early works seem not to conform with those that come later. Obviously, this classification is only a suggestion: I cannot insist on it. But the real point I am trying to make is twofold: that if we are studying the history of thought then, first, what we pursue is coherence of some sort; and, secondly, that we must get the kind of system we look for right. We will be in dreadful error if we suppose a writer who had one sort of system in mind to be attempting a coherence of another sort. This kind of mistake is one of the most insidious forms of anachronism. We must beware, too, of a constant danger in this kind of analysis and reconstruction, that of adding to a corpus of work assistance of our own. A man may never fulfil his intentions as to systematic thinking, may not climb as far up the scale of abstraction as he intended. But we have to be content with what he actually did, with the evidence as it iso The system (whatever it is) lies in what is there, not in what we might want to supplement it with. And, in an this, the right sort of context is everything. The probing categories we use have to be appropriate; we have to avoid the backward-Iook; we must not think that 'Truth' is more important than belief; and so on. It follows that it is never enough to read specific original sources and then indulge in a lot of critical analysis. The sources themselves and this kind of discussion can be awfully misleading. A text is, in any case, something achieved, not something given. And it can only be understood if we see it in the right framework. We have to do a considerable amount of work of, so to say, a secondary kind, to get the context right, before the text (or document or whatever it is) is assessable in any historically satisfactory way. Nor is it ever sufficient to study only the great works. What is primarily needed for this sort of exercise is to deal with the host of the relatively obscure who fill in the

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation

29

intervals between the men of genius and who are probably more characteristic of the age62•

IH. Now how does all this bear on the matter of Hobbes interpretation? In this particular case, I do not think there is any problem about the level of abstraction concerned: it is, unambiguously, the highest, the philosophical. This is a rare situation in the history of political thought, but (I feel) quite clear. So the question really is, How successful was Hobbes in his philosophical enterprise? And this means asking, as a logically previous question. What sort of systematization did he have in mind? Let us look at this in terms of the three types of interpretation earlier outlined. The traditional case clearly looks for consistency of a synthetic kind and in the deductive mode: everything is supposed to follow from the naturalistic assumptions about matter and motion. The 'absolute presuppositions' of Hobbes's system (on this view) include, for instance, that bodies exist and that the world operates by causes and effects. So his natural philosophy begins with definitions of such concepts (body, cause, effect, motion, space, etc.) from which he derives the principles governing the different kinds of body and motion and their propertieg63. And human and political activity are to be seen in these terms. Yet the coherence sought on this basis is elusive, and if this indeed the kind of consistency that Hobbes intended then there are undoubtedly a number of loose ends. The political and ethical views do not seem to flow easily from the basic assumptions; and Hobbes himself indicates that these views may in fact be premeditated on quite another basis, that of introspection and self-knowledge. Further, Hobbes's view of the passions is (as Strauss points out) decidedly non-naturalistic. And, to say the least, Hobbes's language about the moral and divine law is most ambiguous in this respect. So if this naturalistic framework of ideas is really the correct one to have in mind when considering Hobbes's work then his philosophical enterprise is clearly faultily or unsuccessfully carried out. This is a conclusion which does not, however, end the matter but itself raises further problems which centre around the issue, why did not Hobbes himself see these difficulties? One answer may be that he did see them but chose to ignore them. A reason that has been suggested for this view is of the 'biographical' kind. Hobbes knew his materialist 11 Cf. my Order, Empiricism and Politics (London, 1964), pp. 12-13, where I follow aremark of Oakeshott's. See the TLS (1949), review of Butterfield's The Origins of Modern Science. 83 Goldsmith, op. cit., pp. 46, 47.

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doctrine would be unpalatable to many of his contemporaries so he cunningly left ambivalences and incompatibilities that would enable hirn, in defending hirnself against detractors, to point to sufficient evidence of his real orthodoxy. This image of timid Hobbes who artfu11y presents two quite different doctrines side by side as a means of equivocation has a certain appeal and ring of truth. The difficulty is not simply that the stratagern was unsuccessful but that a number of the inconsistencies involved do not seem to be relevant to the supposed end. To say, for instance, that the political ideas may be derived introspectively and do not need to be established on the mechanical, materialist premises is to little purpose if these ideas are in themselves likely to be found objectionable. But, in any case, this kind of explanation, or rather excuse, for some obvious difficulties in the traditional picture of Hobbes becomes unnecessary ü it can be shown that what appear as loose ends and ambiguities are themselves the product of misinterpretation. And this would avoid the necessity for another possible line of escape which is that Hobbes simply got confused or made a great number of bad mistakes and omissions in developing his argument. This is not only a very different assessment of Hobbes from that which sees hirn as clever enough to make deliberate errors, but also is, on the evidence, unreasonable. At the very least, it would mean that if some sort of naturalistic, deductive system is Hobbes's intention then the performance is, in some important respects, an inferior one: a conclusion it is hard to accept. There are ways, too, in which the naturallaw case seems unacceptable because it rests on an unexplained dichotomy in Hobbes's thought, between the ethicaldeontology on the one hand, and the scientific materialism, egoistic psychology and prudential morality on the other. The Taylor thesis is precisely that Hobbes's ideas are basically inconsistent, riven into two incompatible parts. Even if this were true, it would be a matter to be explained rather than a view satisfactory in itself. Again, did Hobbes not see this inconsistency? Is it possible that, in some way, he did not see the matter as an inconsistency at a11? If not, why not? Yet if he did see it, why did he leave things as they were? I feel myself that, as a matter of principle basic to the study of inte11ectual history, it is not possible to accept as final a bifurcated understanding of this kind. The exploration of discontinuity is always to be rejected in favour of the search for a satisfactory consistency, even ü this has to be sought in biographical data. Professor Hood's thesis aboutHobbes's 'divine politics', the essentially religious foundation of his thought, avoids to some extent a defect of this kind, finding in the naturalistic aspects of Hobbes's thought simply a concession to intellectual fashion. Yet little, very little, is said about the historical background of the kind of thinking thus attributed to Hobbes. Moreover, the presence of two very different, if

Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation

31

not incompatible, elements is admitted. And it is not even suggested that the elements at least reflect a common manner of thinking. Strauss's interpretation is open to the same sort of criticism. He stresses the non-naturalistic basis of Hobbes's political and ethical thought but fails to explore its genesis adequately enough. Here lies the strength of the line of inquiry indicated by Oakeshott, Watkins and Glover. They suggest (as I follow their discussion) that many or most of the apparent difficulties found in Hobbes's thought may be resolved by seeing him in the right sort of historical context, in particular, the context of a particular style of philosophical thinking. And the way in which this greatest possible degree of coherence is to be found in Hobbes's thought is to see it, in effect, as an instance of discrete systematization i. e. that what holds all Hobbes's ideas together is the continuous application of a particular mode of thought. Yet it is true to say that here a line of inquiry has been pointed out rather than that it has been explored in anything like the requisite degree of historical detail. This is partly due to the mistaken notion (unfortunately held by so many students of political ideas) that examination of the 'internal' evidence of the texts is all that is required. It follows that if the present state of Hobbes scholarship intimates any specific avenue of advance, it is likely to go in the direction of an attempt to show in detail what this nominalist tradition of thought involved (in particular the kind of systematic thinking it envisaged), how Hobbes was influenced by it, how it affected the development of bis ideas and constituted the base and framework of whatever degree of coherence he achieved in his philosophical politics. What is most needed now is not more insight or textual exegesis but simply more research".

14

I am sustained in this view when I note it is persuasively urged by Mr.

SkinneT, e. g., "The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought", p. 317.

Le Dieu Mortel Par Julien Freund, Strasbourg Les historiens de la philosophie ne se sont pas encore donnes la peine d'etudier de pr es les rapports etroits entre la pensee de Hobbes et celle de Spinoza, ne serait-ce que pour determiner la dette, beaucoup plus grande qu'on ne le croit en general, du second envers le premier. Si Spinoza est l'auteur d'un Tractatus theoZogico-politicus, c'est Hobbes qui est le veritable initiateur de la critique conjointe des concepts politiques et theologiques. La portee et la perspicacite de ses analyses ne le cedent en rien a celles de son illustre disciple et j'incline meme a croire, apres avoir relu les deux oeuvres, que Spinoza a fait beaucoup plus que s'inspirer seulement de son predecesseur, car une grande partie des merites et des audaces qu'on lui attribue, appartiennent en fait a Hobbes. Grace aux nombreux et remarquables travaux qui ont paru depuis une trentaine d'annees sur le philosophe de Malmesbury, il a cesse d'etre un auteur maudit, mais il reste meconnu. Certes, la plupart d'entre nous qui participons a ce colloque savons quelle est son importance dans le mouvement des idees, mais le livre qui lui donnera sa vraie place dans l'histoire des idees n'est pas encore ecrit. Pour cela, il ne faut pas seulement s'attacher a sa philosophie et a sa theorie de la politique; il faut aussi mettre en lumiere sa critique theologico-politique que le XVIIIe siec1e a exploitee, souvent sans la mentionner, et meme en la combattant. En litterature non plus on n'est pas reconnaissant et l'on n'aime guere ceux envers lesquels on a contracte une lourde dette1 •

Ce n'est pas pour faire des concessions a l'esprit de son temps, mais de propos delibere, que Hobbes a donne tant d'importance au phenomene religieux dans ses ecrits politiques. Il y consacre par exemple tout le chapitre VII de son De Corpore poZitico, la derniere des trois parties du De Cive, mais surtout, sur les quatre parties du Leviathan, les deux dernieres, soit a peu pres 1a moitie de l'ouvrage, traitent l'une de l'Etat chretien et l'autre du Regne des tenebres. Pour bien compendre sa pensee il faut donc, semble-t-il, considerer comme participant de la meme vision d'ensemble et de la meme intention philosophique les trois 1 On lira avec fruit l'excellente etude de B. WiUms, Von der Vermessung des «Leviathan», dans 1a revue Der Staat, Berlin 1967, t. 6, cahier 1 et 2.

3 Themas Hebbes

34

Jiulien Freund

grands themes qui dominent aussi bien les Elements of Law que le Leviathan: les reflexions anthropologiques sur l'homme et la nature humaine, les explications sur l'Etat et les commentaires de theologie politique. Les dissocier ou meme negliger l'un de ces chapitres au profit des autres ne ferait que rompre l'unite profonde de l'oeuvre globale. En effet, Hobbes aurait pu comme Machiavel ou Bodin traiter le probleme politique ou l'Etat po ur lui-meme. Du moment qu'il ne l'a pas fait et qu'au contraire il a integre l'analyse politique dans un contexte anthropologique et theologique, il importe de rest er fidele a sa demarche. C'est le seul moyen de penetrer vraiment dans son univers et de saisir sa place dans l'evolution des idees. Hobbes n'est pas un philosophe au masque. Quand il parle des problemes religieux, il le fait sans circonspection et sans equivoque, mais avec la decision c1aire de l'homme qui connait son affaire et qui ne cache pas ses convictions materialistes. Etre materialiste, ce n'est pas la meme chose qu'etre athee. C'est peut-etre parce que certains interpretes de sa philosophie ont absolument voulu voir en lui un athee qu'ils ont ete amenes a croire qu'il a cherche a travestir sa pensee. En fait, il etait davantage au courant de l'histoire de la theologie que la plupart des theologiens de son temps: on le constate par exemple apropos de sa discussion sur la corporeite de l'äme, car l'idee d'une ame incorporelle s'est introduite apres coup dans le christianisme sous l'influence de la philosophie neo-platonicienne. L'originalite de Hobbes est d'avoir ete un chretien materialiste. Aussi faut-illui faire credit et ne pas lui imputer je ne sais quelle ruse d'auteur lorsqu'il se rec1ame du christianisme. C'est sa propre conviction qu'il a exprime dans le chapitre 43 du Leviathan, quand il y dec1are que toute la foi se resume en cette proposition: Jesus est le Christ. Jamais il n'a mis en doute l'existence de Dieu, mais uniquement la connaissance que les hommes peuvent en avoir, le plus souvent en reprenant a son compte les arguments de la theologie negative!. C'est precisement parce que Dieu est une realite inintelligible pour l'homme et qu'il echappe a notre raison que d'une part les guerres de religion sont absurdes, puisqu'elles ont po ur origine des croyances gratuites, voire des ignorances concernant l'intelligibilite de Dieu, et que d'autre part la religion est politiquement une affaire de souverainete, chaque Etat etant libre d'instituer un culte officiel a sa convenance, du moment qu'il sauvegarde la foi fondamentale dans J~sus comme Christ. 2 «Comme le Dieu Tout-puissant est incomprehensible, il s'ensuit que nous ne pouvons avoir de conception ou d'image de la divinite; consequemment tous ses attributs n'annoncent que l'impossibilite de concevoir quelque chose touchant sa nature dont nous n'avons d'autre conception, sinon qu'il existe», Elements of Law, Human Nature, chap. XI, § 2, traduction dans Oeuvres philosophiques et politiques de Thomas Hobbes, Neufchätel1787, t. II, p. 257.

Le Dieu Morle!

35

Le debat theologique met ainsi en cause les fondements meme des conceptions politiques de Hobbes, mais aussi ceux de la methode cl suivre en science politique. Au fond, il fut le principal demystificateur de son siecle. A la difference de .tant d'autres philosophes qui utilisent sans examen tout un appareil de concepts theologiques, secularises ou non, il est l'un des rares cl avoir pris conscience du role qu'ils jouent dans la reflexion philosophique et dans les evaluations politiques, en meme temps qu'il est l'un de ceux qui ont essaye d'elucider la notion du politique comme tel. Mon propos n'est evidemment pas d'exposer en detaill'ensemble de sa doctrine theologico-politique. Je me contenterai d'analyser un point particulier: sa definition du Leviathan comme Dieu mortel. 11 n'y a pas de doute que le materialisme philosophique et la conception de la religion sont chez Hobbes des consequences de son rationalisme. 11 est cependant inutile de retracer ici les grandes lignes de sa theorie de la raison, qu'il con~oit essentiellement comme une creatrice d'artifices (tels le mot, l'Etat et aussi l'institution religieuse), capables de dominer les desordres dans lesquels les passions, les opinions et les craintes jettent les etres humains. Ce qui parait surprenant, c'est que Hobbes, qui refuse precisement au nom du rationalisme les miracles et les superstitions, les dogmes et les mythes, ait employe des noms mythiques, empruntes cl l'Ecriture, pour designer l'Etat et la Revolution, a savoir ceux de Leviathan et de Behemoth et qu'il ait appele le Leviathan un Dieu mortel. 11 me semble que l'examen de cette apparente contradiction nous aidera justement cl mieux comprendre l'utilisation de la theologie aux fins de la politique, pour autant que Hobbes s'attache moins au mythe qu'a la mythologie, con~ue comme une rationalisation des mythes, pour determiner leur signification par rapport a la nature du politique, qui, comme toute nature, ainsi que l'explique la premiere phrase du Leviathan, est au total de l'art. En cela, il reste fidele a l'intuition originaire de son materialisme: l'homme ne comprend que ce qu'il cree, c'est-a-dire ce dont il est la cause, ce dont il est l'artisan. S'il est vrai, comme nous l'apprend la revelation, que le monde est l'oeuvre deDieu, la nature nous reste aussi inintelligible que son auteur, sauf dans la mesure ou nous reussissons cl la dominer par des artifices contruits par l'homme. Aussi ne convient-il pas de se fier cl la providence divine, mais l'homme doit devenir sa propre providence en edifiant l'Etat et en se donnant des institutions politiques et juridiques. Bref, l'artifice est le moyen de conquerir la nature non seulement au plan de l'action, mais aussi a celui de la connaissance. Cette conquete est egalement un desenchantement du monde, dont le Leviathan n'est qu'une expression, puisque l'homme se montre capable de creer un Dieu artificiel; du meme coup il est aussi l'ouvrier de ses mythes, car ils ne sont a leur tour que des artifices, au meme titre que les mots de notre langage.

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J,ulien Freund

Hobbes a en quelque sorte fait la fortune du terme de Leviathan, puisque celui-ci est passe dans le langage commun pour designer l'Etat en general, plus souvent une organisation politique monstrueuse, teIle totalitarisme, voire meme le mal politique en general. Ces diverses significations constituent cependant en general des contresens par rapport a la pensee de Hobbes, mais ce n'est pas le lieu d'en debattre. Nous renon~ons egalement a nous demander si le ehoix de ce mot fait par Hobbes fut heureux au regard de l'idee qu'il voulait exposer. Notre but est plus limite: comment Hobbes entendait-il lui-meme cette designation? Pour repondre acette question il faut considerer d'une part les commentaires explicites qu'il nous a fourni lui-meme et d'autre part les elements implicites que l'interpretation peut produire a titre d'hypotheses vraisemblables, sur la base d'une confrontation des textes de Hobbes et de certains passages de la Bible. A. - C'est a la fin du ehapitre 28 du Leviathan que Hobbes nous explique d'une fac;on precise son ehoix. La comparaison se refere au livre de Job, eh. 42, versets 24-25 ou il est dit: Non est potestas super terram,

quae comparetur ei; factus est, ita ut non metuat; videt subZimia omnia infra se; et rex est omnium filiorum superbiae. Outre ce passage il evoque seulement a deux autres reprises cette figure, d'abord dans l'introduction et puis ä. la fin du ehapitre 17. Ce sont lä. les trois seuls passages ou il est explicitement question du Leviathan. Il me semble utile de confronter rapidement ces trois textes entre eux, pour voir comment le Leviathan s'y trouve qualifie, et avec queIs autres concepts il se trouve mis en rapport. En premier lieu, le Leviathan sert de comparaison (comparison) pour figurer le commonwealth ou l'Etat, en latin civitas (introd. et eh. 17). Autrement dit, gräce ä. cette denomination Hobbes eherehe ä. exprimer metaphoriquement, sur la base de certains traits indiques dans le livre de Job, les caracteres specifiques de l'Etat. En second lieu, il est une creature artificielle, de l'ordre des automates et des maehines (introd.), qui symbolise tantöt un etre humain, mais plus grand que l'homme ordinaire (introd.), tantöt un Dieu, mais mortel (eh. 17), tantöt une creature mortelle, sans autre precision (eh. 28). En troisieme lieu, il est comparable ä. un organisme dont la souverainete serait l'äme artificielle, les magistrats les membres, alors que les nerfs representeraient la recompense et la punition (introd. et eh. 28). Il faut noter en passant que le eh. 28, un des trois textes ou il est directement question du terme de Leviathan, est intitule: Des peines et des recompenses. Le bien etre et la riehesse seraient la force de cet etre, le salut du peuple constituerait sa täehe, les conseillers du pouvoir figureraient sa memoire et les lois sa raison et sa volonte artificielle (introd.).

Le Dieu Morte1

37

Cet organisme forme comme tout corps une volonte une et une veritable unite dans l'integrite (eh. 17). Enfin, comme toute creature organique, i! peut etre sain ou malade, il peut meme mourir (introd. et eh. 28). En quatrieme lieu, il designe la multitude unie au sein de l'Etat et forme une «personne» (eh. 17), cette union reposant sur un contrat (introd. et eh. 17) dont le but est d'une part la protection des citoyens ou la paix interieure, d'autre part la securite ou defense commune ou la paix exterieure (introd. et eh. 17). En cinquieme lieu, il designe l'autorite ou la domination souveraine a laquelle les hommes doivent obeissance, afin que la paix interieure et la securite exterieure puissent etre assurees efficacement (introd. et eh. 28). Cette autorite souveraine peut etre exercee soit par un homme unique soit par une assemblee (eh. 17), ce qui veut dire que le Leviathan peut etre un etre singulier ou un etre collectif. En dernier lieu, il a pour röle de contraindre les passions humaines, en particulier l'orgueil (pride), grace a la domination qu'il exerce comme Etat (eh. 28), tout particulierement sous le couvert de la terreur qu'il inspire (eh. 17). Au total on constate qu'il y a une relative concordance interne entre ces trois textes, mais egalement entre ces textes et la doctrine generale exposee dans la deuxieme partie du Leviathan, que je suppose connue ici. Assez souvent meme l'un de ces trois passages repete l'autre, a quelques differences pres qui ne concernent que la formulation. Il semble qu'il n'y ait contradiction que sur deux points: 1) dans l'introduction le Leviathan est presente a la fois comme une maehine et comme un organisme, 2) dans l'introduction il figure un homme, mais plus grand que l'homme ordinaire, tandis que dans le eh. 17 il est assimile a un Dieu, mais mortel et que dans le eh. 28 il est dit qu'il est seulement une creature mortelle queIconque3 • D'ou les deux questions suivantes: le Leviathan est-il une maehine ou un organisme? - Est-il une espece d'homme ou une espece de divinite? On peut donc se demander s'i! n'y a pas ambiguite dans la pensee de Hobbes sur ces deux points. Nous traiterons d'abord de la premiere difficulte, parce qu'elle est la plus facile a resoudre. Apremiere vue la these organiciste peut s'appuyer sur d'aussi bonnes raisons que la these mecaniste. En effet, l'introduction ne nous decrit-elle pas le Leviathan comme ayant une ame, des membres, des nerfs et de plus, comme tout etre de vie, n'est-il pas 3 Le fait que Hobbes designe par Ie terme de Leviathan tantöt l'ensemble du corps politique ou l'Etat, tantöt Ie seul souverain ne presente pas de difficulte, parce que, en vertu de Ia notion de representation, Ie souverain et 1«: peupie ne forment qu'une m~me persop.m~1 celle clu C(:mF~()n'W~(tlth,

38

JuLien Freund

soumis aux phenomemes de la sante, de la maladie et de la mort? 11 est meme susceptible d'organiser son bien-etre et se procurer des riehesses. Le eh. 17 va encore plus loin et designe cet organisme comme formant une personne. A l'inverse, les arguments que la these mecaniste peut invoquer sont tout aussi pertinents, car l'introduction precise que le Leviathan est un homme artificiel et Hobbes met la construction de cet etre en rapport avec la capacite humaine de creer des animaux artificieIs, des automates ou des maehines (engines). En outre, il souligne que, parce que l'art humain est en mesure de construire des animaux artificiels, il n'y a pas de raison qu'il ne puisse faire encore davantage et imiter la creature 1a plus noble de la nature, a savoir l'homme, et construire en consequence cet etre artificiel qu'est le Leviathan. En verite, cette contradiction n'est qu'apparente. Elle doit etre attribuee a certains interpretes de Hobbes et non a lui-meme, car sa propre conception est exempte d'equivoques. Depuis ses premiers ecrits, en particulier son Short tract on first principles, il n'a jamais dissimule qu'il etait partisan du mecanisme universeI, sous la forme d'une explication de tous 1es phenomenes, qu'ils soient physiques ou psyehiques, par le mouvement. Le Leviathan ne fait que reaffirmer cette these, lorsqu'il assimile le coeur a un ressort (spring), les nerfs a des cordes (strings), les articulations ades roues (wheels). C'est tout l'organisme qui est une maehine et les phenomenes de sante, de maladie et de mort s'expliquent eux aussi, comme n'importe quel accident, par des mouvements mecaniques. Enfin, s'appuyant sur divers textes de l'Ecriture sainte, il explique au ehapitre 44 du Leviathan que l'äme aussi est soumise a la loi universelle du mecanisme, puisqu'elle n'est qu'un concept qui designe la vie ou les mouvements de la vie. Aussi refuse-t-il de la considerer comme une substance incorporelle ou immaterielle. S'il y avait quelque doute quant a 1a pensee profonde de Hobbes, il suffirait de mediter la premiere phrase de l'introduction de Leviathan, ou la nature dans son ensemble est congue comme une machine, puisqu'il y est dit qu'elle n'est que de l'art, gräce auquel Dieu a cree le monde et continue a le gouverner. En ce qui concerne la deuxieme difficulte: le Leviathan est-il un homme ou un Dieu, la solution est plus delicate. Nous y reviendrons plus loin, apres avoir examine tous les elements directs ou indirects que Hobbes nous a fournis pour l'intelligence du Leviathan. B)Acötedes commentaires memedeHobbes,il y a lieudetenir compte en premier lieu de certains passages de la Bible. 11 est vrai les philosophes d'aujourd'hui, apart quelques exceptions, ne sont plus guere des lecteurs assidus de l'Ecriture: souvent ils ne la connaissent que grossierement pour l'avoir simplement parcourue a titre de lecture utile ou bien ils ne se sQuviennent que de certaines generalites, de certaines bribes ou

Le Dieu Morlel

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enfin ils sont indifferents sinon hostiles a l'ouvrage 4 • Hobbes par contre l'a lu attentivement et longuement medite, comme en temoignent la subtilite et la profondeur des discussions theologiques qu'on rencontre a profusion dans ses livres. A la difference de beaucoup de ses contemporains, elle etait pour lui autre ehose qu'un ornement rhetorique ou un moyen de dissimuler sa propre pensee ou encore une simple source de references, d'arguments et d'exemples. Je crois qu'il n'est pas exagere de dire qu'il l'a affrontee corps a corps et que sa propre doctrine s'est forgee aces contacts incessants et cl ces confrontations radicales raison supplementaire pour ne pas negliger sa theologie politique. C'est surtout le livre de Job, auquel est emprunte l'image du Leviathan, qu'il faut relire, car bien qu'il soit question du Leviathan dans d'autres passages de la Bible (Isa'ie 27, 1 ou ce monstre est identifie cl un serpent fuyard et tortueux, et les Psaumes 74, 14 et 104, 26), Hobbes semble n'en avoir rien retenu. De meme, il n'a tenu aucun compte de la difference dans la description du Leviathan comme monstre marin et de Behemoth comme monstre terrestre; du moins aucun passage de son oeuvre n'a utilise cette distinction et n'en a tire des consequences, de sorte que nous pouvons la negliger ici. En effet, la seule opposition qu'il etablit entre ces deux animaux mythologiques dans Behemoth or the long Parliament se reduit cl faire du Leviathan l'image de l'Etat absolu et ordonne qui assure la securite des individus et de Behemoth celle de la revolution qui conduit cl l'anarehie et a la guerre civile. Par contre il faut souligner certaines concordances ou pour le moins certaines coincidences entre les traits du Leviathan qu'enumere le texte de Job {40-41) et l'idee que Hobbes se fait de l'Etat, de sorte que l'on peut supposer que ce passage a pu pousser au moins implicitement Hobbes cl designer l'Etat, tel qu'ille con!;oit, par l'image du Leviathan. Par exemple le Leviathan ne supplie pas (40, 28), il forme un bloc sans fissure (41, 8) comme l'Etat absolu, mais surtout il ne s'engage pas par contrat envers les hommes (40,23), tout comme le souverain de Hobbes; il ne peut etre mis en vente par les associes (40, 25) de la meme maniere que les sujets de l'Etat de Hobbes ne peuvent dissoudre l'organisation politique. Aces allusions s'ajoutent deux autres, tout aussi importantes: d'une part la terreur regne entre les rateliers du monstre (41, 5), image que Hobbes reprend au eh. 17 ou il dit: tantam potentiam et tantarum virium usum habet, ut terrore earum voluntates omnium ad pacem inter se et ad conjunctionem contra hostes conformare possit; d'autre part le Leviathan est roi sur tous les fils de l'orgueil (41, 25), idee qui est elle aussi reprise explicite, Soit dit en passant, il y aurait quelque interet pour une meilleure connaissance des philosophes d'analyser leurs oeuvres sous le rapport de leur familiarite avec la Bible, ou de leur re action face a cet ouvrage qui a joue un röle fondamental dans l'histoire de la pensee humaine.

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ment par Hobbes au eh. 28 de son ouvrage. Toutes ces indications peuvent etre utilisees au moins a titre d'hypotheses pour l'eclaircissement du concept de Leviathan, tel que Hobbes l'entend. En tout cas, il ne semble pas l'avoir ehoisi arbitrairement ou pour de simples raisons d'une rhetorique facile. En second lieu, bien qu'il soit fort probable que Hobbes n'ait pas connu toute la litterature medievale concernant la legende du Leviathan, on peut admettre qu'il n'ignorait pas les ecrits de Bodin, en particulier sa Demonomanie ou le Leviathan est decrit comme un etre diabolique a qui personne ne peut resister et avec lequel on ne saurait conclure de contrat. Par ailleurs Carl Sehmitt insiste sur le fait qu'au XVII e siecle les discussions sur le Leviathan etaient assez frequentes et que certains auteurs designaient sous ce concept les puissants de la terre et meme la puissance politique, de sorte que Hobbes, encore que son nom demeure definitivement attaehe a l'utilisation de terme dans cette acception, ne semble pas avoir fait preuve de grande originalite en l'employant comme titre de son oeuvre principale sur le politique5 • Tout cela laisse entendre qu'a cette epoque l'idee d'un Leviathan comme etre ayant une nature metadivine etait dans 1'air. En troisieme lieu, bien que Hobbes ne se refere guere explicitement qu'aux philosophes classiques de l' Antiquite, Platon et Aristote, et ne cite pas les materialistes et sceptiques, tels Epicure ou Carneade, sauf par allusion (par exemple au eh. 12 du Leviathan), il y atout lieu de croire qu'il n'ignorait rien de la pensee de ces derniers, surtout qu'au cours de ses sejours en France il a eu l'occasion de lire ou de rencontrer Gassendi et Thomas de Marte!. En tout cas, il y a une parente indeniable sur beaucoup de points entre la philosophie des materialistes antiques et celle de Hobbes, par exemple apropos de la religion consideree comme fait purement humain, de la critique de la Providence, des Miracles et des superstitions ou de la croyance en Dieu, dont la source est la crainte, la peur«. Comme par aiIleurs Hobbes admet que la religion est un «element» de la politique humaine, on comprend aisement qu'il puisse voir dans 1'Etat une espece de divinite, car, comme la religion, la politique a pour origine la crainte, qui devient ainsi, suivant le commentaire de R. Polin, «la passion fondamentale de 1'homme et, pour ainsi dire, la passion fondatrice de l'humanite»7. Dans ce contexte, la conception du Leviathan comme un «Dieu morte!» peut s'expliquer sansdifficulte. En dernier lieu, il semble necessaire de tenir compte egalement de la gravure qui orne la page liminaire de l'edition de 1651 du Leviathan, 5 Sur toutes ces questions, voir C. Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes, Hambourg 1938, en particulier les ehapitres I et II. • Voir Leviathan, eh. 12. 7 R. Polin, Politique et philosophie ehez Thomas Hobbes, Paris 1953, p. 14.

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que Carl Schmitt a commentee admirablement. Contrairement cl la legende, le Leviathan n'est pas represente sous les aspects d'un animal marin, d'un dragon ou encore d'un serpent, mais sous ceux d'un etre gigantesque, d'apparence humaine. Son corps, compose d'une multitude d'hommes petits, domine une ville et sa contree. A la main droite il tient une epee, a la main gauche une crosse. Sous le premier bras la gravure represente cinq dessins: un chateau-fort, une couronne, un canon, des armes et drapeaux et enfin un champ de bataille; parallelement sous l'autre bras on trouve egalement cinq dessins: une eglise, une mitre, les foudres de l'excommunication, une serie de distinctions scolastiques aiguisees en pointe et enfin un conciles. L'ensemble illustre parfaitement le sens du titre et des quatre parties de l'ouvrage, a savoir que l'Etat concentre en ses mains a la fois le pouvoir civil et le pouvoir ecclesiastique, c'est-a-dire le pouvoir temporel ou direct et le pouvoir spirituel ou indirect. 11 n'y a qu'un point apropos duquel je ne puis partager entierement l'interpretation de C. Schmitt. A son avis, cet etre gigantesque represente au premier chef le grand homme, le !-LtXXPO\; ~VÖPll)7tO;; (dont il est surtout question dans l'introduction de l'ouvrage). Or, dans la mesure Oll l'iconographie chretienne represente generalement Dieu sous les aspects humains, on ne saurait exclure qu'il peut egalement representer le Dieu mortel. Bref, il peut figurer indistinctement aussi bien le magnus homo que le Deus mortaZis, Hant donne qu'aucune indication peremptoire ne peut guider notre choix entre ces deux interpretations. En tout cas on comprend aisement qu'en raison de sa preference C. Schmitt ait tendance a negliger la denomination du Leviathan comme Deus mortaZis, qui risque de donner lieu, a son avis, ades meprises et ades confusions·. Quoi qu'il en soit, il me semble que cette expression a plus qu'une signification polemique, pour deux raisons. a) D'abord parce que Hobbes estime que la denomination de Dieu mortel est plus honorable, plus digne que celle de Leviathan, en meme temps qu'il admet une relative dependance de ce Dieu au Dieu immortel de la religion - dependance qu'il n'a cependant pas precisee clairementto. Aussi, si l'Etat est une espece de divinite, il ne saurait se substituer au Dieu revele, ce qui signifie que Hobbes ne confond pas politique C. Schmitt, op. cit., ch. 2. C. Schmitt, op. cit., p. 48. 11 ajoute meme a la page suivante: «Daß der Staat als bezeichnet wird, hat im Gedankengang dieser Staats8

D

konstruktion keine eigene und selbständige Bedeutung. Die Bezeichnung ist, soweit sie nicht einfach Wendungen des Mittelalters oder der Zeit Ludwigs XIV. aufnimmt, stark polemisch bestimmt.» 10 «This is the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence», Leviathan, ch. 17.

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et religion, mais maintient la distinction de leur essence. Certes il combat la these de la subordination de l'Etat a 1'Eglise, non seulement sous ]a forme medievale de la superiorite du pouvoir spirituel, mais aussi sous celle de la theorie du pouvoir indirect de Bellarmin et si finalement il se sent plus proche de la conception antique qui donnait a la religion un caractere politique, il estime neanmoins que la religion comme teIle possede des presupposes autonomes. En effet, il reconnait explicitement que 1'on ne saurait jamais effacer de la nature humaine les «germes» religieux, de sorte que la dissolution d'une religion ne produira pas un etat a-religieux, mais laissera le champ libre pour 1'epanouissement de nouvelles religionsl l . b) Si dans 1'etat de nature l'homme est un loup pour 1'homme, homo homini lupus, dans 1'etat civil il devient suivant la formule de Bacon, reprise par Hobbes, homo homini deus. Je crois qu'il faut mettre en relation cette idee avec la denomination du Leviathan comme Deus mortaUs, car elle met en jeu la conception que Hobbes se fait de la religion dans l'economie generale de sa theorie de 1'origine de la politique. Comme il y a un droit natureI, il y a aussi une religion naturelle - bien que Hobbes n'utilise pas cette expression - qui a pour fondement la crainte. L'idee que 1'homme se fait de Dieu dans la religion naturelle reste en parfaite concordance avec la description generale que Hobbes fait de l'etat de nature, avec cette seule difference que, contrairement a l'homme, Dieu n'a pas d'egaux ou de rivaux a craindre. L'attribut essentiel que Hobbes reconnait aDieu est la puissance (potestas), d'ou l'inutilite d'une connaissance plus complete de la divinite. Ce qui veut dire que, comme la volonte de n'importe quelle autre puissance, celle de Dieu est egalement discretionnaire et s'exprime par des commandements, ainsi que l'enseigne precisement le livre de Job. 11 regne sur le monde par le droit du plus fort. C'est dans la mesure ou les hommes substituent a l'etat de nature l'etat civil, c'est-a-dire dans la mesure ou le politique fait regner l'ordre, la paix et la securite que la crainte propre a la religion naturelle s'adoucit pour devenir aussi une religion d'amour et de charite, sous le signe de l'honneur qui «n'est autre chose que l'estime que l'on fait de la puissance de quelqu'un, accompagnee de bonte»t2. C'est meme dans ces conditions que le culte devient possible, car il n'est que «l'acte exterieur, caractere et signe visible de l'honneur interieur"lS. Ainsi, dans l'etat civil 1'homme devient Dieu pour 1'homme, d'une part en raison de la securite et de la paix instituees par la politique, d'autre part en raison du culte religieux. Bref, le Dieu mortel qu'est le politique 11 1! 18

Leviathan, eh. 12. De Cive, 3e sect., eh. XV, § 9, Mit. de Neufehätel, 1787, p. 296. Ibid., p. 297.

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et le Dieu immortel de la religion contribuent egalement, pour autant qu'ils sont oeuvre de l'homme, a humaniser la nature. Le souei de maintenir sur le meme plan les deux denominations du Leviathan, comme magnus homo d'une part et comme deus mortalis de l'autre, sans negliger l'une au profit de l'autre, se justifie enfin du point de vue de l'interpretation generale a donner de la philosophie de Hobbes. En effet, si l'on met l'accent de preference sur l'une plutot que sur l'autre on risque de comprendre la pensee de Hobbes ou bien dans un sens essentiellement anthropologique ou a l'inverse dans un sens essentiellement theologique - ecueil que C. Schmitt acependant evite, puisque, tout en donnant la preference a la designation du Leviathan comme magnus homo, il a egalement insiste sur la theologie politique chez Hobbes. La position que nous adoptons ici ne facilite guere, j'en conviens, l'interpretation de Hobbes, car elle peut conduire finalement a prendre tout simplement en charge la contradiction signalee plus haut: le Leviathan est-il une divinite ou bien un homme? Le probleme a resoudre est donc le suivant: peut-on lever cette difficulte? Le fait est que cette difficulte est propre uniquement au Leviathan et qu'il n'est fait mention dans aucun autre ouvrage de Hobbes de denominations similaires ou analogues. On peut meme se demander s'il a eu personnellement conscience de la contradiction, puisqu'il n'a pas eprouve le besoin de nous fournir un quelconque eclaircissement ni dans une edition ulterieure du Leviathan ni dans un autre ouvrage ou lettre. C'est que peut-etre il n'y atout simplement pas vu lui-meme de difficulte et que cette double designation exprime sous forme metaphorique le mieux possible l'essence du politique teIle qu'il l'a conl;ue. De cette these je voudrais me faire l'avocat - a titre non point d'une affirmation definitive, mais d'une supposition qui peut contribuer a une meilleure inteIligence de ce qu'on appelle le hobbisme. Je voudrais d'une part evaluer la signification profonde de la contradiction po ur l'ensemble de la pensee politique de Hobbes, d'autre part en tirer certaines consequences d'ordre general. 1. Il faut insister ici une fois de plus sur le fait que Hobbesn'a rien retenu de la representation classique et habituelle du Leviathan, sous les traits d'un animal. Or, dans la mesure ou la hierarchie des etres jouait encore un role important dans la philosophie de son epoque, et que l'animal passait pour appartenir aux categories inferieures, il semble qu'il ait voulu marquer que la politique ou l'Etat ne saurait non plus etre consideree comme une activite subalterne, mais qu'elle est une entreprise noble qui, par sa dignite, depasse les activites humaines ordinaires, celle de l'economie par exemple, puisque le Leviathan est plus qu'un homme: il se situe entre l'humanite et la divinite. Il affirme· done d'une certaine maniere le primat de la politique, au sens ou le groupe-

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ment etatique, parce qu'il a la responsabilite de l'ensemble d'une societe determinee - salus populi suprema lex esto - ne saurait etre assimile aux autres types de groupements et d'associations. Sa raison d'etre consiste justement a eviter la guerre civile, c'est-a-dire a empecher que les rivalites d'interet de la pluralite des groupements a l'interieur de l'unite politique ne tournent ades conflits mettant en jeu l'existence physique des individus. Ainsi, le politique transcende les hommes et les individus parce que non seulement il fa~onne le style des autres relations sociales, mais aussi parce que, par son action, il determine directement l'existence, suivant qu'il est capable ou non d'assurer la protection de ceux qui mettent en lui leur confiance. Du meme coup la difference que Hobbes a etablie entre multitude et peuple devient plus intelligible. La multitude n'est qu'une simple quantite, un assemblage d'hommes sans aucune caracteristique propre, car elle ne fait que reunir le nombre d'individus qui la composent. Le peuple au contraire forme une realite autonome, un corps, mais de caractere supra-humain, car il depasse chaque individu qui en fait partie. Il est donc autre chose que la somme des individus qui le composent, car il est doue d'une volonte propre qui, par l'artifice de l'organisation, c'est-a-dire l'unite du souverain et des sujets, transforme la quantite qu'est la multitude en une union d'un type special, possedant ses qualites sui generis. La multitude reste au niveau de I'homme et meme de l'animal, puisqu'elle n'est que la repetition indefinie des individualites qu'elle comprend, tandis que le peuple est une realite superieure aux individus, tout comme le magnus homo ou le Deus mortalis qu'est le Leviathan. La premiere est l'ordre du nombre, le second de celui de l'organisation, c'est-adire un mecanisme institue artificiellement. C'est le lieu d'insister ici sur le fait que Hobbes est sans doute le premier philosophe qui ait elabore une theorie de l'organisation. 2. Le Leviathan n'est ni un vrai homme, puisqu'il est plus grand que I'homme naturel et commun, ni un vrai Dieu, puisqu'il est morte!. Sans etre un monstre - c'est uniquement l'animal mythologique de la Bible qui l'est - il est cependant un etre non naturei, singulier et exceptionnel. Tout ceci est en parfaite concordance avec la theorie generale de la societe chez Hobbes, puisque a son avis il n'existe pas de societe naturelle. Je crois que 1'0n peut trouver une signification encore plus profonde a cette inconsistance formelle du Leviathan. Il semble, en effet, d'une part que Hobbes refuse de deifier le politique, et c'est pourquoi il conteste que le Leviathan possede les attributs du vrai Dieu, d'autre part qu'il renonce a le banaliser, a le relativiser, puisqu'il s'interdit de le reduire a une activite humaine ordinaire. C'est par ce double refus que la soi-disant contradiction prend tout son sens et qu'il m'apparait necessaire de la prendre en charge teIle quelle. Il faut donc y voir la difficulte

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que Hobbes a eprouvee pour definir specifiquement le politique comme activite autonome: l'Etat est une realite pour soi qui ne correspond ä aucune autre qui lui serait semblable et qui ne se laisse pas non plus reduire a une autre. C'est donc pour marquer cette singularite qu'il a situe le Leviathan entre l'humanite et la divinite tout en le privant des caracteres positifs de l'une et de l'autre. Le but de l'Etat est selon Hobbes la protection des citoyens, c'est-a-dire leur donner les moyens de preserver dignement leur vie dans la concorde interieure et la securite exterieure. Aussi n'exige-t-il des individus qu'une adhesion raisonnee et non mystique ou ideologique a la realite superieure qu'est l'Etat. Or, aussi bien la deification que la banalisation du Leviathan vont a l'encontre de ce but. Dans le premier cas le pouvoir devient theocratique, ou dans un langage moderne, totalitaire, a la maniere du vrai Dieu qui est seul a la fois libre et tyran. Contre une teIle conception, c'est non seulement l'individualisme profond de Hobbes qui proteste, mais aussi le theologien qui n'a cesse de denoncer le royaume des tenebres. Dans le second, quand on relativise la politique en une activite purement humaine, la protection que les individus ont le droit d'exiger de l'Etat ne peut plus etre assuree, en raison de la rivalite des partis et des interets et aussi de la guerre civile qui mettent la concorde et la securite en danger. Bref, a travers cette designation du Leviathan comme deus mortalis et comme magnus homo, Hobbes exprime de fac;on indirecte sa theorie de l'absolutisme qui s'oppose et a une conception pluraliste de l'Etat, en tant qu'il n'est plus dans ce cas qu'un simple denominateur commun entre les groupes et associations rivales, et a une conception theocratique et totalitaire pour laquelle le souverain cesse d'etre un protecteur pour devenir un vengeur. En tant que le Leviathan est une espece de divinite il n'a pas besoin de se justifier, en tant qu'il est une espece d'homme il est la raison du droit. 3. L'apparente divinite et humanite a la fois du Leviathan accentue son caractere d'etre artificiel, que Hobbes designe aussi par le concept de personne. R. Polin a montre avec beaucoup de pertinence l'importance de cette notion dans la philosophie hobbienne, le role qu'elle joue dans les ecrits politiques successifs de l'auteur. Je voudrais seulement m'attaeher ici aux rapports entre cette notion et celle du Dieu mortel, d'autant plus que Hobbes lui-meme les a associees dans un meme paragraphe a la fin du ehapitre 17. On sait qu'il fait une distinction entre la personne naturelle, qui est l'auteur de ses actes et de ses paroles, et la personne artificielle qui represente les actes et les paroies d'un autre. Nous nous interesserons ici au deuxieme cas. La personne artificielle ou dictive» (suivant l'expression du De Homine) peut representer n'importe quoi: un homme, Dieu lui-meme ou des ehoses inanimees, teIles qu'une Eglise, un hopital, etc. De meme fac;on

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une multitude d'hommes peut etre representee et constituer une personne unique. C'est le fondement de toute la theorie du Commonwealth: le peuple represente par son souverain forme une personne artificielle et devient un etre unique, doue d'une volonte qui est une et capable d'une action qui est egalement une, de sorte que ce que decide le souverain est voulu par le peuple. Grace acette notion de personne fictive le souverain exprime reellement et authentiquement la souverainete du peuple ou comme le dit Hobbes en une formule qui n'est paradoxale qu'en apparence: Rex est populus. Mais en meme temps cette personne artificieIle agit comme Dieu, sans l'etre vraiment, puisqu'elle ne l'est que fictivement. Neanmoins cette fiction suffit pour qu'on puisse lui attribuer la puissance qui, on le sait, est determinante pour Hobbes en ce qui concerne la definition de Dieu. Aussi, en un certain sens, l'expression de Dieu mortel est a peu pres equivalente de celle de personne fictive ou encore de Dieu fictif. C'est ce que semble suggerer, a mon avis, le passage suivant du chapitre 17 du Leviathan. Apres avoir montre comment par le contrat se forme une volonte une et la veritable unite d'une personne, Hobbes poursuit: «Si cela a eu lieu, on appellera cette multitude unie en une personne l'Etat, en latin civitas. TeIle est la generation du grand Leviathan ou mieux, pour parler de fa~on plus reverencieuse, du Dieu mortel.» Dans l'Introduction nous lisons une phrase a peu pres analogue. mais appliquee au magnus homo: «C'est par l'art qu'on creera le grand Leviathan, appele Commonwealth ou Etat, en latin civitas, qui n'est rien d'autre qu'un homme artificiei, bien que d'une taille et d'une force plus grande que celles de l'homme naturel.» Tout cela nous laisse supposer non seulement que Hobbes n'a vu aucune contradiction, ainsi que nous l'avons deja dit, entre les expressions de deus mortalis et de magnus homo, mais encore qu'elles traduisent metaphoriquement de maniere differente ce qu'il entendait par personne fictive ou artificielle. Suivant qu'on considere la puissance de cette personne, c'est l'image d'un Dieu qui est suggeree, suivant qu'on considere son organisation, c'est celle d'un homme. Aussi pourrait-on eventuellement admettre que la gravure de la page liminaire de la premiere edition du Leviathan represente tout simplement cette personne fictive, puisqu'elle nous expose par le jeu de l'art pictural une multitude d'hommes formant la personne unique du Leviathan. 4. I1 reste a resoudre une derniere difficulte. Toujours dans le chapitre 17 du Leviathan il ecrit: «Ce dieu mortel, auquel nous devons la paix et la protection sous le Dieu immortel (under the immortal god).» Il laisse ainsi entendre en termes, il est vrai, assez vagues, une certaine dependance du dieu mortel par rapport au dieu immortel, alors qu'il passe pour l'un des theoriciens qui s'est oppose le plus categoriquement et le plus ouvertement a la subordination de l'Etat a l'Eglise et a toute

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preponderanee du pouvoir spirituel, aussi bien direet qu'indireet. C'est done toute sa theologie politique que eette phrase semble remettre en question. A la verite, eomme nous l'avons deja souligne, il n'y a eontradietion que si l'on veut absolument voir en Hobbes un athee (position dont il ne s'est jamais reelame) et si on regarde sa eonfession: Jesus est Christus eomme une eoneession a l'esprit du temps - ce qui semble exc1u en raison de ses dec1arations explicites et reiterees apropos de sa foi chretienne. D'ailleurs a lire ses eerits sans prevention on ne peut que eonstater que sa pensee ne souffre d'aueune equivoque sur ce point: iZ est Z'adversaire, non point de Za religion, mais de ce que nous appeZZerions aujourd'hui Ze cZericaZisme. Une chose est eertaine, c'est que pour Hobbes la politique n'est pas seulement une affaire d'interets, de sauvegarde, mais aussi d'opinions. Par consequent, l'Etat ne saurait rester indifferent a ce que les citoyens pensent, non seulement parce que la rivalite des doctrines risque de provoquer des conflits et mettre la paix interieure en danger, mais aussi parce que le souverain, en tant que personne representative, ne peut qu'exprimer la volonte et les opinions du peuple. Dans ces conditions, il est c1air que le Leviathan doit lui aussi participer a la vie religieuse, du moment que les citoyens, qu'on le veuille ou non, sont presque tous des eroyants et adherent a la foi chretienne. On comprend que Hobbes ne peut que condamner la petite minorite des athees eomme des ennemis de l'Etat. D'ailleurs l'atheisme n'est qu'un cas particulier de ce que reprouve l'ouvrage sur Behemoth: la liberte individuelle en matiere religieuse qui, les guerres de religion l'ont montre, est cause de la guerre civile la plus dangereuse pour l'ordre public. Ce n'est done pas seulement la religion qui est necessaire a l'Etat, mais aussi une Eglise, a condition qu'elle ne cherche pas son inspiration et ses ordres dans un pouvoir extra - ou supraetatique. Il est tout simplement partisan d'une Eglise d'Etat.

Bref, Hobbes est tout aussi hostile au principe du laieisme moderne, a savoir la separation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat, ear elle a pour fondement la liberte d'interpretation des individus, qu'a celui de la subordination de l'Etat a une Eglise universelle et autonome. Etant donne que le christianisme est la religion courante, adoptee par la presque unanimite des peuples, l'Etat l'accepte et meme se rec1ame du Dieu immortel qu'elle honore, mais sans admettre les dogmes d'Eglise et ses lois, parce que de l'avis de Hobbes, le Christ n'a apporte que des sacrements. Certes, ce n'est pas le röle de l'Etat comme tel de trancher les differends qui peuvent s'elever en matiere de foi et apropos des choses sacrees; ce travail incombe au ministere ecc1esiastique qui reste cependant subordonne au souverain au meme titre que les magistrats civils. Aussi, la souverainete de l'Etat reste-t-elle entiere aussi bien dans les affaires civiles que dans les affaires ecclesiastiques, suivant les indications du sous-titre du Levia-

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than et en conformite avec l'enseignement des autres ouvrages, par exemple le De Cive 14• La doctrine du deus mortalis, correlative a celle du magnus homo, comporte des consequences diverses, interessant a la fois le statut de la science politique et de la philosophie generale de Hobbes ainsi que sa place dans le mouvement et le developpement historique de la philosophie en general. 1. Que le Leviathan se presente sous les traits du deus mortalis ou sous ceux du magnus homo, il est un etre artificiel. Or, c'est une doctrine constante de Hobbes que l'homme ne saurait connaitre que ce qu'il a cree lui-meme ou qu'il peut creer, c'est-a-dire tout ce qu'il construit ou qu'il peut contröler par sa volonte. Puisque nous n'avons pas cree le Dieu reveIe il echappe a notre intelligence, il nous demeure inconnaissable. De meme la nature reste incomprehensible pour autant qu'elle est l'oeuvre de Dieu et que nous ne sommes pas en mesure de reproduire mecaniquement ses mouvements. Par contre l'Etat, parce qu'il est un etre artificiei, un Dieu ou un homme produit et etabli par la volonte humaine, est une realite parfaitement connaissable et il peut donner lieu a une science. n n'y a donc aucune difficulte a comprendre pourquoi Hobbes a pu se proclamer comme le veritable fondateur de la science politique. Cette affirmation n'a rien de pretentieux, car celle decoule naturellement de sa theorie de la connaissance et de sa conception de l'art: la connaissance est une prise de conscience d'une invention, soit sous la forme de la creation, soit sous celle d'une simple imitation. 2. Tout mecanisme est artifice, qu'il s'agisse du mecanisme naturel ou d'acquisition ou du mecanisme social ou d'institution, fonde sur !'imitation. e'est ce qu'explique sans ambigulte aue une la premiere phrase de l'Introduction du Leviathan que nous avons maintes fois citee, car elle resume sous une apparence presque paradoxale les fondements de la philosophie de Hobbes: «La nature, ou l'art par lequel Dieu a fait le monde et le gouverne, est imitee comme dans beaucop d'autres choses par l'homme du fait qu'il peut construire un animal artificiel.» Ainsi, la nature est de l'art comme la societe - ce qui suppose qu'a l'origine du mecanisme il y a une creation contingente ou une volonte arbitraire. En 14 «Le souverain d'un Etat est tenu, en tant que chretien, d'interpreter les saintes ecritures, lorsqu'il est question de quelques mysteres de la foi, par le ministere des personnes ecclesiastiques dument ordonnees. Et ainsi dans les Etats chretiens le jugement, tant des choses spirituelles que des temporelles, appartient au bras seculier ou a la puissance politique; de sorte que l'assemblee souveraine ou le prince souverain est le chef de l'Eglise aussi bien que celui de l'Etat, car l'Eglise et la Republique chretienne ne sont au fonds qu'une meme chose», De Cive, Mit. de Neufchätel 1787, ch. XVII, § 28, p. 420--421. On peut egalement consulter a ce sujet R. Capitant, Hobbes et l'Etat totalitaire, Archives de philosophie du droit, Paris 1936, cahier 1 et 2.

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ce qui concerne la creation du monde par Dieu, aucune science ne peut la prouver, mais nous pouvons y croire par foi et, dans ce cas, il suffit que , « Homo homini Lupus :.

67

Tels sont les textes. Quelles conclusions et quelles conjectures autorisent-ils? Touchant le fond, le sens meme des formules, les arguments internes (confirmes par les faits biographiques) plaident en faveur d'une influence baconienne: d'abord, sans doute, apropos de la notion de simiZitudo Dei; mais davantage encore, pour ce qui concerne l'application du vers de Plaute aux problemes de droit public, alors que l'auteur latin ne vise que les relations privees. Neanmoins, sur ce point, un critique exigeant ira difficilement au dela du mot «possible»; «vraisemblable» sera son nec plus ultra. En revanche, pour ce qui est de la forme meme de nos deux adages, l'influence erasmienne doit etre dite, atout le moins, tres vraisemblable: c'est en effet dans les Adages, (et, dans l'etat actuel de notre recherche, la seulement) que nous trouvons les deux formules libellees exactement comme chez Hobbes, et comme chez Hobbes mises en parallele l'une avec l'autre. Cette source commune des deux expressions, dont Hobbes laisse entendre qu'elle existe, il ne faut sans doute pas la chercher ailleurs. Si l'on admet, comme nous sommes disposes ale faire, que Hobbes en ecrivant l'epitre dedicatoire du De Cive, pense au texte d'Erasme, pouvons-nous en tirer une meilleure comprehension de sa pensee? Certes, il a dit ce qu'il voulait dire, et il importe relativement peu de savoir ou il a pris les mots po ur le dire. Neanmoins, il n'est pas indifferent d'apercevoir le cortege de conceptions ou de preconceptions qui accompagnent deja une formule au moment ou un auteur l'emprunte a son tour. Sur homo homini lupus, considere isolement, il y a peu de choses adire: tout se passe chez Hobbes comme si l'application de la formule au probleme de l'anarchie (transfert dont Bacon avait donne l'exemple) eclipsait completement le sens originaire de Plaute (sur lequel Erasme fonde tout son commentaire): l'idee que l'homme est feroce a l'egard de l'inconnu, et de l'inconnu seulement. Ce sens premier est evidemment etranger aux themes majeurs de la pensee de Hobbes: pour lui, ce qui marque le passage de l'etat de nature a l'etat politique, ce n'est pas l'apparition de la connaissance de l'autre, c'est celle d'une reconnaissance mutuelle: non pas certes l'Anerkennen de la Phenomenologie de l'esprit22 , avec toute son orchestration dramatique et metaphysique, mais, en somme, au delä. des rivalites du desir et de l'orgueil, et de la peur qui les accomAsinaria, Homo homini lupus. Quo monemur, ne quid fidamus homini ignoto, sed perinde atque a lupo caueamus. Lupus est, inquit, homo homini, non homo, qui qualis sit, non nouit. (Dans la citation de Plaute, Erasme remplace par un qui le quom que donnent les editeurs modernes: Fleckeisen, Havet, Ernout. Sa le{:on qui n'apparait pas dans les apparats critiques, pourrait venir d'une simple defaillance de memoire. La variante ne change rien au sens.) n B. conscience de soi, IV, A.

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pagne, une «reconnaissance» fondee sur un ideal assez bourgeois de securite et de reciprocite: le röle de l'organisation politique, c'est de faire cesser l'etat naturel violent en fournissant ses conditions d'application concrete ci la loi de nature, qui se resume dans les deux formules «ne fais pas ci autrui ce que tu ne voudrais pas qu'on te fasse»23 et «agir envers les autres comme nous voudrions qu'on agisse envers nousmemes»2'. Il existe neanmoins un passage ou Hobbes met le couple hostilite-paix en parallele avec le couple ignorance-connaissance. Il vient, dans un developpement fameux, repris du De Cive, d'invoquer, ci l'appui de sa these sur le caractere violent de l'etat de nature, toutes les precautions de l'homme prudent: serrures, armes, escortes. Il ajoute alors, dans un passage ou il peut du reste y avoir une reminiscence de Platon25 : «Mais pourquoi se donner du mal pour demontrer aux doctes ce que les chiens eux-memes n'ignorent pas, eux qui accueillent par des aboiements, pendant le jour, les inconnus, et la nuit, tout le monde 2i1 .» Mais cela est dit en passant, et il serait imprudent d'echafauder sur ce passage des constructions trop ambitieuses27 .

En revanche, en ce qui concerne Homo homini Deus, la lecture d'Erasme, sans apporter de quoi renouveler l'interpretation de Hobbes, contribue ci placer la formule dans une lumiere un peu particuliere, qui par certains cötes tendrait ci en attenuer l'audace toute relative, mais qui par d'autres l'accroit. En effet dans l'edition frobenienne des Adages, le titre de l'article donne deus, avec un petit D (dans le corps de l'article, la typographie hesite, mais il y a une tendance ci mettre deus quand il s'agit d' et de « Multitude :. chez H.obbes

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particuliers arraches a leur particularite, c'est commettre un de ces contresens si dommageable a la philosophie politique que non seulement elle en devient «trompeuse et babillarde», mais encore que ses dunestes erreurs», ses «pernicieuses maximes»18 engendrent les pires calamites. Au sein de la multitude, chaque homme particulier agit, parce qu'il parIe, qu'il pense, qu'il veut, qu'il juge. La multitude n'est jamais la coherence des volontes ou des jugements particuliers: elle ne pense, ne veut, ni ne juge. Il arrive cependant, comme le note le Leviathan, que chacun convienne avec chacun de remettre la direction d'une bataille ou d'une guerre a un commandement unique. L'unite obtenue est bien d'une autre nature que l'action multiple de multiples particuliers, mais elle ne dure que le temps de la guerre ou de la bataille. Par elle, n'a pas ere vraiment aboli l'etat de nature, la vie de dispersion au sein de la multitude, puisque le retour a l'anarchie ou aux guerres particulieres signe la fin de la periode d'entente I7 • A l'impossibilite, pour une multitude, d'avoir une action concertee, commune, unique, est lie son troisieme caractere: dans l'heteroclite affirmation des passions de chacun, a travers les calculs personneis tendant a leur assouvissement, chacun a droit egal sur chaque chose, sur tout. Les Elements of Law le notent: «[les hommes] ne laissent pas d'etre chacun dans son etat, et dans cet etat, chacun a droit sur toutes choses I8.» Le De Cive souligne: «D'ailleurs une multitude ... demeure dans l'etat rle nature, ou toutes choses appartiennent ä tous, ou la distinction du mien et du tien n'est pas re~ue, et ou le domaine et la propriete sont des fa~ons de parler inconnues I9 », reprenant exactement les termes des Elements of Law qui montraient deja que ce droit de chacun sur tout n'introduisait parmi les hommes «nulle distinction ni lieu pour Mien et Tien»20. Remarque importante, dont il convient de tirer les consequences: les hommes rassembles localement dans les limites geographiques d'une multitude, sont en realite radicalement separes par leurs desirs et l'exigence de leur satisfaction. L'appropriation de quelque bien que ce soit, meme et surtout la conservation de l'existence biologique individuelle est un droit ipso facto, sans justification, mais aussi sans limite, sauf qu'il n'est reconnu par personne et que le premier venu, s'il est plus fort ou plus ruse, peut lui faire echec. Droit par consequent que rien n'assure, qui, comme tout droit purement abstrait, est «invalide», selon l'expression des Elements of Law. Ainsi nait la crainte qui se developpe au De Cive, preface. Leviathan, Chap. XVII. 18 Elements of Law, 2e p. Chap. I. 2. 19 De Cive, Chap. VI. l. 20 Elements of Law, 2e p. Chap. I. 2. 18

17

15'

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point d'etre la passion dominante de l'homme de la multitude. Car la Oll chacun ne re!;oit pas le consentement d'autrui a la proprh~te de ses biens, de sa famille ou de sa vie, la Oll il n'assure pas la propriete d'autrui, de son propre consentement, rendu definitif et irreversible, le terme meme de propriete n'est qu'un leurre, n'accede pas a la signification et la realite est la guerre, offensive ou defensive, garant sans certitude d'un bien toujours menace. C'est pourquoi le nombre meme des hommes a l'etat de nature, aussi eleve soit-il, loin d'etre une securite po ur chacun, n'est au contraire qu'une menace plus grande. «Que les hommes soient en nombre aussi grand qu'on voudra: si neanmoins leurs actions sont dirigees selon leurs jugements et appetits particuliers, ils ne peuvent attendre de leur nombre ni defense ni protection, tant a l'encontre d'un ennemi commun qu'en ce qui concerne leurs injustices mutuelles ... loin de s'aider l'un l'autre, ils se genent ... 21.» Aussi ne serons-nous guere etonnes, si nous voulons ramasser en une definition de la multitude, l'analyse de ses differents caracteres, de ne pouvoir, avec Hobbes, n'en donner qu'une definition negative. Chaque fois, en effet, que nous tentons de saisir ce qu'est la multitude, nous la voyons se dissoudre, eclater dans l'eparpillement du multiple, du disparate, de l'inorganise, pratiquement, de l'indicible. C'est bien pour cela qu'on la saisira beaucoup mieux, par contraste avec ce qu'elle n'est pas. A partir des trois caracteres qu'a la suite de Hobbes, nous avons tente de mettre en evidence, retenons la definition qu'il en donne lui-meme dans le De Cive, quand il insiste sur son polymorphisme irreductible: «La multitude n'est pas une personne naturelle!2.» La definition negative exclut toute idee d'ordre, d'organisme, d'unite, elle interdit le passage naturel de ce qui n'est meme pas personne naturelle a la «personne publique» que sera le corps politique, que sera le Peuple. Passage qui, transformant les hommes de la multitude en citoyens, va leur permettre de s'arracher «aux miseres et [aux] calamites affreuses qui accompagnent soit une guerre civile, soit l'etat inorganise d'une humanite sans maitres, qui ignore la sujetion des lois et le pouvoir coercitif, capable d'arreter le bras qui s'appretait a la rapine ou a la vengeance23 ». A l'etat de nature, les hommes sont prisonniers d'une contradiction: d'une part, l'etat de fait est l'etat de guerre; d'autre part, chacun aspire a la paix, seul garant de la conservation du premier des biens: la vie. Le desir de paix et la guerre sont aussi «natureIs» l'un que l'autre et meme s'engendrent l'un l'autre: c'est la crainte d'etre tue qui pousse a la guerre, c'est la meme crainte qui fait desirer la paix. 11 est interessant de noter !l !!

U

Leviathan, Chap. XVII. De Cive, Chap. VI. 1 (note). Leviathan, Chap. XVIII.

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que la definition de la paix, a l'etat de nature, est, elle aussi, negative. Dans les Elements of Law Hobbes ecrit: «Le temps qui n'est pas la guerre, c'est ce qu'on appelle la paix24 .» La stabilite de la paix et de la concorde, ne sera donc jamais «naturelle», sa realite ne peut pas exister a l'etat de nature, elle est contradictoire avec le droit de chacun sur toutes choses, car il suppose «une attaque et une violence egales, et capables de perdre l'un et l'autre parti»25. De meme, apres avoir etabli le droit naturel et absolu de chacun sur toutes choses, le de Cive montre qu'«il est donc contraire au bien de la paix ... que quelqu'un ne veuille pas ceder de son droit sur toutes choses ... Car si chacun retenait le droit qu'il a sur toutes choses, il s'ensuivrait necessairement que les invasions et les defenses seraient egalement legitimes (etant une necessite naturelle que chacun täche de defendre son corps et ce qui fait a sa conservation) et par ainsi, on retomberait dans une guerre continuelle»28. Le Leviathan dit tres nettement: «Aussi longtemps que dure ce droit de tout homme sur toute chose, nul, aussi fort ou sage fiit-il, ne peut etre assure de parvenir au terme du temps de vie que la nature accorde ordinairement aux hommes27.» Fait de nature: la guerre. Desir naturel de conservation et par consequent Loi de nature: rechercher la paix. La contradiction ne peut se resoudre et la concorde s'etablir, qu'au niveau de ce qui n'est pas «de nature», c'est-a-dire au niveau d'une creation, d'un artifice rationnel, d'un processus original. C'est ce processus qui assure le passage de la multitude a la societe civile ou corps politique, de l'inorganise a la personne civile, de l'etat de nature au «Leviathan». Le terme du processus, c'est la creation d'une realite dont l'existence n'est pas donnee naturellement, d'une realite coherente, unifiee, et promise a une vie desormais paisible: le Peuple. Le principe du passage reside dans la transformation de l'heteronomie des volontes particulieres - droit de chacun sur toutes choses, mais droit fictif, sans lendemain, lethai - en l'autonomie d'une volonte unique - transfert, abandon de ce droit absolu, resilie par chacun, dans l'esperance d'une protection efficace et durable. A la dispersion, la contradiction, l'agressivite reciproque des volontes particulieres, generatrices de guerre, doit succeder la puissance d'une volonte unique, souveraine, seule capable d'imposer la paix, de la creer dans sa realite effective et efficace. Tous les textes concordent. Les Eleu Elements of Law, 2e p. I. Chap. I. 11. Cf. aussi Leviathan: Ch. XIII: «Tout autre temps se nomme Paix.» !5 Elements oi Law, 2e p. I. Chap. I. 12. IS De Cive, Chap. 11. 3. 17 Leviathan, Chap. XIV.

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ments of Law: «TI est donc vrai que le consentement par lequel j'entends l'union de plusieurs volontes tendant a une meme fin, ne suffit pas pour donner des assurances et precautions certaines qu'on aura une paix commune, si 1'0n n'etablit quelque puissance superieure et generale, qui puisse contraindre les particuliers, et de garder entre eux la paix etablie et de joindre leurs forces contre l'ennemi commun28.» Le de Cive: «Puis donc que la conspiration de plusieurs volontes tendant a une meme fin, ne suffit pas pourla conservation de la paix et pour jouir d'une defense assuree, il faut qu'il y ait une volonte unique de tous, qui donne ordre aux choses necessaires pour la manutention de cette paix et de cette commune defense29 .» Et le Leviathan: «La seule fa~on d'eriger un tel pouvoir commun, apte a defendre les gens ... ales proteger ... de teIle sorte qu'ils puissent vivre satisfaits, c'est de confier tout leur pouvoir et toute leur force a un seul homme, ou a une seule assemblee, qui puisse reduire toutes leurs volontes, par la regle de la majorite, en une seule volonte30 .» L'instauration de cette «volonte unique» rompt la particularite des actions multiples de la multitude: l'action d'un peuple est une, parce que le peuple a l'«unite du nombre», il se pense comme peuple, et il y a un langage du peuple, parce que l'essence du peuple est d'etre unite, transcendant les particularites discordantes. Quelles sont les modalites de cette negation du multiple, de cette creation de l'unique que constitue la transformation d'une multitude en peuple, transformation qui ne se trouve preformee a aucun niveau dans la multitude, de teIle sorte que le peuple, loin d'en etre un effet, apparait comme premier commencement par rapport a elle? On peut distinguer deux aspects pour ce faire. D'abord, il faut bien comprendre qu'aucun particulier, aucun groupe de particuliers, au sein de la multitude, ne peut contracter un engagement quelconque vis-a-vis d'une puissance quelle qu'elle soit, puisque la multitude n'a en rien la realite d'un partenaire. Chacun ne peut donc s'engager que dans sa particularite, envers chacun. Cet engagement n'a de sens que dans la mesure ou celui qui s'engage en attend un bienfait si considerable qu'il renonce, acette fin, a son droit naturel sur toutes choses, c'est-a-dire a sa force, a son pouvoir, au droit qu'il a de resister. Par la renonciation particuliere de chacun, il devient necessaire d'admettre que chaque force est «transferee», remise, a ce qui va etre une force unique, capable, par son unicite et sa coherence, d'assurer «la paix domestique et la defense commune»31 ce qui n'est possible que si chacun se range a l'avis, a l'ordre, a la force d'un pouvoir unique qui est d'abord Elements of Law, 2e p. I. VI. 6. De Cive, Chap. V. 6. ao Leviathan, Chap. XVII. 81 Elements of Law, 2e p. II. Chap. 1. 5. De Cive, Chap. V. 6. Ikviathan, Chap.XVII. 18 18

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n'ont plus de lieu, et celui a qui on a donne la puissance souveraine, demande sous le nom de sien, ce que devant ils disaient tous en nombre plurielleur41 .» Les deux aspects du processus qui transforme la multitude en Peuple sont clairement repris au debut du chapitre XVII du Leviathan: «On dit qu'un Etat est institue, lorsqu'un grand nombre d'hommes realisent un accord et passent une convention, (chacun avec chacun) comme quoi, quels que soient l'homme ou l'assemblee d'hommes auxquels la majorite d'entre eux aura donne le droit de representer leur personne a tous ... chacun, aussi bien celui qui a vote «pour» que celui qui a vote «contre» autorisera toutes les actions et tous les jugements de cet homme ou de cette assemblee d'hommes, de la meme maniere que si c'etaient les siens - cette convention etant destinee a leur permettre de vivre paisiblement entre eux, et d'etre proteges.» Comme dans l'etat de multitude, cette volonte unique, ce representant, quelque forme qu'elle prendra par la suite, n'existe pas, il est bien evident qu'elle ne s'engage envers aucun contractant. Seul, chaque membre contracte envers elle. Le Souverain est au-dessus, en dehors du contrat, aucune de ses decisions ne sera donc injuste, puisqu'elle ne saurait etre violation du contrat. Le corps politique institue, le Peuple ne saurait en aucune fa~on se diviser legitimement. En resume, pour que la definition du Peuple soit bien claire, on pourrait dire que c'est presque par un abus de langage qu'on parle de «peuple d'Angleterre» ou de «peuple de France», en designant les hommes qui demeurent en ces pays. Pour Hobbes, le Peuple, c'est surtout le Souverain, qu'il s'agisse de tous les hommes qui constituaient la multitude abolie, unis en corps politique, dans une democratie de type athenien par exemple, des quelques meilleurs choisis pour composer l'Assemblee souveraine dans un gouvernement aristocratique, ou du Monarque absolu «dont la volonte est prise et tenue pour la volonte de chaque particulier»42. La formule du Leviathan est eclairante: en evoquant les differentes formes du Souverain, Hobbes parle de «quiconque est depositaire de la personnalite du Peuple»43; ce depot de sa personnalite, le Peuple, corps politique, l'a decide, l'a «autorise» en se constituant. En monarchie absolue, la definition reste coherente quand Hobbes declare dans le de Cive: «Le roi est ce que je nomme le Peuple44.» Mais on peut comprendre aussi sans risque d'erreur que le Peuple, c'est l'Etat, c'est-a-dire l'ordonnancement d'un certain nombre d'hommes, da multitude qui est gouvernee» du de Cive, sous le pouvoir souverain d'un ou de plusieurs hommes. 41

41 43

44

Elements of Law, 2e p. II. Chap. II. 11. Elements of Law, 2e p. II. Chap. II. 11. Leviathan, Chap. XIX. De Cive, Chap. XII. 8.

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Le Peuple une fois constitue, le terme de multitude reapparait cependant. La multitude designe desormais en un premier sens, justement cette masse des gens qui sont dans l'Etat: les passants qui circulent sur une place, les spectateurs dans une salle de theätre, etc... Mais ces gens ne sont plus a l'etat de nature. Tenus par le pacte qui les a rassembles, quelque desir qu'ils puissent en avoir, ils ne risquent plus de s'attaquer, car ils sont empeches par la crainte des lois, que le «glaive de Justice», entre les mains du Souverain, rend efficaces. Cette multitude-hi, vit desormais a l'etat civil: elle ne gouverne pas effectivement, mais chacun des membres est auteur des decisions du Souverain, en vertu du pacte anterieur, d'ou la possibilite de l'appeler Peuple, puisque, dans son actuel rapport d'obeissance au pouvoir, elle est une partie du corps politique. Multitude aussi, les devoyes qui croient pouvoir se revolter contre le pouvoir, mais multitude dangereuse, car la sedition est le retour a l'etat de nature, dont tout peuple est toujours menace, dont on connait l'horreur dans la guerre de chacun contre chacun, recommencee. Aussi les precautions ne sont-elles jamais assez grandes pour empecher un peuple, persona una, de s'abimer de nouveau en dissoluta multitudo 45 • Notons cependant que Hobbes reconnait la necessite, pour un peuple defait a la guerre, d'en revenir aux armes que la seule nature lui a donnees pour se conserver. L'autorite du Souverain ne le protegeant plus, chacun ne peut plus que tenter d'assurer par lui-meme sa propre securite. Cet eclatement de l'unite du groupe, cimentee par la certitude d'etre defendu, renvoie chacun de ses membres a l'etat de nature. L'exile, le condamne a mort, que leur gouvernement non seulement ne protege plus, mais attaque d'une certaine fa~on, recouvrent, eux aussi, le droit de resister. De meme, les Etats, les uns par rapport aux autres, n'ont que le statut insulaire des membres disperses d'une multitude a l'etat de nature. C'est pourquoi, en dehors de la reconnaissance souvent vague d'un Jus Gentium, l'etat de guerre dans lequel ils se trouvent si souvent les uns envers les autres n'assure jamais ni unite, ni coherence entre eux. Pour etre exhaustive, une analyse des notions de Peuple et de Multitude, devrait aussi noter la forme de multitude que constituent les croyants au sein d'un Etat. La politique de Hobbes garde toute sa coherence: les membres des Eglises ne peuvent etre que soumis, comme citoyens, a l'Autorite politique, la quelle, pour etre souveraine, ne peut pas etre divisee. C'est donc parce qu'il a cherche la paix impossible a l'etat de nature, que l'homme de la multitude a ete capable de renoncer a lui-meme 45

De Cive, Chap. VII. 11.

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comme liberte absolue, vide et inefficace, pour devenir un citoyen soumis aux lois, ne jouissant que d'une propriete limitee, de droits limites, mais certains. De meme qu'a l'etat de nature, la seule fa!;on de n'etre plus gene par la violence de l'ennemi etait de le desarmer, de le reduire, de rompre l'egalite naturelle en le soumettant, de meme, l'instauration de ]'Etat civil detruit definitivement l'egalite naturelle entre les hommes. Dn Souverain, des citoyens: un Peuple, c'est-a-dire une organisation hierarchique, coherente, assurant, ades niveaux differents de la force que regle le pouvoir souverain, l'unite des differents membres et leur securite. Philosophie pessimiste certes, dans laquelle le moteur le plus puissant de l'homme est la crainte, parce que naturellement, l'homme n'est pas porte a aimer l'homme, mais bien plutöt a le fuir ou a l'attaquer, ou la raison n'est d'abord que calcul po ur se defendre en tuant l'autre, mais philosophie qui ne se borne pas a dresser un bilan de nos miseres et de nos manques, qui organise une Cite po ur l'homme. A lui de developper desormais, par l'intermediaire des institutions politiques, ce qui pourra lui permettre une vie pacifique pleinement humaine.

Quelques Questions Soulevees par la Comparaison du «Leviathan. Latin avec le «Leviathan» Anglais* Par Fran> (0. L. II!, ch. XV, p. 116). Il est clair que les mots qui ne se trouvent que dans l'anglais sont necessaires a l'equilibre de la phrase.

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etre son oeuvre fondamentale, il etait plus naturel d'user du latin que de sa langue maternelle. L'argument n'est pas nul, mais il ne saurait pretendre a emporter la conviction. J'attache plus d'importance, pour ma part, a la comparaison des oeuvres politiques de Hobbes (egalement proposee par Lubienski) selon leur longueur: celle-ci s'accroit quand on passe des Elements of Law au De Cive, puis du De Cive au Leviathan anglais. Or, le Leviathan latin se place, a cet egard, entre le De Cive et le Leviathan anglais. La non plus, l'argument n'est pas decisif, et ne pretend pas l'etre. Mais il invite implicitement a une comparaison quantitative des deux Leviathans, qui ne me parait pas depourvu de toute portee, malgre l'apparente futilite de tels calculs. En tout cas, j'ai eu la curiosite de m'y livrer, en ecartant de la comparaison: 1°) l'introduction et les huit premiers chapitres, ou les deux textes sont tres proches I'un de I'autre; 2°) le chapitre IX, qui est au contraire tellement different, d'une edition a l'autre, qu'aucun des deux textes ne peut passer po ur la traduction, meme lointaine, de l'autre; 3°) les parties non communes de la fin de l'ouvrage (dans l'anglais: «A Review, and Conclusion»; en latin, les deux dernieres pages du chapitre XLVII, et surtout l' «Appendix ad Leviathan»). Une fois ces retranchements effectues, il reste les chapitres X a XLVII, moins les deux dernieres pages du latin, c'est-a-dire la masse principale du livre. On a alors, dans les editions Molesworth, dont la typographie est homogene, 440 pages pour le latin et 630 pages pour l'anglais, soit un rapport de 143 %. Ce rapport tombe au contraire a 112% po ur le debut du livre (introduction et chapitre I a VIII), chiffre comparable aux 115 % qu'on obtient en comparant, toujours dans les editions Molesworth, les deux redactions du De Cive. Cette dtlference de 12 a 15 % s'explique aisement par le fait que le latin est plus concis que l'anglais. Au contraire une difference de 43 % implique que l'anglais contienne une quantite notable de choses qui ne sont pas dans le latin6 • Bref, jusqu'a la fin du chapitre VIII, les deux textes cheminent a peu pres parallelement. Au contraire, a partir du debut du chapitre X, les variantes abondent, mais presque toujours en accroissant la masse de l'anglais par rapport au latin. o Dans les deux textes que nous possedons du De Corpore, le rapport est de 126%: mais on sait que le De Corporeanglais est, par rapport au latin, un texte revu et augmente par l'auteur. Pour en revenir au Leviathan, je dois preciser qu'il me parait difficile d'affirmer sans reserves pour les chapitres X et XI ce que je crois vrai du reste de l'oeuvre jusqu'au dernieres pages du chapitre XLVII: en X et XI, les deux textes commencent a diverger, mais sans atteindre le degre d'independance reciproque qu'on pourra observer dans la suite de l'ouvrage.

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J'ignore ä. quelles circonstances il convient d'attribuer le premier de ces deux faits. Une hypothese seduisante, mais inverifiable, consisterait ä. supposer que nous avons, dans les huit premiers chapitres, la traduction que Henry Stubbe avait entreprise avec l'accord de Hobbes, et effectivement poursuivie jusqu'aux environs du chapitre IX7• Quoi qu'il en 7 Sur l'affaire Stubbe, cf. Brockdorff, Cay von, Hobbes als Philosoph, Pädagoge und Soziologe, Kiel, 1929, pp. 148-155; et Thompson, F., Lettres de Stubbe a Hobbes, dans Archives de philosophie, 1936, pp. 99/285 a 106/292. Cf. surtout les lettres de Stubbe a Hobbes, conservees au British Museum sous la cote Add. Ms. 32553. I1 est certain que Hobbes a laisse Stubbe travailler, pendant l'annee 1656, a une traduction latine du Leviathan; d'apres la lettre du 7 Octobre, Stubbe parait etre alle jusqu'au chapitre IX inc1usivement. Mais en depit des resolutions exprimees par Stubbe dans ses lettres du 9 Novembre 1656 et du 13 Janvier 1657 (la lettre porte 1656, mais l'Angleterre compte alors les annees selon l'ancien style, l'annee commencant le 25 Mars), son travail de traducteur parait s'etre arrete dans les derniers mois de 1656, et ne pas avoir ete repris. C'est du moins ce qui ressort, tant des resumes que donne Brockdorff de cette correspondance (op. cit., pp. 151-152) que des photographies de ces lettres (documents a vrai dire parfois difficiles a dechiffrer) que j'ai en ma possession. Hobbes a vraisemblablement garde dans ses papiers les chapitres traduits par Stubbe. Or, ses admirateurs non anglais ne cessent d'exprimer le voeu de voir le Leviathan paraitre en francais ou en latin (cf. lettres inedites conservees a Chatsworth: de Martel, du 8 Aoüt 1657; de Du Bosc, du 15 Septembre 1659; de Sorbiere, surtout, du ler Juillet 1664). C'est aces pressions que Hobbes fait allusion dans sa reponse a Bramhall (E. W. IV, p. 317): «... I could not in reviewing espy the same defect, till of late, when being solicited from beyond sea, to translate the book into Latin, and fearing some other man might do it not to my liking, I examined this passage and others ...». On peut supposer qu'etant incite par cette crainte a aller vite, il utilise le debut de traduction de Stubbe, et pour le reste se borne a revoir hätivement le proto-Leviathan latin, plus attentif a ne pas donner inutilement prise aux theologiens, qui l'avaient deja attaque sur ses doctrines religieuses, qu'a adapter entierement le proto-Leviathan a la theorie de la souverainete qui triomphe dans le texte anglais. Bien entendu, tout cela, en dehors des citations, est pure conjecture. Certains faits conduiraient au contraire a penser que le latin du debut de l'ouvrage n'est pas celui de Stubbe: d'abord, deux expressions latines qu'il envisage d'utiliser (dans sa lettre du ler Avril1656, editee par F. Thompson, article cite), «schasteria» et «propria cujusque corporis constitutio» (apparemment pour traduire, dans l'introduction, strings et constitution individualI), ne se trouvent pas dans l'edition latine; d'autre part, Stubbe apparait comme un esprit si peu pondere qu'il est difficile d'imaginer que les huit premiers chapitres du Leviathan latin (qui, s'ils sont effectivement rediges d'apres l'anglais, en sont dans l'ensemble une traduction modeste et objective) soient sortis de sa plume. En fait, le probleme Stubbe reste sans solution certaine, en depit d'une lettre de l'editeur hollandais du Leviathan latin, que j'ai trouvee a Chatsworth, et qui nous renseigne un peu sur les conditions materielles dans lesquelles Hobbes a prepare l'edition de 1668. La lettre est daMe du 9 Decembre 1667. Elle est ecrite (en francais) par Pierre Blaeu au nom de son pere Jean Blaeu. Voici le passage qui interesse notre question: «Je vous diray au second lieu que suis bien aise d'entendre que vous aves desia acheve les deux tiers du livre que scavez et que vous travaillez tous les jours deux heures avec esperance de l'achever avec l'aide de Dieu devant Pasque. au reste j'ay bien compris que vous le faictes ecrire par un autre a cause de la foiblesse de vostre main, et puisque celuy la n'entend pas le latin, vous le faictes par apres relire et corriger par un autre qui l'entend bien; voila qui va bien, et de plus j'auray un

La Comparaison du «Leviathan» Latin avec le «Leviathan» Anglais

241

soit, le second fait (la masse plus considerable de l'anglais) me parait constituer, pour les chapitres qu'il concerne, un argument peu spectaculaire, mais quasi-decisif, en faveur de l'anteriorite du latin. En effet, on doit remarquer en premier lieu qu'un auteur qui remanie un de ses ouvrages l'etend plus souvent qu'il ne l'abreges. D'autre part, et surtout, pour quiconque a quelque familiarite avec Hobbes et la maniere dont il use du langage, il est tres difficile de l'imaginer en train de retrancher: meme en faisant abstraction des enrichissements progressifs de la doctrine, il y a chez lui une sorte d'exuberance stylistique, d'impetuosite baroque, qui me parait prete ä. accueillir les additions beaucoup plus qu'ä. sacrifier quoi que ce soit de ce qui a une fois ete ecrit. De plus, en de multiples cas, la partie du texte anglais qui n'a pas son pendant dans le latin est situee ä. la fin d'un alinea. TI faut ici choisir entre deux explications: ou bien (dans l'hypothese d'un passage de l'anglais au latin) les endroits de l'edition de 1651 juges indignes de subsister dans celle de 1668 se seraient rencontres en grand nombre ä. la fin des alineas - par hasard, mais plus souvent que ne le laisseraient attendre les lois du hasard; ou bien (dans l'hypothese de l'anteriorite du latin), Hobbes, en redigeant le texte anglais, aurait souvent place ses additions lä. Oll elles derangeaient le moins l'architecture du texte latin pre-existant, c'est-ä.-dire ä. la fin des alineas. Cette deuxieme hypothese est de beaucoup la plus vraisemblable, qu'on la considere globalement ou qu'on etudie dans le detailIes endroits Oll les deux textes divergent. Un dernier argument, enfin, peut etre tire de la consideration des allusions faites par Hobbes ä. des textes antiques. C'est ainsi que le soing particulier pour la correction quand nous l'imprimerons». La faiblesse de main dont parle ici Blaeu nous est egalement connue par le temoignage d'Aubrey, qui a bien connu Hobbes, etqui parle du tremblement nerveux (shaking palsey) qui agitait ses mains depuis son sejour en France, et qui empira ensuite, «so that he haz not been able to write very legibly since 1665 or 1666» (Brief Lives: Thomas Hobbes). Le professeur F. C. Hood, a qui j'ai communique le texte de cette lettre des Blaeu, m'a fait observer qu'il ne parait guere possible de dicter la totalite du Leviathan latin a un homme ignorant de cette langue; en revanche, ajoutait-il, cette täche est simplifiee si nous imaginons le secretaire non latiniste travaillant sur un texte latin pre-existant, qu'il n'aurait qu'a corriger de loin en loin, sous la dictee de l'auteur. De fait, sans rien prouver a elle seule, la lettre de Blaeu constitue peut-etre un leger indice supplementaire en faveur de l'existence d'un protoLeviathan latin. 8 Cf., par exemple, le texte suivant, pour l'auteur duquel il est «evident» que de deux editions de longueur inegale, la plus courte est la premiere: «11 est evident que des traites doubles contre les nestoriens, contre les jacobites, contre les manicheens, sur les vertus et les vices, le moins developpe a ete compose le premier» (M. Jugie, article Jean Damascene, in Dictionnaire de Theologie catholique, Paris 1924, t. VIII, lere partie, col. 706). Pour ma part, je dirai au moins qu'en l'absence de preuve certaine du contraire, c'est l'hypothese de travail la plus raisonnable. 16 Thomas Hobbes

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Tl'icaud

chapitre X fait allusion a l'hymne homerique «A Hermes» (0. L. III, p. 73). L'edition latine a ici deux vers latins qui proviennent peut-etre d'une traduction latine d'Homere, mais qui ont plus probablement ete composes par Hobbes lui-meme a partir du texte grec (en effet, la traduction latine courante a cette epoque etait celle d'Estienne, fort differente de celle que donne Hobbes): mais dans les deux cas, le redacteur de cette partie du Leviathan latin avait sous les yeux son Homere, grec ou latin; et meme s'ille savait par coeur, cela ne change pas grand chose a l'affaire; ce qui est important, en effet, c'est que le texte anglais correspondant rapporte le passage d'Homere au style indirect, sans se soueier d'en donner une eitation au sens propre du terme. La solution la plus probable est qu'iei l'anglais est redige apres le latin et d'apres lui. Ce cas n'est pas unique en son genre. L'ensemble de ces raisons m'a conduit a considerer l'anteriorite du latin comme l'hypothese de travail la plus plausible. Je voudrais maintenant montrer comment cette hypothese permet d'expliquer certains passages enigmatiques du latin, montrant du meme coup a quel point la notion de personne representative est apparue tardivement dans la pensee de Hobbes: il me semble en effet que ce concept, qui est comme la clef de voute du Leviathan anglais, devait etre present dans le protoLeviathan latin sous une forme beaucoup plus tatonnante et moins systematique. On peut ici administrer une sorte de preuve directe en rappelant certains passages ou la reference a la personne representative fait defaut dans le latin. On a, a cet egard, un bon exemple a la fin du chapitre XXXIII. Je eiterai le texte en question d'apres le latin, mais en ajoutant entre parentheses certaines indications qui ne se trouvent que dans l'anglais: "At ecclesia si una persona sit, eadem res est cum civitate (of Christians) ; quae quidem, quia constat ex hominibus (united in one person, their Soveraign), civitas; quia constat ex hominibus Christi anis (united in one Christian Soveraign), ecclesia appellatur" (0. L. III, p. 279; E. W. III, p. 380). On voit qu'iei le latin ne connait la notion de personne qu'au sens du De Cive (ch. V, § 9: «eivitas ergo, ut eam definiamus, est persona una ... »). Seul l'anglais lie a cette idee celle de la personne representative, c'est-a-dire du souverain. D'une fa~on generale, au centre de la doctrine politique du Leviathan anglais, il y a le souverain, et au centre de la doctrine politique du De Cive, il y a la cite. Or, le Leviathan latin presente a cet egard plusieurs textes qui sont plus proches du De Cive que du Leviathan anglais. Tel est par exemple le cas de cette importante variante qu'on trouve vers le debut du chapitre XVIII:

La Comparaison du «Leviathan» Latin avec le «Leviathan» Anglais «Secondly, because the right of bearing the person of them all, is given to him they make sovereign, by covenant only of one to another, and not of hirn to any of them; there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretence of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.,.

243

«Secundo, summa potestas propter malam reipublicae administrationem habenti tolli non potest; primo, quia, cum totius civitatis personam gerat, quae ut actor facit ille, ut author facit civitas. Quis autem est, qui civitatem ream faciet?"

(La suite du texte se developpe parallelement dans le latin et dans l'anglais, avec toutefois, dans le latin, un membre de phrase ou la these que nous venons de voir dans l'anglais - l'impossibilite d'opposer au souverain aucune imputation de «forfeiture» - est egalement avancee, mais plus loin que dans l'anglais du debut de l'alinea.) En apparence, le texte latin allegue est peu favorable a ma these, puisque la theorie de la personne representative s'y lit en toutes lettres. Mais qu'on y regarde de plus pres: si le souverain n'a pas a repondre de ses actes, c'est qu'll agit au nom de la civitas, que nul ne saurait accuser. Son irresponsabilite penale derive de celle de la civitas, qui est ici le principe de l'argumentation. Tout se passe ici comme si le concept de civitas jouissait ici de quelque autonomie, voire de quelque priorite, a l'egard de celui de souverainete. Or, si c'est la une position absolument insoutenable dans le contexte du Leviathan, je n'en dirai pas autant du De Cive, dans lequel, certes, le souverain est indispensable pour que la cite ait une volonte (eh. VI, § 19), mais dans lequel on trouve aussi des passages ou le droit du souverain est fonde sur le droit de la cite, ce dernier constituant le principe de l'argumentation. C'est ainsi qu'au eh. VI, § 14, pour montrer que le souverain n'est pas lie par les lois ni oblige envers les citoyens, Hobbes argumente ainsi:

- la cite n'est pas liee par les lois ni obligee envers son citoyen; - or, la volonte du souverain est la volonte de la cite; - donc, le souverain n'est pas lie par les lois, ni oblige envers aucun citoyen. On trouvera une argumentation analogue dans le Leviathan, vers la fin du ehapitre XVIII, mais seulement dans le latin, car c'est un des rares passages du latin qui n'ait absolument rien qui lui corresponde dans l'anglais: «Atque haec sunt jura summam habentis potestam principalia; ut ampliter hic demonstratum est, et brevius demonstrari potuit unico hoc argumento. Jura enim haec omnia quin civitatis sint, negabit nemo. Civitas autem nisi per personam suam, nempe, eum qui summam habet potestatem, neque loqui neque agere potest. Sunt ergo jura haec omnia illius, qui in civitate summam habet potestatem, sive is homo sit, sive coetus hominum" (0. L. IH, p. 138). 16'

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La premiere phrase est comparable a ce qu'on trouve dans l'anglais

(E. W. HI, p. 167), mais la suite (a partir de «ut ampliter») est absolument

propre au latin. Ici encore, les droits de la cite sont presentes comme plus fondamentaux que ceux du souverain; ici encore, il s'agit d'un passage qu'on trouve dans le Leviathan latin, mais non dans l'anglais. TI arr~ve que cette difference d'eclairage (l'un des deux textes ayant surtout en vue la souverainete, l'autre la cite) se manifeste d'une maniere extrement simple, le latin disant civitas la ou l'anglais porte sovereign, sovereignty ou government. Les exemples foisonnent vers la fin du chapitre XXI: the end of the institution of sovereignty (ibid., p. 203) sovereignty by institution is by covenant (p. 204) the end for which the sovereignty was ordained (p. 205) is therefore destructive of the very essence of government (p. 206) by contract between sovereigns (p. 209)

the amity of sovereigns (p. 209)

finis autem institutionis civilis (ibid.,

p. 165)

institution civitatis fit per pacta (p. 165)

finem institutionis civitatis (p. 166) ipsamque civitatis essentiam destruxit (p. 166) per contractum inter civitatis (p. 169) amicitia inter se ambarum civitatum (p. 169)

TI faut reconnaitre que les textes aussi frappants ne sont pas egalement repartis dans tout l'ouvrage. Les plus nombreux se trouvent dans la deuxieme partie: en anglais, of Commonwealth; en latin, de Civitate. TI est peut-etre legitime de s'arreter un instant sur ce titre latin: c'est bien d'un traite de la cite qu'il s'agit quand Hobbes commence vers 1648 ou 1649, la redaction (en latin) de son troisieme grand traite politique. Ce n'est qu'en cours de route que la perspective sera modifiee, quand il aura mis au point !'idee de personne representative. Cette mise au point parait contemporaine de la composition du texte anglais. C'est alors que l'ouvrage devient le traite de la souverainete. A cette evolution de la doctrine correspond une evolution dans le vocabulaire: pratiquement, le Leviathan anglais ignore les mots de citoyen (citizen) et de cite (city), si frequents dans la traduction anglaise du De Cive. TI leur prefere republique (commonwealth) et sujet (subject). Mais le Leviathan latin, qui continue a parler du civis et de la civitas, subsiste, temoignant involontairement de l'avant-dernier etat de la pensee politique de Hobbes.

Stellungnahme zu einigen Referaten des Hohhes-Kolloquiums Von Reinhart Klemens Maurer, Stuttgart

I. Solange die drei Bereiche der Hobbesschen Philosophie: der naturwissenschaftliche, der juristisch-politisch-moralische, der politisch-theologische (vgl. Freund, S.33) nicht in einer umfassenden Deutung so zusammengebracht sind, wie sie besonders im Leviathan fast gleichberechtigt zusammengehen, solange wird sich die Philosophie wohl nicht mit dem Ergebnis der Darlegungen von Greenleaf "what is most needed now is not more insight or textual exegesis but simply more research" (S.31) einverstanden erklären. Denn offenbar ist Hobbes' eigentliche Bedeutung eine philosophische. Wegen seiner Leistungen in den aufgezählten Teilbereichen brauchten wir uns heute kaum mit ihm beschäftigen. Es gibt in seiner Zeit bessere Naturwissenschaftler, Juristen, Politiker und vielleicht auch Theologen als ihn. Bedeutsam an Hobbes jedoch ist die Ordnung, der gegenseitige Begründungszusammenhang, zu dem er die aus verschiedenen Traditionssträngen und aus der Wirklichkeit seiner Zeit aufgenommenen Elemente zusammenfügt. Nur zusammen ergeben sie eine Grundlagentheorie der Politik (der Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie und politische Ethik), die ihre Bedeutung gewinnt im Entwicklungszusammenhang der politischen Philosophie und Wirklichkeit von der Antike bis heute. Freund, Polin, Villey und Riedel spüren diesem Zusammenhang nach und leisten damit einen Beitrag zur Überwindung der traditionellen Einseitigkeiten der Hobbesliteratur, die Greenleaf referiert. Dagegen tragen die Thesen von Kriele eine Trennung in die Theorie des Hobbes, äie geeignet ist, seine philosophische Leistung als einen großartigen überbau von jedoch sekundärer Bedeutung über recht konkrete und verwerfliche Ansichten zur rechtlichen und politischen Lage zu verstehen.

n. Zu M. Kriele: Thesen zur Kontroverse zwischen Hobbes und den englischen Juristen-

"Hobbes' politische Philosophie verfolgte politische Absichten ... Die geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung und der philosophische Rang einer poli• Die Zitate beziehen sich auf die deutsche Vorlage von Martin Kriele.

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tischen Theorie ist zwar nicht primär an der konkreten Funktion zu messen, die die Theorie im politischen Kontext zur Zeit ihrer Veröffentlichung oder Abfassung besaß. Gleichwohl ... " Daß Hobbes politische Absichten hegte, sagt er selber. Daß Absichten und konkrete politische Funktion einer Theorie auseinandertreten können, ist unbezweüelbar. Doch wäre wohl auch noch in diesem Funktionsbegriff eine subjektive und eine objektive Komponente zu unterscheiden: Ob Hobbes' Theorie (die größtenteils erst nach Ausbruch des englischen Bürgerkrieges an die Öffentlichkeit trat) entgegen seinen Absichten tatsächlich die politische Funktion gehabt hat, diesen Krieg mitzuverursachen, dürfte ebenso schwer nachzuweisen sein, wie das, was K. als "Desiderat der Hobbesforschung" bezeichnet, nämlich daß die absolutistischen Bestrebungen Karls L, die Hobbes ideologisch unterstützte, den Frieden hätten bewahren können. Dagegen ist die Frage leichter zu beantworten, "warum es in England nach der Restauration und auch in den nach englischem Modell gestalteten parlamentarischen Monarchien Nord- und Westeuropa nicht dauernd zu Bürgerkriegen gekommen ist". Nämlich darum nicht, weil diese späteren Könige anders als Karl L hinnahmen, daß ihnen nach und nach alle Souveränitätsrechte entzogen wurden, bis sie fast nur noch dem Namen nach Könige waren. Nun ist freilich bei K. der Funktionsbegrüf durchaus so zu verstehen, daß man schon dann von einer Theorie sagen kann, sie habe politische Funktion, wenn sich wahrscheinlich machen läßt, daß sie Einfluß auf die politischen Meinungen gehabt hat, z. B. zur "Radikalisierung" beigetragen hat. In dieser vagen Allgemeinheit ist der Begriff geeignet, selber eine Funktion im Parteienkampf zu bekommen, indem man mit seiner Hilfe jemandem Parteilichkeit vorhalten kann, auch oder gerade wenn er wie Hobbes behauptet, über den Parteien zu stehen und nur den Frieden zu wollen. K. ergreift so Partei für das Common Law und behauptet, damit eine Instanz zu unterstützen, die geeignet ist, die Probleme in allmählichem Fortschritt, ohne Bürgerkrieg zu lösen. Diese Parteinahme steht nicht in Widerspruch zu der von K. zitierten These von C. Schmitt, daß es nur zur Radikalisierung der Konflikte beitrage, "wenn sich eine kriegführende Partei zur Friedenspartei schlechthin erklärt", denn im damaligen Konflikt zwischen dem Absolutismus und dem Parlamentarismus "gab es keine Common-Law-Partei". Alle vorhandenen Parteien beriefen sich schließlich, wie K. sagt, verfassungswidrig auf ein unmittelbares "Naturrecht". Die Forderung, daß die geschichtlichen Veränderungen in rechtlichen Bahnen verlaufen sollen, ist sicher gut und richtig. Aber was ist das für ein Recht, wenn im Konfliktfall keiner für es Partei ergreift? Und falls jemand für Recht und Frieden Partei nimmt, dann verfällt er dem oben berührten Verdacht. Auch K. entzieht sich diesem Verdacht nur dadurch,

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daß er eine Partei unterstützt, die keine war. Doch inzwischen scheint sie eine geworden zu sein, und ihre Unterstützung scheint verhindern zu können, daß überhaupt eine tiefgreüende Krise in Recht und Politik entsteht. Denn, wie K. sagt, lIes gibt politische Situationen, in denen Radikalismus und Revolution unumgänglich werden". In solchen Situationen ist das Recht machtlos. Die Frage ist also, ob in England zur Zeit Hobbes' eine derartige Situation eingetreten war, oder nicht. Von K.s Thesen aus ist die Frage entgegen der eigenen Vermutung des Autors eindeutig zu bejahen. Denn er sagt selber, daß es in dem ausbrechenden Konflikt keine ins Gewicht fallende Rechts-Partei gab. Das von K. verteidigte "Verfassungsrecht" (das es im modernen Sinne dieses Wortes auch nicht gab) war offenbar nicht mehr in der Lage, die Souveränitätsfrage, d. h. das Entscheidungsrecht in substantiellen außen- und innenpolitischen Belangen, eindeutig zu lösen. Denn dem Parlament war notgedrungen von den Königen bereits soviel an substantiellen Rechten zugestanden worden, daß es auf der Basis des Erreichten mehr fordern konnte, als der König einzuräumen in der Lage war, ohne eine schleichende Abdankung in Kauf zu nehmen. Die absolutistische Theorie ist so gesehen nur eine Reaktion auf die sich langsam zum offenen Konflikt zuspitzende Zersplitterung der königlichen Souveränität. Ihr trat Hobbes mit einer neuen Theorie der Souveränität qua Absolutismus entgegen, und wenn HaIe von seiner Common-Law-Position aus die absolutistische Doktrin für objektiv ungeeignet hielt, den Bürgerkrieg zu verhindern, ja eher geeignet, ihn zu befördern, so wäre zu fragen, welche politische Lösung (denn eine solche war jetzt nötig) er im Auge hatte. In der bisherigen Weise weiter das Common Law zu praktizieren war durch den aus welchen Gründen auch immer faktisch eintretenden Bürgerkrieg zunächst einmal ausgeschlossen, und die andere Aiternative hieß verfassungsrechtlich Parlamentarismus. Aber offenbar hatte bereits die bisherige Praxis des Common Law den allmählichen übergang der Souveränität auf das Parlament begünstigt. Sie hatte den König in eine Position manövriert, in der er nur noch durch Rechtsbruch seiner weiteren Entmachtung zuvorkommen konnte. Die Anhänger des Common Law waren also gar nicht so unparteiisch. K. bezeichnet sie als "Reform-Konservative". Das trifft bis heute einen Wesenszug der englischen Demokratie. Die englischen Juristen, deren Partei K. ergreift, waren also Parteigänger der demokratischen Revolution l in ihrer evolutionären Form. Entwicklung und Revolution sind hier kein Widerspruch, denn diese Entwicklung ist in Europa wie vorher im 1 Zum universalgeschichtlichen Begriff der "demokratischen Revolution" vgl. de Tocqueville, A.: De la Democratie en Amerique.

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antiken Hellas allgemein so verlaufen, daß langsam wachsender Konfliktstoff sich eines Tages in Kriegen oder Bürgerkriegen entlud. Wenn man Hobbes zu diesem großen Prozeß, in dem die Parteiungen seiner Zeit nur eine, wenn auch besonders interessante Phase ausmachen, in Beziehung setzt, so braucht man nicht mehr, wie K. es tut, seine konkret verfolgten politischen Absichten, deretwegen er sicher nicht sehr bedeutend ist, von der "geistesgeschichtlichen Bedeutung und dem philosophischen Rang" seiner politischen Theorie zu trennen. Eine mögliche gesonderte Betrachtung der konkreten politischen Absichten und funktionen seiner politischen Theorie ist fruchtlos, wenn sie nicht wenigstens im Hintergrund den Bezug darauf enthält, weswegen diese Absichten heute allein bedeutsam sind, nämlich weil Hobbes, der große politische Theoretiker, sie verfolgte. Dann müßte aber wenigstens - statt sie beiseite zu.loben - angedeutet werden, worin diese Größe lag. Dieser Aspekt fehlt in K.s Thesen fast gänzlich. Er blitzt nur einmal auf, wenn anfangs gesagt wird, daß Hobbes helfen wollte, "unter den Bedingungen der heraufziehenden bürgerlichen Gesellschaft" Stabilität und Ordnung zu errichten. Hiermit ist ein Hinweis auf die demokratische, wissenschaftliche, industrielle, religiöse Revolution gegeben, der jedoch durch das Wort "heraufziehen" sehr verschleiert ausfällt. Immerhin klingt bereits das Thema an, welches dann die Thesen durchgängig bestimmt, nämlich daß da ein kollektiver, vernünftiger Prozeß abgelaufen sei, dem sich einige, die Anhänger des Common Law z. B. gemäß verhielten, während andere, wie etwa Hobbes, ihre partikulare Vernunft in radikaler Weise (entweder fortschrittlich oder reaktionär) mißbrauchten. (Umfassendere philosophische Theorien über Recht und Staat aufzustellen, scheint demnach vermessen zu sein, es sei denn, sie stützten den Reform-Konservatismus.) Wichtiger als solche möglichen Folgerungen aus den Thesen K.s ist jedoch der Hinweis, daß sich Hobbes unter die Bedingungen des Heraufziehenden stellte. Von daher ist wohl zu verstehen, daß er ein "radikaler Revolutionär" genannt wird. Andererseits unterstützt er ja die herkömmliche staatliche Ordnung, die Monarchie, die freilich auf eine nicht herkömmliche Weise. Denn traditionell war ja die Weise des Common Law, das aber inzwischen zu einer Stütze der demokratischen Revolution geworden war. Demnach wäre Hobbes im Gegensatz zum Reform-Konservatismus ein konservativer Revolutionär. In solcher dialektischen Verknüpfung der wirklichen Gegensätze scheint tatsächlich das Besondere und Bedeutende seiner Theorie zu liegen: in seiner Ableitung eines Absolutismus, ja Totalitarismus aus Freiheit und Gleichheit, den Grundprinzipien der demokratischen Revolution. Hobbes selber sagt, daß alle Wissenschaft nur ,wenn-so-Aussagen' macht. Demgemäß plädiert er in seiner politischen Wissenschaft (was interpretativ zu zeigen wäre) nicht schlechthin für einen Absolutismus monarchi-

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scher oder auch parlamentarischer Spielart, sondern sagt: wenn es bei einem Maximum von Freiheit und Gleichheit dennoch staatliche Ordnung und Frieden statt des von Natur daraus folgenden Krieges aller gegen alle geben soll, dann bedarf es des Leviathan-Staats. Wenn dagegen ein mit der Vernunft von Generationen aufgeladenes Common Law institutionell gesichert funktioniert, d. h. ethisch gesprochen: wenn die Menschen von sich aus eine politische Ethik im Sinne des Aristoteles entwickeln (vgl. Villey), ist der Leviathan unnötig. Des Willens zur Macht wegen, der mit dem Streben nach Freiheit und Gleichheit einhergeht, entfällt für Hobbes diese positive Alternative. Soziales Verhalten muß von außen, d. h. aus dem Entwurf eines Einzelnen und dessen wissenschaftlicher und staatlicher Durchführung an die Menschen herangebracht werden, und das Recht kann sich nicht geschichtlich bruchlos entwickeln, da es ebenso sehr die Vernunft wie die Unvernunft von Generationen enthält. Falls diese negative Beurteilung der menschlichen Natur richtig ist, wird der Leviathan notwendig als der paradoxe Versuch, "das Recht, ein System der Beziehungen zwischen Menschen, auf das partikulare Individuum ... und damit das Recht auf die Negation des Rechtes zu begründen" (Villey). Ob Hobbes mit seiner Einsetzung der schlechten Wirklichkeit eines in sich maßlosen Machtstrebens in die von ihm aufgestellte ,wenn-so-Formel' recht hat, hängt davon ab, wieweit die Emanzipation aus der politischen Ethik oder die "ethische Neutralisierung des Politischen"2 oder, um mit Riedel zu sprechen, die Depotenzierung des HandeIns zugunsten des Herstellens noch geht, und wieweit das sich ohne umfassende normative Theorie von Fall zu Fall umbildende Recht auf ihre Seite tritt, vermeinend, dies sei die allein friedensstiftende Partei. Das Faktum, daß Hobbes seinen Landsleuten heute weniger fremd ist als früher und auch sein politischer Einfluß im Steigen begriffen ist (dies zur Ergänzung von K.s Thesen), könnte darauf hindeuten, daß die schrittweise, immanent juristische Rechtsentwicklung jetzt ähnlich wie zu Hobbes Zeiten nicht mehr in der Lage ist, der anstehenden Probleme Herr zu werden. Die allgemeine Entwicklung ist in Richtung auf immer mehr Planung verlaufen. Das hat man so gewollt. Nun kann man sich nicht vor den Notwendigkeiten umfassender Planung in die kurzatmige, etwas verschrobene, ziemlich gefühlsmäßige Rationalität der CommonLaw-Tradition zurückziehen. Damit ist nichts gegen die von K. befürwortete und wohl immer geschehende allmähliche Umbildung des Rechts durch die juristische Praxis gesagt. Die Hobbessche Theorie ist offen genug, daß eine solche EntwickI Vgl. Ritter, J.: "Politik" und "Ethik" in der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles, Philos. Jahrb. 74, 1967, S. 235 ff.; hier: S. 253.

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lung auch im Leviathan-Staat ihren Ort haben könnte. Aber es kommt auf den ethischen und politischen Rahmen an, innerhalb dessen sie sich bewegt, und den sie mitprägt, wie sie von ihm geprägt wird. Das angelsächsische Mißtrauen gegen umfassende Theorien, die praktischen Anspruch machen, wird dann gefährlich, wenn es praktisch einen bestimmten, umfassenden, aus den vielen Teilplanungen ungeplant entstehenden Trend unterstützt, ohne sich dessen recht bewußt zu werden. Die Rede vom Reform-Konservatismus ist hier viel zu ungenau. Sie vergeht vor der Hobbesschen Begriffsschärfe. III. Zu H. Warrender: Hobbes' Conception of Morality 3 1. "Hobbes is basically a naturallaw philosopher ... " (437 ff.). - Was traditionell Naturrecht (naturallaw) hieß und noch heißt, nimmt Hobbes in die beiden gegensätzlichen Bestandteile natural right und natural law auseinander (Lev. Kap. XIV). Diese Spaltung impliziert für den Naturzustand den Krieg aller gegen alle, für den gesellschaftlichen Zustand dessen Unterbindung durch die staatliche common power. Der Gegensatz zwischen natural right und law wirkt im Untergrund des Staates weiter. Die menschliche, individuelle Vernunft, die unterstützt von der Todesfurcht den Gesellschaftsvertrag gegen die Macht der Leidenschaften ermöglicht hat, kann diese Höchstleistung nicht dauernd vollbringen (vgl. RiedeI, a.a.O.). Daher ist zutreffend, wenn W. betont, daß die vernünftige Maxime (Goldene Regel) "do as you would be done by" (438), welche die Basis der natural laws ausmacht, nicht einfach im gewöhnlichen Eigeninteresse der Individuen liege (445) oder, wie Kant wollte, logisch sei (448). Bei Hobbes ist sie normativ (prescriptive). Diese oberste Norm muß von der konstituierten Staatsrnacht durchgedrückt werden gegen den bleibenden Widerstand der Individuen. Hobbes' Naturrechtslehre bezieht sich ebenso sehr auf das natürliche Recht aller auf alles "even to one anothers body" wie auf die Regeln bzw. Gesetze, die dem daraus folgenden Chaos ein Ende bereiten können. Da man - in welchem Sinn von Moral auch immer - das right of nature unmoralisch nennen muß, gibt es bei Hobbes kein unmittelbar moralisches Naturrecht t{vgl. Riedel S. 113). Ethtk und Naturrecht treten so auseinander wie bei A. Smith Eigennutz und Gemeinwohl (vgl. 446 f.). Daß sie dann doch miteinander bestehen können, beruht nach Hobbes auf vernünftig gerechtfertigtem Terror und Zwang, bei Smith auf einer geradezu metaphysischen, Leibnizschen "natural harmony of interests". Hobbes war nüchtern genug, dergleichen nicht vorauszusetzen. 3 Die Seitenverweise beziehen sich auf Howard Warrender: "Hobbes's Coneeption of Morality", in: Rivista Critiea di Storia della Filosofia, Florenz 1962, Fase. IV.

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2. Es scheint, daß W. auf einem bestimmten, wenn man ihn einmal gewählt hat, recht plausiblen Wege dahin gelangt, Hobbes als einen Naturrechtsphilosophen zugleich traditioneller und moderner (s. u.) Art zu begreifen: nämlich durch Ausklammerung seiner materialistischen Anthropologie und seiner politischen Theologie. W. berücksichtigt vor allem den mittleren Teil des Leviathan. Dem geht jedoch bei Hobbes der Versuch voran, die gesellschaftliche und staatliche Ordnung als ein System spezifisch menschlich bewegter Materie ("motion of the matter") abzuleiten (vgl. Polin). Und ihm folgt oder ihn begleitet durchgängig eine Theologie, die den Staat als eine Strafe Gottes für den menschlichen Hochmut begreift und als eine stete Unterdrückung des hauptsächlichen Antriebs des Menschen, des Willens zur Macht (desire of power). 3. "This basic obligation to obey the sovereign rests for each individual upon a private sphere of morality ... " (442, vgl. 435 ff.). - Im Gegensatz zur Polis-Ethik verhält es sich bei Hobbes so. Es gibt eine Privatmoral, die in sich selbst zunächst nicht der Realität Rechnung trägt, daß es immer bereits andere Individuen gibt sowie eine politische Ordnung oder Unordnung, in der sie zusammenleben. Gegenüber dem gemäß dieser Moral moralischen Privatmann verfolgt der "political man" (445 ff.) seine Interessen zunächst ohne jede Rücksicht auf eine private oder sonstige Moral. Dies ist ja sein "natürliches Recht". Erst Erfahrung und Verstand (der offenbar primär nicht zur Moral gehört, wonach diese primär irrational ist) lehren ihn, das Politische als ein äußerliches, legalistisches System der Privatsphären zu konstruieren (Vertragstheorie) und sich dieser seiner Konstruktion je nach eigener Entscheidung zu unterwerfen oder zu entziehen. Da dabei, wie Hobbes betont, offen bleibt, ob jeweils das Gewissen oder der Wille zur Macht entschieden haben, bedarf es dann einer übermächtigen common power, um zu gewährleisten, daß die subjektive Entscheidung nicht Gewalt gegen andere mit sich bringt. Der Machtstaat beruht freilich auf einer "critical number" (435 f.) von Individuen, und da seine Lage so kritisch ist, muß er alle äußeren Mittel anwenden, sich ihrer Unterstützung zu versichern. Denn von der vollen Zustimmung der Bürger getragen zu werden, ist ihm verwehrt. Ethik ist nicht immer schon zugleich politische Ethik. Zwischen dem privaten und politischen Bereich befindet sich ein mit Zwang oder Manipulation oder staatlich gelenkter Erziehung und Information auszufüllendes Vakuum. 4. Der "political man" ist anders als der "polites" dadurch definiert, daß er primär nicht gut, sondern überhaupt irgend wie leben will (vgl. Riedei, S. 107). Das Gut-Leben (im moralischen wie materiellen Sinne) soll in der {freilich politisch gesicherten) Privatsphäre vor sich gehen. Deshalb reicht für die politische Ethik ein "neutral or second-order value" {447). W.s These lautet, daß es gemäß einer universal möglichen

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Minimalmoral, die näher als utilitare, man könnte auch sagen behavioristische "ethic of results" bestimmt wird, bei Hobbes keine Unterscheidung von Moral und Politik gäbe (448). Damit dürfte Hobbes angemessen interpretiert sein. Doch bei W.s Stellungnahme für diese politische Neutralisierung und Reduzierung der Ethik ("if this is not morality, it ought to be" ! 450), ist zu fragen, ob sie geeignet ist, wie W. nahelegt, unter den gegenwärtigen Bedingungen den Frieden zu sichern, so wie zu Hobbes' Zeiten die Neutralisierung der religiösen Moral, den Religionskriegen ein Ende machte. Denn W.S Position legt die Hobbessche Trennung von Innen und Außen zugrunde, was sich in der Unterscheidung zwischen "motivational ethics" und "ethics of result" (448) zeigt. Diese ist jedoch eine Abstraktion und hat als solche vielleicht in einer methodisch beschränkten Wissenschaft (z. B. der Soziologie) ihren Ort, nicht aber in einer Wissenschaft wie der Philosophie, die sich darum bemüht, zu begreifen, was ist. Solange es Menschen gibt, die wenigstens gelegentlich das tun, was sie für richtig halten, ist der Versuch, eine Weltfriedensordnung auf der Trennung von Innen und Außen aufzubauen, unrealistisch. Diese Menschen als "Intuitionisten" oder "desparate Romantiker" zu disqualifizieren (448), ist überdies eine Kriegserklärung, welche die erstrebte Friedensordnung in Frage stellt und die vorgeblich universale Partei zu einer partikularen herabsetzt. Den desparaten Romantikern scheint nämlich, daß das bloße Überleben noch nicht einmal ein zweitbestes Ziel ist, wenn die Lebensinhalte, mit denen es erfüllt werden könnte, so beliebig, subjektiv und langweilig ausfallen, daß sich in Wahrheit das anscheinend minimale Allgemeine als das Höchste erweist, das Mittel zu einem guten Leben, nämlich die Selbsterhaltung, in Wirklichkeit zum obersten Zweck wird. Falls gar zur Erlangung des Zweitbesten ein absoluter Staat oder eine totale Gesellschaft nötig ist, zeigt sich, daß das als Erstes erstrebte Zweite zu einem nur Drittbesten herabsinkt. Dasselbe folgt aus der Einsicht, daß alle Moral auf dem Prinzip beruht, das Unmögliche zu verlangen, damit das Mögliche geleistet wird. 5. Wenn es keine Moral gibt ("we have no applicable moral systems"! 450), bei der das Überleben und der Frieden als ein zweites Ziel nur miterstrebt werden, so steht es demnach wohl schlecht um den Frieden. 6. Die Neutralisierung des Problems einer erst-besten religiös-moralischen Politik im 17. Jahrhundert hat zwar die Religionskriege beendet, hat aber zugleich den Grund gelegt für die europäischen Nationalitätenkriege. Wie diese das Scheitern der politischen, so markiert die marxistische Revolution das Scheitern der ökonomischen, angeblich universalen Minimallösung. Das Prinzip "private vices, public benefits" (Mandeville) konnte schließlich nur noch durch die Keynessche Flucht nach vorn ge-

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rettet werden. Durch die antizyklische Wirtschaftstheorie wird die von Gen Einzelnen nicht bewußt als solche intendierte Harmonie des Ganzen, im Hinblick auf die man sich moralisch verhalten könnte, nicht mehr wie von Smith als der immanente, geheimnisvolle Umschlag des allgemeinen Egoismus ins Gemeinwohl erwartet, sondern jeweils auf eine unbestimmte Zukunft verschoben. Die drohende Explosion wird um den Preis der steten Vermehrung des Sprengstoffs hinausgezögert. So wenigstens erscheint es, wie W. andeutet, einem "natürlichen" (naiven) Denken (449). Das diesen Prozessen positiv gegenüberstehende Denken jedoch beruht trotz aller modernen Kompliziertheit auf noch naiveren Voraussetzungen, nämlich auf dem blinden, irrationalen Vertrauen, daß es auch ohne umfassende Planung immer irgendwie weitergeht und daß auch den nach uns Kommenden wieder ein Ausweg einfallen werde, der den Menschen n:'cht die Anstrengung einer primären, zugleich privaten und politischen Moral zumutet. IV. Zu: R. Polin: L'ldee d'Obligation und K. R. Minogue: Hobbes and the Just Man 1. Polin verfolgt den ",grand rationalisme de Hobbes" (S.147) mit einer so großartigen Konsequenz, daß Hobbes selber dagegen zu verblassen droht. Er zeichnet den Hobbesschen Weg rationaler Demonstration nach,der zu einer staatlichen Friedensordnung als einem Mechanismus menschlicher Selbsterhaltung führt. Das Commonwealth ist künstlich, sofern es nach einem menschlichen Verstandesentwurf gebildet wird. Da der Verstand dem Menschen jedoch von Natur zukommt, ist das Commonwealth die der spezifisch menschlichen "motion of the matter" angemessene Ordnung. Vermittels der Rationalität kommt so die generelle Tendenz der Natur auch im menschlichen Bereich zur Wirksamkeit. Diese Tendenz zielt auf Erhaltung von Bewegung, beim Menschen also {?) primär auf Selbsterhaltung (S. 134). Das vom Verstand erschlossene Naturrecht enthält demnach Naturgesetze, die sich im Guten oder Schlechten durchsetzen, je nachdem ob die Menschen sie mißachten oder erkennen und erfüllen. "Das Commonwealth ist Teil der Natur und folgt, so künstlich es auch sei, ihrem Lauf. Es ist daher auch nicht nötig, Gott zur Hilfe zu rufen, um den Regeln der Natur den Namen ,Gesetz' zu ,geben; es genügt, am Commonwealth teilzunehmen" (S.146). Nach Hobbes ist es aber zumindest möglich, auf Gott zu rekurrieren, um den Regeln des natürlichen Verstandes (nicht unmittelbar der Natur) die Verbindlichkeit von Gesetzen zuzuschreiben. Allein als göttliche Gesetze haben sie schon im Naturzustand Verbindlichkeit (obligation) (vgl. Lev. Kap. 15, Ende) und allein als solche gelten sie dann in der bürgerlichen Ordnung für den Souverän, der über den staatlichen Gesetzen

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steht, "so that he never wanted Right to any thing, otherwise, than as he himself is the Subject of God, and bound thereby to observe the laws of Nature" (Lev. Kap. 21; vgl. Kap. 29). Dagegen sind die Regeln des Verstandes im Hinblick auf eine möglichst universale Lebenserhaltung "but Conclusions, or Theoremes" (Lev. Kap. 15, Ende). Es ist auch nicht einzusehen, was anders aus dem kollektiv verrechneten Streben nach Selbsterhaltung folgen könnte, wenn dieses rein mechanisch als Erhaltung von Bewegung verstanden wird. Denn da im Krieg aller gegen alle nicht alle umgebracht werden, stellt er eine besonders heftige Weise einer sich selbst erhaltenden Bewegung dar. Das sich in der Bewegung erhaltende Selbst braucht bei der Gleichgültigkeit der Natur nicht das menschliche zu sein, sondern es erhält sich eben die Bewegung selbst, als ein Naturprozeß. Außerdem ist nicht einzusehen, wie angesichts der Stärke der Leidenschaften und der vergleichsweisen Schwäche der Vernunft jemals ein bloßes Theorem wenigstens soviel allgemeine Verbindlichkeit bekommen könnte, daß es "alle" zum freiwilligen Abschluß des Gesellschaftsvertrages bewegen könnte. Denn an diesem kritischen Punkt des übergangs vom Krieg zum Frieden gibt es ja noch keinen mit dem Machtmonopol ausgestatteten Souverän, der die bloße Plausibilität von Theoremen durch Zwang unterstützen oder ersetzen könnte (vgl. Warrender 463; Minogue S.166). Es ist also zwar richtig, wenn Polin schreibt: "il suffit de participer a un commonwealth", aber eben das, ein Commonwealth überhaupt zu errichten, um an ihm teilnehmen zu können, ist beim Hobbessrhen Vertragsansatz das Problem. Zu seiner Lösung ist eine vorgängige, individuell ansetzende Verbindlichkeit (überhaupt erst etwas Normatives, Präskriptives) erforderlich, die man im Sinne Warrenders "moralisch" nennen kann, da sie nicht einfach logisch ist. Ohne eine derartige Voraussetzung dürfte es z. B. unmöglich sein, außer den ersten drei, formalen, auch die weiteren, mehr inhaltlichen, natural laws abzuleiten, die Hobbes in Lev. Kap. 15 {dazu De Cive Kap. 3, 25 - vgl. Minogue S. 171) behandelt. Ob die "moralische", nicht von vornherein rational und kollektiv vermittelte Verbindlichkeit notwendig einen Rekurs auf Gott enthalten muß, ist eine andere Frage. Bei einer nicht abstrakten, sondern geschichtlichen Betrachtung des Problems ist jedoch festzuhalten, daß bei Hobbes dieser Bezug durchgängig vorhanden ist, denn Gott ist für ihn und seine Zeit des beginnenden Protestantismus der Garant des Individuums, und der Leviathan-Staat ist ein System von solchermaßen durch höchste Autorität aus jeder "natürlichen" Gemeinschaft emanzipierten Individuen. Hobbes leugnet daher keineswegs eine mögliche unmittelbare Beziehung des individuellen Gewissens zu Gott (wodurch dieses zur wichtigsten normativen Instanz würde, und eine gewisse Vergöttlichung des

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Individuums und seine absolute Vorrangigkeit vor Staat und GesellsC'haft einträte), er sagt bloß, daß sie im Staate - außer beim Souverän - politisch nicht wirksam werden dürfe. Er bekämpft die politischen Gefahren protestantischer Innerlichkeit, obwohl er ähnlich wie später Rousseau die "Religion des Herzens" für die wahrste Form der wahren Religion (des Christentums) hält. Die religiöse und moralische Innerlichkeit soll wie im Katholizismus durch eine politische Kirche kontrolliert werden, aber diese soll anders als im mittelalterlichen Katholizismus dem Souverän des jeweiligen Staates unterstehen. 2. Polin bringt die naturwissenschaftliche und politische Seite des Leviathan zusammen, wobei jedoch eine Korrektur im Sinne Warrenders nötig erscheint, der in seiner - freilich einseitigen - Herausarbeitung der politisch-naturrechtlich-"moralischen" Mitte des Leviathan weniger konstruierend vorgeht als Polin. Ähnlich wie Warrender setzt Minogue an. Aber des ersteren reduzierter Moral- und Naturrechtsbegriff ist augenscheinlich Hobbes angemessener als das, was Minogue im Anschluß an Taylor als vierte und höchste Stufe gesellschaftlicher Integration bei Hobbes sucht{insbes. S.163ff.). Er geht damit in entgegengesetzterRichtung wie Polin über Hobbes hinaus, nämlich in der Absicht, das Vorhandensein einer unmittelbar moralischen Obligation als eines "submerged pattern in Hobbes' system" (S. 170) nachzuweisen. Dabei kommt es zu einer Art Lockeschen Nivellierung der wesentlichen Unterschiede, die zwischen Hobbes einerseits und andererseits der politischen Ethik der Antike, der mittelalterlichen Naturrechtskonzeption und einer möglichen neuen Polisgesinnung bestehen (vgl. Villey; Riedei). Minogue macht aus Hobbes einen heimlichen Platon (vgl. S. 164 ff.), als wenn Hobbes irgendwo das wenigstens utopische Ideal aufstellte, diejenigen müßten regieren, die "knowledge and virtue" (S.l71) in sich vereinten, oder als wenn er meinte, alle könnten sich diesem philosophischen Ideal nähern. Vielmehr (das ist auch gegen Freunds Glorifikation des Politischen anzuführen) ist der Souverän ein bloßer, keineswegs mit überlegener Weisheit und Tugend, sondern nur mit Autorität ausgestatteter Schiedsrichter (arbitrator - vgl. Lev. Kap. V und XV). Die Hobbessche Begriffsschärfe fließt durch solche Grenzverwischungen zusammen zu der (anders als in der platonischen Theorie) politisch amorphen Struktur einer von wenigen "generous natures" (S. 163) verinnerlichten Zivilisationsethik, wobei zugleich eingeräumt wird, "that civilisation is merely aveneer over natural barbarism" {So 172). 3. Im Gegensatz zu dieser spezifisch englisch scheinenden Trübung Hobbesscher Klarheit (Minogue spricht mit Selbstironie vom "moralistic smokescreen" S. 167) geht, wie gesagt, Polin in Richtung des bei Hobbes offen zutage liegenden zunächst egoistischen, dann altruistischen Rationalismus über Hobbes hinaus. Würde seine Interpretation durch eine ge-

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wisse Korrektur im Sinne Warrenders und Minogues wohl noch angemessener, so scheint eine einschneidende Korrektur und Ergänzung im Sinne Freunds und auch Contiades' bei Polins Behandlung der politischen Theologie notwendig. Hobbes' großartiger Rationalismus ist durchgängig auch rationale Theologie. Es stimmt nicht, daß die Deduktion der laws of nature ohne Erwähnung Gottes vor sich ginge. Die wichtigste Erwähnung, worauf Freund hinweist, findet sich gleich im ersten Satz der Einleitung zum Leviathan: "Nature (the Art whereby God hath and governs the World) ... " Daß die Natur die Technik Gottes sei, und weiter, daß Gott in ihr nur als Macht gegenwärtig sei (Lev. Kap. 12), sind zwei wesentliche Voraussetzungen für die Deduktion des Commonwealth als eines Mechanismus der Selbsterhaltung. Diese Thesen stehen faktisch und an wichtiger Stelle im Argumentationsgang des Leviathan. Dagegen ist es eine bis heute unbewiesene und wohl aus den vorhandenen Zeugnissen nie eindeutig beweisbare These, daß Hobbes nur oder vor allem aus Gründen persönlicher Sicherheit auch theologisch argumentiert habe (so auch Polin S.152). Und was bedarf es solcher Hypothesen, wenn Hobbes' politische Theologie seinem Naturalismus und Rationalismus, aber auch seinem latenten Moralismus nicht widerspricht, sondern diese Aspekte ergänzt und in ein noch schärferes Licht rückt?

v. Die eingangs genannten drei Dimensionen der Hobbesschen Philosophie werden von der derzeitigen Forschung, wie die Bochumer Tagung einmal mehr zeigt, vor allem in zwei Interpretationsrichtungen entwickelt: in der rationalistischen (französischen) und der moralistischen (britischen). Dabei ergibt sich ein Widerspruch zwischen dem Hobbes unterstellten Rationalismus einerseits und Moralismus andererseits, der vielleicht durch Berücksichtigung auch der dritten Dimension wenn nicht beseitigt so doch aufgeklärt werden könnte. Im Anschluß an C. Schmitt dringt Freund in diese Dimension vor, ohne sich jedoch das Ziel einer umfassenden Hobbesdeutung vorzusetzen. Eine solche könnte ausgehen von dem, was Hobbes in der Geschichte interessant machte, nämlich von seinem politischen Atheismus. Das nach Hobbes allein festzuhaltende theologische Dogma "that Jesus is the Christ" bedeutet eine radikale Säkularisation des Politischen, besagt also, daß es nach Erscheinen des Heilands keine politischen Heilslehren mehr geben dürfe. Gott ist, politikwissenschaftlich gesehen, nur noch als Macht gegenwärtig, das heißt: die Macht ist der Gott, das höchste Prinzip der Politik. Die Macht jedoch ist ein Naturphänomen, das der Mensch wis-

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senschaftlich-technisch beherrschen kann. Er selbst ist aber auch Natur und damit auch Machtnatur. Daher ist nicht einzusehen, warum die Mensen ein gesellschaftliches System der Selbsterhaltung und Friedenssicherung einem möglichst perfekten Krieg aller gegen alle vorziehen sollten. Das Elend des Naturzustandes ist zwar notwendige, aber nicht hinreichende Bedingung zur Gründung des Commonwealth. Über diesen bloßen Anlaß hinaus muß es einen individuell, moralisch ansetzenden Appell geben, den natürlichen Verstand statt zum Kämpfen zum sich-Vertragen zu gebrauchen (vgl. Minogue S.170), denn von sich aus ist er nach beiden Seiten offen. Dieses Sollen, das die Rücksichtnahme der Individuen aufeinander betrifft, ist ein anderes Prinzip als die Ableitung eines Mechanismus zur Erhaltung von Bewegung, eines Mechanismus, der nicht dem allgemeinmenschlichen, je individuellen Wunsch nach Selbsterhaltung kongruent zu sein braucht. Das moralische Prinzip durchbricht die glatte materialistische Konstruktion und läßt einen allein technischfunktional-rational verstandenen Hobbes inkonsequent erscheinen. Hobbes' Philosophie ist aber zugleich theologisch rational, will sagen, sie fragt nach einem obersten Bezugspunkt eines praktischen Systems. Da dieser nach dem Mißbrauch, den die katholische, politische Kirche damit getrieben hatte und der Protestantismus damit zu treiben drohte, politisch neutral sein sollte, stand Hobbes vor der schwierigen Aufgabe, einen politischen Atheismus und Immoralismus zu entwickeln, der nicht zugleich alle menschliche Praxis bestimmt. Die gesuchte praktische, aber im allgemeinen nicht politische Moral muß zugleich religiös sein, weil eine ebenso radikal wie die Politik säkularisierte Ethik (ein Comtescher Altruismus) im Fall einer pessimistischen Beurteilung der menschlichen Natur vor der unlösbaren Schwierigkeit steht, die naturrechtliche Fundierung des Staatsrechts aus der Negation alles Rechts (vgl. Villey) unmittelbar ableiten zu müssen. So wird zur Ergänzung einer religiös und moralisch neutralen Politik jener latente Moralismus notwendig, der offen, politisch nur zum Zuge kommt erstens beim Abschluß des anfänglichen grundlegenden Vertrages aller mit allen und zweitens in der Person des Souveräns. Der Indifferenzpunkt der materialistischen, "unmoralischen" Politik und der latenten Sozialmoral ist bei Hobbes nicht praktisch, sondern spekulativ. Er liegt im Hobbesschen Gottesbegrüf. Im Reich Gottes fiele diese Differenz dahin, aber solange die Weltgeschichte dauert, in der die Menschen durch den Sündenfall "Gods office" übernommen haben, "which is Judicature of Good and Evill; but acquired no new ability to distinguish between them aright" (Lev. Kap. 20; vgl. Kap. 29 u. 35), herrscht zur Strafe für d.en menschlichen Hochmut (Lev. Kap. 28 Ende) der Leviathan und damit die Entzweiung. Es ist die politische Ordnung der Außenlenkung und des Zwanges, die sich gründet auf die Trennung von "innen" und "außen" 17 Thomas Hobbes

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(Lev. passim) sowie von primärer, religiöser Moral und machtphysikalischer Politik, - ein Gegensatz, der von der dazwischen liegenden altruistischen, rationalen, aber nur halb verinnerlichten Gesellschafts- und Zivilisationsmoral nur unsicher und zweideutig vermittelt wird. Diesem Gegensatz entspricht die Trennung von konditionaler (funktionaler) und absoluter Wissenschaft, das heißt von Wissenschaft, die allein diesen Namen verdient, und Theologie, die nur als negative möglich ist. Als solche wird sie von der Hobbesschen Philosophie entwickelt, und die Philosophie ist auch diejenige Wissenschaft, welche die Notwendigkeit der Entzweiung nachweist, indem sie die zu trennenden Momente zusammen überschaut. Mehr kann sie für die Einheit des Menschen und des Politischen nicht tun.

Hobbes and Existentialism: Some Affinities By Winfried Dallmayr, Lafayette From the distant shores of Stuart England Thomas Hobbes still speaks to us in a strangely familiar and captivating idiom. Obviously, traversing the rugged expanse of four centuries, some of his words are muffled and obscure; but whatever the obstacles, our generation seems willing to strain in order to perceive more clearly the subtle inflections of this voice. During the past decade the literature devoted to Hobbes has expanded rapidly both in volume and breadth of focus, covering the most diverse topics of his natural and civil philosophy. The reasons for this preoccupation are complex and elusive. One motivation may derive from the aspect that Hobbes stood at the beginning of various intellectual and social trends whose culmination or eclipse is witnessed in our own time. According to Crawford Macpherson, Hobbes was one of the first advocates of "possessive individualism", an anthropological doctrine which, concentrating on the accumulation and protection of property as man's primary motives, became a cornerstone of the market economy and modern industrial society. Taking a broader view, Jürgen Habermas identified Hobbes as one of the ancestors of technological rationalism, a rationalism which, in its combination of rigorous analysis and technical invention, continues to animate the "scientific revolution" of our age 1 • No doubt, these and similar interpretations posses great plausibility and persuasiveness; but they hardly tell the entire story. Neither Hobbes's vocabulary nor our own seem restricted to this range of discourse. While attractive to the scientific mentality of a technological era, Hobbes's voice also reaches us on a different level or frequency: the level of basic human experience. From this vantage point one may assurne that Hobbes's current appeal is due, at least in part, to the affinity of his idiom to that of contemporary existentialist literature. The present pages seek to explore this assumption. The attempt to trace a linkage between Hobbes and existentialism may seem whimsical or extravagant. One may object, first of all, that 1 Jürgen Habermas, Theorie und Praxis (Neuwied 1963), pp. 32-46; Crawford B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford 1962), pp. 9-106, and "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man", in K. C. Brown, ed., Hobbes Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 169-183.

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the enterprise is excessively subjective and that violence is done to the "original" Hobbes in an effort to render hirn our contemporary. To this charge I would answer, initially, that it exaggerates the ambition of these pages; the intent here is not to present Hobbes as an "existentialist", but merely to suggest a certain affinity, a feasibility of developing some of his statements in an existentialist direction. To the rest of the charge, however, I plead guilty without embarrassment; any interpretation proceeds from the perspective of one's experience. In any event, my interest is not antiquarian; if it could be shown that Hobbes was merely a remote ancestor, living in a world totally alien to our own, I would simply conclude that I have no business with hirn. In a slight reformulation of the same charge, the objection may be raised that the proposed exploration ignores the lapse of time and implies an immutable anthropology or the postulate of a constant human nature behind the flux of social configurations. To this objection I would reply that the following argument does not properly involve a fixed human ontology, but at best a certain way of viewing the world and man in the world. Moreover, despite profound fissures and upheavals, the passage of four centuries has hardly produced the irreparable breach that would preclude the intended comparison. Another query which cannot be escaped concerns terminology; a presentation of Hobbes from the perspective of "existentialism" is under an obligation to specüy the use of this notoriously ambiguous concept. To some extent, I have to resort to a stipulative procedure. No effort will be made here to delve into the recesses of religious existentialism or into the intricacies of Heideggerian ontology; rather I shall limit myself to a certain secular and progressive version, aversion which I find exemplified in the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre and, to some extent, Albert Camus2 • As to the content of this version, I have to limit myself at this point to the roughest outlines. In the case of all three writers, existentialism proceeds at least in a loose way from the proposition that existence precedes essence, that human lile is not channeled by a preordained teleology inherent either in nature or reason. Human experience, in this view, is intimately wedded to concrete phenomena and situations; however, while expelled from the refuge of a transcendent spirituality, man constantly eludes the world of objects through an act of withdrawal or denial. Existence thus is astate of breach or estrangement and, at the same time, an incessant search to I As is weH known, Camus frequently objected to the existentialist (or to any other) label; but his objection derived largely from a presumed coincidence of existentialism with a leap into faith or an escape into transcendental meaning, e. g., The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays, trans!. by Justin O'Brien (New York 1955), pp. 24-31.

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remedy the breach. Alienation and anxiety have frequently been identified as basic existentialist themes; but exclusive reliance on these themes may tend to submerge existentialism in sentiment and psychic peculiarities. Perhaps Merleau-Ponty offered a corrective to this tendency when he wrote: "A more complete definition of what is called existentialism than we get from talking of anxiety and the contradictions of the human condition might be found in the idea of a universality which men affirm or imply by the mere fact of their being and at the very moment of their opposition to each other, in the idea of a reason immanent in unreason, of a freedom which comes into being in the act of accepting limits and to which the least perception, the slightest movement of the body, the smallest action,bear incontestable witness"3.

I. Mind and Matter, Being and Consciousness Examinations of Hobbes's moral position or view of life commonly start from his conception of "human nature", a conception which sees man as a rational animal, a hybrid composed of passion and rationality. In one of his early writings, Hobbes speaks of "the two principal parts of our nature, reason and passion"; somewhat later he refers to the "two most certain postulates" of appetite and reason which, translated into human endowments, can be described as "faculties of the body, and faculties of the mind"4. While useful as guideposts to his moral outlook, these statements also seem to provide a rough delineation of his philosophical position. First ofall, the stipulated dichotomy seems to differentiate Hobbes's thought from ambitious monistic schemes, both from a comprehensive rationalism or idealism in which the world appears as derivative of a constituting spirituality, and from a self-sustaining realism or "materialism" in which man is submerged in objects and external conditions. At the same time, Hobbes's dichotomy does not coincide with a juxtaposition of two separate realms of substances, in the manner of the Cartesian mind-body dualism. Mind, in Hobbes's treatment, remains linked to bodily movements and sensations; largely restricted to a calculating function, it lacks the speculative energies of a thinking substance. On the other hand, Hobbes's conception of bodies and the objective world is by no means as unambiguous as a naive realism would require. The intimate juncture of elements appears as a distinctive mark of Hobbesian philosophy. It would be pointless to deny, however, that the same juncture also conceals some profound philosoa "Hegel's Existentialism", in Sense and Non-Sense, trans!. with preface by Hubert L. and Patricia A. Dreyfus (Evanston 1964), p. 70. On the theme of alienation see, e. g., F. H. Heinemann, ExistentiaUsm and the Modern Predicament (New York 1958), pp. 9-13. , Elements of Law, Ep. ded. and pt. I, eh. 1, art. 4, 5; De Cive, Ep. ded.

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phical dilemmas - dilemmas which Hobbes never entirely resolved, although his endeavors frequently foreshadowed the explorations of later centuries. The problematic character of Hobbes's position emerges above aIl in his epistemology. As is weIl known, Hobbes conceived the subject matter of both his natural and civil philosophy in terms of "bodies" (either physical or "politique") which he defined as things "coincident or coextended with some part of space" and as "having no dependence upon our thought". However, to Hobbes as to Galilei, mere sense impressions or collections of data did not yet constitute philosophical knowledge or understanding in the strict sense of the term. To obtain knowledge properly speaking, objects had to undergo rigorous analysis, be decomposed into their constitutive elements and reconstructed on the basis of generating factors. Anything (including society and commonwealth) that submitted to such analysis and reconstruction qualified for the term "body"; at the same time, only "bodies" could be objects of rigorous knowledge, were real in the philosophical sense. From this perspective, the presumed "materialism" of Hobbes reveals its elusive quality. If the line of argument is pursued, reality strictly defined tends to result from a constructive analytical reason; on the other hand, the realm of factual data, the world of contingency, is in danger of lapsing into unintelligible if not inaccessible darkness 5• To be sure, Hobbes never embraced this extreme position. Distinguishing between sense data and analysis, he identified the coIlection of the former as "knowledge of fact" (although the epistemological basis of this knowledge remained uncertain). More importantly, he tried to corroborate a linkage between factual genesis and analytical construction (hut again, the relationship of history and science was never sufficiently explored). From a different vantage point, the dilemma of cognitive rationality reappears in Hobbes's psychology. The spotlight of analysis tended to obscure not only contingent factuality, but also the realm of consciousness and subjective awareness. To qualify for philosophical knowledge, individual awareness had to be construed as an object in motion, amenable to division into constituent parts and to reassembly on the basis of generating factors. No doubt, Hobbes spent considerable efforts to demonstrate the linkage between awareness and bodily motions. Thus, conceptions were said to result from the motion of external objects upon sensory organs and nerves and from the countermovement of brain and heart. Imagination was described as remaining and "decaying sense", on the basis of an analogy with standing water which "put into motion by 5 Riehard Hoenigswald, Hobbes und die Staatsphilosophie (Munieh 1924), pp. 32, 52; compare also De Corpore, pt. I, eh. 6, art. 1; pt. II, eh. 8, art. 1.

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the stroke of a stone, or blast of wind, does not presently give over moving as soon as the wind ceases, or the stone settles". In a similar vein, fiction was defined as a combination of movements, again in analogy with water which, exposed to diverse impacts, "receives one motion compounded of them a11". Even the sequence of thoughts was ascribed to the original succession of motions, "in so much as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the later fo11ows, by coherence of the matter moved in such manner, as water upon a plain table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger"«. However, is consciousness properly intelligible when treated as "body" in this manner? Movement, one will agree, can produce movement or countermovement; but the demonstration of a linkage with sensory impacts does not yet reveal how bodily movements are transformed into awareness in general and individual identity in particular. That such considerations were not alien to Hobbes, is shown at least in some of his psychological passages. Thus, at one point, "remembrance" is described as an internal sixth sense through which "we take notice also some way or other of our conceptions". Another passage sees among a11 phenomena or appearances the "most admirable" in "apparition" or the experience of phenomena, in the fact "that some natural bodies have in themselves the patterns almost of a11 things, and others of none at a11"; such experience or awareness shou1d therefore be acknow1edged as basis of a11 other princip1es and forms of knowledge. Noteworthy are also his statements on the negative or nihilating capacity of reason; but these and similar observations remained fragments 7• Even a cursory acquaintance with existentialism discloses the extent to which the mentioned dilemmas continue to preoccupy contemporary philosophy. Especia11y under the influence of phenomeno10gy, the re1ationship between subject and object, between phenomena and consciousness emerged as a basic theme of existentialist thought. Husserl's efforts, as will be reca11ed, had been prompted by the "crisis of the European sciences", a crisis which, resulting from deve10pments in mathematics and physics, revea1ed the "artificial" character of a scientific epistemology in which ana1ytica1 concepts were treated as the sole means of gaining objective knowledge of phenomena. In order to overcome this crisis, Husserl explored the vital underpinnings of this epistemo10gy and especia11y the linkage between an original, "constituting" consciousness and the rea1m of objective, "constituted" meaning-structures. Fo11owing to some extent in Husserl's footsteps, Merleau-Ponty's first study tried to 6 Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 2, art. 2, 8; eh. 3, art. 1,4; eh. 4, art. 2; Leviathan, pt. I, ehs. 1, 2, 3. 7 Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 3, art. 6; De Corpore, pt. H, eh. 7, art. 1; pt. IV, eh. 25, art. 1; see also Hoenigswald, op. cit., pp. 70, 108-110.

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uncover the structures and infrastructures of human behaviour - behind and underneath the analytical abstractions of psychology. Behaviour, he observed at the time, "is not a thing, but neither is it an idea", an "envelope of a pure consciousness"; its peculiarity had to be found in its structure of relations, its blending of receptivity and projection8 • The existential implications of this view were developed more explicitly in his Phenomenology of Perception. The central aim of the study was to understand how man is able to constitute the meaning-structures of experience while finding this experience always already constituted in terms of significations not of his making. In this experience of the world as constituted and yet always in need of human construction resided for Merleau-Ponty the core of "existence", of man's presence in the world defined as an "existential field". As Richard McCleary points out, existence to Merleau-Ponty signified "thought in act - our unending assumption of already constituted facts and hazards in a meaninggiving act of constitution which does not exist before or wihtout that assumption"9. In an essay written at the end of the war, Merleau-Ponty delineated in broad strokes the characteristic position of existentialism with reference to traditional philosophical systems. Two classical views, he observed, could be distinguished with regard to man's relation to the world: "one treats man as the result of the physical, physiological, and sociological influences which shape hirn from the outside and make hirn one thing among many; the other consists of recognizing an a-cosmic freedom in hirn, insofar as he is spirit and represents to himself the very causes which supposedly act upon hirn. On the one hand, man is apart of the world; on the other, he is the constituting consciousness of the world. Neither view is satisfactory." The first alternative could be criticized on the grounds that, if man were an object among many, he could not know any of them "because he would be locked in his own limits like this chair or that table, present at a certain location in space and therefore incapable of representing to hirnself a11 the others". But while characterized by a special "intentional" mode of being, man could not therefore be construed as absolute spirit, since in such treatment "our corporal and social ties with the world and our insertion in it would 8 The Structure of Behavior, transI. by AIden L. Fisher (Boston 1963), p. 127. • "Translator's Preface" to Signs (Evanston 1964), p. XIV. Compare also the comments by Hubert L. and Patricia A. Dreyfus: "Like MarceI, Merleau-Ponty means by 'body' neither an object known from without nor a pure subject completely transparent to itself. For Merleau-Ponty the body is just the capacity to experience perceptual solicitations and to make them more determinate by moving to reveal what is concealed ... This bodily set-to-explore . .. thus turns out to be precisely that organizing activity which has been called 'ex-istence'." "Translator's Introduction" to Sense and Non-Sense,

p.XII.

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become incomprehensible". The merit of the "new" philosophy, MerleauPonty added, was precisely that, in the notion of existence, it tried to find a way of thinking and speaking about the human condition. In the modern sense of the term, "existence" had to be understood as "the movement through which man is in the world and involves hirnself in a physical and social situation which then becomes his point of view on the world". Such involvement was necessarily ambiguous since itimplied both an affirmation and restriction of freedom: it constituted a limitation of man's view on the world and yet the only way to approach the world and act in it. Above all, the relationship between subject and object as conceived by existentialism was "no longer that relationship 01 knowing postulated by classical idealism, wherein the object always seems the construction of the subject, but a relationship 01 being in which, paradoxically, the subject is his body, his world, and bis situation, by a sort of exchange"lO. Merleau-Ponty's essay was a response to some queries and comments provoked by the publication of J ean-Paul Sartre's Being and N othingness. As is commonly known, Sartre's thinking has always been strongly dominated by the question of the correlation between consciousness and the world, between freedom and situation. One of his first phenomenological studies had attacked the identification of creative imagination with incorrect perception or error in judgment and had developed a distinction between perceptual and imaginative acts in terms of different "intentional" structures. In The Psychology 01 the Imagination, Sartre rejected completely the common opinion that imagination was a vague or decaying perception, arguing on the contrary that consciousness, and imagination in particular, involved a capacity of nihilation. Although inevitably linked with the world, consciousness could not be identified v.rith this world since, as awareness of an object, consciousness was also awareness of not being the object. Already at this point, consciousness was thus closely connected with the ideas of nothingness and freedom, a freedom which, in Sartre's words, had to be construed as a "being-inthe-world which is at once the constitution and the negation of the world". In Being and Nothingness, this theme was developed in greater breadth and detail on the basis of a refined philosophical distinction between conscious and uhconscious being ("for-itself" and "in-itself"), between the "being of phenomena" and the "phenomenon of being". The tenor of the study was that consciousness should be viewed as nothingness, hut as a nothingness which is a revelation of being. As Sartre wrote, the statement that "consciousness is consciousness 01 something" signifies that "transcendence is, the constitutive structure of consciousness", that 10

"The Battle over Existentialism", in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 71-72.

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consciousness is "born supported by a being which is not itself" and that it "must produce itself as a revealed revelation" of this being. While paying greater attention to concrete social conditions, his laterworkscanstill be viewed as variations on the same basic theme. Reformulating consciousness in terms of human praxis and activity, the Critique of Dialectical Reason links the dialectic of individual projects with the counterdialectic of inertial conditions and the pinch of necessity ll. 11. Anthropology and Sodal Conflict Starting from principles of analysis and the basic properties of inanimate and animate bodies, Hobbes's philosophical system proceeds to an examination of human attitudes and dispositions in their "natural" state (or in the absence of a civil community). Some of the propositions advanced at this point have received wide currency, as distinctive trademarks of Hobbesian thought; but their basis is less frequently explored. The thesis of man's "perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceases only in death" and the portrayal of "natural" human life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" are sometimes ascribed to the pessimism, if not the base disposition of the philosopher; in this manner, his anthropology is reduced to a personal idiosyncracy. To be sure, the context in which these propositions are advanced does not always enhance their persuasiveness. The argument that perception and sensory experience result from bodily movements and countermovements might lead the reader to the conclusion that, far from being compelled to a restless search, man could be sufficiently constrained and contented by this circulation of movements. The situation is not remedied by the assuption of a basic fissure in Hobbes's view of man and by the appeal from a "mechanistic" to a "vitalistic" or spiritualist version of anthropology - for in the latter version, man might still find repose in an unlimited internality and transcendence12 • Although it is probably true that Hobbes never fully clarified his thoughts on this point, many of his observations seem to point in the direction of a view which is by no means unfamiliar to existentialism: the conception of the congruous incongruity of human experience, of man as a deficiency constantly in quest of reality. 11 The Psychology of the Imagination (New York 1948), p. 269; Being and Nothingness, transl. with introduction by Hazel E. Barnes(New York 1956), pp. LXI-LXII. Compare also Eugene F. Kaelin, "Three Stages on Sartre's Way", in George L. Kline, ed., European Philosophy Today (Chicago 1965), pp. 89-111. 12 Compare Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago 1963), p. 9; also my essay "Strauss and the 'Moral Basis' of Thomas Hobbes", Archiv für Rechts- und Sozial philosophie, vol. 52 (1966), pp. 25-63.

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The contours of this incongruity emerged only slowly in Hobbes's writings. In the first sketch of his philosophical position, the thesis of the dependence of human motivation and of animal motion in general on external impacts was joined almost abruptly with the conception of a restless competition and discord; the nexus remained largely implicit13. Still the treatment of human sensation in terms of a quasi-mechanical motion seemed to preclude at least the metaphysical notion of a human essence, of a preordained teleology gently directing man's path with the promise of fulfillment. Some implications of man's predicament were developed in De Cive. Arguing against Aristotle's view of man as a "political animaI", Hobbes in the opening chapter maintained that nature had not provided man so conveniently with a goal or haven. While admitting that it might seem "a wonderful kind of stupidity" to place this stumbling block in the threshold of his doctrine, he insisted that man's inclinations and desires, even when ultimately directed at social commerce, did not by themselves procure peace; civil society, in short, was the result less of natural inclination than of design and planning. The nexus between natural inclinations and human discord was explored more fully in the Leviathan. Although alluded to in earlier writings, the divergence between animal and human experience was now specified in greater detail and the borderline demarcated; almost invariably, the distinctive criterion was placed in the peculiar structure of human consciousness and imagination. Thus, while signals of command were found to be intelligible to most animate creatures, man was assigned the special capacity of "understanding not only his will, but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of things into affirmations, negations and other forms of speech". Moreover, man could go beyond the immediate confines of perception by trying to figure out the likely consequences and possible uses of an object - a faculty, Hobbes writes, "of which I have not at any time seen any sign but in man only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other passion but sensual". Coupled with this inventiveness was man's rational potential, his ability developed through training to "reduce the consequences he finds to general rules", to "reason or reckon, not only in number, but in all other things"14. 13 Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 7, art. 3, 4, 5; eh. 9, art. 21 (comparison of human life with a "race"). 14 De Cive, pt. I, eh. 1, art. 2; Leviathan, pt. I, ehs. 2, 3, 5. Compare also these passages in a letter to the Marquis of Newcastle: "The passions of man's mind, except only one, may be observed all in other living creatures. They have desires of all sorts, love, hatred, fear, hope, anger, pity, emulation, and the like: only curiosity, whieh is the desire to know the causes of things, I never saw sign in any other living creature but in man ... And therefore as in the cognitive faculties reason, so in the motive curiosity, are the marks that part the bounds of man's nature from that of beasts." E. W., vol. 7, p. 467.

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Largely on the basis of these arguments Hobbes then advanced his general thesis of the deficiency and restlessness of human life. The absence of a preordained essence and the incongruity between man's imagination and the world supported the conclusion that man on earth could not find ultimate fulfi11ment or a finis ultimus, that the "felicity of this life" resided not "in the repose of a mind satisfied" or the attainment of an object, but rather in the "continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the later". To this thesis, the further proposition of human conflict and discord could be attached without great difficulty. For in the pursuit of his goals, man cannot avoid encountering others engaged in a similar endeavour. This general search or race, however, is dominated not only by a (historica11y variable) scarcity of desired goods, but above a11 by a scarcity of positions in front or on top, and from this scarcity derives the danger of hostility and even physical destruction. Moreover, man in the pursuit of his ends has to assure hirnself constantly of the necessary means; due to their diverse abilities, other human beings are liable to be employed as such objects or instruments (or to be subdued or destroyed in case of resistance). As Hobbes observes, there are three principal sources of human conflict - competition, diffidence, and resentment: competition to use and subdue others as objects, diffidence of being used or subdued as such, and resentment for being valued more as an object that a person16• As will readily be admitted, the discussed issues continue to reverberate strongly in contemporary existentialist thought; indeed, man's predicament in a disenchanted universe is sometimes identified as existentialism's chief concern. In the writings of Albert Camus, man is portrayed as a wandering stranger, an exile in a silent and inhospitable land. While perhaps transparent to a divine intelligence, the world does not disclose a meaning for man, a justification of his presence. "In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights", Camus writes, "man feels an alien, astranger. His exile is without remedy since heisdeprived of the memory of a lost horne or the hope of a promised land". In the absence of a preordained teleology, human life becomes a defiant adventure, a voyage without the promise of a safe harbor; "man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is". On this voyage, the longing for rest and fulfi11ment has to be abandoned as an illusory hope. The man who realizes his predicament, the "absurdity" of his condition, is also 15 Leviathan, pt. I, chs. 11, 13 (Hobbes uses "glory" for resentment); also De Cive, pt. I, eh. 1, art. 6: "But the most frequent reason why men desire to hurt eaeh other, arises hence, that many men at the same time have an appetite to the same thing; whieh yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it; whence it follows that the strongest must have it and who is strongest must be decided by the sword."

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"that individual who. wants to. achieve everything and live everything", who.se ambitio.n is "first and fo.remo.st being faced with the Wo.rld as o.ften as Po.ssible"lt. From this general quest, the likeliho.o.d of human Co.nflict would seem to. fo.llo.W as a natural co.nsequence. Curio.usly, despite his emphasis o.n rebellion and revo.lt, Camus never devoted much attentio.n to. Co.nflict. The rebellio.n which preo.ccupied hirn was mo.re a pro.test against man's predicament than an actual co.ntest between men; his tho.ughts, as it seems, were always impatient to. reach the stage o.f general hum~n co.nco.rd and understanding. With mo.re patience (and less abstractio.n) o.ther co.ntempo.rary thinkers have examined the evidence and co.nsequences o.f man's predicament. In a co.mment o.n Hegel's Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty observed that "man, as o.ppo.sed to. the pebble which is what it is, is defined as a place of unrest (Unruhe), a co.nstant effort to. get back to. himself, and co.nsequently by his refusal to limit hirnself to. one or another o.f his determinatio.ns". The so.urce o.f this unrest was assigned precisely to the incongruity of human experience, to. the discrepancy between co.nscio.usness and the o.bjects o.f the world. "Whatever relatio.nships may besho.wn to. exist between conscio.usness and the bo.dy or brain", he argued, "all the disco.veries of phreno.Io.gy will not suffice to. make co.nscio.usness a bane, for a bone is still a thing or a being, and if the only compo.nents o.f the wo.rld were things or beings, there would no.t be even a semblance of what we call man - that is, a being which is no.t, which denies things, an existence witho.Ut an essence". Ho.wever, acco.rding to. Merleau-Po.nty, human experience was distinguished no.t only fro.m a "bo.ne", but also. fro.m animal life because of the different structure o.f awareness. Co.nsciousness, he wro.te, "implies the ability to step back from any given thing and to deny it. An animal can quietly find contentment in life and can seek salvatio.n in repro.ductio.n; man's only access to. the universal is the fact that he exists instead o.f merely living ... Life can o.nly be tho.Ught o.f as revealed to. a consciousness o.f life which denies it". Yet, the view o.f existence as denial and negatio.n remains elusive on the level of definitio.n; negatio.n beco.mes co.ncrete experience only in man's encounter with other human beings. At this po.int, pheno.menolo.gy adds a philo.So.phical criterio.n to. Ho.bbes's anthro.po.Io.gical argument o.f human Co.nflict. Due to. the inco.ngruent juncture o.f co.nscio.usness and the wo.rld, the awakening o.f individual awareness is bo.und to. reduce o.ther human beings to. the status o.f o.bjects o.f awareness, a reductio.n which fro.m the denial o.f their human quality may pro.ceed to. the level of vio.lence and physical destructio.n. In the wo.rds o.f Merleau-Po.nty: "The o.nly experience which brings me elo.se to. an authentic awareness o.f death 18 The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 5, 46, 61; also The Rebel, trans!. by A. Bower (New York 1956), pp. 11, 248.

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is the experience of contact with another, since under his gaze I am only an object just as he is merely a piece of the world under my own. Thus each consciousness seeks the death of the other which it feels dispossesses it of its constitutive nothingness"17. Sartre's writings abound with descriptions of human incompleteness and insufficiency. Already one of his earliest studies explored man's vertigo or anguish before the recognition that nothing in his past or personality structure ensured or excused his pattern of conduct. In the novel Nausea, the protagonist is overcome by the lack of a preordained meaning or purpose, by the realization that existence is contingent and unjustifiable. "We are a heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves", Roquentin observes; "we hadn't the slightest reason to be there, none of us; each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, feIt de trop in relation to the others". In Being and N othingness this deficiency was investigated and corroborated from the perspective of consciousness. Man, Sartre now argued, is "the being through whom nothingness comes into the world", the being whose life implies an incessant withdrawal and negation. The relation of existence to essence in man is "not comparable to what it is for the things of the world" since "human freedom precedes essence in man and makes it possible". Incapable of taking his cues from a prearranged destiny, man has to chart his own course; his present has meaning only in the light of a future which is his own project. In Sartre's terminology, man as the "for-itself" is a nothingness in constant pursuit of definite being or the "in-itself". This pursuit, however, remains futile, since man in vain tries to escape his nihilating awareness; uItimate synthesis eludes hirn in this world. As Hazel Barnes comments: "For the for-itself to be one with the in-itself would necessitate an identification of fullness of being and non-being - an identification impossible because self-contradictory. The only way by which the foritself could become in-itself would be to ce ase being for-itself, and this we have seen can happen only in death"18. Sartre's later writings still reflect the same concern with man's elusive search. "Man", he writes in Question of Method, "defines hirnself by his project"; in continually sur17 "Hegel's Existentialism", in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 66--68. Compare also John F. Bannan, The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty (New York 1967), p.86. 18 Being and Nothingness, p. XXXI; at another point she adds (p. XXVIII): "With Sartre, to destroy a11 desire would be to destroy the for-itself - not in the nothingness of Nirvana but absolutely. A satisfied for-itself would no longer be a for-itself. The for-itself is desire; that is, it is the nihilating project toward a being which it can never have or be but which as an end gives the for-itself its meaning." For Sartre's statements see ibid., p. 24-25; Nausea, transl. by Lloyd Alexander (New York 1949), p. 172; The Transcendence of the Ego, transl. with introduction by F. Williams and R. Kirkpatrick (New York 1957), p. 100.

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passing his condition "he reveals and determines his situation by transcending it in order to objectify hirnself - by work, action or gesture". This projection, he adds, "is what we call existence, by which we do not mean a stable substance which rests in itself, but rather a perpetual disequilibrium, a wrenching away from itself with all its body"18. As in the case of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre's view of human existence is intimately connected with the theme of social conflict. The famous phrase in No Exit, "l'enfer c'est l'autre", has startled (though perhaps not enlightened) audiences for some time. In Being and Nothingness conflict is discussed largely in terms of awareness. In the eyes of another person an individual is necessarily turned into astrange object, into something which he has not chosen to be. "Beneath the other's look", Sartre writes, "I experience my alienation and my nakedness as a fall from grace which I must assurne" . This experience, however, is reciprocal because, in looking at the other, "by the very fact of my own self-assertion I constitute hirn as an object and as an instrument, and I cause hirn to experience that same alienation which he must now assurne" . As a result, conflict is "the original meaning of being-for-others"20. In the Critique 01 Dialectical Reason the discussion of the subject-object dilemma is expanded and deepened through the notion of scarcity. Since man must design his project in a given situation and since the world known to us is characterized by a shortage of desired goods and positions, "scarcity defines a particular relation of the individual to his environment". Through his involvement in the material environment, however, man's activity "rebounds against man hirnself"; he becomes part of an objective and inhuman dimension. In this dimension, every individual constitutes for others an object among objects, an obstaclt~ to be overcome or subdued; thus everyone carries in hirnself for all others "the menace of death". In the words of Wilfried Desan, scarcity is the element of negativity built into social relations "by which one is capable of killing or vulnerable to being killed"21.

m. Natural Law and Etbics No part of Hobbes's writings is more intensely controverted than his theory of moral obligation. Lodged at the juncture between the "state of nature" and the commonwealth, his moral philosophy clearly occupies 18 Search for a Method, trans!. under this title by Hazel E. Barnes (New York 1963), pp. 150-151. 20 Being and Nothingness, pp. 364, 410. !1 Critique de la raison dialectique(hereafter abbreviated Critique; Paris 1960), pp. 204, 206, 208; Wilfrid Desan, The Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre (Garden City 1965), pp. 91-94.

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a crucial place in his entire argument. Broadly speaking, two main alternative interpretations have emerged in this area, interpretations which, though conceived as radical opposites, are perhaps not entirely incompatible. According to the first and more traditional view, Hobbes's moral theory coincides with his psychology of natural dispositions and amounts in essence to a doctrine of self-interest, adorned with prudential admonitions. The second view - originating in the "Taylor thesis" formulated before the last war-regards Hobbes's moral tenets asentirely divorced from his psychology or anthropology, as a true deontology based on non-empirical, transcendent values. Among other adherents of the latter view, Howard Warrender at one time argued that Hobbes subscribed to a prescriptive ethics strictly independent of any notion of self-interest and self-preservation, an ethics deriving its ultimate sanction from divine injunction. Combining the two alternatives, Leo Strauss meanwhile has championed a dualistic interpretation, patterned after the neo-Kantian "Sein-Sollen" dichotomy; unable or unwilling to resolve the dilemma, Hobbes in this view is assumed to oscillate perpetually between a naturalist and a prescriptive morality - with great damage to the coherence of his thoughts 22 • It is at this state of the argument that existentialism intervenes questioning the foundation and ineluctable character of the stipulated dichotomy. For why - one can legitimately ask - must human life be unproductive of responsibility? And how can transcendent principles be morally relevant without regard to .human concerns and needs? It is at the same point, as it seems to me, that Thomas Hobbes intervenes by postulating the search for peace as a standard compatible with human experience. To areader anxious for hidden mysteries, Hobbes's argument must appear dry and uninspiring; his terse sentences never soar to the heights of eternal vistas or awesome revelations. His starting point - life and its continuous affirmation - is almost offensively mundane. Human existence to Hobbes is a simple original fact unsupported by teleological justifications. Human lüe can neither be derived from nor be explained in terms of a higher reason or immutable principles; rather, whatever principles can be found are linked to this humble and dark origin. Even when life is traced to the fiat of divine omnipotence, this omnipotence ZZ Compare A. E. Taylor, "The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes", and Stuart M. Brown, Jr., "The Taylor Thesis: Some Objections", in Brown, op. cit., pp. 35--55, 57-71; Howard Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford 1957), pp. 93, 213; Strauss, op. cit., pp. 8 ff. Reviewing the two alternatives,

Michael Oakeshott has advanced a "third" solution, tracing a11 obligation to the command oI a legitimate authority - a solution which bypasses rather than answers the question of a precivil, moral obligation; "The Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes", in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (New York 1962), pp. 248-300. See also his "Introduction" to Leviathan (Oxford 1946), pp. LVIII-LXI.

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neither owed nor offered man a justification of his act. Although a simple fact, however, life is also an act of affirmation. By his mere presence - by breathing, consuming food, and the like - man affirms life and his desire to live. Melancholy ennui and death wish are in this respect insignificant and unconvincing. Even the final step of suicide is an act of life until the point of successful completion; but atthis point death silences man's argument. While alive, man necessarily confirms and seeks life and its preservation; he also endeavours to obtain the means which seem conducive to this goal. Thus man - not hypothetically, but in reality and inevitably-acts in such a way as to endeavour what he thinks good for himself (bonum sibi) and to avoid what he considers harmful, "but most of all the terrible enemy of nature, death, from whom we ,expect both the lass of all power and also the greatest of bodily pains in the losin,g". Such behaviour is not only inevitable, but also legitimate in its basic intent. Reason, unproductive of life, cannot veto the affirmation of life. But since what is not against reason is called "right" or "blameless liberty", everyone must be conceded the original privilege or, as Hobbes says, "the right of nature" to "preserve his own life and limbs with all the power he has" and with all available means2S• Pursued as a prompting of nature, however, the affirmation of life carries within itself the seeds of contradiction and destruction. In the absence of additional safeguards, man's pursuit of life rebounds against hirnself; in seeking the means of his preservation, he encounters others as objects and obstacles and is liable to endanger both their lives and his own. As such or as an outgrowth of nature, this conflict is beyond judgment. Nature cannot be described as wicked without absurdity (or, if on likes, impiety), because nature merely seeks preservation without regard to human standards or to the damage inflicted. It is only to man that this conftict can appear offensive because man, although apart of nature, is also conscious of its processes. To human consciousness, however, nature's blind conftict reveals itself as an intolerable contradiction. For, as has been shown, man by his mere presence demonstrates his intention to live; by the same token, since he cannot discard the presence of others, he demonstrates his intention to live with others. But if, in the pursuit of his aims, he provokes the danger of mutual destruction, he acts as if he intends to be killed24 • The realization of this contradiction - indifferent to nature - becomes a sting to man's awareness and the Elements of Law, pt. I, ch. 14, art. 6,7. "The state of hostility and war being such, as thereby nature itself is destroyed and men kill one another ... he therefore that desires to live in such astate as is the state of liberty and right of all to all, contradicts himself. For every man by natural necessity desires his own good, to which this state is contrary." Ibid., pt. I, ch. 14, art. 12. 23 24

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first signal of rebellion: the signal for an attempt to overcome nature's haphazard condition through creative design, through the establishment of a peaceful and civilized lüe. The road leading from conflict to pe ace, however, is slow and arduous. In Hobbes's argument, reason never rises far above nature's contradiction; rational awareness remains linked to the unrational contingency of existence and human passion. Even when designing a civil remedy, man does not simply abandon his natural inclinations; rather, compelled to seek his own good (that is, his preservation) by an apparently careless nature, he can be reconciled with himself and his awareness only in a condition in which nature's aim is more stably secured against avoidable dangers 25• Moreover, the realization of nature's contradiction is not an inspiration with the power of sudden transformation. Although implanted in man by nature, reason in Hobbes's view is a tender faculty requiring cultivation and industry; especially in the state of nature where passions abound, rational awareness is liable to be a fragile giftlW. If reason requires cultivation, the pursuit of its precepts demands diligence and foresight. For reason cannot effect the immediate removal of nature's dilemma; it is only with a view toward the future or in the context of time that this dilemma can be remedied, because only in this context is man able to subordinate his short-range good to the long-range good of a more secure life2 7 • Finally, in Hobbes's argument, the task of building a civillife is not assigned to reason alone, but is shared by various natural inclinations which can be enlisted in support of the enterprise28 • Nevertheless, despite its fragile condition, rational awareness imposes on man 25 Ibid., pt. I, eh. 15, art. 1. Macpherson argues that Hobbes derives moral obligation from the fact of existence; op. cit., pp. 81-87. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that, at this level at least, fact and value merge because life is both a fact and an affirmation. !8 "By right reason in the natural state of men, I understand not, as many do, an infallible faculty, but the act of reasoning, that is, the peculiar and true ratiocination of every man concerning those actions of his whieh may either rebound to the damage or benefit of his neighbours." De Cive, pt. I, eh. 2, art. 1, note; compare also Leviathan, pt. I, eh. 5. n "They therefore who could not agree concerning a present, do agree concerning a future good, whieh indeed is a work of reason; for things present are obvious to the sense, things to come to our reason only. Reason declaring peace to be good, it fo11ows by the same reason, that a11 the necessary means to peace be good also ... The law therefore, in the means to peace, commands also good manners, or the practice of virtue: and therefore it is called moral." De Cive, pt. I, eh. 3, art. 31. 28 HAnd thus much for the ill condition, which man by mere nature is actua11y placed in, though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the passions, partly in his reason. The passions that encline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggests convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement." Leviathan, pt. I, ch. 13.

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the burden of responsibility. With the emergence of consciousness, man learns that nature's dilemma shouZd be overcome because it can be overcome (at least to some extent). Once this voice of consciousness is perceived, man can no longer in good faith pretend his utter helplessness at the hand of nature; he can no longer blame his acts entirely on nature without offending his consciousness or conscience. Hobbes's statement that man, in the state of nature, is bound in foro interno suggests that man even at this stage can contravene his conscience by acting in bad faith 29 • To be sure, in the absence of further safeguards, man's outward conduct cannot entirely follow the precepts of peace without endangering his life (and thereby continuing the contradiction); but good faith requires man even then to abstain from senseless violence and to direct hisendeavours sincerely - and his actions as far as can safely be done - toward the emancipation from nature's dilemma. Among the selected existentialist writers, none has been more preoccupied with moral questions than Albert Camus; in fact, as has been observed, bis style at times evokes the tradition of classical French moralists. In the Myth of Sisyphus, it is true, Camus protests that "there can be no question of holding forth on ethics"; but the entire essay is a defense of man and of his struggle against his predicament, against the absurdity or incongruity of existence. Man's predicament derives not simply from the blind indifference of nature, from the silence of a universe which does not disclose a meaning to man, but from man's awareness of this condition and from his desperate longing for rationality and lucidity. Nature, Camus observes, is not reasonable, but this by itself does not matter; "what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational world and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart". In this confrontation, two apparent solutions offer themselves to man: complete affirmation and complete denial, the one assigning a hidden meaning to nature, the other silencing man's query through suicide. According to Camus, however, both alternatives are roads of escape; both the "leap" and suicide are forms of surrender in the face of man's predicament. The only coherent attitude is one which meets the challenge, an attitude of defiant revolt and perseverance. Revolt, to Camus, means the "constant confrontation between man and his obscurity. It is an insistence upon an impossible transparency". What emerges from the revolt is not an affirmation of transcendent meanings and higher values, but a sober and dry assertion of human existence. The only truth convincing at this point "comes to life and unfolds in 29 "But if any man pretend somewhat to tend necessarily to his preservation, whieh yet he himself does not confidently believe so, he may offend against the laws of nature." De Cive, pt. I, eh. I, art. 10, note; see also eh. 3, art. 27, 30; Leviathan, pt. I, eh. 15.

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men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives." But this "breath of human lives" is not entirely impotent as a guide of behaviour, because its continuance is not easily assured: "Let us say that the sole obstacle, the sole deficiency to be made good, is constituted by premature death"30. While the Sisyphus essay concentrated on the individual's revolt against his predicament, Camus' Rebel examines man more closely in his social context; while the former remained tentative and aphoristic, the latter is more confident (at times overconfident) in its assertion of rules of behavior31 • The central question of the Rebel is whether, in view of man's absurd condition, killing and violence can be accepted as coherent patterns of conduct. Again, two radical answers - absolute acceptance and absolute negation - suggest themselves: the first postulating a higher meaning in the world or in history in whose name men can be sacrificed; the other using the blindness of nature as an excuse for violence and destruction. Both answers, according to Camus, are inacceptable because both fight against their own premises. By the simple act of living, man manifests his intention to live and to render life possible; by persevering in his dilemma he "admits that human lüe is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis". At the same time, not being alone in the world, man in asserting his existence also admits the need to live with others. But when embracing violence and death, man embroils hirnself in contradiction; as Camus writes, assertion of life "when it develops into destruction, is illogical". Once brought to awareness, the contradiction cannot persist without offending man's consciousness or conscience; for, to sustain the absurdist encounter, "the conscience must be alive". Thus, "from the moment that life is recognized as good, it becomes good for a11 men. Murder cannot be made coherent when suicide is not considered coherent". Together with the prohibition of murder, a host of other rules of 30 The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 16, 40, 46, 49, 50. The elose linkage of fact and value at this level is evident in Camus' statements (pp. 40, 45) that "once and for all, value judgments are discarded here in favour of factual judgments" and that "revolt gives life its value. Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores its majesty to that life". 31 The continued merger of fact and value can be gleaned from his statements that "the transition from facts to rights is manifest ... in rebellion" and that rebellion is "contradictory in its content because, in wanting to uphold life, it exeludes all value judgments, when to live is, in itself, a value judgment. To breathe is to judge". However, while still critical of transcendent or "absolute values", Camus now argued that "revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history" . The Rebel, pp. 8, 15, 21, 251.

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behaviour follow from man's original affirmation, rules which promote the possibility of civil life and communication32• All these rules, however, find their basis in the fact that, while maintaining his life, man cannot in good conscience make hirnself an accomplice of (physical) death; although his capacities are limited and although violence may be inevitable in exceptional cases, he cannot postulate destruction as a general principle of conduct. In Camus' words, human existence "in its exalted and tragic forms, is only and can only be a prolonged protest against death, a violent accusation against the universal death penalty"33. Merleau-Ponty has been less expansive on his moral views than Camus; but he has not been silent. His essay "Man, the Hero", written at the end of the war, probed themes similar to those developed in Camus' Rebel. The starting point of the essay was again man's confrontation with a disenchanted and silent universe: "If one ceases to believe not only in a benign governor of this world but also in a reasonable course of things, then there is no longer any external support for heroic action; it cannot gather strength from any divine law or even from a visible meaning in history" . In this situation, the only coherent attitude of man is sober perseverance: "to be and think like a living person for as long as he does live, to remain poised in the direction of his chosen ends"84. Yet, in comparison with Camus, Merleau-Ponty's arguments have always been more subtle and complex, more attentive to concrete reality. In Camus' presentation, the success of man's rebellion, the progress from contingency to rational harmony was hardly in doubt, largely because of the theoretical character of man's predicament; to MerleauPonty, by contrast, violence was a reality which could not be overcome by theory alone. As he observed in his Humanisme et terreur, "history is terror because there is a contingency"; violence therefore "isthesituation with which every regime begins" . Thus the movement from terror to humanism, from violence to the recognition of man by man involves not a sudden ascent, but an incessant labor without the promise of final victory. One of the major roadblock:s - Merleau-Ponty pointed out at the time - consists in the denial of the ambiguity and openness of 32 "If injustice is bad for the rebel, it is not because it contradicts an eternal idea of justice, but because it perpetuates the silent hostility that separates the oppressor from the oppressed. It kills the small part of existence that can be realized on this earth through the mutual understanding of men. In the same way, since the man who lies shuts hirnself off from other men, falsehood is therefore proscribed and, on a slightly lower level, murder and violence, which impose definitive silence." Ibid., p. 283; see also pp. 6, 285. 33 Ibid., p. 100. As he adds (p. 101): "The rebel does not ask for life, but for reasons for living. He rejects the consequences implied by death ... To fight against death amounts to claiming that life has a meaning, to fighting for order and for unity." 3& "Man, the Hero", in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 183, 185.

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history, in man's submergence in a ready-made destiny35. While inextricably involved in the world, man is also the conscious witness of his involvement; consciousness, however, is first of all an awareness of contingency and death. As he stated in another context: "To be aware of death and to think or reason are one and the same thing, since one thinks only by disregarding what is characteristic of life and thus by conceiving death". This awareness is not a simple gift nor an unearned privilege of "man" in general; its sting is feIt primarily by the underprivileged and oppressed, those concretely threatened in their existence. From this vantage point, however, awareness can turn into an active plea against terror: "Learning the truth about death and struggle is the long maturation process by which history overcomes its contradictions and fulfills the promise of humanity - present in the consciousness of death and in the struggle with the other - in the living relationship among men"H. Among all existentialist writers Sartre has been most reluctant to express his moral views. The demand for authenticity has sometimes been described as the only moral criterion of his philosophy37; but perhaps it is possible to extract from his arguments further implications which are not entirely at odds with Hobbes's position. In Sartre's view, human life is first of all a simple fact, devoid of ontological necessity; both my own existence and the existence of others are not derived from or justified in terms of permanent reasons or principles. Moreover, human life as such is beyond judgment; existence cannot be assigned a good or evil "nature" without absurdity (that is, without treating the for-itself as an in-itself). Human existence, however, is engaged in a constant search for fulfillment, in a quest of its own good; while poised in its pursuit, it cannot choose evil or its own destruction without denying itself as pursuit. As Sartre writes, to will myself as evil "would mean that I must discover myself as willing what appears to me as the opposite of my good and precisely because it is evil or the opposite of my good. It is 35 His observations on this point resembled to some extent Camus' arguments against absolute affirmation; but in commenting on Koestler's Darkness at Noon Merleau-Ponty observed that the criminal trial of Rubochov (or Bukharin) negated not so much the defendant's abstract awareness but his complicity and responsibility in an inescapably ambiguous historical develop';' ment. See Humanisme et terreur (Paris 1947), pp. 25, 40; also Bannan, op. cit., pp. 200-205. 38 "Hegel's Existentialism", in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 67, 69. Compare also his comment in The Structure of Behaviour (p. 223) that "man is not assured ahead of time of possessing a source of morality; consciousness of self is not given in man by right; it is acquired only by the elucidation of his concrete being and is verified only by the active integration of isolated dialectics - body and soul - between which it is initially broken up". 37 See Marjorie Grene, "Authenticity: An Existential Value", Ethics, vol. 62 (1952), pp. 266-274.

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therefore expressly necessary that I will the contrary of what I desire at one and the same moment and in the same relation; that is, I would have to hate myself precisely as I am myself. I would have to approve myself by the same act which makes me blame myself". This contradiction, however, prevails in man's original encounter with others at the point where existence is in principle endangered or denied. Since man cannot knowingly choose evil, the contradiction can persist only in the absence of awareness. Once raised to the level of consciousness, the simultaneous assertion and denial of existence becomes an act of bad faith. In Sartre's terminology, bad faith or the "spirit of seriousness" consists in blaming one's behaviour on eternal principles or the world of objects, in refusing responsibility for one's future 38. In order to overcome bad faith, consciousness has to perform a "purifying reflection", a purification or katharsis which can become the basis of a coherent moral behaviour. This purification, however, is not an emotional inspiration; it is an act of reason, since rationality and knowledge are the only coherent links between man and his world. Bad faith is essentially irrational because it maintains the contradictory principles that one is free and not free. In the words of Hazel Barnes, Sartre's philosophy "inc1udes the irrational among its data and recognizes that man's irrational behavior is an important part of hirn. But the final appeal, the standard of judgment is reason"39.

IV. Social Contract and Commonwealth Hobbes's properly "political" theory, his theory of sovereignty and the commonwealth, can only be sketched at this point. In the absence of further safeguards, moral rules in Hobbes's view are unable to extricate man from nature's dilemma, from the conflict of preservation and destruction. In order to remedy this conflict, a further step is required, the establishment of a civil society and a common government. Except in case of immediate danger or overwhelming force, this undertaking is the work of foresight and design. In any event, civil authority properly speaking is always the result of conscious assent and recognition, regardless of whether assent precedes the exercise of power (government "by 38 "The spirit of seriousness has two characteristics: it considers values as transcendent givens independent of human subjectivity, and it transfers the quality of 'desirable' from the ontological structure of things to their simple material constitution ... Man pursues being blindly by hiding from hirns elf the free project which is his pursuit. He makes hirnself such that he is waited fOT by a11 the tasks placed along his way. Objects are mute demands, and he is nothing in himself but the passive obedience to these demands." Being and Nothingness, p. 626. 39 Ibid., p. XXXV. Compare also Frederick A. Olajson, Principles and Persons, An Ethical Interpretation of Existentialism (Baltimore 1967).

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institution") or follows after the fact (government "by acquisition" or conquest). It should be noted, however, that in Hobbes's theory mutual recognition or understanding does not simply emanate from a transcendent source; nor is it by itself a secure basis of civil life. First of all, agreement is commonly accompanied or encouraged by natural inclination, especially by fear of harm. In this respect, the main types of government differ only in the source of danger, in the origin and immediacy of possible violence40 • Yet, while active as midwife, apprehension is not properly the parent of the civil bond. All social or civil obligation involves an act of consciousness and mutual consent which requires at least some degree of trust'l; but neither trust nor consent are unmotivated. In addition, mutual agreement alone does not sufficiently guarantee the observation of its terms; in Hobbes's poignant phrase, "covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all"42. Thus, after having prodded the growth of social concord, natural inclination - especially fear of sanctions and retaliation - becomes also its jealous protector and guardian. In times of excitement, it is true, a multitude may gather and, without established authority, jointly perform actions which seem to proceed from a common will; however, a result of quick enthusiasm, this union is also prone to quick disintegration48 • To overcome this hazard a more durable type of commitment is required, a commitment which combines the expression of mutual consent with the simultaneous appointment or acceptance of a common power of whose actions every partner considers himself the joint author. This commitment, says Hobbes, is "the generation of that great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that mortal god", the civil community or commonwealth". Without embracing a uniform political outlook, French existentialists have focused their attention strongly on questions of civil and political life; partly as a result of concrete experiences, the genesis and main40 Commonwealth or sovereignty by acquisition "differs from sovereignty by institution only in this, that men who ehoose their sovereign do it for fear of one another and not of hirn whom they institute: but in this case they subject themselves to hirn they are afraid of. In both cases they do it for fear: whieh is to be noted by them that hold all sueh covenants, as proceed from fear of death or violence, void; whieh if it were true, no man in any kind of commonwealth could be obliged to obedience." Leviathan, pt. lI, eh. 20. 41 De Cive, pt. I, eh. 2, art. 9; pt. lI, eh. 8, art. 3. U Leviathan, pt. lI, eh. 17; also Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 19, art. 6, pt. lI, ch. 1, art. 6; De Cive, pt. lI, eh. 5, art. 1, 4. C3 Leviathan, pt. lI, eh. 17; De Cive, pt. lI, eh. 6, art. 1; Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 19, art. 4; on the possibility of cementing social relations through "oath" see Leviathan, pt. I, eh. 14; De Cive, pt. I, eh. 2, art. 20--22; Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 15, art. 15--17. 44 Leviathan, pt. lI, eh. 17; De Cive, pt. lI, eh. 5, art. 7,9; Elements of Law, pt. I, eh. 19, art. 7, 8.

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tenance of a political community have been prominent topics in their writings. In Camus' view, the basis of civil cohesion resides in the universality of man's predicament. "The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things", he writes, "is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe" . In challenging this common predicament, the defiant man also challenges the silent hostility between human beings, between oppressor and oppressed, and clears the path leading to mutual recognition and understanding. The rebel, by opposing man's absurd condition, "therefore pleads for life, undertakes to struggle against servitude, falsehood, and terror, and affirms, in a flash, that these three afflictions are the cause of silence between men, that they obscure them from one another and prevent them from rediscovering themselves in the only value that can save them from nihilism - the long complicity of men at grips with their destiny". With this emphasis on mutual recognition and accOI'd as basis of civil life, however, the parallel between Camus' and Hobbes' argument comes to an end. As portrayed by Camus, consensus seems disengaged from concrete motivations and impervious to human frailty. While insisting that "the part of man which cannot be reduced to mere ideas should be taken into consideration the passionate side of his nature that serves no other purpose than to be part of the act of living", he refrains from exploring the implications of passion and violence. Agreement seems to be consummated in a higher region "where minds meet and, in meeting, begin to exist", a region isolated from the ravages of desire. Rather than creating human concord, revolt in Camus' description simply discovers the realm of a common human nature, arealm which, far from requiring the protective shield of a political power, dictates its standards to politicallife. Rebellion, he writes, "is the affirmation of a nature common to all men, which eludes the world of power"; it thereby "brings to light the measure and the limit which are the very principle of this nature"45. Camus' divergence from Hobbes's argument also demarcates his departure from fellowexistentialists who refused to segregate consensus and passion by a rigid barrier. While finding the basis of civil life in mutual recognition, Merleau-Ponty ties the emergence of such recognition closely to the experience of conflict, to the subject-object dilemma where man's reduction to an object or instrument would not constitute violence without the simultaneous intercession of awareness. "I do not feel threatened by the presence of another", he writes, "unless I remain aware of my subjectivity at the very moment his gaze is reducing me 45

The Rebel, pp. 19, 22, 250, 284, 294.

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to an object; I do not reduce hirn to slavery unless he continues to be present to me as consciousness and freedom precisely when he is an object in my eyes. We cannot be aware of the conflict unless we are aware of our reciprocal relationship and our common humanity". Thus, just as mutual recognition proceeds from mutual denial, human denial involves the seeds of its supersession: "Just as my consciousness of myself as death and nothingness is deceitful and contains an affirmation of my being and my life, so my consciousness of another as an enemy comprises an affirmation of hirn as an equal. If I am negation, then by following the implication of this universal negation to its ultimate conclusion, I will witness the self-denial of that very negation and its transformation into coexistence"46. The linkage between civillife and discord in Merleau-Ponty's thought can also be gleaned from his comments on Machiavelli (which seem to apply with equal force to Hobbes). "What he is reproached for", he notes, "is the idea that history is a struggle and politics a relationship to men rather than principles. Yet is anything more certain?" As he adds, Machiavelli's starting point did not preclude mutual agreement but clarified the prerequisites of civil commitment: "By putting conflict and struggle at the origins of social power, he did not mean to say that agreement was impossible; he meant to underline the condition for apower which does not mystify, that is, participation in a common situation". Machiavelli's emphasis on the role of power and passion extended from the genesis to the continued maintenance of civil life. His originality, Merleau-Ponty observes, resided precisely in the fact that "having laid down the source of struggle, he goes beyond it without ever forgetting it"; for, while not identical with naked force, power cannot simply be resolved in the "honest delegation of individual wills, as if the latter were able to set aside their differences". The merit of this reminder, again, was to prevent obfuscation and to delineate more clearly the challenge of building a properly human community47. Proceeding from a similar perspective Sartre has attempted a more detailed scrutiny of the formation and operation of civil communities; the connection between consensus and discord has been a maj or preoccupation of this endeavor. In Being and Nothingness awareness was "Hegel's Existentialism", in Sense and Non-8ense, p. 68. "A Note on Machiavelli", in Signs, pp. 211, 212, 215, 219. As he conc1udes (p. 223), the widespread repudiation of Machiavelli assurnes from this' vantage point "a disturbing significance: it is the decision not to know the tasks of a true humanism. There is a way of repudiating Machiavelli which is Machiavellian; it is the pious dodge of those who turn their eyes and ours toward the heaven of principles in order to turn them away from what they are doing. And there is a way of praising Machiavelli which is just the opposite of Machiavellianism, since it honors in his works a contribution to political clarity". 48 47

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portrayed as generating the instrumental treatment of other human beings, a treatment experienced as offensive and incongruous precisely because of the presence of mutual consciousness48 • In the Critique 01 Dialectical Reason the subject-object dilemma was translated into the relationship between human praxis and its repercussions in the objective world. As the Critique tries to show, human interaction initially takes the form of a mere multitude or "series", of a juxtaposition of individual actors whose projects, pursued in the material environment, rebound against themselves and other actors. The frustration and internal or external dangers resulting from this condition lead to a realization of "the impossibility of life which threatens the serial multiplicity" and to an attempt to transform the series into a more cohesive union. Especially under the threat of immediate violence, in times of "high historical temperature", the multitude may be galvanized into a "group in fusion", an intimate collectivity in which each member, guided by a common objective, acts as "third man" or synthesizing agent. Sartre calls this step the "beginning of humanity", an event which "pulled us out of the earth". However, fusion in Sartre's treatment does not involve a transcendental meeting of minds or the discovery of an abstract human nature; rather, it derives from a mutual recognition of complicity, from joint participation in the pursuit of a common goal. A product of converging activities, the group in fusion does not constitute a biological organism, nor is it possessed of ontological substance or permanence; with the accomplishment of the original objective the cohesion of the group is liable to disintegrate. At this point, various protective devices are likely to be employed, devices designed to combat atomization and dissolution. Thus, an oath or other form of pledge may be imposed to secure the continued loyalty of group members, under threat of punishment or "terror". In this manner, the group enters the process of organization and institutionalization, a process which inc1udes the establishment of a common authority and the allocation of functions to members of the community4D. The preceding pages have explored the affinity between Hobbes and existentialism at significant junctures of their argument; but now, with the establishment of the state or commonwealth, the two finally seem to part company. In Hobbes's presentation, the establishment of a common power seems to inaugurate a reign of tranquillity and rationality, a reign whose continued maintenance depends chiefly on the skill and circumspection of the sovereign. It is true that he rejects the possibility Being and Nothingness, pp. 361-364, 408-409. Critique, pp. 307, 377, 395, 440, 453, 520, 527, 580 ff.; Desan, op. cit., pp. 109, 122-183. Cf. also Mary Warnock, The Philosophy of Sartre (London 1965), pp. 173-175. 48

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of complete security and describes the commonwealth as a "mortal god"; but the sources of this mortality or vulnerability remain largely obscure. Despite the restraining impact of the common power, the exercise of this power obviously requires at least the tacit consensus or acquiescence of the majority of the population. Yet, while noting the ineradicable flux of passions and sentiments, Hobbes simply appeals to the ready intelligibility of the advantage of public order - without specifying how abstract understanding and acceptance are translated into practical loyalty in concrete situations. Moreover, acceptance and consensus are conditioned by governmental performance. Again, Hobbes acknowledges that governments and representative bodies are by no means "free from human passions and infirmities"; but in discussing the "internal causes tending to the dissolution of any government" he concentrates almost entirely on seditious opinions and erratic emotions of the people50• It is at this point that Hobbes seems to have left or abandoned his argument without pursuing its further implications. The stipulation of a common power whose decisions ultimately derive from human will clearly introduces an element of contingency into the operation of the commonwealth. Far from embodying a transcendent or perennial rationality, governments inevitably pursue particular human designs and programs; likewise, popular loyalty and obedience are due not to authority in general but to actual rulers with concrete policies. Thus, instead of reflecting solely the immaturity and flightiness of the people, a measure of discord and change seems to be endemic to political communities. The ambiguity and evanescence of political life, only implicit in Hobbes's argument, have been eloquently stressed by existentialist writers. In Sartre's argument, political communities are engaged in a constant search for synthesis and unity, without being able to accomplish this goal on a permanent basis. The process of organization and institutionalization injects into group relations an element of rigidity and confinement. While acting as supreme regulator, the sovereign remains a human individual with special goals and ambitions; governmental decisions thus are necessarily limited both in objective and appeal 51 • To an even greater degree Merleau-Ponty has been sensitive to the elusive character of political efforts. "Our times" , he observes at one point, "have experienced and are experiencing, more perhaps than any other, contingency". There is no assurance of the success of the human adventure, of the quest for a properly human society; one cannot even "exelude in principle the possibility that humanity, like a sentence which does not succeed in drawing to a elose, will suffer shipwreck on its way". But though un50 See Leviathan, pt. H, ehs. 17, 24, 29, 30; De Cive, pt. H, eh. 6, art. 3; eh. 12, art. 1-11; eh. 13, art. 12. 51 Critique, pp. 509, 521, 573, 609; Desan, op. cit., pp. 158, 162-165, 174-181.

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aided by a preordained destiny and plagued with constant reversals, men can remain guardians of their future "provided they will measure the dangers aIl!d the task"52. Viewed in this subdued light, Hobbes's writings may still speak to us with the voice of a contemporary. Dur generation, like his, has been nearly overwhelmed by violence. How can we fail to appreciate his serenity and quiet perseverance in an age in which the potential of destruction has reached global proportions and in which civillife reveals more than ever its extreme fragility?

51 "Man and Adversity", in Signs, p. 239; "Author's Preface", in Sense and Non-Sense, p. 5.

Hobbes im deutschen Sprachraum - Eine Bibliographie Von Reinhard stumpf unter Mitwirkung von Ion Contiades und Bernard Willms

I. Vbersetzungen 1. Des Engländers Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, oder der kirchliche und bürgerliche Staat. Bd. 1: 1. u. 2. Tl., Bd. 2: 3. u. 4. Tl. Halle 1794/95 [Anonyme übersetzung der lateinischen Version von 1671i]

2. Thomas Hobbes' Abhandlung über den Bürger. Aus dem Lateinischen übersetzt und mit sachlichen und kritischen Erläuterungen versehen von J. H. v. Kirchmann. Leipzig 1873 3. Grundzüge der Philosophie. Erster Teil: Lehre vom Körper. In Auswahl übersetzt und herausgegeben von Max Frischeisen-Köhler. (= Philosophische Bibliothek, 157) Leipzig 1915, Neudruck Leipzig 1949, 2., mit Literaturhinweisen und Registern versehene Aufl. u. d. T.: Vom Körper (ELemente der Philosophie I), Hamburg 1967. Zweiter und dritter Teil: Lehre vom Menschen und vom Bürger. Deutsch herausgegeben von Max Frischeisen-Köhler. (= Philosophische Bibliothek, 158) Leipzig 1918, Neudruck Leipzig 1949. [Neubearbeitung s. Nr. 8] 4. Das Naturreich des Menschen. Eingeleitet und in neuer übersetzung herausgegeben von Herman Schmalenbach. (=Frommanns philosophische Taschenbücher, 4. Gruppe, Bd. 2) Stuttgart 1923 [Knappe Auswahl aus De corpore, De homine, De cive, übersetzt von Erna Stamm] 5. Naturrecht und allgemeines Staatsrecht in den Anfangsgründen. Mit einer Einführung von Ferdinand Tönnies. (= Klassiker der Politik. Herausgegeben von F. Meinecke und H. Oncken. Bd. 13) Berlin 1926 [The Elements of Law, übersetzt von J. Heinrich Hennings, Gräfin Agnes zu Reventlow, EIsa Boysen, Ferdinand Tönnies] 6. Behemoth oder das lange Parlament. [Übersetzt von Julius Lips als Anhang zu:] Lips, Julius: Die Stellung des Thomas Hobbes zu den politischen Parteien der großen englischen Revolution. Mit erstmaliger übersetzung des Behemoth oder das lange Parlament. Mit einer Einführung von Ferdinand Tönnies. Leipzig 1927. [So 101-288] [Vgl. Nr. 96] [Neudruck der Wissenschaftlichen Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt angekündigt] 7. Leviathan oder von Materie, Form und Gewalt des kirchlichen und bürgerlichen Staates. Heraus~geben und eingeleitet von J. P. Mayer. Zürich, Leipzig 1936 [Überarbeitung der übersetzung von 1794/95; nur Tl. 1. 2] 8. Vom Menschen. Vom Bürger. Eingeleitet und herausgegeben von Günter Gawlick. Auf der Grundlage der übersetzung von M. Frischeisen-Köhler, die von Günter Gawlick nach dem lateinischen Original berichtigt wurde.

288

Reinhard Stumpf (= Philosophische Bibliothek, 158) Hamburg 1959, 2., verbesserte Aufl.

1966 9. Leviathan oder Wesen, Form und Gewalt des kirchlichen und bürgerlichen Staates. I. Der Mensch. II. Der Staat. In der übersetzung von Dorothee Tidow mit einem Essay ,Zum Verständnis des Werkes', einem biographischen Grundriß und einer Bibliographie herausgegeben von Peter Cornelius Mayer-Tasch. (= Rowohlts Klassiker der Literatur und der Wissenschaft. Herausgegeben von E. Grassi unter Mitarbeit von W. Hess. Philosophie der Neuzeit, Bd. 6 = Gesamtreihe Bd. 187/188/189) Reinbek 1965 [Nur Tl. 1. 2] 10. Leviathan oder Stoff, Form und Gewalt eines bürgerlichen und kirchlichen Staates. Herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Prof. Dr. Iring Fetscher. Übersetzung Walter Euchner. (= Politica. Abhandlungen und Texte zur politischen Wissenschaft. Herausgegeben von W. Hennis und H. Maier. Bd. 22) Neuwied, Berlin 1966

u. Llteratur1 11. Strimesius, Samuel: Praxiologia apodictica, sive philosophia moralis

demonstrativa pithanologiae Hobbesianae opposita. Frankfurt/Oder 1677 [Herbert, Hobbes, Spinoza] (Appendix qua H. Cardani et E. Herberti de animalitate hominis opiniones [ ... ] examinantur.) Kiel 1680, 2. Aufl. Hamburg 1700 Pritz [Pritius}, Johann Georg: De primo falso Thomae Hobbesii. [Disputation] Leipzig 1688 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm: Correspondance avec Kettwig sur Hobbes. 1695-1696. In: G. W. Leibniz: Textes inedits d'apres les manuscrits de la Bibliotheque provinciale de Hanovre, publies et annotes par Gaston Grua. ( = Bibliotheque de philosophie contemporaine, histoire de la philosophie et philosophie generale, section dirigee par E. Brehier) Bd. 2: Paris 1948. S. 652-656 Berns, Michael: Altar der Atheisten, der Heyden, und der Christen. Wider die 3 Erz-Betrieger Hobbert [sie, für Herbert], Hobbes und Spinosa. Hamburg 1692 Kettwig, Mentet: Epistolae de veritate philosophiae Hobbesianae contra Ulricum Huberum2• Bremen 1695

12. Kortholt, Christian: De tribus impostoribus magnis libero

13.

14.

15.

16.

1 Verzeichnet werden Arbeiten des deutschen Sprachraums (auch in lateinischer und französischer Sprache), die sich ganz oder in größeren Abschnitten mit Thomas Hobbes beschäftigen. Lexika, Handbücher, Philosophie- und Wissenschaftsgeschichten bleiben, mit Ausnahme der früheren Zeit, im allgemeinen unberücksichtigt. Für die Literatur des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts konnte angesichts der bekannten bibliographischen Schwierigkeiten keine Vollständigkeit angestrebt werden. Die bisher umfassendste Hobbes-Bibliographie für die neuere Zeit stammt von Arrigo Pacchi: Bibliografia Hobbesiana dal 1840 ad oggi. In: Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia 17 (1962) 528-547; sie konnte in vielem ergänzt und präzisiert werden. 2 Der niederländische Jurist Ulrich Huber (1636-94, Professor an der Universität Franeker) hatte sich mit Hobbes' Naturrechtsbegriff auseinandergesetzt: De jure civitatis, libri tres. Leiden 1669, 4. Aufl. Frankfurt, Leipzig 1708. [S.10-19]

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17. Fürstellung vier neuer Welt-Weisen, nahmentlich, I. Renati des Cartes, H. Thomae Hobbes, II!. Benedicti Spinosa, IV. Balthasar Beckers, nach ihrem Leben und fürnehmsten Irrthümern. FrankfurtjMain [?] 1702 18. Staat~opff, Jacobus: Ab impiis detorsionibus T. Hobbesii et B. de Spinoza oraculum Paulinum, per ipsum vivimus, movemur et sumus. Greifswald 1707 19. Gundting, Nicolaus Hieronymus: Dissertatio de statu naturali Hobbesii. Halle 1709 20. [Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm:] Reflexions sur la dispute qui a ete agitee entre le Docteur Bramhall, Eveque de Londondery et Mr. Hobbes, touchant la Liberte, la Necessite et Ie Hazard. In: [G. W. Leibniz:] Essais de Theodicee sur Ia Bonte de Dieu, Ia Liberte de l'Homme et l'Origine du Mal. Amsterdam 1710. Appendice S. 1-24. [Weitere Auflagen 1712, 1714, 1720 u. ö.; u. d. T.: Reflexions sur l'ouvrage que M. Hobbes a publie en Anglois, de Ia Liberte, de Ia Necessite et du Hazard. In: Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Herausgegeben von C. J. Gerhardt. Bd. 6: Berlin 1885, Neudruck Hildesheim 1961. S. 388-399. Lateinische Übersetzung von BarthoIomäus Des Bosses Frankfurt 1719, weitere Auflagen 1739, 1771. Deutsche übers'etzung von G. Richter:] Gedancken über die Schrift, die der Herr Hobbes von der Freyheit, der Nothwendigkeit und dem ohngefehrten Zufalle in Engelland herausgegeben hat. In: G. W. Leibniz: Essais de Theodicee oder Betrachtung der Gütigkeit Gottes, der Freyheit des Menschen und des Ursprungs des Bösen, [...] samt angehängten Anmerckungen über Mons. Hobbes. Bd. 1: Amsterdam [recte: Hannover] 1720. S. 1-19. [Weitere Auflagen 1726, 1735 und - herausgegeben von J. Chr. Gottsched 1763; U. Ö.]3 21. Thomas Hobbes. In: Friedrich Ca spar Hagen: Memoriae philosophorum, oratorum, poetarum, historicorum et philologorum, nostrae aetatis clarissimorum, renovatae. Frankfurt, Leipzig 1710 22. Raphson, Joseph: Demonstratio de deo, cui accedunt epistolae quaedam miscellaneae. Leipzig 1712. [So 97-103] 23. SaUg, Christian August: Philosophumena veterum ac recentiorum de anima et eius immortalitate. Diss. Halle 1714 [Gegen Raphson, Nr. 22] 24. Hobbes. In: Johann Heinrich Zedter [Verleger]: Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschafften und Künste. Bd. 13: Leipzig, Halle 1735. Sp. 293-295 25. Hobbes. In: Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon. Herausgegeben von Christian Gottlieb JÖcher. Bd. 2: Leipzig 1750. S. 1629-1631 26. Hobbesianer. In: Deutsche Encyclopädie oder Allgemeines Real-Wörterbuch aller Künste und Wissenschaften. Von einer Gesellschaft Gelehrten. [Herausgegeben von H. M. G. Köster und J. E. Roos]. Bd. 15: FrankfurtjM.1790.S.682-688 27. Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von: Anti-Hobbes, oder über die Gränzen der hochsten Gewalt und das Zwangsrecht der Bürger gegen den Oberherrn.Bd. 1 [mehr nicht erschienen]: Erfurt, Jena 1798, Neudruck Darmstadt 1967 3 Vgl. Emile Ravier: Bibliographie des oeuvres de Leibniz. Paris 1937, Neudruck Hildesheim 1966.

19 Thomas Hobbes

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28. Buchholz, Paul P'erdinand Friedrich: Der neue Leviathan. Tübingen

1805, Neudruck Aalen 1967

29. Georgii, Eberhard Friedrich von: Anti-Leviathan, oder über das Ver-

30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

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