Interpreting Hobbes's Political Philosophy 110841561X, 9781108415613

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I N T E R P R E T I N G H O B B E S’ S P OLIT ICAL PHILOSOPHY

The essays in this volume provide a state-of-the-art overview of the central elements of Hobbes’s political philosophy and the ways in which they can be interpreted. The volume’s contributors offer their own interpretations of Hobbes’s philosophical method, his materialism, his psychological theory and moral theory, and his views on benevolence, law and civil liberties, religion, and women. Hobbes’s ideas of authorization and representation, his use of the “state of nature,” and his reply to the unjust “Foole” are also critically analyzed. The essays will help readers to orient themselves in the complex scholarly literature while also offering groundbreaking arguments and innovative interpretations. The volume as a whole will facilitate new insights into Hobbes’s political theory, enabling readers to consider key elements of his thought from multiple perspectives and to select and combine them to form their own interpretations of his political philosophy. s. a. lloyd is Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cambridge, 1992) and Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge, 2009), and the editor of The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes (2012) and Hobbes Today (Cambridge, 2013).

INTERPRETING HOBBES’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY edited by S. A. LLOYD University of Southern California

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108415613 doi: 10.1017/9781108234870 © Cambridge University Press 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Lloyd, S. A., 1958– editor. title: Interpreting Hobbes’s political philosophy / edited by S.A. Lloyd, University of Southern California. description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2018041012 | isbn 9781108415613 subjects: lcsh: Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679. classification: lcc b1247 .i585 2018 | ddc 320.092–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041012 isbn 978-1-108-41561-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors Acknowledgments

page vii ix 1

Introduction 1 Methodologies of Interpreting Hobbes: Historical and Philosophical

10

Adrian Blau

2 Hobbes’s Political-Philosophical Project: Science and Subversion

29

A. P. Martinich

3 Hobbes’s Philosophical Method and the Passion of Curiosity

50

Gianni Paganini

4 Hobbes, Life, and the Politics of Self-Preservation: The Role of Materialism in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy

70

Samantha Frost

5 Human Nature and Motivation: Hamilton versus Hobbes

93

Michael J. Green

6 On Benevolence and Love of Others

106

Gabriella Slomp

7 Interpreting Hobbes’s Moral Theory: Rightness, Goodness, Virtue, and Responsibility

122

S. A. Lloyd

8 Interpreting Hobbes on Civil Liberties and Rights of Resistance Susanne Sreedhar

v

141

Contents

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9 Hobbes and Christian Belief

156

Johann Sommerville

10 Hobbes on Persons and Authorization

173

Paul Weithman

11 The Character and Significance of the State of Nature

191

Peter Vanderschraaf

12 Hobbes’s Confounding Foole

206

Michael Byron

13 “Not a Woman-Hater,” “No Rapist,” or Even Inventor of “the Sensitive Male”? Feminist Interpretations of Hobbes’s Political Theory and Their Relevance for Hobbes Studies

223

Eva Odzuck

14 The Productivity of Misreading: Interpreting Hobbes in a Hobbesian Contractarian Perspective

242

Luc Foisneau

Bibliography Index

258 279

Contributors

adrian blau is Senior Lecturer in Politics at King’s College London. He is the editor of Methods in Analytical Political Theory (Cambridge, 2017). michael byron is Professor of Philosophy at Kent State University, Ohio. He is the author of Submission and Subjection in Leviathan (2015) and the editor of Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason (Cambridge, 2004). luc foisneau is Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and teaches political philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author of Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu (2000) and Hobbes: La vie inquiète (2016), and coeditor of Leviathan after 350 Years (2004). samantha frost is Professor in the Department of Political Science, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign. Her publications include Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics (2008), New Materialisms: Ontology, Ethics, and Politics (2010), which she coedited with Diana Coole, and Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human (2016). michael j. green is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College. He has published articles in a number of journals including Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. s. a. lloyd is Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cambridge, 1992) and Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature (Cambridge, 2009), and editor of Hobbes Today (Cambridge, 2012) and the Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes (2012). vii

viii

List of Contributors

a. p. martinich is the Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Professor of History and Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1992) and Hobbes (2005), and coeditor, with Kinch Hoekstra, of The Oxford Handbook to Hobbes (2016). eva odzuck is an assistant professor of Political Science at FriedrichAlexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. She is the author of Thomas Hobbes’ körperbasierter Liberalismus (2016) and a number of journal articles. gianni paganini is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Eastern Piedmont in Vercelli, Italy. His publications include Skepsis (2008), Les philosophies clandestines à l’age classique (2005), and the Italian edition of De motu loco et tempore (2010). gabriella slomp is Reader in International Political Thought at the University of St Andrews. She is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on Hobbes, including Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (2000) and Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Hostility, Violence and Terror (2009). johann sommerville is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the author of Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640 (1986) and Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (1992). susanne sreedhar is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. Her publications include Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan (Cambridge, 2010). peter vanderschraaf is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Merced. He is the author of Learning and Coordination: Inductive Deliberation, Equilibrium and Convention (2001), and Strategic Justice: Convention and Problems of Balancing Divergent Interests (2019). paul weithman is Glynn Family Honors Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship (Cambridge, 2002), Why Political Liberalism? (2010) and Rawls, Political Liberalism and Reasonable Faith (Cambridge, 2016), and editor of Religion and Contemporary Liberalism (1997).

Acknowledgments

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude and wish to thank Isabella LloydDamnjanovic for her valuable work in translating chapter three and in formatting and reviewing chapters, and preparing the index. My thanks also to Zlatan Damnjanovic and to A. P. Martinich for scholarly support in completing this project, and to Marya Schechtman and Janet Lynn Edgar Preacher Lyons for their efforts in sustaining the conditions necessary for the production of this work.

ix

Introduction S. A. Lloyd

The spectacular advance in Hobbes scholarship over the last half-century has resulted in both new schools of interpretation of Hobbes’s political theory, and increasingly sophisticated interpretations of specific elements of that theory. Currently contested elements include the understanding and role of Hobbes’s method, intended project, and materialism, his views on psychology, morality, civil liberties, rights of resistance, authorization, the state of nature, his reply to the Foole, and his views on the status of women. Hobbes debates have fragmented as commentators mix and match these different new elementary accounts in attempts to modify or to defend the interpretation of Hobbes’s larger political theory each finds most compelling. This fragmentation has made for surprising alliances on diverse interpretive fronts that traverse scholastic borders, sometimes fruitfully, other times at crosspurposes. The original essays collected in this volume on the “state of the debate” in each of the essential elemental topics provide an overview and meta-analysis of the most important local debates in contemporary Hobbes studies bearing on Hobbes’s political philosophy, providing welcome clarification of the scholarly debate, and enabling readers to orient their own questions within current Hobbes scholarship. Further, these authors present original research in support of their arguments for what are in many cases groundbreaking new interpretations of Hobbes’s ideas. Adrian Blau addresses the debate over which interpretive approach to Hobbes’s theory is most fruitful. He argues that in order to recover Hobbes’s intended arguments it is necessary to engage in philosophical analysis, and not just in (sometimes useful) contextual analysis and (indispensable) textual analysis. He models his proposed principle that we learn more from studying various exemplars of interpretation than we do from reading works about interpretive methodology, or by thinking in terms of methodological schools such as contextualist, Marxist, and philosophical, by assessing two quite different specific substantive interpretations, those 1

2

introduction

of Skinner and of Hampton. He distinguishes what he calls philosophical thinking in the service of the “empirical” end of recovering the author’s meaning/project/belief/argument – which he approves – from philosophical analysis of the author’s work to serve some independent purpose. His introduction to Hampton and discussion of her as a contractarian contextualize her writings on Hobbes as philosophical thinking undertaken in the service of developing a defensible contractarian theory of justice applicable to all subject matters. She does not, in his judgment, engage in the sort of philosophical analysis of Hobbes’s arguments needed to uncover his intended meaning. Blau finds that although Skinner aims to recover the arguments of the historical Hobbes, his efforts at the requisite sort of philosophical thinking sometimes fall short. A. P. Martinich offers a more finely-grained discussion of interpretive challenges in identifying Hobbes’s communicative intentions and distinguishing between his illocutionary acts and (possibly unintended) perlocutionary acts. He notes that contextualism cannot settle disagreements about Hobbes’s view of the relation between politics and religion because it cannot settle what Hobbes believed about religion. He offers a forceful, multipronged argument that those interpreters who take Hobbes to have been an atheist out to subvert religious belief by his treatment of it have proffered evidence that does not in fact support their contention. “Nontheist” interpreters put more stock in the opinions of Hobbes’s critics than of his friends, and in the opinions of lesser thinkers over more formidable ones. They take as evidence of Hobbes’s unbelief his stances on a series of religious positions that were also held by thinkers who were unquestionably believers. They take his inconsistencies about religious matters as evidence of a design to subvert (even though Christian doctrine itself contains numerous contradictions) while refusing to give similar significance to his inconsistencies about other matters. They insist that Hobbes was using irony, avowal by disavowal, insinuation, and other modes of dissembling which are at odds with his goal of establishing political stability through the development of politics as a science, which, on his own explicit account, demands clarity and precision. They attribute to him a willingness to declare obvious falsehoods and to advance obviously fallacious arguments that is contrary to the documented evidence of his intellectual pride and concern for his reputation. And, of course, they discount both his testimony as to his religious beliefs and his religious practice in worshiping and in taking deathbed rites. Complementary to his argument that non-theistic interpreters’ (alleged) evidence of Hobbes’s

Introduction

3

atheism is no such thing, Martinich marshals formidable evidence in support of his own contention that Hobbes wanted “not a brave new world, but a safe old world, reinforced by an accurate understanding of the Bible and compatible with the new science.” Gianni Paganini traces interpretive disagreement over whether Hobbes offers a philosophical system with a unified method. Developing an original analysis of “passionate thought” in the Hobbesian passion of curiosity, Paganini argues that the main reason interpreters have offered for thinking that Hobbes’s system is not unified, namely that his mechanical materialism does not have the resources to account for central aspects of human agency, such as intentionality, goal-oriented behavior, and the normative nature of both science and morals, does not stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, many of the objections addressed to Hobbes’s general philosophy relate more or less directly to its materialism and in particular to the mechanical form it assumed in accordance with the science of his time, and stem, on Paganini’s diagnosis, from not incorporating into Hobbes’s theory of mind the key passion of curiosity. On his analysis, curiosity requires memory and develops into the procedure by which men dissect and compose their sensations, giving rise to analysis and synthesis (the bases of method), processes that become both easier and increasingly complex thanks to the use of language. This kind of passionate thought allows Hobbes to account for the complex thoughts and goal-oriented behaviors assumed in his moral and political philosophy. Samantha Frost tackles the problem of how Hobbesian persons could have the sociable orientation necessary for the success of Hobbes’s political system at the deeper, more foundational level of his materialism. She develops a revolutionary account of the structure of subjectivity of Hobbesian humans that explains why their impetus to “persist in living” does not necessitate a narrowly self-interested preoccupation with conditions of their own bodies, but instead compels an outward orientation toward our interdependent social world. The living body’s impetus to persist in living stretches toward the conditions for future persistence, which, for humans, include acquiring such powers as draw others into its orbit to aid in realizing its desires. Interdependence is a primary condition and constraint for action, but uncertainty about the future conditions for action undermines the forward-looking, power-gathering endeavor to persist. A commonwealth removes that uncertainty, creating a hospitable environment for future persistence. Frost’s groundbreaking account of the outward orientation of the impulse to persist in living allows Hobbes the

4

introduction

rich and realistic psychology he actually uses in his moral and political theory. That psychology need not be rooted solely in introspection, but may now be understood as continuous with his scientific conception of humans as living matter. Frost thus converges with Paganini in the judgment that Hobbes’s practical philosophy receives support from and forms a coherent system with his speculative philosophy. She argues further that her interpretation reinforces Lloyd’s account of Hobbes’s moral philosophy as rooted in the individual’s concern to make its agency effective. Michael J. Green addresses four pressing questions about Hobbes’s conception of human nature: Which faculties of the mind are unique to human beings? Which faculties of the mind develop naturally rather than through artificial methods? What explains the variation in human thought and action? Are people naturally sociable? He argues that what is most interesting about Hobbes’s account of the state of nature is that an egoistic theory of motivation plays little role in this part of Hobbes’s argument. He finds that Hobbes’s treatment of human nature shows that the problems of securing political order are overstated because even people who pursue their own interests are likely to opt for peaceful pursuits and so repressive measures are not needed to keep them in line. Yet they are also understated because religious belief, which is a consequence of the use of our natural faculties and thus ineliminable, promises rewards and punishments greater than any state can match, and so the state cannot rely on its threat of punishment alone to keep order. Green explores whether Hobbes should be considered a pessimist about human nature, and concludes that Hobbes celebrates the fact that human beings have escaped their natural condition through the artificial creations of language and the state. Gabriella Slomp provides a more targeted engagement with interpretations attributing a narrowly egoistic psychology to Hobbesian persons with her original investigation into the role of benevolence and the love of others in Hobbes’s political theory. She lays out the textual bases for interpretations finding Hobbes to espouse psychological egoism or tautological egoism and shows how various important interpretations have sought to draw on these to establish either the impossibility or the rarity of disinterested benevolence. Slomp compellingly argues that Hobbes had little interest in either establishing the possibility of benevolence or in encouraging it, because benevolence may operate to damage the commonwealth. On Slomp’s analysis, benevolence is partial, exclusionary, and potentially divisive, and may motivate would-be benefactors to act in ways that undermine civil peace. Subjects’ ignorance about what is truly good for

Introduction

5

themselves and their society is the real problem; it makes no difference whether ignorant subjects do the wrong thing out of self-interested motives or out of altruistic ones. The jolting conclusion of her investigation is that much less hangs on the question whether Hobbes regards people as egoists than scholarly debate has supposed. S. A. Lloyd addresses the wide range of interpretive disagreement over what Hobbes’s moral theory is, or even whether he has one. She investigates Hobbes’s positions on the various components of a moral theory – conceptions of right, good, virtue, moral responsibility, and moral motivation – concluding that Hobbes’s moral theory is unified by his complex conception of reason. Reason imposes consistency norms of both rationality and reasonableness, with the latter yielding a conception of rightness as reciprocity. She argues that his conception of moral goodness – goodness as sociability – also essentially depends on conformity with reason, participating in constituting a distinctive sort of moral theory that is neither teleological, as is usually supposed, nor classically deontological. Lloyd finds in Hobbes a novel and attractive moral theory that is not intuitionist, subjectivist, projectivist, or contractarian, not egoist or rule-egoist, not a virtue-ethic, and not a divine command theory. In her chapter on civil liberties and the right of resistance, Susanne Sreedhar untangles the strands of interpretation of Hobbes’s notoriously puzzling “true liberties of subjects.” These immunities from moral fault for subjects’ disobedience to certain sorts of sovereign command raise a host of interpretive questions extending to the core of Hobbes’s political philosophy. Sreedhar presents and evaluates interpretive controversies as to what unifies a diverse collection of moral immunities; whether they depend on rights that are inalienable or merely not alienated; who decides whether they have been triggered; whether the admission of the true liberties into Hobbes’s theory constitutes an accidental or an intentional conferral on subjects of a right to rebel, and whether they form the centerpiece of a theory actually intended to advocate limited sovereignty. Sreedhar shows that the issues emanating from efforts to interpret Hobbes’s true liberties extend to such basic questions as who counts as a subject, and whether Hobbes’s argument targets all rebellion on any grounds whatsoever, or, as per her own original argument, only the more limited class of rebellions grounded on ideology rather than on necessity. Johann Sommerville addresses scholarly debate over whether Hobbes held Christian beliefs, whether his interpretation of the Bible shifted over

6

introduction

time, and whether his beliefs concerning Christian religion even matter to his theory of politics. He discusses Hobbes’s views of God, faith, the epistemological status of prophesy, miracles, the authority of the Bible, the alleged infallibility of the church, and salvation. He argues, against Tuck, that Hobbes affords no religious exemption from civil obedience to Jews and Christians, but finds that Hobbes addresses their fear of divine punishment by attributing responsibility for wrongful worship, or the profession of incorrect religious beliefs done at the sovereign’s command to the sovereign and not to the subject, a conclusion reinforced by the more general account of responsibility documented in Lloyd’s chapter. Sommerville considers the contention of some of Hobbes’s contemporaries that the effect of Hobbes’s treatment of religion was to place Christianity under suspicion, and the current nontheistic (to borrow Martinich’s term) interpretations by Curley and Skinner that urge that Hobbes’s intention in so treating religion was precisely to have that effect. Although he finds discerning Hobbes’s personal religious views difficult, and notes that according to Hobbes’s theory, external action is all that should matter to civil authorities, he argues that Hobbes’s distinction between beliefs that are necessary for salvation (fundamental) and those that are not may deprive the question of the orthodoxy of Hobbes’s views of much of its significance. Because the contentious views Hobbes propounded were only about non-fundamental matters, even had he been a sincere believer, he could have propounded them without fearing the loss of eternal life. Sommerville finds plausible Wright’s contention that whether Hobbes was or was not a Christian hardly matters to the interpretation of his political theory. Paul Weithman’s meticulous textual survey and careful philosophical analysis clears a path through the thicket of thorns Hobbes creates in his discussion of persons natural and artificial, authors, ownership, authorization, and representation truly or by fiction. Engaging the debate among Runciman, Skinner, and Martinich, Weithman considers the ontological status of the state and the question of how it is possible for such an entity to act. He argues that we have what he terms “maker’s knowledge” based on our own definitions of terms and knowledge of our own actions that a commonwealth is a person “by fiction” and that it is able to act in virtue of its sovereign’s acting. A novelty of his reading is that it suggests Hobbes’s treatment of the commonwealth was influenced, in ways hitherto unnoticed, by the corporation theory of the great English jurist Sir Edward Coke. He further suggests that new research on how to understand the existence of corporations may eventually help us to attain maker’s knowledge of the way Hobbes thinks the state can exist and act. Turning to

Introduction

7

Hobbes’s murky notion of authorization, Weithman addresses the debate over whether authorization does any work for Hobbes that a mere granting of rights could not do, siding with Green against Gauthier and Kavka in his contention that it does. He argues that Hobbes erred in asserting that one can authorize another to do only what one has the right to do oneself, perhaps misled by his analogy between authorship and ownership, which, as Weithman demonstrates, trades on an equivocation on “ownership” that forced an equivocation on “authorship.” He concurs with Green’s conclusion that authorization’s real contribution is to immunize the sovereign and its functionaries from liability for any wrongs they may commit. Weithman, like Green and many others, assumes that liability entails moral responsibility, and so perceives an apparent contradiction in Hobbes’s insistence that although subjects authorize all their sovereign’s actions, iniquitous actions done at the sovereign’s command are the moral responsibility of the sovereign alone. The so-called state of nature is a centerpiece of Hobbes’s political theory, but what exactly is it, and how exactly does it function in his argument? Peter Vanderschraaf, in his chapter on the character and significance of the state of nature, assesses competing conceptions of the state of nature, including as a condition of liberty unbounded by any moral constraints, as a condition lacking enforcement of norms, and as a condition of universal private judgment. He considers Hobbes’s varying pronouncements on whether the “condition of mere nature” ever actually exists, and offers a novel analysis of Hobbes’s argument that such a condition issues in a war of all against all. Vanderschraaf produces reasons for thinking that the outcome of universal war depends not on any assumption that humans are intellectually or morally flawed, but instead on the absence of a necessary sort of public information. His argument can be seen either to support or to challenge Green’s conclusion that people in a state of nature are likely to opt for peaceful pursuit of their interests over going to war. Although Hobbes contends that only the erection of a sovereign will enable people to avoid a war of all against all, Vanderschraaf’s analysis suggests that there may be mechanisms short of sovereignty that could provide the requisite public information. His interpretation thus belongs to what Blau classifies as philosophical interpretation in the service of a philosophical end. In his chapter, “Hobbes’s Confounding Foole,” Michael Byron explains the challenge posed by Hobbes’s Foole and critically examines several of the most promising interpretations of Hobbes’s reply to that challenge. He proposes to remedy what he sees as a deficiency common to all previous interpretations:

8

introduction

they do not explain what he takes to be Hobbes’s position, that the unjust Foole is the selfsame atheistic Foole of Psalms (rather than that there are distinct types of people – God deniers and rationality of justice deniers – who are foolish in different ways). Byron argues that we can establish that the unjust Foole and the atheistic Foole must be identical by distinguishing between what he calls, following Martinich, a “primary” state of nature in which injustice is impossible because the common power needed for valid covenanting does not exist, and a “secondary” state of nature in which injustice can exist because people acknowledge God as a common power to validate covenants. By denying the existence of God, an atheist locates himself in a primary state of nature; in that state, the unjust Foole’s contention that there is “no such thing as justice” is in fact correct, and just behavior is not rational. Byron concludes that in the primary/secondary state of nature distinction we find a conceptual connection between God and justice that explains why a person denies the existence of God if and only if she denies the rationality of justice. He sees as a virtue of his account, according to which “the inverse of the unjust and atheistic Foole is God,” that it fits with Hobbes’s Christian commitments. Eva Odzuck investigates the contribution feminist interpretations of Hobbes, and feminist efforts to address questions to Hobbes, have made to advancing understanding of his political philosophy. These interpretations, she argues, were often developed as critiques of liberalism’s presuppositions, and employed neo-Marxist and psychoanalytic methodologies. Although Odzuck expresses doubts as to the value of these interpretive methodologies, she credits feminist interpreters with calling attention to crucial questions for Hobbes research, including the importance of power relations, of his commonwealth by acquisition story, and the meaning of his assumption of natural equality. She discusses the feminist treatments of Hobbes in Schochet, Pateman, Hirschmann, and Di Stephano which pose what she terms “the feminist challenge” to Hobbes, namely, that despite his apparent neutrality in assuming natural equality between the sexes, Hobbes’s theory is deeply and systematically biased against women. Odzuck critically evaluates responses to the feminist challenge from several of the Hobbes scholars who have risen to it, including Newey, Sreedhar, and Lloyd. She argues against those efforts to acquit Hobbes of a systematically sexist, misogynistic theory that Hobbes did view women as inferior to men in ways that would, according to his views on power acquisition, quite naturally and predictably both lead to and justify the subordination of women.

Introduction

9

Luc Foisneau returns to both general questions of interpretation and interpretation of Hobbes’s reply to the Foole specifically, building a case that misinterpretation, far from being a waste of effort, can be, sometimes, unexpectedly productive. He argues that Gauthier’s adoption of Wolff’s misreading of Rawls’s project as an attempt to derive morality from rationality leads Gauthier to attempt a Hobbesian contractarianism. Gauthier’s own misreading of some elements of Hobbes’s reply to the Foole results in Gauthier’s distinctive, “emergentist” theory of morality as the constrained maximization of rational self-interest. Foisneau sees some value even for Hobbes interpretation in this narrative of successive misreadings: it may bring us to the conclusion that Hobbes’s rational person is not narrowly self-focused, but attentive and responsive to others’ perceptions of her reliability as a cooperative partner. The outward focus or social orientation Foisneau discovers receives foundational support from the interpretation of materialism in Frost’s chapter, and comports with the account of moral motivation in Lloyd’s chapter. So that every reader can find them in any edition, references to Leviathan, to the Latin Leviathan (OL), to De Cive, and to Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society are by chapter and paragraph number, and references to The Elements of Law are by part, chapter, and paragraph number. In some cases authors referring to these works have included supplementary page numbers of the specific editions they prefer, which editions they identify.

chapter 1

Methodologies of Interpreting Hobbes: Historical and Philosophical Adrian Blau

1

Introduction

Interpretive approaches are usually seen in terms of schools of thought, like contextualist, Marxist, philosophical, and so on.1 This ‘box-fitting’ perspective is misleading and potentially harmful. It is misleading because it ignores principles of good interpretation which we all use. It is potentially harmful because people who see themselves in a single box may avoid using research or techniques from outside their box.2 This chapter’s central message is that understanding Hobbes requires historical and philosophical analysis. Textual analysis is also needed, although this principle is uncontroversial. Our methodological literature, however, has often treated historical and philosophical analysis as alternatives, or emphasised the former and ignored the latter.3 One reason is that philosophical analysis is usually seen as an end, e.g. reconstructing authors to see how well their ideas work. But philosophical analysis is also a means to uncovering authors’ meanings and motivations – just as historical analysis is. This is why we need both. The chapter illustrates this with two scholars: Quentin Skinner, a historian, and Jean Hampton, a philosopher. Actually, Skinner’s ‘historical’ insights also reflect his philosophical analysis of Hobbes. He is more than a historian. Meanwhile, many critics see Hampton as too philosophical. This chapter defends her philosophical aims, partly by reading her historically: we understand her better when we place her Hobbes interpretations in context and see what she is really doing. But in another sense, she is not philosophical enough, misinterpreting Hobbes by taking him at face value and thus failing to grasp some of his meanings. Ironically, in this sense Skinner the historian reads Hobbes more philosophically than 1 3

E.g. Schulz and Weiss 2010, 284–8. E.g. Schulz and Weiss 2010, 284–8.

2

Blau 2015a, 1178–94; Blau 2017a, 243–69.

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Methodologies of Interpreting Hobbes: Historical and Philosophical

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Hampton the philosopher, and Skinner’s interpretations are typically more convincing. But neither scholar is methodologically flawless, as we can see by moving beyond the prevailing view of methodology as a choice between schools of thought, and seeing methodology also as a logic of inference – how we reach conclusions, how we justify our conclusions against actual or possible objections. ‘This interpretation feels right’ is methodologically weak. ‘This interpretation matches what Hobbes says elsewhere, fits the contextual evidence, and makes philosophical sense’ is methodologically stronger.

Quentin Skinner Quentin Skinner is the foremost methodologist of the history of political thought.4 But his actual interpretations are methodologically richer and broader than his methodological writings. His Hobbes work thus corrects widespread but misleading assumptions about how to interpret texts. Skinner presents himself like others present him: a historian, mainly seeking authors’ beliefs and motivations, mainly via historical contexts.5 Yet he has always been more than a historian, as is evident if we examine what he does, not just what he says. Indeed, a genealogy of Skinner’s work on Hobbes shows increasing philosophical analysis over time. It might be tempting to describe contemporary understandings of Skinner as stuck in the 1960s; but even in the 1960s he was analysing Hobbes philosophically. Skinner’s Hobbes interpretations have always rested on a combination of textual, contextual and philosophical analysis. Close textual analysis is the prerequisite: contextual and philosophical analysis needs a careful textual basis. Skinner himself teaches history of political thought like this: his Cambridge classes, for example, comprised a term of close reading of Leviathan. Reading texts carefully, not placing texts in context, is the foundation of good textual interpretation. Analysing contexts is nonetheless a powerful tool. When struggling with a reading of Hobbes, for example, linguistic context shows how contemporaries used problematic words, political context highlights possible ulterior motives for Hobbes’s arguments, philosophical context shows which ancient or modern writers Hobbes might have been following or challenging, and so on. Contextual interpretations have improved our understanding of Hobbes’s meanings and motivations. 4 5

See especially the collection of essays in Skinner 2002, Volume I. E.g. Skinner 2002, vii, 50; Goldie in Brett and Tully 2006, 3–19.

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Philosophical interpretation – here, philosophical analysis as a means, not an end – also helps. Some passages, like Hobbes’s discussion of the ‘foole’, probably cannot be properly understood unless we think them through philosophically, especially in terms of consistency (e.g. seeing if an interpretation fits with Hobbes’s other ideas) and quality of argument (e.g. asking if a philosopher of Hobbes’s ability would make a weak argument that someone has attributed to him). So, Skinner is right that we cannot understand Hobbes without reading him in his historical contexts.6 But equally, parts of Hobbes cannot be understood without reading them philosophically. This is evident even in Skinner’s first foray into Hobbes scholarship. Skinner’s early critique of philosophical readings Skinner’s first Hobbes publication was a critical review of F. C. Hood’s The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes.7 Skinner’s key message is that philosophical analysis can go wrong if not tied to careful textual and contextual analysis. Skinner criticises the approach once dominant among philosophers: concentrating overwhelmingly on a text without placing it in its historical contexts, and constructing an overly coherent system of ideas without addressing the author’s inconsistencies or changes of mind/audience.8 Skinner’s later methodological writings criticise these problems further.9 Skinner censures Hood for ‘textual misunderstanding’ and making claims with ‘no sufficient textual warrant’.10 Context, interestingly, plays little part in this paper. Only in the last two pages does Skinner note how Hood’s view of Hobbes jars with the impressions of Hobbes’s contemporaries; it would be ‘incredible’ if they all ‘missed the point’ Hobbes was supposedly making.11 This essentially treats interpretations in Hobbes’s day as evidence about what he meant.12 Skinner reiterates this in a famous methodological article: ‘the philosopher’s most plausible interpretation must still be tested, and might even have to be abandoned, in the light of historical evidence’.13 But Skinner’s most significant challenge to Hood involves Hood’s philosophical analysis. In a very rare methodological statement about this, Skinner writes: ‘it must remain essential, in assessing the seriousness 6 9 12

7 8 E.g. Skinner 1996, 8, 10. Skinner 1964, 321–3. Skinner 1964, 321–4, 330–3. 10 Skinner 1969, 4–22; Skinner 2002, 59–72. Skinner 1964, 324–5. 11 Skinner 1964, 333–4. 13 See Blau 2015a, 1189–93, on seeing context in terms of evidence. Skinner 1966, 317.

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of Hobbes’s various passing remarks, to consider what place they could have within the general philosophical framework to which he is committed’.14 This insight actually applies to any comment by Hobbes, not just passing comments: for example, the detailed table of the sciences in Leviathan chapter 9 clashes so much with Hobbes’s other comments that we should arguably place little weight on it.15 As Skinner shows, Hood’s reading of Hobbes as a traditional Christian moralist leaves Hobbes open to accusations of ‘stupidity’, given his efforts to separate religious and philosophical argumentation.16 Hobbes does not actually say ‘We must separate religious and philosophical argumentation’, but his texts clearly make this separation. Interpretations conflicting with this look dubious. Skinner does the same thing as Hood, but better – making inferences about Hobbes’s real views by reconstructing his philosophical system. We could hardly interpret texts without sometimes doing so. The more philosophical the thinker, and the more staccato the thinker, the more we must do this. And Hobbes is very philosophical and very staccato. Skinner is adept at thinking through the problems and joining the dots. But his interpretations can still be challenged, as we will now see. Reason and rhetoric: history and philosophy Skinner’s 1996 book Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes is his most advanced piece of historically oriented Hobbes scholarship. Like his other work, including Hobbes and Republican Liberty, it combines textual, contextual and philosophical analysis. But here, context comes first. Literally: the first 200 pages hardly mention Hobbes, instead detailing seventeenth-century humanist education. When we reach Hobbes the payoff is significant: even well-known passages take on new meaning. Consider Hobbes’s proposition that there is no such thing as ‘simply good’,17 and that diverse subjective goods will lead to conflict unless we can agree on some normative yardstick.18 This sounds like an ethical/political statement; Skinner shows that it also reflects Hobbes’s concern with the seditious consequences of the humanist technique of paradiastole, rhetorical redescription.19 Hobbes’s titles also take on new meaning. The Elements of Law, with its praise of mathematical approaches to philosophy, surely echoes the title of the 14 17

Skinner 1964, 331. 15 Sorell 2007, 136. 16 Skinner 1964, 331–2. 18 Hobbes, Elements of Law 7.3. Hobbes, De Cive 3.31. 19 Skinner 1996, 318, 336–43.

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1571 translation of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometry. And De Cive – ‘On the Citizen’ – is an exquisite insult to Hobbes’s humanist contemporaries who encouraged citizens to pursue the ideal of the vir civilis, participating in politics and counselling monarchs with rhetorical speeches.20 Aristotle’s message to the good citizen was: rule and be ruled in turn. Hobbes’s message to the good citizen is: sit down and shut up. More methodologically tricky, though, are Skinner’s broader claims about Hobbes’s changing motivations. Skinner holds that the Elements and De Cive are more optimistic about reason than Leviathan. Meanwhile, the Elements is sceptical about humanist conventions, which De Cive rejects more firmly, while Leviathan is a partial rapprochement – a reengagement with the humanist ideas that Hobbes had spent at least a decade battling. Skinner’s argument turns partly on his handling of certain key comments by Hobbes: (1) the ‘dictates of right reason’;21 (2) ‘Eloquence is power’, science is ‘small power’;22 (3) ‘if there be not powerfull Eloquence . . . the effect of Reason will be little’.23 (1) is part of Skinner’s claims about Hobbes’s pre-Leviathan optimism about reason.24 (2) and (3) are part of Skinner’s claims about Leviathan’s more pessimistic stance, with reason needing an ally in rhetoric.25 As regards (1), Skinner moves from the ‘dictates of right reason’ to ‘its power to order, command and enforce particular conclusions upon us’, its ‘inherent capacity to persuade’.26 But Hobbes might simply imply that reason is merely a guide which recommends what we should do while letting us choose. Both understandings of reason existed in Hobbes’s day: John Donne’s view mirrors Skinner’s, Hooker’s view is softer.27 Unless further contextual analysis resolves the problem, the solution is to think through the problem philosophically. In an earlier study, I wrote that ‘Hobbes’s comments are ambiguous but to me they sound more like Hooker than Donne.’28 I should have been firmer: these comments fit Hooker’s view and not Donne’s. For example, the first two comments in De Cive only involve reason suggesting what to 20 22 23 25 27

Skinner 1996, 285–6, 98. 21 Hobbes, De Cive 2.2, 3.19, 3.27, 15.4, 15.15. Hobbes, Leviathan 10.12, 10.14. Hobbes, Leviathan Review and Conclusion, paragraphs 1–4. 24 Skinner 1996, 302–7. 26 Skinner 1996, 3–4, 351–6, 372, 376, 426–7, 435. Skinner 1996, 302, 347; emphasis added. 28 Blau 2016, 208. Blau 2013, 208.

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do.29 The third comment even implies that we should not always follow the dictates of right reason: If a few men, more modest than everybody else, practised the fairness and consideration which reason dictates, and the rest did not do so, they [i.e. the former] would certainly not be acting rationally. For . . . the law-abiding would fall prey to the lawbreakers. One should not therefore suppose that men are obliged by nature, i.e. by reason, to keep all the laws in a state of mankind in which they are not practised by others.30

If we can choose not to follow the dictates of right reason, they cannot make us do anything. Interestingly, my earlier study did not include the page number for the end of this quotation and the ensuing sentences: I suspect I had not read the whole passage and thus missed its implications. I failed to follow my own guidance about reading ideas in their textual context, not just in their historical contexts.31 Yet Skinner himself seems to make the same error: he reads comments (2) and (3) out of their textual context, weakening his claim that Leviathan has a more pessimistic view of reason. As Michael Goodhart notes, when we read Leviathan chapter 10 from the beginning, comment (2) looks less complimentary about eloquence and less dismissive of science than Skinner implies.32 The chapter discusses powers which are ‘eminent’, i.e. visible and apt to influence people, like wealth, popularity and nobility. Eloquence is power ‘because it is seeming Prudence’, while the sciences are only ‘small power, because not eminent’. Military success is wrongly attributed to individuals rather than the sciences, especially mathematics, which allow us to make fortifications, siege engines and so on. According to Goodhart, comment (2) is not a general disparaging of science but a sardonic commentary on perception affecting power. Meanwhile, Karl Schuhmann notes that comment (3) actually involves Hobbes citing the views of other people.33 Skinner reads this as a sincere statement: ‘reason will have little effect without powerful rhetoric’. Schuhmann reads it as ‘I disagree when people say that reason will have little effect without powerful rhetoric.’ Skinner believes Leviathan reassessed the relationship between reason and rhetoric, Schuhmann thinks its intention was the same and its different style primarily reflected a different audience.34 29 32

Hobbes, De Cive 2.2, 3.19. 30 Hobbes, De Cive 3.27. 31 Blau 2017a, 246. 33 34 Goodhart 2000, 552–3. Schuhmann 1998, 123. Schuhmann 1998, 122.

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Schuhmann overstates the problem: it is not true that Skinner’s broader thesis ‘stands and falls almost entirely’ on this passage.35 Skinner has much more evidence. For example, Leviathan’s chapter on the dissolution of commonwealth no longer blames rhetorical orators.36 (This exemplifies the valuable methodological principle about looking for what is absent, not just what is present.37) Nonetheless, this passage is important for Skinner, and it is thus troubling that the first four paragraphs of the Review and Conclusion are far more ambiguous than he implies. Rereading them, I find some support for Schuhmann but more for Skinner. Schuhmann is right that Hobbes does not necessarily depict reason as weak without powerful rhetoric. His own position, stated in paragraph four, is simply that reason and rhetoric ‘may stand very well together’, in the moral sciences though not the natural sciences.38 Of course, Skinner knows this, quoting the comment three times; and this conclusion fits Skinner’s broader thesis. So does Hobbes’s psychology, especially what Hobbes writes about deliberation.39 (Hobbes’s psychology also fits better with the view of reason as a guide than as a dictator.40) Moreover, if Schuhmann is right that Leviathan’s different style reflects a difference in audience, why was the Latin Leviathan, presumably aimed at a similarly elite audience, even more rhetorical than the English version?41 There are different ways of explaining this, and none of these objections to Schuhmann is a smoking gun. But Skinner’s multiple pieces of evidence are broadly persuasive. These examples show the value of reading comments not only in historical contexts but also in textual context, and thinking philosophically about how they cohere with other ideas. Where a passage is ambiguous, we may need to reread it with different meanings in our head to see what fits best. It can help to chart the evidence for and against an interpretation, to avoid rejecting an interpretation too quickly. Where conclusions are uncertain, we should indicate our uncertainty.42

35 38 39 41 42

36 37 Schuhmann 1998, 123. Skinner 1996, 357. Blau 2015a, 1190. Hobbes, Leviathan Review and Conclusion, paragraph 4; emphasis added. 40 E.g. Hobbes, Leviathan 6.44–57. Blau 2013, 209–16. Skinner 1996, 426–7; see also Nauta 2002, 39. For one possible explanation, see Zagorin 1999, 367. Blau 2011, 362–8.

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Squaring the hermeneutic circle? Some people might call these problems ‘hermeneutic circles’: we interpret each ambiguous comment in the light of Hobbes’s motivations, but we interpret his motivations in the light of each comment. Worse, we also interpret each comment in the light of the other comments, other passages, the implications of other passages, and so on, as well as vice versa. Hermeneutic circles seem to be so serious that they have been presented as almost slam-dunk objections against Skinner.43 But the idea of hermeneutic circles is unhelpful. The literature on hermeneutics in general and hermeneutic circles in particular is imprecise and offers little practical guidance on how to resolve such issues.44 In fact, ‘hermeneutic circle’ is a messy term for what philosophers of science call ‘theory-ladenness of observation and interpretation’: our prior expectations influence what we see and how we interpret it.45 Particularly important is ‘confirmation bias’, which affects all of us and was even described by Francis Bacon.46 An example from Hobbes’s day was Gassendi and others being influenced by Galileo’s faulty description of Saturn: looking through their telescopes, many thus wrongly perceived a planet with two moons rather than rings. These faulty perceptions cannot just be attributed to poor telescopes: many people ‘saw’ what they expected to see.47 The way forward is to question the link between theory and perception/ interpretation by testing both. Saturn’s observers did so and found the solution. With Hobbes, we can reread a passage with different meanings in our head to see what fits better: we test one theory by comparing it to another. There are other tests too.48 No test can ever be conclusive. But if we suspect that our conclusions both depend on and affect our interpretation of particular passages, we can try to test our conclusions and our interpretations. Theory-ladenness is inevitable in textual interpretation, although often we do not spot it until we read conflicting interpretations or someone challenges our interpretations. But once we recognise it, we can try to tackle it, often very straightforwardly, with tools such as using different kinds of evidence to see if they tell the same story, and looking for what does not fit our interpretations, not just what does fit.49 43 44 45 46 47

E.g. Newey 1998. Blau 2015b, 42–50. For a powerful critique of the idea of hermeneutic circles, see for example Stegmüller 1977. Brewer and Lambert 2001, 176–86. Bacon 2000, 1.46. On confirmation bias, see Nickerson 1998, 175–220, especially at 180–4. 48 Van Helden 1974, 105–21. See e.g. Blau 2012, 142–55; Blau 2015b. 49 See Blau 2015b.

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The problem is still profound. Even saying that we should look for ‘what fits’ assumes that Hobbes is fairly coherent – that his ideas were not randomly stitched together, or that he did not just say whatever sounded good, as some people alleged of Rousseau at the time. Most Hobbes scholars conclude that Hobbes was indeed fairly coherent and meaningful, but we never know if this is so in a given case: even the ablest and most practised of philosophers can err. The solution, as ever, is to consider both sides. This is one reason why the ‘principle of charity’ is misleading.50 Let us return to Skinner’s thesis about Hobbes’s changing position on reason and rhetoric. The disputes about comments (1) to (3) are not about whether to study texts textually, contextually or philosophically, but about whether Skinner convincingly pieces together the textual, contextual and philosophical evidence. For the most part he does. Where he does not, it is sometimes because of taking comments out of textual context, an easy mistake to make. At other times, he does not spot that the implications of certain comments support a weaker view of reason than he assumes. Again, such misinterpretations are an occupational hazard. Last reflections on context These challenges to Reason and Rhetoric are primarily about Skinner’s textual and philosophical analysis, not his contextual analysis. But he has been criticised, especially by historians, for overplaying politics and ideology, and underplaying contexts such as political economy, religion, science and social context more broadly.51 Of course, a single researcher can only do so much. Scholarship is a communal enterprise: perhaps Skinner should do what he is best at, and let other scholars build on this.52 Skinner certainly does not imagine that his research is the last word.53 He often refines his Hobbes interpretations through reflecting further on the issues or listening to critics.54 But any historian wishing to emulate or supplement Skinner should remember the limits of historical analysis. This is not to make John Plamenatz’s point, misrepresented by Skinner. Skinner portrays Plamenatz as a textualist, advocating ‘reading’ texts over and over.55 This is not what Plamenatz wrote or meant.56 Rather, ‘weighing’ texts over and over gives us a different kind of understanding to placing them in 50 51 52 55

Blau 2015a, 1185. Goodhart 2000, 542; Whatmore 2006, 121–5; Collins 2011, 281–3; Hamilton 2014, 28–9. 54 Blau 2017b, 15. 53 Skinner 2002, 121. E.g. Skinner 2012, 127–46. 56 Skinner 1969, 131; Skinner 2002, 80, 143. Minogue 1981, 539.

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context.57 Although Plamenatz is not clear, he seems to advocate a kind of philosophical understanding – ‘understanding the argument’.58 For example, we might spot the strengths and weaknesses of one of Hobbes’s laws of nature, how to strengthen it, how it links to other laws of nature and to Hobbes’s psychological assumptions, and so on. Note that Plamenatz is defending philosophical understanding as an end, which the next section on Jean Hampton discusses. But thus far, this chapter has addressed philosophical understanding as a means to the empirical ends of understanding authors’ meanings and motivations. This kind of philosophical analysis can give the same kind of understanding as contextual analysis, and in many cases should go hand-in-hand with contextual analysis, because contextual and philosophical analysis both provide evidence that all textual interpreters need at certain points.59 Historians following Skinner should remember: especially when interpreting Hobbes, it is more history, and more philosophy, which is needed.

Jean Hampton Jean Hampton died tragically young in 1996, aged only 41, after a brain haemorrhage. She was a moral philosopher whose Hobbes interpretations were part of broader projects. This matters. We are rightly urged to place historical authors in context and recognise what they were doing in writing what they wrote. But we often forget to apply this to more recent authors with whom we disagree. Cambridge historians have been particularly uncharitable to John Rawls.60 His former student, Hampton, has not been treated as unfairly, but she too has been criticised for things that are more defensible when seen in context. Her conclusions often fail to convince, but her approach is legitimate and important. The relevant context is Hampton’s lifelong engagement with contractarian moral and political philosophy. Her first publication argued that Rawls did not actually have a contract theory.61 (Interestingly, this ends up being her own interpretation of Hobbes, and her own position.62) Her work regularly addresses rationality, self-interest and self-respect.63 The first two are central for Hobbes. The third, which is more Kantian, increasingly emerges in her post-Hobbes work. 57 60 61 63

59 Plamenatz 1963, x. 58 Plamenatz 1963, x; emphasis added. Blau 2015a, 1189–93. E.g. Dunn 1996, 60–3; Skinner 2010, 45–6, which overlooks what Rawls says in Rawls 1993, 354–6. 62 Hampton 1980, 315–38. Hampton 2007, 10–11, 21–5; Hampton 1992, 650, 670–81. See Hampton’s 1996 interview in Pyle 1999, 232–3.

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Hampton’s path is essentially one from Hobbes to Locke and then Kant. Her famous Hobbes book, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (1986), thinks through Hobbes’s puzzles, challenges his solutions, and suggests that his ideas actually imply Lockean solutions. Her later efforts to maintain a Hobbesian component are really subsumed in Kant. Hampton is thus part of a movement that includes David Gauthier, Martin Hollis and Gregory Kavka. Testing contractarianism is the main aim; interpreting Hobbes is secondary. The key questions are what conditions are needed for order, and what moral and political principles derive from agreement/contracts. Hobbes matters because his model of human interaction and psychology is more minimalist than Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant or Rawls. The actual Hobbes is subtler than Hampton et al.’s caricature, as we will see, but their real concern is how far we can get with minimal assumptions – assumptions still held in much of economics, indeed. These authors’ approach to Hobbes is essentially: (1) work out what Hobbes means, and/or (2) simplify Hobbes; (3) test how well these arguments work; (4) where they fail, see what makes them work. Steps (3) and (4) help us understand Hobbes better, in the second sense of philosophical understanding discussed in this chapter – philosophical understanding as an end, not a means. When an author’s arguments fail, how deep are the errors, and can they be corrected within the author’s system? Hampton et al. often find that fixing Hobbes’s errors requires ideas from later thinkers in the social contract tradition. Such analysis may not interest historians. Richard Tuck, for example, disparages philosophers like Kavka, and by implication Hampton, for ‘pillaging the classics’ to find insights for today.64 But we need not only study things that interest historians. And exploring the development of contractarianism is historically valuable. The key objections to Hampton involve steps (1) and (2). Step (1) can go wrong if a scholar tries to get Hobbes right but fails. Hampton does try to get Hobbes right, as do Gauthier and Kavka (although not Hollis, I suspect). However, we will see that she misreads Hobbes. Ultimately, though, getting Hobbes right is not her goal. Step (2) is fine for her: she is explicit that the ‘Hobbesian’ moral theory she tests may not be Hobbes’s 64

Tuck 2007, 69.

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moral theory, and aligns herself with scholars testing a minimalist model for contractarian reasons.65 So, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition is not just a book about Hobbes. It is, as the title implies, about Hobbes and the social contract tradition. This is evident from the outset: she seeks ‘to shed light on the general structure of all social contract arguments by analyzing and explaining Hobbes’s contractarian argument’.66 She wants a ‘rethinking’ of Hobbes, not just ‘a description or explication’ of his position, because only ‘the best possible statement of Hobbes’s argument for absolute sovereignty’ shows how the argument fails, and grasping this helps us see ‘what structure a social contract argument must have if it is to succeed’.67 As she wrote later: We must resist the temptation to treat philosophical figures as museum pieces. Instead we should dissect, analyze, explicate, and respond to their arguments in order to see how far those arguments are right. Of course, it is anachronistic to read game theory back into traditional contractarian writings – that is not the point. The issue to be decided is whether or not we learn anything of value about Locke’s and Hobbes’s understanding of the state if we do so, and I think we do.68

Treating philosophical figures as museum pieces is surely legitimate in itself, and because dustily antiquarian research can benefit more presentist analyses of dead philosophers. But the key point is that despite Hampton’s errors in step (1), ultimately she focuses on (2) to (4). If we follow Skinner’s advice about asking what authors were doing, we do not fully understand Hampton if we stop reading after spotting her step (1) errors. Even treating her book only as a book on Hobbes says more about us as Hobbes scholars than about the book. Hampton the game theorist A lot of nonsense has been written by game theorists, although not as much as has been written about game theorists. (No field of research is bereft of nonsense; we should judge bodies of thought by their best exemplars, not just their worst.) The basic idea of game theory is uncontroversial: to model interactions between people, including cooperation and conflict. For example, if you expect that your bank will soon run out of money, you might withdraw your money, but if enough people do this, there will be 65 67

Hampton 1991, 34–5, 38–46. 66 Hampton 1986, ix, 1–3; emphasis added. Hampton 1986, 2. 68 Hampton 2007, 210–1.

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a run on the bank. What is individually rational for you in the short term can be collectively irrational, and thus irrational for you in the long term. Politics is partly about avoiding such clashes of rationality, and game theory helps us model them more precisely, e.g. seeing how outcomes might depend on variables such as perception of risk, number of people involved, or amount of money in the bank.69 This example parallels a problem Hobbes faced, as Howard Warrender notes: we obey the sovereign until there is so much disorder that it becomes rational to disobey.70 Hampton analyses the issue in more detail.71 Even Ioannis Evrigenis, no fan of Hampton, uses a simple, non-formal piece of game theory to show how the state of nature turns equality into inequality.72 Game theory is legitimate. And Hobbes surely had an intuitive grasp of it.73 He might have been fascinated by game-theoretic efforts to test his arguments. True, he preferred geometry to algebra,74 and derided heavy use of mathematical symbols, even declaring that one opponent’s argument was ‘so covered over with the scab of symbols, that I had not the patience to examine whether it be well or ill demonstrated’.75 While his ‘once-considerable mathematical reputation’ had been ‘utterly destroyed’ by the 1660s,76 he had been a prominent European mathematician in the 1640s, and explicitly founded his civil science on mathematics.77 But even if he loathed game-theoretic analyses, they would be justifiable: is Hobbes right to derive moral and political conclusions from his claims about human behaviour? Game theorists are not so much telling us what Hobbes thought as ‘completing some of Hobbes’s unfinished business’.78 Hampton uses game theory to ask many important questions. What causes conflict in the state of nature: passions or rationality? Is the state of nature like a one-off prisoner’s dilemma or a repeated prisoner’s dilemma? How, if at all, could individuals in the state of nature choose a sovereign? Could these problems of agreement persist in society? Is the contract an alienation of rights or a principal-agent relationship whereby subjects delegate their power? Is absolute sovereignty consistent with citizens retaining the right to judge when the sovereign threatens selfpreservation? Does Hobbes’s position really point to absolutism or to

69 70 73 75 77

See for example the enlightening discussion of Hampton by Zenzinger 1992, 172–7. Warrender 1957, 318. 71 Hampton 2007, 212–8. 72 Evrigenis 2014, 148–9. Curley 1990, 176–8; Vanderschraaf 2013, 39. 74 Jesseph 1999, 73–100, 131–88. Hobbes EW 7, 316; see also 187–8, 248. I know the feeling. 76 Jesseph 1999, 247. 78 Hobbes, Elements of Law, Epistle Dedicatory. Vanderschraaf 2013, 48.

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a more limited, Lockean, liberal democracy? Such questions are fundamental to Hobbes’s project. Objections to Hampton’s reading of Hobbes Hampton’s specific conclusions are not in themselves typically accepted: game theorists have moved beyond her interpretations.79 Given this chapter’s concerns, it is more methodologically interesting to see how and why she gets Hobbes himself wrong. This is not to attack Hampton’s broader philosophical ends, but it does illustrate how such philosophical ends can lead to misinterpretations. And, despite Hampton’s caveat that she is ultimately not concerned about getting Hobbes right, she often implies that she has done so, and many scholars accept her reading. The most important critique of Hampton is Sharon Lloyd’s attack on the ‘standard philosophical interpretation’ of Hobbes, with its assumptions of egoism, individualism, instrumental rationality and so on.80 Lloyd highlights Hobbes’s ‘remarkably rich, complex, and insightful conception of human psychology’, and criticises Hampton and others for reading Hobbes selectively then unfairly criticising Hobbes’s alleged onesidedness.81 Consider Hampton’s claim that ‘an initial premiss of [Hobbes’s] argument’ was that ‘human beings are not in any fundamental way products of their social environment’,82 and that ‘Hobbes would either not understand or else resist’ the view that our personality, interests and skills ‘are defined by and created within a social context’.83 But as Lloyd and Robert Shaver note, such claims overlook Hobbes’s many comments on human sociability, even in the state of nature, and confuse what Hobbes writes about the thought experiment of the state of nature with his many comments on actual people.84 Hampton’s image of Hobbesian individuals is unHobbesian. She depicts Hobbes’s inattention to these issues as a failing of his moral theory.85 But the failing is not Hobbes’s. Hampton has been criticised for ‘lopping off a good portion of [Hobbes’s] text’.86 Such exclusions can actually be permissible: for example, Hobbes’s natural histories87 and mathematical writings88 are not typically read into his political theory.89 But Hampton errs by reading 79 82 84 86 89

See Eggers 2011, 193–226. 80 Lloyd 1992, 6–47. 81 Lloyd 2009, 57. Hampton 1986, 11. 83 Hampton 1991, 46–7; quotation at 46. Shaver 1990, 55–7; Lloyd 1992, 57–78. 85 Hampton 2007, 11. Eisenach 1989, 134; see likewise Ashcraft 1991, 119. 87 Bunce 2006, 77–101. For one exception, see Blau 2009, 602–3.

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Jesseph 1999.

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Hobbes through her own eyes, not his. Thus she sees Leviathan as ‘primarily concerned with presenting a contract argument for the institution of a certain kind of state (one with an absolute sovereign)’.90 Actually, most of Leviathan, including parts 3 and 4, concerns other matters, including preserving order. When she discusses Hobbesian solutions to disorder, she only addresses coercion,91 resolving or preventing controversies coercively92 and incentivising citizens to like the commonwealth by providing public goods like peace and security.93 This neglects Hobbes’s solutions such as education.94 Hampton sees that Hobbes needs more than coercion, but her account of how sovereigns could ‘convert’ citizens is far more extreme than Hobbes’s educational prescriptions.95 Where does Hampton go wrong? This chapter is more interested in the methodological reasons for errors than in the errors themselves. Ten related problems can be found in Hampton. Listing so many problems is not meant to be harsh on Hampton: we all do make or could make these errors. But in a chapter on methodologies of interpreting Hobbes, with special emphasis on comparing philosophical and historical approaches, it is instructive to highlight the logic of faulty inference, especially since it shows that Hampton’s philosophical ends subvert her use of philosophical analysis as a means to understanding Hobbes. A first problem is anachronistic misreadings – injecting modern notions into Hobbes’s terms. For example, Hampton reads Hobbesian ‘reason’, which is purely deductive, in a modern, rationalchoice way,96 and she treats Hobbes’s sovereign-subject relationship as a master-slave one, a parallel Hobbes rejects in favour of a masterservant relationship; she barely engages with Hobbes’s discussion of this point, which she has ‘clearly misrepresented’.97 So here we also have a second error: not quite reading the text carefully enough. A third error, noted by Al Martinich, is not reading the text contextually: Hobbes’s biblical allusions further highlight his focus on subjects not slaves.98 A fourth reason is not reading widely enough. Daniel Eggers writes that ‘virtually all game-theoretic analyses of Hobbes’s argument have been 90 93 96 97

Hampton 1991, 33. 91 Hampton 1991, 608–9. 92 Hampton 1989, 801–2. Hampton 1986, 166–88. 94 Tuck 1998, 148–56. 95 Hampton 1986, 208–20. Rhodes 1992, 94, 100–1; van Mill 2001, 75–96. Russell 1989, 621–2; see also Zagorin 2009, 84. 98 Martinich 1992, 179–81.

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confined to the English Leviathan’,99 but even within Leviathan, Hampton concentrates overly on its early chapters. Hobbes’s ideas on sociability and education are scattered across many writings, however. Such mistakes, while almost inevitable, partly reflect a fifth and deeper cause: Hampton mainly addresses escaping the state of nature, whereas Hobbes wrote far more about how to avoid returning to one. We need both perspectives, clearly, but Hampton puts too much emphasis on the former. This of course reflects a sixth problem: reading texts with certain expectations can lead to misreadings. These expectations often come from other scholars: Hampton, like all scholars, often follows prevailing wisdoms (or at least, wisdoms that prevailed in her day – Lloyd and others have shown that these views are not so wise). A seventh problem, still common today, is generalising from what Hobbes says about behaviour in the state of nature to behaviour in society. Extrapolating from some sections of a text to others can be permissible, but this extrapolation is wrong. An eighth reason is placing excess weight on comments like men in the state of nature who look like they ‘just emerged from the earth like mushrooms’.100 As Lloyd shows, Hampton should not have read this as a comment about ‘radical individualism’,101 but even if Hobbes had meant it that way, it clashes with so much that he wrote elsewhere that we should not treat it as a core Hobbesian idea.102 Taking such comments at face value reflects the ninth and most intellectually important problem: not thinking philosophically enough (in terms of philosophical analysis as a means to uncovering authors’ meanings, not philosophical analysis as an end). We need some grasp of an author’s key commitments to infer how much weight to place on passing comments, rhetorical flourishes or apparent mistakes. But even grasping the meaning of sincere passages can require reconstruction. Consider Leviathan 17.13, on submitting our wills and judgement to the sovereign’s wills and judgement. Hampton reads this at face value – utter abandonment to the sovereign. As Susanne Sreedhar shows, though, ‘this literal reading of the passage is misleading’. Given what Hobbes writes in similar passages, a ‘more plausible and somewhat less literal’ reading simply involves obeying the sovereign’s commands when we disagree with them.103 Hence this chapter’s reiteration of the importance of thinking philosophically in order to uncover what authors themselves meant. And that 99 101

Eggers 2011, 199. 100 Hobbes, De Cive 8.1. See especially Hampton 1986, 6–7. 102 Lloyd 2009, 76–8; Hampton 1986, 11. Hampton 1986, 11. 103 Sreedhar 2010, 100–3.

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highlights the tenth and most troubling reason why Hampton’s reading of Hobbes goes awry: her main aim is philosophical, not empirical (recovering Hobbes’s own ideas), and when she does focus on the latter, she does not do it well enough, because for her it is not that important. Hampton thus needs both kinds of philosophical thinking: testing/ amending/applying his ideas (philosophical ends) and thinking through Hobbes’s problems philosophically to recover his beliefs (philosophical means to empirical ends). Yet Skinner the historian often does this better than Hampton the philosopher. This conclusion does not undermine Hampton’s broader philosophical objectives: we must not throw out the contractarian baby with the quasi-Hobbesian bathwater. Nor does it privilege the second approach over the first. But whether or not we have philosophical ends, it is easy to get authors wrong, and to the extent that this matters, it is not just historians but also philosophers who need to think philosophically. Hampton on Hobbes, Kant and feminist contractarianism Hampton’s ‘feminist contractarianism’, outlined in a 1991 essay and fleshed out in 1993, is interesting for its Hobbes angle and important in itself.104 Hampton expands the scope of much previous contractarianism, to include relationships between friends, partners and family members.105 Worried that an ethic of care permits exploitation, she proposes a contractarian test of justice in relationships: could two self-interested people in a relationship reasonably accept, in an uncoerced, informed agreement, the distribution of costs and benefits that are not themselves side-effects of affective or duty-based ties?106 This is predominantly Kantian. Hampton rejects a purely Hobbesian contractarianism, which ignores humans’ intrinsic value.107 But Hampton dislikes the austerity of Kantian ethics and its potentially ‘self-flagellating’ and ‘brutalizing’ nature. She wants ‘a Kantian perspective with more self-interest in it’, hence her appeal to ‘the purely self-interested perspective’ in Hobbes.108 Including selfinterest preserves ‘what may be the only rightheaded aspect of 104

105 107

Hampton 1991, 53–5. The 1993 essay ‘Feminist Contractarianism’ (originally in A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, eds. Antony and Witt. Boulder: Westview Press) is reprinted in Hampton 2007, 1–36, from which references below are taken. Hampton expands on her ideas in Pyle 1999, 233–6. Hampton 2007, 1–2, 20. 106 Hampton 2007, 21. 108 Hampton 2007, 11–13; see also Hampton 1991, 48–51. Pyle 1999, 233.

Methodologies of Interpreting Hobbes: Historical and Philosophical 27 Hobbes’s thought’, creating ‘a “Hobbesian” brand of Kantian contractarianism’.109 As she later said: There is a Hobbesian remark that maybe is the only true thing that the man said. (I love Hobbes, but there is very little else that is true.) He says in Chapter fifteen of Leviathan that we are not under any obligation to make ourselves prey to others. In the Hobbesian context that makes sense: it would violate rationality for you to do that. But if you extract that remark and think about it from a slightly different moral perspective it seems that it should be every person’s credo, that you do not have to make yourself prey.110

However, as Ruth Abbey notes, ‘giving the Kantian component due prominence renders the Hobbesian contribution redundant’.111 Treating everyone with dignity and respect means that there is no exploitation. The irony of Hampton’s sadly curtailed career is that it was never as Hobbesian as she thought. Her Hobbes is not always close to the real Hobbes, and although she is a rare example of a philosopher who ‘who does not think that calling a methodology “Hobbesian” is an argument against it’,112 she herself ended up using little that was Hobbesian.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that we should not see methodology in terms of approaches like contextualist, Marxist and philosophical, and has focused instead on methodology as the logic of inference. The chapter’s central insight is the need to think historically and philosophically: historical analysis is crucial, but sometimes we cannot understand what someone meant unless we think through the issues philosophically. One other principle, implicit until now, has also underpinned this chapter: we learn more about principles of good and bad practice by analysing actual interpretations than by reading our methodological literature. While I have learned much about methodology from the methodological literature, especially Skinner’s, I have learned more from actual interpretations, especially Skinner’s. Despite these problems in our methodological literature, there are many excellent interpretations of Hobbes. We are fortunate to enjoy such riches. 109 112

Hampton 2007, 29, 20. Hampton 1989, 807.

110

Pyle 1999, 235–6.

111

Abbey 2014, 129.

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But strikingly, our methodological literature says little about the fundamentally important principle that we must sometimes think philosophically in order to recover what authors meant. As this chapter has shown, in this respect even high-powered interpreters like Skinner and Hampton sometimes fall short.

chapter 2

Hobbes’s Political-Philosophical Project: Science and Subversion A. P. Martinich

Thomas Hobbes conceived of his political philosophy as a science.1 Due to the circumstances in England, he intended it to be subversive. The scientific dimension is accepted by virtually all Hobbesian scholars, including Leo Strauss, who famously held that the scientific trappings obscured his political philosophy (Strauss 1952).2 The character of that science and the place of politics within it is the topic of Section 3. Whether Hobbes’s subversion was supposed to be subterranean, and if so, how, is complicated and will be the topic of Section 4. Both sections need background information to be understood, and that is provided in Sections 1 and 2.

1

Textual and Contextual Interpretation3

Many interpreters adopt formalism in theory. They believe that the meaning of a text is discovered by careful attention to the meaning of the words and to the syntax of the sentences. Those who read between the lines by a careful reading of the text are, somewhat ironically, the best-known textualists. A problem with textualism appears when considering a brief but important text: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” The text does not exclude a law that prohibits people from listening to speech. So by textualism freedom of speech does not include freedom of listening. The text of the second amendment provides an equally good example. It allows laws against the loading and shooting of arms. The source of the problem with textualism is that the meanings of 1 2 3

I want to thank S. A. Lloyd and Leslie Martinich for their help with this chapter. On Hobbes’s humanism, see Skinner 1996, Paganini 2003, and Lauta 2009. Only textualism and contextualism will be discussed in this chapter. Intentionalism and a form of reader-response interpretation both have a role to play in contextualism, described in this section below. Deconstructionism is not treated at all.

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words underdetermine the communicative meaning that audiences care about. For a textualist to object that the context of the text is implicit is to concede that the theory is inadequate. Contextualism, which asserts that context supplements text, obviously does not deny the importance of the text. Text and context have to be balanced against each other with an eye towards identifying the most likely meaning. Applied to a historical text like Leviathan, a judgment as to what Hobbes meant to communicate is or should include evidence from his life and activities, his culture and circumstances, the judgments of his contemporaries about what he meant, propositions about human psychology generally, and of seventeenth-century intellectuals in particular. The reason for considering these multiple factors is that successful communication depends upon mutual understanding of the author and audience, plus the author’s reasonable expectation that his audience can recognize his communicative intention. Mutual knowledge conditions what an author is likely to mean and able to communicate (Davidson 1984; Grice 1989; Quine and Ullian 1978; cf. Skinner 2002: 1, 1–7). While contextualism puts the right elements of interpretation into play, it does not prevent disagreements about the interpretation of a text. Contextualists do not agree on what Hobbes thought the proper relationship between religion and politics is because they cannot agree on his beliefs about religion. One opinion that rests heavily on Hobbes’s reading and the dominant religious practice of the early seventeenth century is that Hobbes was a particular kind of theist, that is, episcopal, orthodox, Erastian, an English Calvinist, and preferring a rich liturgy.4 Such interpretations are “the theistic interpretations” because of what they attribute to Hobbes, not to the interpreter. Non-theist interpreters claim that Hobbes was a deist, agnostic, or atheist.5 Logic would suggest that those who think that Hobbes was a heretic are theistic interpreters since “heretic” presupposes being a believer. However, they usually have more in common with the atheist interpreters.

4

5

Johnson (1974) and Glover were perhaps the first to present this kind of interpretation. Glover wrote, Some of the ideas which Hobbes derived from the Reformation were, as a matter of fact, as disturbing to his contemporaries as anything resulting from his rationalism or materialism . . . [Other Protestants] who held very similar views [used] terminology that obscured implications Hobbes laid bare . . . Against the God of the Platonists Hobbes defended the Biblical tradition of a God who acts directly in nature and history, a God who is the source of righteousness. (Glover 1965: 142–3) A view on the border between the theist and non-theist interpretations, and possibly the best one, is that Hobbes was a deist who thought the best institutional structure of religion was episcopal monarchism and who found a high liturgy spiritually or emotionally most satisfying.

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The claim that Hobbes was an English Calvinist is often mistaken as the claim that Hobbes accepted all of the salient beliefs of John Calvin. However, several Western European countries developed their own versions of Calvinism, England being one (McNeill 1954; see also Martinich 1992, 1996, and 2012). Alan Cromartie gives the impression that Hobbes was not Calvinist enough to be any kind of Calvinist. He indicates that Hobbes differed from John Calvin on some important points and that “the more Hobbes’s view is scrutinized, the less Calvinistic it seems” (Cromartie 2018: 96; cf. Muller 1986: 180). Hobbes’s belief about salvation is relevant here. One mark of any kind of Calvinism is belief that salvation is completely a matter of faith, not works. While Cromartie does not think that Hobbes believes it, consider Hobbes’s assertion in the first sentence of this passage: For by the Law of Moses, which is applyed to mens Actions, and requireth the Absence of Guilt, all men living are liable to Damnation, and therefore no man is iustified by Works, but by Faith only. But if Workes be taken for the endeavour to doe them, that is, if the Will be taken for the Deed, or Internal, for External Righteousness, then doe works contribute to Salvation. And then taketh place that of S. James, Chap. 2.24. Ye see then how that of works a man is iustisted [sic], and not of faith only. And both of these are ioyned to salvation, as in S. Mark. 1.5. Repent and believe the Gospel. . . . But though both Faith and Justice (meaning still by Justice, not absence of Guilt, but the Good Intentions of the Mind, which is called Righteousness by God, that taketh the Will for the Deed) be both of them said to iustifie, yet are their Parts in the Act of Justification to be distinguished. (Elements of Law 6.10, 128–9)

Cromartie denies that Hobbes is a Calvinist because of the words in boldface, the only words of the passage that he quotes. But Hobbes had just asserted the sola fide tenet with the words “no man is iustified by Works, but by Faith only.” The rest of the passage has to be understood in light of that assertion. Maybe Cromartie does not see this because he discounts the first sentence and does not give enough weight to the “if”s in the second sentence. Acts of will are usually not regarded as deeds; but if they are so regarded, then God takes them for deeds. St. Paul is the source for the view (2 Corinthians 8: 12). Such Calvinists as John Bradford and William Perkins wrote that God accepts “the will for the deed” (in Foxe 1583: 1923; Perkins 1592: 7).6 Other expressions of the doctrine may be found in Attersol 1618: 258; Abbot 1617: 8; Bennefield 1615: 21; Bernard 6

Spelling is modernized for seventeenth-century texts not by Hobbes.

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1626: 269; Bolton 1626: 316; and Byfield 1615: 8, to consider only divines with last names beginning with A or B.7 Taking the will for the deed was an aspect of respectable English Calvinism. This example also shows how historical contextualism enjoins “To the texts themselves!” To discuss the proper interpretation of Hobbes’s views more generally, we need to judge the likelihood of his having a particular communicative intention. The issue is not so much about whether we have a “right to suppose that Hobbes could see what we see” (Curley 1996: 270), but whether he could have expected his audience to understand what he meant. Roughly, theistic interpreters think that Hobbes could have expected his audience to believe that he believed (a) that sovereignty is absolute; (b) that religion is subject to the authority of the sovereign in order to preserve civil stability; (c) that God exists; (d) that reason belongs to science and faith to religion; and (e) that faith is compatible with reason, among other things. Non-theist interpreters generally think that Hobbes expected his audience to attribute to him (a) and (b), possibly (c) and (d), but not (e). Those who accept (c) think that Hobbes is a deist, and those who accept (d) usually think that Hobbes believed that religions are superstitions that result from putting faith in a person like Moses. Nontheist interpreters think that the clerics John Bramhall, George Lawson, and William Lucy were perceptive readers and presumably that Hobbes’s philosophical friends, such as Mersenne, Gassendi, Digby, White, and the Cavendishes, who left no evidence of Hobbes’s non-theism, were not. John Aubrey, a friend but not a philosopher, judged that Hobbes’s “writings and virtuous life testify” that he clearly was “a Christian” (Aubrey 1898: 353; cf. Martinich 2007). But Curley thinks that Aubrey’s report that Edmund Waller’s refused to write a memorial poem for Hobbes because Waller apparently said that Hobbes had “pulled down all the churches . . . and laid open their priestcraft” is strong evidence of Hobbes’s non-theism (quoted in Aubrey I. 358; and Curley 1996: 271). I’m not convinced because the first part of Waller’s quotation seems hyperbolic. The second almost certainly applies only to the priests and bishops of the restored Anglican Church. In any case, I am comfortable in the company of Mersenne and the others. Undoubtedly, Hobbes failed to communicate with many people; but most original thinkers do (cf. Skinner 1988: 231–2). In addition to their bigotry and mental rigidity, interpreters could misunderstand Hobbes’s sometimes obscure and apparently contradictory texts (Leviathan 17.13, 18.1, and 21.14; see also Martinich 1996: 275–6; and 2001). If Hobbes’s 7

Space does not allow me to give Cromartie’s work the discussion it deserves.

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obscurities and contradictions existed only in his theological discussions, these failings might be telling. But they occur in his political philosophy, his natural philosophy, and mathematics.8 It is not acceptable to say that our judgments about the significance of Hobbes’s religious contradictions are not subject to the same criteria as those in other fields because religion is . . . religion. Isolating religion from the other parts of his philosophy is special pleading and requires a needlessly complex explanation for what he was doing. Also relevant is Hobbes’s distinction between explicit atheism and “atheism by consequence” (An Answer to a Book, 130–1). Atheists are conscious of their disbelief in God. But atheists by consequence are all those who hold beliefs that entail that God does not exist, whether the person is conscious of this consequence or not. If Christian theism includes inconsistent propositions, then every Christian theologian is an atheist by consequence.9 Also contributing to misunderstanding Hobbes was his unique attempt to yoke the old with the new. The old was his adherence to sola Scriptura, English Calvinism, and absolutism. Sola Scriptura was a standard Protestant tool for purging the Bible of pagan and Roman Catholic elements, as it was in the work of many who decried the use of philosophy in religion (Considerations upon the Reputation, 32, 37; see also Byfield 1626: 50, and Martinich 2013). Hobbes’s arguments against belief in immaterial spirits and free will are consonant with a commitment to the literal interpretation of the Bible, which he shared with the prominent theologian William Perkins: “There is one only sense, and the same is the literal” (Perkins 1609: 31). Hobbes thought that the theology imbued with Aristotelian concepts distorted biblical teaching and introduced false doctrines into Christianity. He was at one with Tertullian on this issue, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” As for absolutism, his promotion of it in Leviathan was incompatible with the spirit of limited government in the early Commonwealth. The new view was his scientism and sophisticated knowledge of biblical interpretation, which far outstripped the common run of English divines. It led him to adopt interpretations that some of his readers thought undermined the Bible through mockery or refutation by his espousal of the new science (see Malcolm 2002). In fact, these interpretations were consonant with

8 9

On political philosophy, see Leviathan 17.13, 87 versus 18.1, 22 and 21.14, 112; on natural philosophy, see Of the Body 7.1–2 and 25.1–2; on mathematics, see Jesseph 1999. Section 4 contains more about Hobbes’s contradictions.

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the English Calvinist theology of double predestination and a literal interpretation of the Bible. Some of his views, which his adversaries thought to be novel, were not. Calvinists had distinguished between faith and reason long before Hobbes (see Pearson 1659: 1–5; see also Cranmer 1580: 139; cf. Frith in Tyndale 1573: 334, second pagination; Hemmingsen 1579: 60; Whitaker 1585: 188). What he provided was an elaboration of the consequences of that distinction. The elaboration did not denigrate faith. He could hardly have done that since he will require subjects to keep faith in creating a sovereign (Leviathan 7.5, 31; 14.18 and 20, together, 68, and 15.3, 71; see also John 20: 29). If two people covenant “to performe hereafter . . . he that is to performe in time to come, being trusted, his performance is called Keeping of Promise, or Faith; and the fayling of performance (if it be voluntary) Violation of Faith” (Leviathan 14.11, 66; see also 14.20, 68; 30.4, 175–6).10 His temperament often worked to his disadvantage. As Seth Ward reported, Hobbes “had a good conceit of himself, and was impatient of Contradiction: . . . he also thought himself Wiser; if any one objected against his Dictates, he would leave the Company in a passion, saying, his business was to Teach, not Dispute” (Pope 1697: 118). His mien reflected his personality: “Those who remember Mr. Hobbs, as I perfectly do (and whose Pictures are perfectly like him) might discover in his very Looks, a supercilious, Saturnine Opiniatrety [sic], pleased with himself” (Evelyn 1697: 340–1). Some resented that the low-born Hobbes had risen so high (Clarendon 1676: 181; Skinner 2002: 2: 324–45; see also Jackson, N. 2007: 51). Hobbes aptly described himself as a man who loved his own opinions (Leviathan, “To My Most Honor’d Friend”). Quentin Skinner, one of the great theorists of contextualism, urged making the guiding question for interpreters “What is the author doing with words in such-and-such a book?” Inspired by Austin’s theory of speech acts, Skinner said that authors’ intentions are revealed through 10

It is tempting to think that religious faith and political faith are different things. But they are not. Hobbes’s explanation of faith or belief in chapter 7 of Leviathan covers the faith that people have in religion and the civil state. It would be difficult for him to hold that there are two kinds of faith since he wants a union of the civil state and religion. In sovereign-making covenants, “faith in the man” is faith in the other parties to perform the terms of the covenant and then faith in the sovereign to protect them. And in religion, “faith in the man” is faith that the founder of the religion is revealing the true god and then, properly, protecting them as the sovereign (Leviathan 7.5, 31). A distinction that should be drawn is between rational and nonrational faith, and within nonrational faith, between irrational and nonirrational faith. Faith in Nazism is irrational political faith, and not different, as faith, from an irrational religious faith. I think that the Christian or Jewish faith of some prominent philosophers has the same character as their faith in their political party. Neither religious nor political faith needs to be uncritical or unreflective.

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linguistic conventions. In answering the question about what an author is doing, it is essential to distinguish between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, that is, between what an author does “in saying” something and what the author does “by saying” something (Austin 1975; and Skinner 2002: 1: 104–5). Skinner departs from Austin’s view of illocutionary acts in that while such acts for Austin apply only at the level of individual sentences (Austin 1975; cf. Fotion 1971), Skinner is primarily concerned with the author’s intentions for an entire text, whether article or book. About The ShortestWay with the Dissenters, he says that Defoe’s “illocutionary intention is that of ridiculing the intolerance that would be embodied in” recommending certain cruel practices (Skinner 1988: 270).11 Skinner seems to be more interested in a fine-grained theory or classifications of genre than in individual speech acts. About the passage “it is necessary for a prince to learn how not to be good” in Machiavelli’s The Prince, Skinner says, “it cannot I think be doubted that the crucial question to raise is what Machiavelli was doing in counselling rulers in this way.” He answers that Machiavelli’s intention was to challenge and repudiate an accepted moral commonplace. We can know he was doing this because there was not only a highly conventionalized genre of writing against which to measure Machiavelli’s utterance of it. There is also a clear presumption that Machiavelli was aware of the genre and the conventions governing it. (Skinner 2002: 1: 136, 142)

Even if Machiavelli was giving counsel, trying to persuade the prince that politics is exempt from morality is a perlocutionary act. Illocutionary and perlocutionary are asymmetric. Illocutionary acts are either governed by conventions or rely on open, communicative intentions in contrast with perlocutionary acts, which cause some natural state or reaction in the audience, a change of beliefs, attitudes, or values (Austin 1975; Grice 1989; Strawson 1971). Discovering the perlocutionary act is often important for understanding the history of a text. So identifying the reactions of an author’s contemporaries is important. But unlike illocutionary acts, perlocutionary acts may be unintended. An author who intends to get his audience to see that covenants ground a sovereign’s authority may succeed in convincing or reinforcing their belief in patriarchy, as it was with Robert Filmer. Hobbes’s insistence that his state of nature was part of a thought experiment was sometimes misunderstood or 11

However, the intention to ridicule is a perlocutionary intention.

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ignored (cf. Filmer 1652). Similarly, an author who wants to rid Christianity of superstition and unjustified clerical claims to authority and to reconcile it with science may instead succeed in convincing his audience that he is non-Christian. Hobbes was often misunderstood. John Bramhall was convinced that Hobbes had, perhaps inadvertently, written a “Rebells Catechism” (Bramhall 1656: 515). In short, while the understandings of a philosopher’s audience are relevant to understanding what the philosopher has done, they should not serve as a criterion for what the philosopher meant. Our particular interest is in showing that dissembling would have been at odds with what Hobbes was trying to do in his book Leviathan. Recognition that an author’s audience misunderstood him does not always lead a contextualist to draw the right conclusion. In his investigation of “how Hobbes’s contemporaries reacted to his claims” in order to find evidence about Hobbes’s views, Jurgen Overhoff discovers that Hobbes correctly described the views of Luther and Calvin, that “Bramhall did not, and that the Calvinist William Barlee held the same view as Hobbes about free will.” He might have added that William Twisse, prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly, also held Hobbes’s view. But Overhoff discounts this evidence and says there is “room for doubts about” Hobbes’s sincerity – why? – because Hobbes did not exhibit the “spiritualism” of Luther and Calvin (Overhoff 2000: 157, 158, cf. 155; cf. Martinich 2013). The issue should not be about devotion but doctrine. Truly, Hobbes did not cry, “Lord, Lord” (Matt 5: 20, 7:21). However, he worshipped according the rubric of the Church of England even when it was illegal; when he was near death, he made his confession and took the sacrament on the condition it be performed according to the rite of the Church of England (Aubrey 1898); and some of his discussions are theologically insightful: By this Ransome, is not intended a satisfaction for Sin, equivalent to the Offence; which no sinner for himselfe, nor righteous man can ever be able to make for another: The dammage a man does to another, he may make amends for by restitution, or recompence, but sin cannot be taken away by recompence; for that were to make to make the liberty to sin, a thing vendible. (Leviathan 38.25, misnumbered as 248; see also An Answer . . . The Catching of Leviathan, 77)

Another problem with Overhoff’s conclusion that there is “room for doubts” is that there is room for doubting most things. The pertinent issue is whether the doubts lead to the right judgment, all things

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considered. Overhoff’s earlier judgment that “most of the theological doctrines developed by Hobbes in his letter Of Liberty and Necessity clearly corresponded with Luther’s and Calvin’s own doctrines on these themes” is better explained by Hobbes’s being a theist (Overhoff 2000: 155). A recalcitrant problem for interpretation is that different interpreters will assign different weights to the available evidence. Hyperbole is for one interpreter evidence of ignorance, whereas for another it is evidence of bad judgment. When John Donne wrote in “Anatomy of the Word,” “[N]we philosophy calls all in doubt / The sun is lost, and th’ earth, and no man’s wit / Can well direct him where to look for it,” was he expressing cognitive dissonance hyperbolically or skepticism unreasonably? While many intellectuals evaded dissonance by ignoring science, Hobbes thought he knew the location of sun and earth and how to live on the latter too. His approach to religion was in the spirit of Cardinal Baronius and Galileo: “the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes” (Galileo 1615: 186).

2 Circumstances and Audiences Hobbes’s first book on politics was finished in spring, 1640, when the king’s authority was breaking down. Copies of it circulated among lingering members of the Short Parliament, “those whom the matter it containeth most nearly concerneth” (“Epistle Dedicatory”). He thought that adoption of his “opinions concerning law and policy” contained in it would be “an incomparable benefit to commonwealth” since doing so would end “mutual fear” and create “government and peace,” an expression of his belief that philosophy should have salutary practical consequences (Elements of Law, “Epistle Dedicatory”). He wanted to end England’s strife, not exacerbate it. His book was quasi-scientific in that it contained more logic than rhetoric, and his exposition of his views is similar to that in De Cive, which is explicitly scientific. Since it was published in the Dutch Republic, his primary audience was continental intellectuals (cf. Vita Carmine, 223, line 155). Hobbes’s primary audience for Leviathan was the ruling class of England during the Commonwealth (Considerations, 19–20). Edward Hyde’s report that Hobbes told him that he wrote it because “I had a mind to go home” rings true and illustrates how infuriating his candor could be. A more irenic answer would have gone something like this: “England now has a stable government, albeit not the most desirable one. I am old and English. I want to go home. But because of my royalism, it’s prudent for me to

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smooth the way by showing how my principles are consistent with a nonmonarchical, non-episcopal commonwealth.”12 His secondary audience was the educated class of England. He wanted them to understand the foundations of authority and the obligation of obedience. It would have been reckless for him to be communicating prosecutable doctrines either openly or surreptitiously. He made this point himself in 1656: But do not many other men as well as you read my Leviathan, and my other Books? And yet they all finde not such enmity in them against Religion. Take heed of calling them all Atheists that have read and approved my Leviathan. Do you think I can be an Atheist and not know it? Or knowing it durst have offered my Atheism to the Press? Or do you think him an Atheist, or a contemner of the Holy Scripture, that sayeth nothing of the Deity, but what he proved by the Scripture? You that take so hainously that I would have the Rules of Gods worship a Christian Common-wealth taken from the Laws, tell me, from whom you would have them taken? From yourselves? Why so, more then from me? From the Bishops? Right, if the Supreme Power of the Common-wealth will have it so; If not, why from them rather then from me? From a Consistory of Presbyters by themselves, or joyned with Lay-Elders, whom they may sway as they please? Good, If the Supreme Governour of the Common-wealth will have it so. (Six Lessons, 62; see also Seven Philosophical Problems, “Epistle Dedicatory”)

At the Restoration, he explained how he had also been writing for royalists (Considerations upon the Reputation, 25–6). His political philosophy could serve the interests of both “commonwealth men” and royalists because it is a form of loyalism, allegiance to an established government, whether it came to rule by legal or illegal means (Six Lessons, 56–7). Royalists for the Commonwealth in 1650, and republicans for the monarch in 1660. If it is paradoxical that he could honestly justify both sides of a dispute, it is Hobbesian (although not only Hobbesian) (Wilson 1615; Parkin 2016). He gloried in paradox and enjoyed showing people who claimed he had contradicted himself that he had not. So he wrote that Bramhall had not yet found the place where I contradict either the Existence, or Infiniteness, or Incomprehensibility, or Unity, or Ubiquity of God. I am therefore yet absolved of Atheism. But I am, he says, inconsistent and irreconcileable with my self, that is, I am, (. . . he thinks) a forgetful blockhead. I cannot help that: but my forgetfulness appears not here. (Answer to

12

Outrage at the execution of Charles I probably also moved him to write Leviathan. (See Vita Carmine, 234, lines 189–9; on regicides, Leviathan 18.3, 89; 18.7, 90; and 29.14, 170–1.)

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a Book Published by Dr. Bramhall 5–6; see also Questions Concerning Liberty, 283; cf. Holden 2015)

The mistake was in Bramhall’s inattention or ratiocination, not in Hobbes’s argument. Non-theistic interpreters typically argue that Hobbes’s assertion that God’s nature is incomprehensible is a sign that he believes there is nothing to comprehend by the word “God.” In evaluating this interpretation, it is necessary to consider his view that people cannot know the nature of the smallest creature (Leviathan 31.33, 191); that negative theology was an ancient and honorable Christian tradition; and that both Arminians and Calvinists asserted the fact of divine incomprehensibility (Jackson, T. 1629: 3, 7–8; Wilson 1600: 15; Wilson 1615: 6–7).

3 Political Theory as Scientific Philosophy In Leviathan,13 Hobbes defined philosophy or science as [1a] the Knowledge acquired by Reasoning, from the Manner of the Generation of any thing, to the Properties; or [1b] from the Properties, to some possible Way of Generation of the same; [2] to the end to bee able to produce, as far as matter, and humane force permit, such Effects, as humane life requireth. (Leviathan 46.1, 367)

Philosophy has two major aspects, [1] methods and [2] goal. The methods of philosophy are also two, indicated by “a” and “b.” Each method connects the way things are generated or come to be with the properties of those objects. The first method, the “synthetic” one, consists of connecting the manner of generation (the cause) with the properties or effects, [1a]. The second method, the “analytic” one, connects effects to possible causes of those effects, [1b] (see Of the Body, 6.1). Clause [1a] comes from Hobbes’s conception of Euclidean geometry. Definitions, in general, should give instructions for constructing figures such as this: a circle results from fixing one leg of a compass and drawing a line with the other until a closed plane forms. This definition depends on the definition of a line, and the definition of a line on the definition of a point. [1a] is the preferred method of the first chapters of De corpore and of De Cive. The method of doing science indicated in [1b] is to begin with an effect and then to conjecture that some particular thing or event is its cause. 13

Hobbes’s first published definition of “philosophy” or “science” is in Elements of Law, I.6.4.

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So suppose that a roughly circular figure appears. One way to find out whether it actually is a circle is to propose a generation like the one described above. If the result of the generation is a line that is equidistant from a given point within the figure, then it is a circle. While Hobbes considers the propositions of both methods to be formally hypothetical, the propositions used in reasoning according to [1b] are also hypothetical in the sense of a hypothesis that may be confirmed or disconfirmed by an experiment. Applied to politics, [1b] characterizes the reasoning of someone who thought that the destruction of a commonwealth could be the effect of people acting on the belief that the authority of a sovereign is not absolute, or the belief that they did not transfer their rights to the sovereign, and so on (Of the Body 6.7). The scientist of politics formed a hypothesis consisting of a possible cause and the actual effect, which this proposition expresses: “If people believed that the authority of their sovereign was not absolute, the commonwealth was destroyed” (Leviathan 29.3, 167–8, and 46.1, 367; see also De corpore 6.4). The methods described in [1a] and [1b] are asymmetrical. The conclusions of [1a] are the effects of the actual causes. The premise or some of the premises of [1b] are only possible causes of the effects (cf. Talaska 1988). The second feature of philosophy, indicated by [2], has to do with the goal of philosophy (see Hoekstra 2006). The “end or scope of philosophy” is some benefit to human beings. The importance of practical consequences in Hobbes’s conception of philosophy is consonant with his assertion “Scientia potentia est” [“Science is power”]14 (Latin Leviathan, 10.15; cf. Bacon 1597: sig. E3 v: “ipsa scientia potestas est”). The word “end” in [2] suggests that Hobbes violated his stricture against final causes, as he also seems to have done at the beginning of chapter 17 of Leviathan: The final Cause, End, or Designe of men . . . in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves . . . is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say of getting themselves out of that miserable condition of Warre. (Leviathan 17.1–2)15

However, the phrase “final Cause” is a façon-de-parler expression, replaceable with a literally true mechanistic paraphrase: The desires for selfpreservation and a contented life cause human reason to calculate the 14 15

Hobbes then adds “sed parva.” The parallel passage in Leviathan is, “The sciences are small power” (10.14, 42). This definition appears at the beginning of chapter 46, “Of Darkness from Vain Philosophy, and Fabulous Traditions.” It seems to be out of place unless chapter 46 was written as a standalone essay say, in response to discussions with members of the largely Roman Catholic Mersenne circle. Then it occurs right where it should, at the beginning of the essay.

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means of maintaining that preservation and even producing a more contented life. The apparent reference to the final cause of entering a commonwealth dissolves into human desires (cf. Hyde 1676: 27). In De corpore, Hobbes restricts the definition of philosophy to its methods, described above. PHILOSOPHY is such knowledge of Effects or Appearances, as we acquire by true Ratiocination from the knowledge we have first of their Causes or Generation: And again, of such Causes or Generations as may be from knowing first their Effects. (Of the Body 1.2)

However, Hobbes’s discussion of the end or goal of philosophy shortly after indicates that it is essential to his conception of philosophy: The End or Scope of Philosophy, is, that we may make use to our benefit of effects formerly seen; or that by application of Bodies to one another; we may produce the like effects of those we conceive in our minde, as far forth as matter, strength & industry will permit, for the commodity of humane life. (Of the Body 1.6)16

While Hobbes’s entire philosophy was supposed to consist of three parts, of body, of the human being, and of the citizen, the last was published first. It begins with adult human beings who shoot up like mushrooms (Philosophical Rudiments, 127; cf. Lloyd 2009: 75–6). The humans are adults because the results of the second part of the triad, De Homine, which ends with human beings as individuals, is presupposed. Not understanding this, critics objected to his beginning with mushroom men (Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society 8.1; see Eachard 1672: 117–18). In fact, publishing the third part first was not objectionable in principle. It was analogous to publishing a book on solid geometry before one on plane geometry. The geometer may assume the definitions of point, line, and plane, and begin with definitions of face, edge, base, vertex, and so on (cf. Sorell 1988). Both the methods and the aim of philosophy presuppose the tools of philosophy, namely, clear and unambiguous words, used literally. Insinuation and suggestion are not the ways of science or philosophy. Reason is attained first in apt imposing of Names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly Method in proceeding from the Elements, which are Names . . . To conclude, The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words . . . And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are like 16

Lloyd has noted that “self-preservation” does not appear in this description of the end of philosophy.

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He had a strong motive for using perspicuous words and speaking clearly about religion in the second half of Leviathan. False and nonsensical language in religion caused contention and sedition. His chief complaint against Aristotelian philosophy was its unintelligibility; and its intrusion into religion was a source of superstition (Leviathan 1.5, 4.1, 12.31, 44.3 and 46.11). Hobbes found the philosophical terminology in the Nicene Creed offensive (Springborg 2008: 230–5). However, he was willing to profess it because the sovereign commanded it. To object that Hobbes’s allegiance to clarity is a good cover for his surreptitious subversion is to beg the question of his need or desire to dissemble. It is also to oppose the force of evidence. Hobbes’s goal of establishing political stability through the development of politics as a science, his commitment to clarity and precision in philosophy, his aversion to accusations of error, and his self-satisfaction in holding paradoxical views, suggest that he would not try to communicate surreptitiously. At the beginning of chapter 31, Hobbes says that he had derived the Rights of Soveraigne Power, and the duty of Subjects, from the Principles of Nature onely; such as Experience has found true . . . and from Definitions. . . . But in that I am next to handle . . . the Nature and Rights of a Christian Commonwealth the ground of my Discourse must be, not only the Naturall Word of God, but also the Propheticall. (Leviathan 32.1, 195)

In short, the method and the content of the second half of Leviathan are substantially different from those of the first. The first half aspires to science; the second does not. This difference between the first and second half does not mean that there is any change in Hobbes’s communicative style. He seems to discuss this particular issue: we are not to renounce our Senses, and Experience; nor (that which is the undoubted Word of God), our naturall Reason. For they are the talents which he hath put into our hands to negotiate . . . and therefore not to be folded up in the Napkin of an Implicite Faith, but employed in the purchase of Justice, Peace, and true Religion. (Leviathan 32.2, 195)

In other words, Hobbes is recommitting himself to the ideals of clarity and precision. His allusion to “the Napkin of an Implicite Faith” is an insult to 17

Hobbes is continuing the analogy introduced by “like.”

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Roman Catholic theology.18 Some think that Hobbes’s succeeding comment that “the mysteries of our Religion” should be “swallowed whole” because chewing them would likely cause them to be “cast up again” (Leviathan 32. 3, 195) may imply revulsion for Christianity. But I think that twenty-first century sensibilities are being projected onto the seventeenth century (cf. A. D. 1624: 18; Abbot 1594: 181–2; 1623: 267). Religion has mysteries that cannot be broken down and understood. Breaking down is a method of science that produces understanding of those phenomena that are proper objects of scientific study.

4 Subversion and Surreptitious Subversion Hobbes was open about his subversive projects. He wanted to subvert the mistaken religio-political views that led to the Civil War, the belief in limited sovereignty, the practice of superstitious religion in Roman Catholicism, and the pretension that religion should be independent of the sovereign’s authority. He wanted to initiate a “cultural transformation” that had “roots in the humanist and polemical traditions of the Renaissance” (Johnston 1986: ix and xx; on Hobbes’s humanism, see especially Nauta 2009, Paganini 2003, and Skinner 2008: 1–17). But he did not expect people to give up religion, pace David Johnston (1986; cf. Leviathan 12.2, 52). As for the numerous false religions, his account of them fits the standard understanding of the time, that they were deviations from the original, true religion (Calvin 1559: I.4.1; Raleigh 1614: 84–97; Martinich 1992: 62–7 and 372 n. 4). He thought that self-interested people could be made obedient through a proper education in the universities and from the pulpit, as S. A. Lloyd (1997) has rightly emphasized. (During her reign, Elizabeth I prescribed politically correct sermons to be read at Sunday worship services (Jewel 1571; cf. Anonymous 1623).) Hobbes did not believe “the human psyche [could be transformed] into the mold of rational egoism” (Johnston 1986: 216; cf. Lloyd 1992: 374–5). Human nature was fixed. Education could instill the fundamentals of government and training could inculcate a desire to obey. He wanted not a brave new world, but a safe old world, reinforced by an accurate understanding of the Bible and compatible with the new science. 18

According to Roman Catholics, Christians did not need to know doctrine in detail. As long as they believed whatever the Church believed, they had implicit faith, and that was sufficient faith for salvation (see Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, Q. 2, art. 5. For Protestant criticism of implicit faith, see e.g., Anonymous 1611: 80–1; Attersoll 1612: 77; and Beard 1616: 143, 349, and 528; cf. Ball 1617: 9).

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Hobbes looks more modern in politics than he was because he exploits the concepts of liberty and equality (cf. Skinner 1998 and 2004). However, his conceptions of them are not the liberal conceptions. Not even a radical libertarian could love Hobbes’s liberty because it provides no protection for property; and equality is equal ability to kill or vulnerability to being killed. Absolutism saves. It is the lesson of the Bible in the stories about the leadership of Moses, David, and Solomon. England’s rule came close to that ideal in the quasi-absolutist reigns of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I (Leviathan, chapter 40). Was there also an important strain of surreptitious subversion, as nontheist interpretations claim? I do not think so. Adrian Blau has, in my opinion, definitively refuted the Straussian interpretation that Hobbes communicated his genuine beliefs between the lines and that “the careful reader” could identify them (Blau 2012). As for other non-theistic interpretations, they depend less on surreptitious messages than on supposed conversational implicatures. They hold that Hobbes’s materialism, antiCatholic, anti-Presbyterian, anti-jure-divino clericalism was on the surface. I agree. But those positions do not imply that Hobbes was a non-theist. Tertullian was a materialist, as are Mormons; and Hobbes is right in holding that the Bible is not committed to immaterial substances. As for anticlericalism, Luther and the thousands of signers of the root and branch petitions were anticlerical. Religious reformers and zealots were “anti” one traditional Christian thing or another, and often many things. Many of Hobbes’s “offensive” religious views were held by undeniably religious authors or are understandable as his attempt to show that faith is compatible with reason, as Mersenne and others did. To read the polemical religious treatises of the Elizabethan and Jacobean reigns is to be shocked by the uncharitable recriminations among Christians. So it should not be surprising that any rigorous, original thinker is castigated by his contemporaries. A more subtle form of argumentation for Hobbes’s non-theism has been offered by Edwin Curley. He says that Hobbes engages in “suggestion by disavowal” (Curley 1996: 261–2); that is, a speaker asserts a proposition by supposedly denying it: “In this rhetorical device a writer presents a series of considerations which might reasonably lead his reader to draw a certain conclusion, but then denies that that conclusion follows” (Curley 1996: 262).19 Curley illustrates his point by claiming that Hobbes reports his 19

By “his reader,” Curley must mean a generic reader. But it is doubtful that Hobbes had a generic reader when it comes to his religious views. Different particular readers drew different conclusions

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skepticism about miracles, prophets, and scripture (hereafter: the triad). Hobbes supposedly leads his readers to the conclusion that none of the members of the triad exist and then unconvincingly disavows his own lack of belief. I do not agree with Curley’s position partially because I think he misdescribes the texts. Hobbes explains why members of the triad are not objects of knowledge, but of faith or belief. It was not a novel position (see Barnes 1573: 344 [third pagination]). His discussion was supposed to protect the triad that is grounded in faith from criticism supposedly arising from reason. Science uses reason; religion uses faith (Leviathan 32.5, 196; 37.5, 234; 43.8, 324; Luke 7:50 and 18:42). Since all covenants depend on faith, as mentioned in Section 1, Hobbes would have been fighting against himself if his point was to convince his readers to abandon faith. Also, before Hobbes explains why instances of the triad cannot be known, with some exceptions, he either asserts or presupposes that there have been revelations, miracles, and true prophets (revelation: Leviathan 32.3–7, 195–7; miracles: 37, 233–8; cf. 26.39, 148–9; and prophets 36.8–13, 225–8). This order of assertion or presupposition is important in that he settles the issue of fact before raising the issue of knowledge. Pace Curley, Hobbes does not lead the reader to the conclusion that members of the triad do not exist, only to disavow that conclusion. Curley’s interpretive device of “suggestion by disavowal” is faux cancellation of what would be otherwise conversationally implicated. In genuine cancellation, the speaker forestalls the conclusion that the listener might otherwise have drawn (Grice 1989). If a speaker says to Lee’s manager, “This is the third time this month that Lee has submitted his report late,” she might add, “but that is not a reflection on Lee’s competence; Lee’s been given too many duties.” If suggestion by disavowal is in play, the speaker is caught in a catch-22. The speaker would be incriminated whether asserting atheism or denying it. Attributing suggestion by disavowal to a speaker is easily uncharitable and difficult to determine. The comedy Seinfeld created a meme by having characters end an apparently negative description of some behavior with “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Non-theist interpreters make much of the effort by some Restoration clerics to have Hobbes investigated for atheism. Usually omitted is the fact that the accusers wanted Thomas White, a Roman Catholic priest, investigated at the same time. Both could be exasperating; and that largely accounts for the clerical threat. Much is also made of the condemnation of from his texts. The readers most inclined to conclude that Hobbes was anti-religious were the most inquisitorial ones.

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Hobbes’s works by Oxford University in July 1683. What is usually omitted is that the Presbyterians Richard Baxter and John Knox, the Independents John Milton and John Owen, and the “philo-Catholic” Godfrey Goodman were condemned in the same document (see Judgment and Decree, 1683; Martinich 1992: 38). And why was the condemnation issued against dead authors? It was a ripple of the reaction to the Rye House Plot. The reliability of suggestion-by-disavowal can be put to the test outside the realm of religion. Consider Hobbes’s position that people are equal. He purports to prove it using the premises that people are generally satisfied with the amount of intelligence they have and that “there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share” (Leviathan 13.2, 61). Actually, variations in strength and intelligence seem to be evidence of inequality; and many stupid people do not know that they are and are content with the talents they have. So, suggestion-by-disavowal yields the result that Hobbes’s assertion of equality should be taken as suggesting that he thought people were unequal. But that is the wrong result, for if he actually held that people were naturally unequal, he undermined his political philosophy in three ways. One is that he needs equality in order to generate war in the state of nature. Another is that the few of superior strength and intelligence would have a claim to natural sovereignty. The third is that Hobbes believes scientific progress depends on the method he discovered (see De Cive “Preface” 2–3, De corpore chapter 6, and Leviathan 5.17, 21 and 5.21, 22; cf. Leviathan 8.11, 34).20 (See also Section 3 above.) Some non-theist scholars claim that Hobbes’s words constitute plausible deniability, and they imply that almost any offensive position can be protected with a denial. No. Powerful scoundrels sometimes pretend to give a plausible denial of their bad behavior, and they often get away with the pretense because their opponents lack the power to press the point, but Hobbes was in no such position. Since space does not allow as full a discussion of other non-theistic interpretations as they deserve, I will need to paint in broad strokes. Any argument that depends on showing that Hobbes’s professed Christian views entail a contradiction is weakened by the fact that Christian doctrine seems to concern numerous contradictions, as mentioned in Section 1 (see Martinich 1978 and Martinich 2017 for another example). A favorite nontheist argument for Hobbes’s subreption concerns the Trinity. He allegedly uses his novel theory of persons to show that the doctrine of the 20

Descartes placed the same high value on the method of rightly conducting the mind.

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Trinity is inconsistent. But it is implausible that Hobbes had this intention. (Although the doctrine is demonstrably inconsistent in predicate logic, seventeenth-century philosophers did not know this.) He was trying to show the power of his theory of persons to explain that well-entrenched doctrine. It is hard to believe that he would not have known that faced with a choice between (i) and (ii): (i) accept Hobbes’s novel theory of persons and reject the doctrine of the Trinity, or (ii) reject Hobbes’s novel theory of persons and retain the doctrine of the Trinity, virtually everyone would choose (ii). Attributing “a clearly ironical strategy aimed at attacking the very substance of the doctrine” to Hobbes does not seem plausible (Paganini 2003: 192 n. 103, referring to Curley’s view; see also Trinkhaus 1996). Since no cogent treatment of the Trinity had ever been given – non-theist interpreters do not cite any—Hobbes’s failure is not revealing. Scotus’s theory is no better that that of Thomas Aquinas (Bach 1982 and 1998). Appealing to an irreligious motive is de trop. Let us now consider a special problem that Hobbes has. Curley argues that Hobbes’s theory of covenants is incompatible with the biblical conception of them and that this is evidence that Hobbes was a nontheist (Curley 2004). Curley does not mention that the Bible contains at least two incompatible conceptions of covenants, each of which is problematic with respect to the standard model of a transcendent God. Hobbes was in an impossible situation. I think Hobbes made a good effort in trying to make biblical covenants consistent with his theory (Martinich 2004). The contextual elements of English law and the Bible support the theist interpretation of Hobbes. According to law, the monarch was the supreme head of the church. Henry VIII had asserted it; key bishops had supported it; and Parliament had enacted it in the Law of Supremacy. Elizabeth I’s parliament reinstalled it. Most Elizabethan21 and Jacobean bishops were comfortable with it. It is not surprising that the Act of Supremacy was part of the law since it was also part of the law that all English subjects were Christians. The ideal of the Old Testament was that the leader was the head of state and religion. 21

Elizabethan clerics had to pledge, “I, A. B., now elect bishop of C., do utterly testify and declare that the Queen’s Highness is the only supreme governor of this realm . . .. . . as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal” (Elton 1982: 375).

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The three greatest leaders of the Israelites, Moses, David, and Solomon, headed both religious and secular affairs, as Hobbes explained in chapter 40, “Of the Rights of the Kingdom of God, in Abraham, Moses, the High Priests, and the Kings of Judah.” The two dimensions of Christian sovereignty are represented on the title page of Leviathan, in which Leviathan holds the sword of secular authority in one hand and the crozier of episcopal authority in the other. Running down the left- and right-hand side of the page are five boxes. On the left, aspects of secular power are pictured; and on the right, religious power. Religious elements are coordinate with secular ones (Martinich 1992: 362–7; see also Lloyd 1992: 224–6). Both Protestants and Catholics thought that every commonwealth needed a religion: “Without Religion, Societies are but like soapy bubbles, quickly dissolved” (Bramhall 1657: 465; see also, for example, Hakewill 1616: 111; and the Roman Catholic priest Thomas Fitzherbert 1610: Preface, n.p.). And in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Europe, the sovereign often had regular control over the religion. That many of Hobbes’s contemporaries would think he was irreligious is attributable to many factors: his innovative and nonstandard theories, his desire to resurrect an old-time religio-political system, rejected by both royalists and non-royalists, arrogance, and a flinty personality (cf. Malcolm 2002: 317–35; Pope 1697: 117–18; cf. Aubrey 1898: 348).

5

Conclusion

Hobbes’s political philosophical project was to make politics scientific, according to his geometrical conception of science, which begins with “perspicuous words but by exact definitions first snuffed and purged from ambiguity,” for such words are “the light of human minds” (Leviathan 5.20, 21–2). Ambiguity and verbal legerdemain are the stock in trade of dissemblers. Hobbes’s audiences were educated men in England and on the continent, many of whom had power and influence; few of whom were non-theists. Also, he hoped his theory would come to be taught to the elite in universities and to the masses from the pulpit (Review and Conclusion, 16, 395). Like others, he believed that religion was important to civil stability. So conveying an anti-religious view would have been counterproductive.

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The argumentation of Leviathan is at least as cogent as that in De Cive; and the second half of the book has at least the same clarity as the first, arguably more. Finally, since he wrote Leviathan because he had a mind to go home, he had to have known that insinuating anti-religious views would have been against his self-interest.

chapter 3

Hobbes’s Philosophical Method and the Passion of Curiosity Gianni Paganini

The Historical Debate In the first third of the twentieth century, after the Marburg school’s attempt to present Hobbes’s system as non-dogmatic phenomenism, Brandt reconstructed the methodological unity of Hobbes’s thought (1921, 1928) around the theses of rationalism and pervasive mechanism, even though he diminished the contribution of Galileo and emphasized instead the influence of the ancient atomists. The work of Leo Strauss (1936) radically overturned this thesis and is still used by those today who isolate Hobbes’s politics from his physics. According to Strauss, one should return to the “prescientific” basis of Hobbes’s system, namely, the fundamentally “moral” antithesis between vanity and fear of violent death, which he understood to be independent of Hobbes’s materialistic science. Strauss’s thesis has many debatable aspects. For one, he undervalued the materialistic psychology that precedes and founds politics both in the Elements and in Leviathan. Furthermore, the discovery of Hobbes’s manuscript De motu loco et tempore, dated 1642/43 but published only in 1973, reinforces the unity thesis because Hobbes, at a very early stage of his work, jointly treated the materialistic foundations (the science of motion) and the basis of morality and politics, under the control of a “first philosophy” deeply influenced by his study of Galileo (Paganini 2015). Notwithstanding its one-sidedness, Strauss’s thesis had so much impact on Hobbes scholarship that we may speak of “before” and “after” Strauss. In response to that thesis, interpreters sought the unity of Hobbes’s thought less in its content than in its method. Brandt’s “strong” thesis of a unitary system, recovered in part by Polin (1953) and Goldsmith (1966), was replaced by a “weak” version based on the unity of Hobbes’s method (Watkins 1965). Watkins pointed to Galileo and before him Zabarella, as originating Hobbes’s method comprised of both analysis and synthesis. Watkins’s book was also a response to another dual antithesis, that of 50

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Taylor (1938) and Warrender (1957), which isolated moral obligation to make it the autonomous foundation of politics, independent of a selfinterested psychology. Beginning from different philosophical orientations (Taylor thought of moral obligation in terms of Kantian deontology, whereas Warrender emphasized the divine origin of obligation), they both reproduced in a new form the isolation of moral and political science from scientific materialism. This view has reappeared as a methodological orientation, without those authors’ substantive assumptions. For instance, Sorell (2006, 56–7) has asserted the irrelevance of “motionalism” (Spragens 1973) for Hobbes’s politics, while Rawls has maintained that one can study Leviathan independently from its “scientific” basis and theological extensions (Rawls 2007, 26–30). Even staying within the limits of a thesis of methodological unity, problems remain. Pacchi (1965) remarked on the hypothetical character of Hobbes’s physics, pointing to the gap in the transition from general principles (magnitude, body and motion) to the explanation of particular effects, including the functioning of animate bodies (sensation, conatus, passions, etc.). More recently, Martinich (2005, 172–5) has highlighted another duality, between the analytic approach (based on definitions) and the hypothetical, based on the search for “possible” causes from actual effects. One of the most severe verdicts on Hobbes’s method remains McNeilly’s, that Hobbes had oscillated between “extreme logical empiricism” in the Elements of Law and the “hypothetical-deductive” method in De Corpore. In Leviathan in contrast, McNeilly recognized a “fairly high degree of consistency” based on three background theses: “(1) a clear statement of a conventionalist view of science (restricted to universal propositions); (2) an assumption that scientific propositions state important truths about the world; and (3) some mention of the possibilities of empirical confirmation and falsification” (McNeilly 1968, 84). However, even McNeilly endorsed the irrelevance of mechanistic explanations, though for epistemological reasons. The definitional method, consisting of “some generalizations about human nature,” would actually be replaced in Leviathan by “the understanding of some psychological concepts.” Despite his declared methodology, Hobbes begins from empirical knowledge of human passions. Other studies have focused on the crucial relationship between moral psychology and “civil science” (see Sacksteder 1990), via the “psychology of self-preservation” (Lott 1982), which implies a theory of individualistic, egoistic and hedonistic motivation. This motivational foundation has also been the subject of controversy in past decades. McNeilly had earlier

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distinguished between a “selfish” phase in the Elements of Law and a more “neutral analysis” of desire in Leviathan, “subjectivist” yet not committed to selfish and hedonistic assumptions, and thus disconnected from the materialistic bases of the system. It would result in “the unimportance of mechanistic materialism in Hobbes’s philosophy” (McNeilly 1966, 198–200). Bernard Gert (1965, 1967) argued in a similar vein, claiming that “Hobbes’s psychology is almost completely independent of his mechanism” (Gert 1967, 503). Hampton (1986) offered a more sophisticated analysis proposing to interpret Hobbes’s system as a “non standard psychological monism” to the extent that it recognizes a variety of motivations (self-preservation, glory, well-being, peace, even altruism), yet maintains a “monistic” character, as it is based on a unitary biological mechanism relying on the corroboration of vital motion experienced as pleasure. According to Hampton, it is not that the actions of the psychological egoist are always consciously and directly aimed at his own pleasure, but rather that his behaviors are caused by desires which in turn are produced by a “selfinterested bodily mechanism” (Hampton 1986, 18, 23, 24). Lloyd (1992) presented a targeted challenge to psychological, standard and non-standard monism, criticizing three cornerstones of such mainstream views. Against the motivational primacy of the fear of death, Lloyd highlights cases in which the Hobbesian subject does not hesitate to prefer death to other selfconservative solutions deemed dishonorable or contrary to religious duty. Against the predominance of material motives, Lloyd argues for the superior motivational power in some cases of “ideals,” including “opinions” about such things as the requirements of morality or religion. And finally, against the ubiquity of selfish and self-interested motives, the same author uncovers the Hobbesian subject’s capacity for altruistic behavior. This complex interpretation has reopened the debate on the true basis of Hobbes’s conception of man and morality, without falling into the inconveniences of the old Strauss’ dichotomy. In such discussions, the question of the unity of Hobbes’s method and system has returned to the fore. In what follows we will consider the question not in general epistemological terms, but rather from an anthropological viewpoint, focusing on Hobbes’s doctrine “of man” and especially his theory of mind, which connects materialistic physics to morals and politics. The main challenge will be to see how Hobbes tried to preserve human distinctiveness without sapping the materialistic foundations of the system. The crucial notions to address will be “passionate thought” and “curiosity.” As we shall see, these notions are tightly

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connected to the methodological issue, so that “method” and “system,” with the problem of their unity in Hobbes’s thought, overlap on this very point.

Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism: The Problems Posed by Hobbesian Materialism The extension of the method of “natural philosophy,” that is, of physics, to the human mind constitutes one of Hobbes’s main goals, but also one of the most discussed points of his doctrine, especially by those who judge morality and politics to be self-contained. This intention is declared by Hobbes in the first chapters of Leviathan, where the philosopher, though considering it “not very necessary to the business now in hand” (Lev. I, 3), provides a mechanical account of the human mind.1 That account is largely reductionist, although we can distinguish between different types of reductionism, and on one crucial point it is anti-reductionist. (a) Psychological Reductionism: The higher levels of mental activity are effects caused by lower levels and are therefore reducible to them, being based on causal chains that preserve and transmit the character of imaginative representations to all thoughts, even the most evolved. Not only the contents of knowledge (sensations, images, concepts, etc.) but also the activities that transform them (imagination, memory, dreams, intellect, etc.) originate from sensation and are modifications of it. Sensation is “the originall of them all” (Lev. I, 2). In Hobbes, the synonymy between “imagination” and “thought” is perfect, for, as Descartes had already pointed out, he does not distinguish between material image and idea. Imaginations are connected in sequences (called “train of imaginations” or “train of thoughts”), in which “mental discourse” consists (Lev. III, 1–5). Even after the institution of verbal language, the concepts or imaginations that stand behind signs always refer to single objects or parts of them, through the technique of “consideration” (DCo I, 3). While affirming the superiority of “human speech” to “mental” representations (shared by animals), Hobbes does not attribute it to a superior or immaterial faculty, but to the use of a “technique” (“ars”: DM XXX, 15). The architecture of the human mind is much more complex than that of animals, but this 1

This account is in large part anticipated in EL I, II-X, developed in DM XXX, reprised in DCo XXV and DHo X-XIII. For an analysis of the development of the mechanical account of the mind in Hobbes from one work to the next and in opposition with another renowned mechanistic philosopher of his time, Gassendi, see Paganini 1990.

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complexity originates from the same building blocks and these are to be found in sensible experience: There is nothing “innate” in Hobbes’s theory of mind, not even “reason.” This kind of strong psychological empiricism is fully reductionist. (b) Ontological Reductionism: One could say that Hobbes offers an obvious precursor of the mind-body identity thesis. Especially after an early first phase (EL I, II, 8–9), when he located the center of perception and understanding in the brain, Hobbes later, starting with De Motu (DM XXX, 3) and then in Leviathan (I, 4) and De Corpore (XXV, 4), held that the heart, rather than the brain, is the center of all psychological activities, both cognitive and emotional.2 In this conception, conatus or “endeavor” plays the primary role as the imperceptibly minute origin of animal motions (Lev. VI, 1–2). All states of the mind are literally “different movements of matter.” Although psychological and physical descriptions use different terms with different connotations, they have ultimately the same referents: material particles and motions, because “motion produces nothing but motion” (Lev. I, 4). All mental events are physical events involving subtle and mobile particles. Even if he subscribes to the first two forms of reductionism, Hobbes does not accept a third form, which was regularly associated with the first two, and was already partially anticipated in the libertine skepticism that flourished in Paris in Hobbes’s day: (c) Vitalistic Reductionism. This kind of reductionism, based on the assumption of the common nature of all living beings, including humans, seems to be claimed in Leviathan (VI, 1), when Hobbes attributes to “animals” in general, including humans, two basic motions, “vital” and “animal” or “voluntary,” and in De Corpore (XXV, 12), where he connects all desires and aversions to the actions of strengthening or hindering the “vital motion,” which is ultimately described as blood circulation. This emphasis on “vital motion,” and by consequence on self-preservation, connected to the heart as the organ that unifies the body, has mislead some scholars into a “vitalistic” interpretation of Hobbes’s anthropology. However, naturalizing the basis of life, feeling, thought and excising any immaterial soul do not mean “animalizing” man or reducing those operations to a complex stimulus-response. In all of his works, Hobbes affirms 2

On the relocation from the brain to the heart of all psychological life cf. Brandt 1928, 388–90; with reference to relations with Gassendi: Paganini 1990, 368–72.

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the “superiority” of man over animals, especially as far as science and politics are concerned (EL I, V, 4; DM XXX, 15; Lev. IV, 22, V, 4; DH X, 3).3 Not only “speech,” but also “method” marks the peculiarity of man within the common sphere of living beings. In the same sentence of Leviathan Hobbes shows that he accepts the first two kinds of reduction (psychological and materialistic) yet rejects the third. His view that man’s peculiarity cannot be watered down in a vague vitalism dictated by the primacy of “vital motion” is clearly expressed in this passage: For besides Sense, and Thoughts, and the Trayne of thoughts [characteristics also of animals], the mind of man has no other motion; though by the help of speech, and method, the same Faculties may be improved to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures. (Lev. III, 11)

This particular mix of psychological and ontological reductionism with the rejection of vitalistic reductionism raises at least four major issues that can be formulated this way: (1) If men are immersed in a materialistic and deterministic universe made up of bodies and motions governed by “integral” causes, that is, causes from which the effect cannot but necessarily follow, what is the role and explanation of teleological (purposeful) behaviors such as the search for the knowledge of causes? (2) If the great Galilean principles of movement (the principles of inertia and externalism, which exclude self-movement: Lev. I, 2, II, 1–2, III, 2, VI, 1) rule even mind and will operations, how can the doctrine “Of Man” escape the objection of passivity? (3) How can this “ontological” passivity be reconciled with the active role that method plays in orienting man toward science, and through “civil science,” toward peace? (4) And finally, how can these different explanatory principles be reconciled to confirm Hobbes’s idea of the unity of science, natural and civil?

“Passionate Thought” and Teleology It may be useful to begin with the first question about teleology. Compared to Aristotle, Hobbes not only abandons the general metaphysical picture of final causation, reducing Aristotle’s four causes to only two (material and efficient: DM XXVII, 2; DCo X, 7), but he also rejects in moral psychology 3

On the comparison between humans and animals in Hobbes and Gassendi, see Paganini 2017.

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the Aristotelian theory of deliberation and volition that supposed the existence of a “rational appetite” (orexis dianoetike) as the ideal norm of will. Hobbes replaces it with his own more realistic theory of deliberation as an alternation of desires and aversions, that is passions, until the last prevailing appetite constitutes the will. This much was clear in the Elements and the polemic with Bramhall; however, it is notable that, for the first time in Leviathan, he introduces the concept of “passionate thought” (Lev. III, 3), believing that a “train of thought” can be “regulated” or “guided” only inasmuch as it is driven by a “passion,” that is, by a desire or aversion aimed at a certain object. In this way, thought itself becomes a teleologicalpassionate activity aimed at the goal of a desire.4 Seen in more detail, the teleology of “passionate thought” does not constitute an exception to, but rather an enrichment of Hobbes’s causal materialism. There are at least four reasons why: (a) Purposeful behavior is not exclusively human, but is also common to animals: even if it is reducible to an efficient cause (see b), purpose or end characterizes all animated and sentient beings (DCo X, 7), while it is absent from the rest of nature, in contrast to Aristotle who considered the entire universe permeated with final causation, starting from motion and place (cf. Lev. III, 4, XVII, 1). (b) What in Aristotelian terms would be described as the final cause is for Hobbes a particular species of efficient cause: it is the imagination of the object of desire acting as the cause producing the movement in which any appetite consists. (c) Leviathan VI (“Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions, commonly called the Passions”) reconstructs the origins of the passions and voluntary motions according to the physical laws that dominate the entire universe. Unlike vital motion, voluntary motion requires the intervention of imagination or thought (the two terms are largely synonymous in Hobbes), because “the imagination is the first internal beginning” of voluntary motion (Lev. VI, 1). (d) However, as seen in the previous chapters of Leviathan, imagination is “nothing but decaying sense” (Lev. II, 2), so a weakened movement, according to the two first kinds of reductionism (psychological and ontological) accepted by Hobbes, and all motions are always “from the outside” (external causality). If there is a psychological specificity, that consists in grasping the beginning of the movement when it is still “invisible” or “insensible”; yet this is the general problem with infinitesimals, which also arises for the “subtle” or “invisible” parts of matter that are supposed to explain activities of the (material) mind. To name these imperceptible 4

On “passionate thought” cf. Paganini 2012.

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beginnings, Hobbes introduces the concept of “endeavor” or “conatus” (Lev. VI, 1), which, however, does not constitute either a principle of selfmovement or a violation of the principle of causality. As has been noted, “conatus” represents a notion easily assimilated to the “moment” of Galileo.5 To come back to the first question, if one looks at the material counterparts of Hobbes’s psychological notions, it seems that his own explanation for teleological thought does not break with strict physicalism and does not jeopardize the unity of either his system or his method. Galileo’s mechanics provides Hobbes with at least a “model” to hypothesize a corpuscular theory of mind and then to explain psychological dynamics: the idea of “passionate thought” is the translation in an emotional language of the complex but still physical action of small particles and infinitesimal conatus. “Cognitive” and “conative” aspects, teleology and efficient causality are not incompatible; they rather represent different descriptions of the same fundamental physical level. This is the answer to the first question.

Curiosity, Mental Pleasure and Power To the second question concerning the threat of passivity posed by Hobbes’s doctrine “Of Man,” scholars have usually responded by emphasizing the role of language, which would be the engine of “active thinking.”6 Men excel “in all faculties that depend on the use of names” (DM XXX, 15). Linguistic intellect, reason and calculation are what Hobbes calls “facultates criticae” of man (DM XXX, 22). In fact, the origins of an active “mental discourse” (not the mere repetition of past mental associations) are already present before language; they are found in a passion that Hobbes terms “curiosity,” attributing it uniquely to man.7 If the presence or the absence of this passion differentiates man from animals, the greater or lesser degree of the same distinguishes the “wit” of one man from another (Lev. VIII, 2–4). To define human specificity (which is what hinders the third type of reduction), Hobbes has to study man’s prelinguistic and “passionate” endowment. To this end, in Leviathan Hobbes goes beyond the generic definition of curiosity as a search for causes that in Elements was supposed to separate humans from animals (EL I, IX, 18). In the more mature work, Hobbes 5 7

Cf. on this point Baldin 2017. 6 Cf. ultimately Pettit 2008. On the peculiarity of Hobbes’s conception of curiosity, see Paganini 2012; Paganini 2018. Cf. also Barnouw 1989; Tabb 2014. For a moral valuation of curiosity see Lloyd 2018.

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recognizes that even the latter are capable of developing a “series of regulated thoughts” as when seeking the causes or means that produce an imagined effect, and – he adds – “this is common to man and beast” (Lev. III, 5). Therefore, it is a peculiar kind of curiosity that characterizes humans and not, more generally, the search for the cause of an immediate, desired effect. In fact, the particular “passionate thought” that is “desire of knowledge” studied in Leviathan is a “train of regulated thoughts” that contains within it two diverse types: The Trayn of regulated Thoughts is of two kinds; One, when of an effect imagined, we seek the causes, or means that produce it: and this is common to Man and Beast. The other is, when imagining any thing whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects, that can by it be produced; that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it, when we have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any signe, but in man only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other Passion but sensuall, such as are hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. (Lev. III, 5)8

It is, therefore, the second type of “regulated thoughts” (from causes to possible effects) and not the first (from the immediate effect to its near cause) that properly bears the name of the sort of “curiosity” that is characteristic of humans exclusively. It applies also the definition of Lev. VI, 35, where Hobbes describes curiosity as “lust of the mind,” inexhaustible as the continuous generator of knowledge, unlike the “carnal pleasure” that produces satiety and sometimes even discomfort. It is thanks to this kind of curiosity, and to the subsequent development of language, that humans “did excel all other animals” (Lev. V, 6; cf. II, 10). The central error of the third kind of reduction consisted in not differentiating these two diverse species of “regulated thought,” and therefore in not grasping the human specificity that appears, thanks to the passion of “curiosity,” even before the intervention of language. Curiosity is a “mental pleasure,” but two aspects distinguish it from Aristotle’s notion of “admiration,” which had inspired the previous passage of Elements where the two affections appeared together (EL I, IX, 18). First, Aristotle’s admiration was not a passion, but simply the natural desire to know, while Hobbes’s curiosity, being a passion, is subjected to the mechanics of endeavour or conatus. Second, Aristotelian admiration or wonder is disinterested and contemplative, whereas curiosity is aimed at power. We can therefore characterize curiosity in Hobbes as having six 8

Cf. also Hobbes, A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques, critical edn. by E. C. Stroud, University of Wisconsin-Madison, PhD Thesis, 1983, 76 (Dedicatory Preface).

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aspects: (a) It is directed to a more or less distant end, rather than an immediate cause, so human curiosity provides humans with a more complex and longer-term teleology than animals can have. (b) It is mental, regarding a future that “does not exist” in the present, but can only be imagined. (c) Curiosity is primarily aimed at the search for “power,” that is, the ability to obtain the satisfaction of one’s own appetites not only in the present, but even more so in the future (Lev. XI, 2). (d) It is consequencesoriented, since it searches for “all the possible effects” that may result from a cause, drawing on knowledge of cause and effect. (e) It is conditional because the mode of the cause-effect relationship contemplated by the “curious” person is especially expressed in the formula If . . . then. Note that the language of deliberation, in which this passion enters, is according to Hobbes in the subjunctive: “if this be done, then this will follow” (Lev. VI, 55). (f) Because this species of curiosity is inextinguishable, the desire for knowledge and consequently for power embodies the highest degree of the dynamics of life, according to Hobbes’s general definition of happiness as consisting in “continual success” (Lev. VI, 58) in satisfying a succession of desires, whereas to cease to look forward is equivalent to dying. This specifically human curiosity within the general type of “trains of regulated thoughts” provides a reply to the second question’s objection of passivity. Being the “passionate thought” that distinguishes humans from animals, “curiosity” in its proper and more restricted sense has two sides, cognitive and conative.9 It is deeply rooted in man’s emotional life, but at the same time drives a “lust of mind” that is not reducible to the quest for “carnal pleasure.”10 Unlike carnal desire, this sort of curiosity is the cause of tireless human activity.

Curiosity and Method We now come to the question of the active role played by method, and answer by connecting it to specifically human curiosity. In a crucial passage of Leviathan (XX, 19) Hobbes deals with curiosity and method together. In fact, most of the characteristics that we have listed for curiosity apply also to scientific method, especially those that are linked 9

10

Even while stressing the “cognitive” aspect of the passions, Abizadeh 2017 must recognize that these are at least “hybrid mental states” (11). His very detailed study unfortunately does not take into account the particular passion that is curiosity. As regards “mental discourse,” the same author speaks of “innate patterns of association” (27–8), while it is clear since the controversy with Descartes that Hobbes rejects any kind of innatism. Cf. Paganini 2018.

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to its “conditional” and “consequences-oriented” nature, and therefore to its synthetic aspect. The particular “passionate thought” or “train of thoughts” that pushes man to look further and further for possible effects has an exact parallel in Hobbes’s theory of scientific method, which warrants our seeing it as a projection of human “curiosity.” To understand the significance of this equivalence, one must return to the three chapters (V, VII, IX) in which the results-oriented character of science and method is highlighted. Chapter V (“Of Reason and Science”) is famous for the definition of reason as calculation: that it is “nothing but the Reckoning (that is Adding and Subtracting) of the Consequences of general names” (Lev. V, 2). More specifically, the true and scientific “method” consists in tracing the “consequences, from the first definitions and settled significations of names” (Lev. V, 4) “proceeding from one consequence to another” (Lev. V, 4). The first cause of absurdity is the “want of method”: “confusion and unfit connexion of names into assertions” (Lev. V, 9). This definition of reason contains several central elements of Hobbes’s doctrine: the distinction between science and prudence; anti-innatism, because “reason is not born with us” (Lev. V, 17; cf. VIII, 13; XIII, 2); the idea that reason develops gradually, in both individual and collective history, through continuous exercise (“industry”); and the necessity of a “good and orderly Method,” “till we come to the knowledge of all the Consequences of names” (Lev. V, 17). In line with his constructive conception of demonstration, Hobbes points out the parallel between the search for “consequences” and the search for “effects,” thus highlighting science’s productive nature in revealing how effects may be generated: Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like, another time; Because when we see how any thing comes about, upon what causes, and by what manner; when the like causes come into our power, we see how to make it produce the like effects. (Lev. V, 17)

This definition of “science” must be situated in relation to the idea of demonstration developed in De Corpore. There, demonstration is assimilated to causation that proceeds through movement. Hobbes speaks for example of “generations and descriptions” for the construction of a line produced by the motion of a point; even in geometry one should consider “what does the body move, if it is considered nothing else but movement.” More broadly, the same reasoning applies to physics where the “movement

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of individual parts of a body” is supposed to generate all the demonstrated effects. A similar approach, properly called causal-demonstrative, also applies to psychology, where demonstrating “the motions of the mind, namely, appetite, aversion, love, benevolence, hope, fear, anger, emulation, envy, &c.” means understanding “what causes they have, and of what they are causes” (DCo VI, 6). Even definitions have generative character: “the names of things that are meant to have a cause must have the same cause in the definition or the mode of generation” (DCo VI, 13). Apparently, Hobbes inherits the classical and Aristotelian idea of knowing as “scire per causas” (to know through causes), but his own idea of scientific method is much more modern, distinguishing between what is true by definition (or by consequence) and what is experimentally true. In Leviathan (VII, 4 and IX, 1) Hobbes differentiates “Absolute Knowledge” that concerns facts and can be established only by experience, on the one hand, and “Conditionall knowledge” that is “knowledge of the consequences of words” on the other hand. Only the latter is really “Science,” depending not on experience (like “prudence”), but on reason, which sets the definitions and derives all possible inferences. Therefore, Hobbes did not confuse, as he has been accused of doing11, logical inference and causal dependence. Even when he conceived definition as the “cause” of the consequences and the effects as the results of a demonstration according to his constructive view of the method, Hobbes always kept the logical plane of propositional language (“words”) and the factual plane as distinct. The former has scientific value, but it is only “conditional,” regarding the consequences of “names” and definitions; therefore it applies only to possible, not real, effects. The latter relates to real facts and, by means of empirical verification, can be “absolute.” No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute knowledge of Fact, past, or to come. For, as for the knowledge of Fact, it is originally, Sense; and ever after, Memory. And for the knowledge of Consequence, which I have said before is called Science, it is not Absolute, but Conditionall. No man can know by Discourse, that this, or that, is, has been, or will be; which is to know absolutely: but onely, that if This be, That is; if This has been, That has been; if This shall be, That shall be: which is to know conditionally; and 11

Malcolm 2002, 155. According to Martinich 2005, 166–8 there is a “tension” between the adoption of the syllogistic method (evident in DCo) and Hobbes’s oft stated preference for the constructive method of demonstration. So concludes Martinich: “his paradigmatic examples of scientific reasoning are geometric constructions” (166). Pécharman 2016, 25 noted that the traditional principle of syllogistics, according to which the premises are the cause of the conclusion, was reinterpreted by Hobbes so: “strictly speaking, knowledge is the cause of knowledge, not propositions of another proposition,” or replaced by “a principle of effective causality from a conception-that to another.”

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gianni paganini that not the consequence of one thing to another; but of one name of a thing, to another name of the same thing. (Lev. VII, 3)

It is true, however, that, after distinguishing these two levels, Hobbes thinks about their coordination and even collaboration. Although he does not use the expression “hypothetical-deductive method,” Hobbes’s care about a rigorous logical formulation jointly with the necessity of using experimental verification, when it comes to real existence and not simply logical derivation, well describes the scientist’s procedure: first hypothesizing a cause of a general nature or a universal definition, then tracing the consequences (“knowledge of consequence”) in a “conditional” way, and finally submitting it to the experimental verification that only “absolute knowledge of fact” can provide. In reality, the search for possible results and constructivism converge in the “logical” part of Hobbes’s method, according to the view that definitions and demonstrations show the genesis or causation of their theorems; on the other hand, even if these procedures permit science to achieve universality, Hobbes knows that this generality applies only to the realm of possibilities; ascertaining real existences or actual effects remains a matter “of fact” and so of experience. The search for possible consequences, however, is the counterpart, at the level of method, of basic human curiosity which consists in the search for “all possible effects” based on the knowledge of causes. As far as science is concerned, this consequence-seeking approach is best expressed in chapter 9 (“Of the Multiple Subjects of Knowledge”), where it becomes also the principle for classifying sciences (in the Latin version, the chapter is entitled “On the Distribution of the Sciences”). In this chapter Hobbes opposes knowledge “of fact” (history, civil or natural) to science as “knowledge of the consequence of one affirmation to another,” and again distinguishes between “absolute knowledge” and “conditional” knowledge (Lev. IX, 1). The chart at the end of the chapter presents a bipartite structure (natural vs political or artificial bodies), instead of the elemental tripartition that will be realized in De Corpore. The chart emphasizes consequence-seeking, beginning with the general definition of science or philosophy: “SCIENCE, that is, Knowledge of Consequences, which is also called PHILOSOPHY.” In fact, at each node of the graph, it is the “consequences” that are expounded. The chart develops in a “natural” way from left to right, that is, from the most general to the most particular, since, as the Latin version observes, “the universal things are essential to those belonging to the knowledge of the species, so that the latter cannot be

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grasped except by the light of the former.” In accordance with the parallelism between causation and demonstration, the graph proceeds from causes to effects, always keeping in mind that the “subjects of sciences are bodies” or their “accidents.” Obviously, the chart can also be read in the other direction, from the particular to the general, from effects to causes, as the two directions of reading reproduce the two parts of the method (synthetic and analytic). It is easy to see that reading the chart from left to right, besides indicating the procedure of the synthetic method, reproduces the trend of specifically human curiosity, which, starting from causes, imagines possible effects. It is enough to substitute “causes” for “definitions” and “effects” for “consequences” to get the equivalence between the psychological mechanism of “curiosity” and the logical mechanism of inference (equivalence that is in turn based on the constructive conception of demonstration, as we have already seen). Being shared by both curiosity and science, Hobbes’s consequence-orientation is the key to answering to the third question: Humans are oriented to science because of their careful examination of the consequences of any statement or action. Looking at the chart and bearing in mind the tight connection that we have established between curiosity and method, we can now answer the fourth question: the chart evidences the unity not only of Hobbes’s method, but also of his system. All of the sciences and their respective objects are subsumed under the unifying category of “body”; even morality (“Ethics” as a “consequence of the passions of man”) and the “science of just and unjust” (as a “consequence from speech in contracting”) are remote consequences of the “natural body.” The “politic body” has fewer offshoots, including only two branches: the science of the rights and duties of the sovereign and of the subjects respectively. In any event, even these minor branches are connected to the main root: the consequences-oriented definition of science or philosophy (Lev. IX, chart). Against any temptation to separate morals and politics from the general frame of his philosophy, Hobbes, even in the most “autonomous” of his works (Leviathan), consistently tried to reinstate the unity of both method and system.

Memory, Care and Curiosity One could object that affording this centrality to curiosity reinstates a kind of human exceptionalism, contrary to Hobbes’s intention. According to the contemporary lexicon, Hobbes is not an eliminativist: his theory of the unity of mind and body does not involve the elimination of psychological

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discourse about the states of mind, like in the present strictly physicalist theories. Not only does Hobbes maintain substantial parts of common sense and the philosophical psychology of his time, even if he considers it as a description and not an explanation of mental life, but also (Lev. Intro., 3–4) he reevaluates introspection not as a purely subjective experience, but through inter-subjective comparison, serving as a means of constructing a universal language of human passions.12 In fact, the descriptive classification of the passions developed in Leviathan reflects phenomena gathered from empirical observation of oneself and others, even though Hobbes thinks that their causal explanation should result in hypotheses about the corresponding micro-states of the body (not just of the brain, as in today’s materialistic theory of mind). What, then, are the causes of curiosity, which is tantamount to enquiring about the cause of humanity’s most important distinguishing characteristic? Even if neither Leviathan nor De Corpore investigate the causes of this peculiar “passion,” we can resort to De motu for some enlightenment. But first, it will be useful to make a comparison with the explanation of another “exceptionality” that encompasses this time all the living beings in opposition to inert matter. In De Corpore Hobbes inquires into the nature of sensible representation, the “phainesthai,” literally the appearance, that he considers to be the “phenomenon of all the most admirable,” and especially “the fact that some natural bodies have in themselves the models of almost all things, while others do not have it.” In other words, Hobbes is wondering about the difference between sentient matter and inanimate matter (DCo XXV, 1). To give an account of this difference, in addition to resorting to the “resistance” or “reaction” of the internal parts of the sentient, which produces a resilience to the outside, from which the “phantasm” is generated (EL I, II, 8–10), Hobbes introduces in De Corpore another, more important, factor: a peculiarity of organized matter unlike the inanimate one. In fact, the ability to feel depends on two aspects: the psychological and the material. From a psychological point of view, Hobbes argues that feeling is never instantaneous, but needs a certain amount of time to allow for “a constant variety of phantasms”; therefore, sensation must involve a minimum of memory to put the “phantasms” in comparison. This psychological and temporal distension requires, on the material plane, that the sentient body contain “organs capable of holding motion imprinted, even when the object has moved away” so as to realize the 12

See Apeldoorn 2015.

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comparison between “the first phantasms and those after.” Otherwise, the pure phainesthai would be instantaneous and thus imperceptible: “moving the object away, it would cease immediately.” This capacity of retention goes beyond the simple reaction of the conatus and requires in the body a particular organization, that is – says Hobbes – “suitable organs” (DCo XXV, 1).13 Sentient matter (body in the “biological” meaning of this word) is therefore a subspecies of a wider kind, “matter in general”: the former is literally an “organic” matter as it is articulated in peculiar “organs.” The specificity of sensation, from which all of animal psychology comes, is thus explained by referring to some sort of “variegated matter,” which captures the difference between sentient and non-sentient bodies (Frost 2008, 6–7). The account of bodily mechanisms of curiosity in De motu is much sketchier and anticipates some of the peculiarities that would be highlighted later in Leviathan. We must refer to DM XXX, 15, which is the passage in which curiosity, the desire to know causes and the invention of verbal language are dealt with together. Not only is the cluster noteworthy, but also significant is the detail concerning comparison of “phantasms” just discussed. In DM, besides opposing “ars” (human technique) to merely animal “prudence” to explain the origins of language “ex instituto,” that is “artificial,” instead of the “natural notes” used by the beasts, Hobbes explains that even the search for causes depends on “comparison of things,” that cannot properly be made “in things themselves,” but only “in phantasms.” This comparison requires the help of “memory” and to this end humans “invented marks, especially names that could stir up similar phantasms, in the place of past phantasms.” Hobbes argues (controversially) that animals do not “remember” their received sensations and do not make sure to mark places where they hide surplus food. Note that memory plays a crucial role not only in sensation, but in the impetus to use words, but in DM Hobbes does not wonder about any specific “organ” that would support it. Hobbes goes on to explain the reasons animals lack this “technique” (“ars”) of setting artificial marks (what in Leviathan will be called “signs,” distinguishing them from “marks” used by animals too). One reason reappears in Leviathan, but the other sheds new light. Looking only for “carnal pleasure,” animals do not develop verbal language, and that happens “ex constitutione corporis.” The reference to the “carnality” of animal delight is also found in Leviathan, but this reference to “body constitution” is there omitted. 13

For a detailed study of this theory and a comparison with Gassendi, see Paganini 1990, esp. 373–8.

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Is specifically human curiosity based on bodily specificity, as in the case of sensation? It seems so. Yet in the case of curiosity Hobbes is not that precise and the allusion to “bodily constitution” remains undeveloped. He clarifies instead the consequences of beasts’ inability: animals cannot “care for their phantasms” (“phantasmata sua curare”: note that in the Latin words “curare” and “cura” we can find the same verbal root as in “curiosity”), “tell them apart from the things of which they are phantasms or recall them” (DCo XXX, 15). Memory, composition and decomposition of phantasms, and then the search for causes finally constitutes “curiosity.” Therefore, curiosity requires “memoria” but develops into “consideratio,” then brings about “comparatio” and “distinctio” (of phantasms from things, and from one another), processes that become both easier and more and more complex thanks to the use of “notae.” It is notable that this “care [cura] about phantasms” is also at the root of “consideratio,” the procedure by which humans dissect and compose their sensations, giving origin to analysis and synthesis, that is, to the basis of method (DCo I, 3).

Conclusion On the whole, Hobbes’s explanation of human uniqueness is consistent with his materialistic framework, even if it is not as complete as one might wish. This incompleteness (Hobbes does not clarify what special organ or what particular conatus is responsible for the passion of curiosity) has led some scholars to speak of curiosity (and sometimes also of sensation and intentionality) as an “emergent property” that “arises” out of a more fundamental entity (matter) and yet is “novel” or “irreducible” with respect to it.14 Besides being rather controversial even in contemporary philosophy, the idea of “emergent properties” is completely absent from Hobbes’s conception of the human mind. Instead of this misleading label, one must retain the category of “internal realism” to describe Hobbes’s stance. He was convinced that just as external reality can be explained having resort only to material particles and their movements, the internal reality of the body and the mind should be accounted for similarly, hypothesizing that 14

Barnouw (1989, 522–3), to depict sense and desire, introduces the category of “emergent property” and speaks of endeavor as a “conception of a dynamic unconscious”: both of these categories are clearly foreign to Hobbes’s philosophy. Tabb (2014, 22) also speaks of curiosity as an “emergent property”; in the same way he claims (20, 32) that “Hobbes does not explicate the mechanics of the appetite,” to argue the “non-mechanical aspect of Hobbes’s psychology.” By contrast, it is enough to read Chapter VI of Leviathan (and many of Hobbes’s other works) to find a mechanical explanation of the origin of appetites and passions that does not require either emergent properties or nonmechanical factors.

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micro-entities and their behaviors are similar to what we can experience at the macro level. Many of the objections addressed to Hobbes’s general philosophy relate more or less directly to its materialism and in particular to the mechanical form it assumed in accordance with the science of his time. Thus, he was reproached for failing to account for central aspects of human agency, such as intentionality, goal-oriented behavior, and the normative nature of both science and morals. The analysis we have conducted so far simply attempted to show that many of these reproaches stem from not incorporating into Hobbes’s theory of mind the key passion of curiosity. Just examining this specific human passion allows us to escape the caricature that has often been made of Hobbes’s psychology, reduced to a sort of automatic and repetitive mechanism of stimulus and response. In light of the considerations offered above, even application to Hobbes of a mechanistic label should be reassessed as it proves too simple and reductive. It is sufficient to take seriously the complexity of the human “body” and its functions as they are exposed in Leviathan or in De Motu, to see that Hobbes did not endorse a “poor” conception of undifferentiated and passive matter, but made it evolve in a more dynamic (with the conatus) and differentiated direction (with his idea of the organized body). In the seventeenth century, he was the thinker who provided the richest and most articulated explanation of the living and thinking body without breaking with his materialistic account of the mind and life. The ontological reduction Hobbes endorsed did not prevent him from acknowledging and demonstrating that material reality is not thin, but on the contrary rich, and in need of deep exploration. Curiosity is the main manifestation of this richness at the psychological level: a passion, i.e., an infinitesimal conatus and then an appetite like the others, but exclusively reserved for humans; a movement embedded in the dynamic of body, yet open to knowledge of the new and unusual; a passion causally determined but at the same time capable of directing itself, thanks to foresight, toward trains of thoughts and calculation of consequences beyond the repetitive consequences of past experience. Through curiosity, the unity of Hobbes’s method and system is deeply rooted in the human body’s complexity. The mistake of those interpreters who thought that Hobbes’s politics and morals must be separate from his materialism, because his materialism is inadequate to ground those sciences, lay in not considering that his materialism involves a theory of the specifically human body that supports richer achievements (sensation, mental delight, search

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for causes, language, method, etc.) than are not available to mere matter in general. It could be objected that our attempt to bring the method and the system back to unity shows the compatibility, but not the deductibility of morals and politics from the general materialistic assumptions of Hobbes’s philosophy. However, pretending deduction would mean to go against the warnings of Hobbes himself. There are two reasons for this: (1) As we have already said, Hobbes believes that the basis of practical philosophy can also be derived directly from experience (its principles are “known to everyone by experience” De Cive, Preface) or introspection (Lev. Intro.) Therefore, it is not strictly necessary to know the “causes” of sensation and other psychological facts (Lev. I, 3), although the first chapters of “Of Man” contain a causal explanation of this type. In reality, Hobbes does not think that the causal explanation is severed from the observational-introspective one, but maintains that they can confirm and corroborate each other (see also DCo VI, 7, where in politics next to the synthetic method Hobbes stresses also the value of “the experience through which everyone observes his own motions”). (2) There is, however, a more substantial reason against the pretension of deducing morals and politics from the general principles of physics. The deductive ideal (which is affirmed in DCo VI, where the perfect reversibility of analysis and synthesis is also claimed) in the continuation of De Corpore is in fact restricted to geometry alone (see Pacchi 1965, 216 ff.). This limitation is particularly evident when it comes to assumptions concerning the micro level of matter, such as in “motus animorum” (DCo VI, 7), and therefore has a significant impact on the “scientific” knowledge of psychology. De Corpore XXV is dedicated to “sensation and animal motion” and in this framework (the natural basis of the anthropological doctrine) Hobbes explains that it is possible to pinpoint only the “possible causes,” the “possibility of a generation,” starting from “phenomena” (DCo XXV, 1). For this reason, in the deduction of the “doctrine of man” from physics Hobbes did not go beyond general hypotheses or conjectures. The mechanism of passions in general is clearly formulated, both in Leviathan and De Corpore, but what is offered is only a scheme (what is more, largely unverifiable, given the micro level of causal imputation) and there is no attempt to go into the details of single passions in particular. It is at this problematic joint point that experience and introspection make up for the limits of causal explanation. The range of any possible explanation is however traced within the classes of “movements and forces of the bodies” (DCo VI, 6).

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It is in this tension between the ambition of the scientific model and the awareness of its epistemological limits that the doctrine “Of Man” and its moral and political extensions must be framed. However, this is not a break within the system, but rather an articulation provided by the method itself. In this sense, while noting the differences between the different parts of the system, it seems more correct to speak of their complementarity.

chapter 4

Hobbes, Life, and the Politics of Self-Preservation: The Role of Materialism in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy Samantha Frost

Introduction: The “Monstrous Metaphysics” and the Ethical and Political Improbabilities It Implies, or, How (Not) to Read Hobbes’s Materialism Hobbes’s materialist metaphysics has been an extraordinarily vexed theoretical object over the years.1 It has been the source and target of great philosophical agitation because the materialist facets of his thinking push against the conceptual categories that have organized our understanding and portrayal of much early modern and modern philosophy (James 1997). In keeping with his materialist metaphysics, Hobbes’s conceives of individuals as bodies-who-have-the-capacity-to-think rather than as subjects who are bifurcated or differentiated into two ontologically distinct entities of “mind” and “body.” Indeed, early in De Corpore, Hobbes asserts that one of the “gross errors of writers of metaphysics” is to presume that “because they can conceive of thought without the consideration of body, they infer there is no need of a thinking-body” (pt. I, ch. 3, ¶4). It is individuals qua thinking-bodies that populate Hobbes’s philosophy and his theories of ethics and politics. 1

I have been working on this essay on and off for a number of years with the consequence that my gratitude has an expansive reach. Thank you to panelists and audiences at a couple of APSA panels in 2010 in which I presented pieces of this project. Many thanks to the Humanities Research Center at Rice University in Houston, TX for a vibrant seminar on an early version of this paper in 2013. Likewise, thanks to the members of the Hobbes Political Theory Network who engaged this paper at King’s College, London in 2013. For perspicacious comments and questions, thanks also to the participants of the “Materialism: Words and Power in Hobbes” Coloquio at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, Chile in 2018. I am grateful for comments and feedback from various other interlocutors over the years. And a huge thanks to Sharon Lloyd for detailed and insightful suggestions to improve the essay as it approached its final form. Finally, I am very grateful for the able research assistance of Hana Nasser.

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Yet, for many of his readers, such a concept – that of the thinkingbody – constitutes an improper commingling of metaphysical categories, and Hobbes’s mobilization of this concept has incited an extraordinary admixture of ad hominem attacks and charges of rash and bungling logic. What is at stake in this sometimes charged debate about Hobbes’s materialism is the capacity of his subject to engage in rational thinking and judgment, and by extension, to engage in voluntary action as an ethical and political actor. We can see the push against the possibility of making good sense of Hobbes’s materialism as bound up historically with the effort to preserve the possibility of self-reflective, deliberate action in the face of the mid-twentieth century behaviorist revolution. Indeed, many of the most vociferous opponents of Hobbes’s materialism cut their philosophical milk teeth trying to hold onto the contours of a Cartesian or Kantian subject. However, even as the threat of behaviorism has waned, scholars have had to work hard to dig Hobbes’s materialism out from the rationalist precepts that have governed the defense of philosophy and politics against it. One facet of that older anti-behaviorist generation’s criticism of Hobbes’s materialism centers on what is seen as its refusal of the indubitable, indisputable distinction between mind and body. For those fighting from this corner, reality is structured by clear, qualitative differences between mind and body and between the concepts and language appropriate to talking about each of them. Since mind and body are ontologically distinct entities, Hobbes cannot correctly conceive of them as in some way equivalent. Consequently, Peters and Tajfel (1972) decry Hobbes’s materialism as a “monstrous piece of metaphysics” (180). In their view, Hobbes is “incredibly hard-headed and naïve” in his materialism and proceeds with “reckless” leaps in logic (180). Less exercised but no less critical, Spragens explains that “structural features of one realm of reality cannot be derived by deducing them from the characteristic features of another realm” (1973, 165). And Watkins points out that “[p]sychological conclusions about thoughts, feelings, and wants cannot be deduced from materialistic premises about bodily movements” (1965b, 238). Because of the purportedly incontrovertible fact that the substance and activity of the mind cannot be derived from the workings of the body, Peters argues that Hobbes failed “to see what later generations have called ‘philosophical problems’ in moving from physiology to psychology” (1967, 94–5). Sorell (1986) contends that an “embarrassing result” of Hobbes’s materialism is the possibility that the reverberations that resonate in a stone after it is struck could be said to be a kind of thinking, which is to say that Hobbes’s

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materialism erases “the boundary between the animate and the inanimate, and between bodies with minds and bodies without” (74–5). Gert (1965) echoes this criticism, claiming that for Hobbes to say that the subjects he describes can imagine or have thoughts is tantamount to “illegitimately” attributing beliefs to a machine (347). In addition to attacking Hobbes’s materialist philosophy, Hobbes’s critics also call into question his capacity for logic and his writerly virtue. Peters declares that Hobbes is “curiously” unaware of the “logical mistakes” he committed (1967, 159). Sorell likewise grumbles that “the thought that . . . mental processes might be irreducible . . . seems never to occur to him” (1986, 75). Mintz (1996) makes a similar claim, stating that “Hobbes never considered the possibility that the product of mental activity – thought – is different in kind from the physical processes which give rise to it” (65). But in addition to making mistakes, Hobbes is imagined as a mendacious ne’er-do-well, purposefully trying to pull one on his readers. For instance, Watkins suggests that Hobbes is afflicted with a kind “self-deception” (1965b, 251). Peters goes further to accuse him of deliberately using a “twilight kind of language” to confound and trick his readers, relying on ambiguous terms, open to “twofold interpretation,” in order to “obscure[. . .] the jumps he was in fact making” (1967, 78 and 93). Sorell says that even if we play along with Hobbes’s account of the derivation of thoughts from sensory perception, in the end Hobbes’s subjects do not “qualify as full-fledged thinkers” (85). In part, this is because of Hobbes’s claim that the principle of inertia governs the movement of “body” broadly construed: his various statements to the effect that “when a Body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something els hinder it) eternally” (Leviathan, ch. 2, ¶2; see also De Corpore, pt. I, ch. 9, ¶7) are understood by critics to mean that “there is no change without push” (Watkins 1965a, 43). The combination of the implication that people think poorly and the principle that the movement of one body depends upon a prior movement of another seems to suggest that, in Hobbes’s materialist philosophy, “all human actions are caused by motions external to them” (Peters, 168). In other words, Hobbes’s materialism seems to entail that when an individual acts, “the initiation of movement” comes “from without” the subject rather than from within (131). At the most, then, Hobbes’s materialism seems to give us a deterministic behaviorism. Tracing out the contours of this determinism, Gert (1965) contends that “to have a motive for doing an action entails both that one have some beliefs and that he regard this belief as his reason for doing that action”

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(341). However, Hobbes “makes deliberation sound more like a succession of emotional states than a consideration of the consequences of various courses of action” (Gert, 1996, 162). McNeilly agrees, pointing out that if Hobbes’s subjects cannot be conceived as having beliefs, neither can they be imagined as having motives for their actions (1993, 164). Peters and Tajfel (1972) similarly suggest that Hobbes’s subject acts “compulsively,” rather “like a man under posthypnotic suggestion” in that such an individual “will only ‘reason’ to find excuses for what he is going to do anyway” (182). So, the kind of subject ostensibly implied by Hobbes’s materialism cannot be conceived as having beliefs or motives – and consequently cannot be self-directing nor self-consciously or deliberately initiate action. This incapacity makes Hobbes’s account of the subject irrelevant for thinking about politics, Peters complains, noting that “[i]n ethics and politics, actions are only interesting in so far as they are consciously directed towards their goals” (Peters, 145). In sum, in what critics see as a sabotage of the truism that rational belief is a condition of and impetus for voluntary action, Hobbes’s materialist metaphysics condemns us to a crude stimulus-response model of politics. By asserting that “body” is all there is, Hobbes makes it impossible to conceive of an individual as the origin or author of her own actions. For that particular generation of scholars, then, the way to get into Hobbes’s accounts of ethics and politics was to avoid or ignore the metaphysics. Strauss (1952), for instance, disposes of the problems posed by Hobbes’s materialism by flatly denying that his “science” has anything to do with his political and ethical philosophy, claiming that “Hobbes’s political philosophy is really . . . based on a knowledge of men which is deepened and corroborated by the self-knowledge and self-examination of the individual, and not on a general scientific or metaphysical theory” (29). Similarly, attributing to Hobbes a desire for logical rigor (obviously made impossible by the materialism), Watkins allows Hobbes to save philosophical face, surmising “Hobbes must have made a fresh start when he turned from nature to psychology” (1965b, 238). In recent years, readers of Hobbes have found a new set of permissions and perspectives for engaging his materialist metaphysics, including the broad scholarly visibility of feminist and critical race studies analyses of embodiment, the rise of neuroscientific and pharmacological studies of the embodied self, and a renewed interest in the different forms of phenomenology and materialism found in the history of philosophy. This intellectual context has fomented a rash of studies that buck the Cartesian constraints on the interpretation of Hobbes’s materialist account of the

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subject to offer careful, thoughtful, and detailed analysis of his accounts of sense, perception, self-consciousness, desire, and deliberation (e.g., Abizadeh 2017; Adams 2014, 2016; Apeldoorn 2012; Dempsey 2009; Frost 2008, 2010; Garau 2016; Gorham 2014). But the transition from accepting Hobbes’s account of the materiality of the subject to tracing its effects on his ethical and political thinking has not followed suit. This interpretive stalling has happened for the most part because it has seemed that to admit the materiality of Hobbes’s subject is also to have to accept the egoism that purportedly rides on his (materialist) account of self-preservation. Of course, the selfishness and egoism of Hobbes’s subject have long been a concern of scholars interested in thinking through his ethical and political work. Watkins (1965b), for instance, argues “since the vital motions of the heart can only be excited by the prospect of some bodily change in its owner, all motivation is essentially egocentric; merely moral motivations unrelated to such a change cannot affect behavior” (252). Gauthier (1969) affirms this assessment about the moral incapacity of Hobbes’s subject, noting that “from this account of vital and voluntary motion, it follows that each man seeks, and seeks only, to preserve and strengthen himself . . . hence man is necessarily selfish” (7). Nagel (1959) likewise expounds upon what he calls “the Hobbesian man’s malady,” noting that the subject of Hobbes’s imagination “is susceptible only to selfish motivation and is therefore incapable of any action which could clearly be label moral” (74). Even today, as Jesseph (2016) observes, many scholars doubt whether a Hobbesian subject could ever really escape the depredations of the flesh long enough to think rationally or make decisions that are not governed by a snorting spasmodic fear of death. After a review of the contemporary landscape, Jesseph himself claims that in Hobbes’s psychology, “there is no role for reason to regulate the appetites . . . only a contrary conatus arising from the fear of . . . death” (80). In keeping with this trend, Garau (2016) also contends that in “elevating the heart to explain both vital and animal motions, he [Hobbes] offered . . . an account of human behavior as essentially oriented towards self-preservation” (233). The general verdict is that to accept Hobbes’s (materialist) account of self-preservation is to be forced to acquiesce in an account of the subject characterized by such extreme selfishness or egoism as to make Hobbes’s ethical claims rather puzzling and his politics hard to stomach. The problem of how to reconcile Hobbes’s account of self-preservation with his ethical arguments in particular has been engaged in various ways. Echoing the earlier “devious Hobbes” critique, some scholars undertake

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awkward mental gymnastics to resolve the issue, attributing to Hobbes such sleights of hand as “a controlled inconsistency” (Hequembourg 2013), “an intentional incoherence” (McClure 2013), or the insight that being alive (the result of pursuing self-preservation) is a condition of having the kinds of rational desires that would make his moral philosophy coherent (Meyer 2013). Other scholars share much with Taylor’s strategic declaration that “there is no logically necessary connection” between Hobbes’s egoistic moral psychology and the doctrine of civil duty which, he says, both binds subjects to “unqualified submission” to the sovereign and obliges strict adherence to the laws (1993, 29). Thus, Dungey (2008) and Dunn (2010) simply claim that Hobbes’s description of the contours and motive force of self-preservation is inconsistent with the normative demands of his ethical and political work. And Adams (2016), Apeldoorn (2015), and Lloyd (2009) suggest that while Hobbes’s metaphysics may give a coherent account of the subject, there are epistemological and methodological reasons to believe that the metaphysics and the psychology form a project distinct from his deductive science of ethics and politics. On the merits, I think these scholars may be right in the claim that Hobbes’s ethical and political arguments are derived deductively from rational principles rather than directly from the materialist account of the self that he derives from natural philosophy. However, it seems to me that the recourse to methodology is a technical way to get around the problem of self-preservation but, being technical, is not particularly elegant or satisfying theoretically. It imputes an awkwardness to Hobbes’s thinking that these scholars otherwise seem to want to avoid. In this chapter, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s materialism provides an unusual account of what heretofore we have been calling self-preservation. Tracing the various articulations of vital motion in perception, desire, and action, I argue that the impetus to persist in living that drives Hobbes’s subject is not the same thing as “self-preservation.” In elucidating how, in Hobbes’s argument, the impetus to persist in living shapes his subject’s engagement with the world, I will suggest that Hobbes gives us theoretical warrant to link his materialist account of subjectivity to the non-egooriented theories of ethics and politics that many scholars find (or hope to find) in his work. In recasting what is at play in Hobbes’s account of self-preservation, I counter the common and satisfying tendency to paint Hobbes as a kind of anti-political thinker, i.e., one whose account of the self-interested subject combines with his argument for absolute sovereignty to produce an overbearing state and a crowd of politically passive individuals who fearfully

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obey the law and set their sights only on what will be to their individual advantage. To do so, I will shift out of the theoretical framework within which the impetus to preserve the self is figured as either a raw animal impulse or the root of an inexpungable egoism. Instead, I will talk about the persistence of the body’s drive to keep living in a manner that does justice to Hobbes’s account of the complexity of the embodied individual’s imagination and relationship to time. In what follows, I argue that if we consider some of the details of Hobbes’s account of the living body’s impetus to persist in living, we see that far from folding the subject upon him or herself in the sense of producing a narrow horizon of concern for the self, the impulse to persist in living opens the subject up to the future and demands the formation of a specifically political form of subjectivity – not a democratic form of subjectivity, to be sure, but one that integrates the commonwealth into individuals’ patterns of thought, desire, and action. Such a structure of subjectivity produces an incipient civic-mindedness that gives rise to the possibility of a community held together by awareness of interdependence when the stability and productivity of interdependence is not underwritten or guaranteed by divine writ or natural order. In the opening sentences of Leviathan, Hobbes portrays life as “but a motion of Limbes” (Introduction, ¶1). A little further on in the text, he reiterates this point, noting that “Life itself is but Motion” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶58). The claim that life is “but” motion could be perceived as an indication that Hobbes is reducing life to motion, that life is merely motion and not something more marvelous or complicated. Yet, to parse his adverbial “but” in this way is to fall prey to the tendency to see life as mute and somewhat mechanical physiological processes, in contrast to which the capacity to think, imagine, and reason serves as both the figure and the wellspring of political judgment and decision-making. In this chapter, I call into question such an understanding of life and reexamine the contours of and role played by life conceived as vital motion in Hobbes’s work. Analyzing Hobbes’s discussions about the forms of motion peculiar to animate bodies, I will argue that his conception of life-asmotion gives intentionality to the body’s perceptions and desires, posits a temporality to life processes, and intimates that Hobbesian subjects, in their very living embodiedness, exhibit an intrinsic openness to and engagement with the world. In the sentence from which the claim that life is but motion is extracted, Hobbes continues his point to observe that life “can never be without Desire, nor Feare, no more than without Sense” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶58). He elaborates upon this claim that desire, fear, and sense are integral to life

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itself when he observes a little later on “Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand” (Leviathan, ch. 11, ¶1). For Hobbes, then, desire and fear, as well as sense and imagination, are such that to be without them is to cease to live. This is something of a peculiar claim because it aligns desire, fear, sense, and imagination more closely with life than we commonly tend to do: we often think there is the living body and then there is a “self” that senses, desires, fears, and imagines. Yet, this peculiarity is the very reason I want to highlight these stipulations: they complicate what life is. These qualities of life entail not just an encounter with the world but an interested engagement with it. They also give to the living subject a distinctive temporality. What they show is that, for Hobbes, what we have glossed as “self-preservation” is neither a convulsive physical reflex nor a form of interest that concerns only the solitary self as he or she strives to save his or her skin (Lawton and Pringle 1993, 58). Instead, this phenomenon called vital motion is an impetus to persist in living that turns the living creature’s attention to the world beyond it. In Hobbes’s materialism, the life of a living creature is not a closed immediacy or immanence that requires a masterful agent to plan and direct its motive force. Rather, the life of animate creatures is an intelligent reaching-out to the world as well as an aspiration toward the future. The worldliness and futural temporality implicit in Hobbesian life reconfigure what is at stake when Hobbes puts the impetus to persist in living at the center of his account of politics.

Life Is World-Engaging, or, Life as Force Rather Than Object The place to start this analysis is Hobbes’s account of sense, because in this account we can see the ineluctable link he establishes between sense and vital motion (life). In tracing how sensory perception shapes and is made possible by vital motion, how perception provokes and entails an affective or passionate valence, I will argue that, for Hobbes, life is not the object of desire and fear but rather the force or motion behind them. Hobbes claims that “the nature of sense . . . is some internal motion in the sentient” (De Corpore, pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶2). He explains that when a perceptual object stimulates a sense organ, the motions or forms of resonance that constitute that stimulation are translated “by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body . . . inwards to the Brain, and Heart.” Once they reach the heart, they “causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver itself’” (Leviathan, ch. 1, ¶4). Indeed, as Rodolfo Garau (2016) notes, it is

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the activity of the heart that initiates “kinetic responses to external stimuli” (232).2 These kinetic responses, these motions of encounter and resistance, are what constitute a phantasm, fancy, or sensory percept (Leviathan, ch. 1, ¶4).3 And since the resistance to perceptual motion that constitutes a percept takes the form of motion pressing outward, i.e., in opposition to the inward-moving motions instigated by the perceptual stimuli, the perceiving subject gains a sense of the externality of the object of perception (¶4). What I particularly want to highlight is Hobbes’s reminder that “[t]he subject of sense is the sentient itself, namely, some living creature; and we speak more correctly, when we say a living creature seeth, than when we say the eye seeth” (De Corpore, pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶3). Even though the motions that precipitate sense enter the body through specific sense organs, the sense perception itself is properly conceived as a perception by the entire living creature. The perceptual sensation is not a discrete disturbance in one organ but rather involves the living body as a whole: it is the creature, and not the eye, that sees. In specifying that it is the “living creature” that sees, Hobbes draws our attention to the fact that sensory perception not only depends upon the liveliness of the body but also affects it. To put the point shortly, the resistance of vital motion as it is impinged upon by the motions precipitated by perceptual sense is the resistance of vital motion – of the heart, of the body – to being impinged upon. Hobbes’s specification that the processes of sensory perception necessarily have a bearing on vital motion gives perception an evaluative tenor. And this evaluative tenor or affective valence ties sensory perception to the passions and to action in ways that are important for my argument. Vital motion is one of the two types of motions Hobbes attributes to animals: it is “the motion of the blood, perpetually circulating . . . in the veins and arteries” (De Corpore, pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶12). Hobbes points out, though, that if vital motion is “helped by motion made by sense, the parts of the organ 2

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Interestingly, Garau (2016) situates Hobbes within his contemporary debates regarding physiology, showing that Hobbes specifies the heart not only because he followed Harvey but also because he was determined to provide an alternative to (a refutation of) Descartes’s dualism, which rested on the brain being the center of perception, and consequently required the positing of an intellective faculty. In De Corpore, he makes a similar point: “all resistance is endeavour opposite to another endeavour, that is to say, reaction. Seeing, therefore, there is in the whole organ, by reason of its own internal natural motion, some resistance or reaction against the motion which is propagated from the object to the innermost part of the organ, there is also in the same organ an endeavour opposite to the endeavour which proceeds from the object; so that when that endeavour inwards is the last action in the act of sense, then from the reaction, how little soever the duration of it be, a phantasm or idea hath its being” (pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶2).

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will be disposed to guide the spirits in such a manner as conduceth most to the preservation and augmentation of that motion, by the help of the nerves. And in animal motion, this is the very first endeavor” (¶12). Ignore for the moment the outdated physiology (i.e., “spirits” moving organs). What is striking in this passage is the link established between sense and animal motion. Phantasms, Hobbes says, are “effects in the sentient produced by objects working upon the organs” (¶10). However, there “are also other effects besides these, produced by the same objects in the same organs; namely certain motions proceeding from sense, which are called animal motions” (¶10). So in the very process of sensory perception, as vital motion inflects and responds to perceptual motions, the body begins to move towards or away from the objects that cause perception. In other words, appetite and aversion are an aspect of sensory perception. Indeed, this is just what Hobbes indicates when he notes that in addition to sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, “there is another kind of sense . . . namely the sense of pleasure and pain” (¶10). Customarily, we think of pleasure and pain in Hobbes’s work in the context of his discussion of the passions, for appetite and aversion form the basis for the passions. The general account runs through the effects of stimulation upon vital motion: when the motion of a stimulus is “a corroboration of Vitall motion, and a help thereunto,” the living body is drawn towards the stimulating object. This is the motion Hobbes names “Appetite.” Conversely, when the pressure or motion resonating from the stimulating object “hinder[s], and troubl[es] the motion vitall,” the body is repelled from the object, a movement Hobbes names “Aversion” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶10). It is worth noting here that the particular things that corroborate or trouble are neither fixed in one individual over time nor shared from person to person. Hobbes notes in De Homine, for example, that people’s inclinations have “a six-fold source,” a combination of physical constitution, experience, habit, luck, self-conception, and “authorities” (ch. 13, ¶1), all of which together will vary inevitably among individuals. And Hobbes explains that each individual’s physical body “is in continuall mutation,” which means that “it is impossible that all the same things should always cause in him the same Appetites and Aversions” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶6). Sources and variations aside, the point here is that these motions of being drawn towards or repelled away from an object are not visually perceptible, such as in the gross physical shifting of the limbs. Rather, Hobbes explains, they are the “small beginnings of Motion, within the body of Man, before they appear in walking, speaking, striking and other visible actions” (¶1). And even though, like sense, appetite and

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aversion are “nothing but Motion,” “the apparence, or sense of that motion, is that wee either call Delight, or Trouble of Mind,” that is, pleasure or pain (¶9). What I want to emphasize is that the stimulus-motion that occasions sense is the very same stimulus-motion that occasions appetite and aversion. By extension, the counter-pressure of vital motion that makes a sensory percept possible is also, at the same time, the pressure or resistance of vital motion that Hobbes describes as incipient voluntary action. That is, the modification of vital motion that constitutes a phantasm is also the extension of the body towards or away from an object that affects the body’s efforts to persist in living. Phantasms and the endeavors of appetite and aversion are all produced in the body’s processes of sensing particular objects, when the vital motion of the sentient is modified by the motions produced by perceptual objects. Accordingly, appetite and aversion are not a step removed from perception, mediated by the evaluative thinking processes of a masterful subject. Rather, perception and the passions are two aspects of the same process. For Hobbes, “passions are intrinsically cognitive,” as Arash Abizadeh notes (2017, 6), and perception is ineluctably evaluative, i.e., “the judgment we make of objects by their phantasms” (De Corpore, pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶5). This dual aspect of percepts is the reason Hobbes claims that “as appetites and aversions are generated by phantasms, so reciprocally phantasms are generated by appetites and aversions” (¶9). For Hobbes, then, the passions – appetite and aversion, desire and fear, the beginnings of animal or voluntary motion – are a constitutive dimension of sensory perception. The point I would like to draw out here is that for Hobbes, sensory perception entails both apprehension of and response to a world of perceptual objects. Since the resistance of vital motion that constitutes endeavor is also a constitutive element of sensory perception, the endeavors “appetite” and “aversion” necessarily have an object with respect to which they occur. Significantly, the object of such endeavor is not the self, but rather an object, or a memory or imagination of an object, that either assists or undermines the body’s persistence in living. To put a twist on Laurens van Apeldoorn’s (2015) helpful formulation, the passions consist in an elaboration of vital motion but the passions are not about vital motion.4 To be sure, perceptions are of something and passions are about something – they are, as Abizadeh (2017) notes, intentional. Abizadeh 4

In an argument that traces themes similar to those elaborated here, Apeldoorn (2015) explains that “Deliberation consists in endeavors . . .. . . but deliberation is not about” those endeavors (329).

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explains that because of the processes from which they arise, percepts and passions are necessarily “directed on an intentional object they are about, and they represent that object in a particular or aspectual way” (8). But what percepts are of and what passions are about is the big wide world of perceptual objects that have an effect upon vital motion. What is referenced in the body’s impetus to persist in living is not the self but the world beyond the self. The impetus to persist in living implies the life of the self because it is the life of the self – it is vital motion. But the impetus to persist in living does not take itself, i.e., vital motion, as its object. The impetus to persist in living, this elementary or fundamental form of motion, the vital motion that constitutes life, pushes the body to pay attention to, to respond to, and to engage the world beyond itself.

Life Has a Futural Orientation, or, Vital Motion Beyond the hic et nunc In the last section, I argued that what we have been calling “selfpreservation” is a misnomer because the impetus to persist in living does not take the self as its object. In this section, I will argue that for Hobbes, the workings of the body are not purely immanent. The processes of perception, for example, are not merely linear in-the-moment mechanistic reactions to stimuli. Rather, they involve a complex temporal doh-si-doh, a recursivity that suggests that the body animated and driven by vital motion exists not in a perpetual hic et nunc but rather in a complex temporal horizon. Tracing out this temporality, I will contend that, according to the terms of Hobbes’s argument, vital motion, or life, has a futural orientation and that what a body driven by the impetus to persist in living stretches towards, or has as its intentional object, are the conditions for future persistence. Hobbes claims that for sensory perception to take place, there must be “a perpetual variety of phantasms, that they may be discerned one from another” (De Corpore, pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶5). Indeed, he suggests that sense perception without such variety is not sense at all, “it being almost all one for a man to be always sensible of one and the same thing, and not to be sensible at all of anything” (¶5). For Hobbes, then, to be able to experience phantasms as phantasms, we must compare phantasms with one another. And such comparisons between the varieties of phantasms could not be made “if that motion in the organ, by which the phantasm is made, did not remain there for some time, and make the same phantasm return” (¶5). So, as Marcus Adams

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(2016, 47) also notes, for Hobbes sense “hath necessarily some memory adhering to it, by which former and later phantasms may be compared together, and distinguished from one another” (De Corpore, pt. IV, ch. 25, ¶5). These two additional dimensions of sensory perception – variety and memory – are important because, in addition to making sensory perception possible, they orient the living body in time. For Hobbes, all change or mutation is motion (De Corpore, pt. II, ch. 9, ¶9). And since “there can be no conception of motion, without conceiving past and future time,” motion and time are ineluctably linked (ch. 8, ¶11). In keeping with his more general account of perception, Hobbes denies that time is a feature of the world itself, an accident or characteristic of the objects around us. Time, he says, is “not in the things without us, but only in the thought of the mind” (ch. 7, ¶3), a phantasm that arises out of our perceptual experience. So, “time is a phantasm of motion,” a phantasm that arises when, for instance, we perceive a “body passing out of one space into another by continual succession” (¶3). He points out, however, that to say that time is a phantasm of motion is not quite enough, because time “comprehends the notion of former and latter, or of succession in the motion of a body, in as much as it is first here and then there” (¶3). In other words, the perception of succession, of before and after, is central to the perception of motion that produces the phantasm of time. Since I am trying to develop an account of how the body in Hobbes’s work is not stupid to time, it is important to be clear that, in this context, we are talking about the perception and experience of time and not its measurement. Hobbes does acknowledge that thinking and calculating about time requires concepts and reason, for “time . . . cannot be reckoned but by some exposed motion; as in dials by the motion of the sun or of the hand” (De Corpore, pt. II, ch. 8, ¶6). The term “reckoned” emphasizes this need for abstraction and observation in the measurement of time. But such abstractions and externalizations are not necessary for the experience or phantasm of time occasioned by the succession of percepts that constitutes sense perception. According to Hobbes’s argument, the motions in the body precipitated by sense perception, which are noticeable and distinguishable because of their successive variety, necessarily, through that successive variety, also occasion a phantasm of time. To be a living creature, animated by vital motion, perceiving and engaging the world, is also and necessarily to experience a sense of before and after – to experience time. For Hobbes, then, time is not only a sophisticated intellectual concept of measurement. It is also, and primarily, a perceptual experience

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that is a constitutive facet of the processes of living, perceiving, desiring, and fearing. Hobbes’s claim that time is the perception of succession in motion is important for understanding his accounts of life, sense perception, imagination, appetite, and aversion, for all these are forms of motion in the living body. Hobbes’s argument enables us to understand how a living body might have an experience of the distinction between past and present, between then and now, simply through the processes of sensory perception in all their affective saturation. What is not clear, yet, is how a living body gains a sense of the future: as a percept of before and after, the sense of time gives us a past then and a present now, but not necessarily a sense of the future. For Hobbes, rather than being a sensory percept or an experience, the future is implied; it is an inference drawn from the experience of the variation or the temporal relation between the past and the present. As he explains, the future is “but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions Past, to the actions that are present” (Leviathan, ch. 3, ¶7). This definition of the future as an extrapolation of the relation between past and present contains an odd reversal of conceptual syntax. For in Hobbes’s accounting, it is the experience of desire that brings forth an imagination of the future. To understand how this is so, we must remember that the experience of time is not abstract but rather bound up with sense perception and the endeavors of appetite and aversion. For Hobbes, desire comprises the motions of appetite in the absence of a remembered object; it is the experience of moving now towards a perceptual object that one encountered then. In talking about this movement, Hobbes points out that “From Desire, ariseth the Thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we ayme at; and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till we come to some beginning within our own power” (Leviathan, ch. 3, ¶4). Now, such a series of thoughts is not necessarily a deliberate and labored activity: as I have argued elsewhere (Frost 2008), for Hobbes, such chains of thought take place “in a moment of time; for Thought is quick” (Leviathan, ch. 3, ¶3). But it is some such memory – traced to an action that is within our own power to undertake – upon which we act, projecting imaginatively through the chain of means to anticipate the having again. The combined motions of desire and memory create the imagination or fiction of the future, the moment when, through successive acquisition and deployment of means, the object will be found or encountered again. So, it is not, as we sometimes think, that an idea of the future gives the foundation for desire (i.e., that the emptiness of the future prompts a desire to fill it). Rather,

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Hobbes suggests, it is the experience or movement of desire through remembered conditions for action that produces the possibility for the imagination of the future. And again, this sense or imagination of the future is not necessarily a refined concept or intellectual formation – although clearly it can be, as numerous scholars attentive to the religious or eschatological dimensions of Hobbes’s work can attest (e.g., Lloyd 1992; Martell 2007; Springborg 1995). Rather, it is an inference from experiences past about what in the world can be used, or can be done, to persist in living. More importantly, perhaps, the future is not an object of passive contemplation. As a sense or imagination produced through the play of memory and desire, the imagination of the future is bound up with vital motion, with the inexorable movement of the body towards those things that enhance vital motion and away from those that undermine it. If, as Hobbes says, the life of a living creature “can never be without Desire, nor Feare, no more than without Sense,” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶58), then to live is to be a creature who experiences or inhabits time and who is driven through that experience to imagine and pursue a future in a world of its own making.

Pursuing the Conditions of Persistence, or, Life Well-Lived The phantasm or experience of time that is simply a facet of living life, and the anticipatory orientation towards the future that is an extension of that experience, together inflect people’s perception and imagination of the world in which they act. The impetus of the body to persist in living generates in Hobbes’s subject a strenuous attention toward present and future conditions for action. The impetus to persist in living shapes attention and action because, in Hobbes’s argument, vital motion and animal (or voluntary) motion are fundamentally linked – or perhaps it is better said that the latter, animal motion, is an articulation of the former, vital motion. To be sure, Hobbes distinguishes the two forms of motion, explaining that there is “one called Vitall; begun in generation, and continued without interruption through their whole life; such as are the course of the Bloud, the Pulse, the Breathing, the Concoction, Nutrition, Excretion, &c, to which Motions there needs no help of Imagination: The other is Animall motion, otherwise called Voluntary Motion; as to go, to speak, to move any of our limbes, in such manner as is first fancied in our minds” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶1). Hobbes distinguishes voluntary motion from vital motion in view of the fact that the former “depend[s] always upon a precedent thought of whither, which

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way, and what,” which is to say that “the Imagination is the first internall beginning of all Voluntary motion” (¶1). We can acknowledge that the “imagination” at play here could well be the product of a rational thought process or of deliberation – that particular process is not what I am interested in elucidating right now, and it is given thoughtful treatment recently by Abizadeh (2017) and Apeldoorn (2015). What I am interested in is that while Hobbes distinguishes them with respect to their direction, in their motive force they are not really distinct. Rodolfo Garau (2016) reminds us that in Hobbes’s recounting, animal motion has its origin in “the beginning of the responsive motion of the body originated by the heart” (245), in the “reactive conatus of the heart” that is an integral part of the process of sense perception (248). Since appetite and aversion are the resistance of vital motion in the processes of sensory perception, animal or voluntary motion might be best conceived as an elaboration of vital motion with respect to a perceptual object, the endeavor of the body as it evolves through perception and appetite into gross physical movement. While the imagination is “the first internall beginning of all Voluntary motion,” providing an intentional object, the force of voluntary motion, that is, the motion in voluntary motion, is the “moving outwards” of vital motion as it responds to or resists the motions of perceptual stimuli that aid or upset its persistence in living. Voluntary motion is not a motion of an utterly different kind than vital motion but rather is an extension of vital motion vis à vis an intentional stimulating object. To appreciate the relationship between vital motion and voluntary motion – in all their sensual and appetitive complexity – is to be able to see the actions people take in view of the future in a different light. For Hobbes, curiosity, or the “Desire, to know why, and how” is a singular passion that, along with reason, occurs “in no living creature but Man” (Leviathan, ch. 6, ¶35). Indeed, curiosity about causes combines with the impetus of appetite and aversion to create an anxious orientation towards the future, an anxiety that “disposeth men to enquire into the causes of things: because the knowledge of them, maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage” (ch. 11, ¶24). To be clear, what pushes people to “be inquisitive into the Causes of the Events they see” is not idle curiosity but rather the more pressing question of “the causes of their own good or evill fortune” (ch. 12, ¶2). By observing and mapping “how one Event hath been produced by another,” and by remembering “in them Antecedence and Consequence,” Hobbes’s subject can anticipate the future and also do something about it (¶4).

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According to Hobbes, the insight that there are determinate causes for their fortune and misfortune is what leads people to the effort to master or control those causes. The recognition that there are causes that map to fortunate or unfortunate consequences pushes people to perceive and engage the world not simply as an object, a potential object of appetite or aversion, but also, in a profoundly important shift, to perceive and engage the world as the conditions or means for that acquisitive or repulsive action. Hobbes famously points out that “Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later” (ch. 11, ¶1). Felicity is serial success in obtaining the means to attain desires. Being in anxious thrall to the future means that the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions, and inclinations of all men, tend, not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life; and differ onely in the way: which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions, in divers men; and partly from the difference of the knowledge, or opinion each one has of the causes, which produce the effect desired (¶1).

This oft-cited passage reads differently in this context. The actions that proceed from our anxiety about the future, from our imagination of the future, are directed at objects in the world, at those things, relations, or people that constitute part of the causal pathway from here and now to the desired yonder. Indeed, the pleasure of being a living creature such as Hobbes describes is to map out those causes and conditions and to map them well. As Hobbes tells it, the experience of mapping those pathways, making them real, and traipsing along and past them is part of the satisfaction and joy of life.

The Politics of the Impetus to Persist in Living, or, a Life of Interdependence Hobbes’s account of how the body’s impulse to persist in living elicits perception, desire, and action gives us a distinctive account of the structure of subjectivity, one characterized by an orientation towards the world as both an object of and a condition for action, now and into the future. Significantly, far from suppressing this form of subjectivity in his theory of politics, Hobbes exploits it to give it a specifically political tenor. To illustrate how it is parsimonious with Hobbes’s accounts of power,

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war, and inequality, I shall briefly run through each of these. I shall end by demonstrating how this account of subjectivity complements and supports Lloyd’s argument for a reciprocity interpretation of Hobbes’s moral philosophy in which subjects are obliged by the principles of reason to submit to the sovereign’s authority. Power, for Hobbes, is a person’s “present means, to obtain some future apparent Good” (Leviathan, ch. 10, ¶1). While he depicts some such means as natural endowments, such as strength, ability, or intelligence, and the others as social or experiential in nature, such as eloquence, friends, servants, wealth, and reputation, what is common to all of these forms of power is their effectiveness in drawing other people into one’s orbit and enabling one to use their actions to realize one’s own desires (¶2-¶54). They are, as Hobbes explains, “a means to have the assistance and service of many” (¶7). This account of power as composed of the network of relationships with others that enable one to do what one wants to do suggests that successful action, and the conditions for felicity, rest upon a profound interdependence. The structure of subjectivity that develops through the impetus of the body to persist in living attunes the Hobbesian subject to the ways that the conditions for action “form combinations,” as Sandra Field puts it (2014: 61); it pushes people to perceive “the overwhelmingly social determination of the human capacity to achieve ends in the social sphere” (Field 2014, 70). In this context, the notorious “perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power” (Leviathan, ch. 11, ¶2) is the desire to identify and secure the relations necessary for the future realization of desires. Accordingly, an individual’s pursuit of power necessary to assure “the way of his future desire” (¶2) is not necessarily a violent clash of interests or a serial effort to dominate others but instead a project requiring a complex temporal orientation and attention to the many social and material conditions that will, in the future, provide for the occasion of action. So, what drives the pursuit of power, Hobbes says, is not a raw egoism but rather the insight that interdependence is a primary condition and constraint for action. The impetus to persist in living, as the central motor of action, orients the political subject towards others as among the conditions for interdependent action that exist in a broad social landscape and a long temporal horizon. When Hobbes’s subjects act, they do so with a view to those social conditions as they might exist into the future and as they might affect future action. Similarly, in Hobbes’s account, war has a futural temporality that is consonant with the form of subjectivity he develops. Indeed, he insists that “Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre” (Leviathan, ch. 13, ¶8).

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In his view, any stretch of time “wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known,” that is, in which it appears that conflict will be resolved only through violence, constitutes a state of war (¶8). War, then, “consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE” (¶8). What is striking in this account of war is that actual battle is not the defining factor: one could coexist without battle for a long time and still be considered to be at war. What is crucial is whether or not there is a reassurance among the social cast that, over time and into the future, violence will not be the common recourse in moments of conflict. Such uncertainty about the future conditions for action undermines the forward-looking, power-gathering endeavor to persist that makes for felicitous living. Unable to map and use a web of social relations as a means to act, each subject must “rely on his own strength and art, for caution against all other men” (ch. 17, ¶2). This interruption of the imagination of the future also disrupts the appetitive engagement with the world that fuels science, arts, and industry (ch. 13, ¶9). Accordingly, “the life of man [is] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (¶9). In such a context, solitary, poor, nasty, and short make sense. Why brutish? Without an imagined and (somewhat) certain future around which to plan one’s felicitous life, each subject suffers a reduced horizon for action, becoming animal-like with a concern only for “quotidian Food, Ease, and Lusts” (ch. 12, ¶4). For Hobbes, what we have called “self-preservation” – the impulse to persist in living – compels us to pay attention to others, to apprehend that we are in relations of interdependence with others, relations that must be deliberately crafted and maintained if we are to live the lives we want to live. The figure of the sovereign Hobbes invokes in response to the problems faced by individuals in the state of war is supposed to “defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their own industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly” (Leviathan, ch. 17, ¶13). To be sure, the sovereign is fearsome: to defend and secure the people in such a way that they can use their “industry” to “live contentedly,” the sovereign “hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to form the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutuall ayd against their enemies abroad” (¶13). But what I want to draw attention to here is that the sovereign, as a “Common Power” over all the people, “direct[s] their actions to the Common Benefit” (¶13), which is to say that the sovereign produces the peace and order that are the conditions of the mutually

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interdependent actions that enable individuals to live felicitous lives. As an imposing public figure, the sovereign is a dominant organizing feature of the political landscape but it is not the target or object of people’s activity (Frost 2010). The subjects reference the sovereign in their interactions, a reference that, in authorizing and reauthorizing the sovereign, functions to assure everyone that the “Common Benefit” of peace is considered as among the ongoing conditions or means for their successful and felicitous activities. As Lawton and Pringle (1993) explain, the sovereign constituted and authorized by Hobbesian subjects “creates the conditions for us to build our selves on a more certain foundation” (71). Let me elaborate this point briefly. In his account of the political covenant that produces the sovereign, Hobbes recapitulates in a political idiom the form of subjectivity that is consonant with his account of vital motion. To constitute the sovereign, people use words and actions (Leviathan, ch. 14, ¶7) to convey to one another the transfer of their “power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men” who will “beare their Person; and every one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their Person, shall Act or cause to be Acted, in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie” (ch. 17, ¶13). In other words, every one behaves in such a manner as to convey to every one else that each authorizes a particular “man, or assembly of men” to act on their behalf on matters concerning “the Common Peace and Safetie.” What is crucial to Hobbes’s covenant is that is it made, not between the sovereign and the people (as a whole or as an aggregate of individuals) but rather between the individuals themselves: “as if every man should say to every man, I authorize and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner” (¶13).5 In thus proposing not only that the covenant is generated among and between the subjects, binding over time, but also that those very subjects are authors of the sovereign’s peacemaking and ordering actions, Hobbes sketches a form of subjectivity in which individuals consider how their actions with others constitute the conditions for their future actions. The rehearsal in the covenanting process of the living creature’s future-oriented manipulation of the conditions for action is especially clear when Hobbes notes that “the motive, and end for which this renouncing, and transferring of Right is introduced is 5

For an astute analysis of the forms of relation and trust entailed in sovereignty by conquest, see Baumgold (2013).

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nothing else but the security of a mans person,” not just “in his life” but also, significantly, “in the means of so preserving life, as not to be weary of it” (ch. 14, ¶8). What is at stake and taken into consideration is not simply immediate life but felicitous life, a life that extends into the future with the successful and successive realization of desires. We can see a similar mapping of political subjectivity in Hobbes’s discussions about the sovereign’s regulation of honorific titles and status. When Hobbes proclaims the sovereign as “the fountain of Honour” (Leviathan, ch. 18, ¶19), he does so in an effort to stabilize and recruit to the purposes of the sovereign the various hierarchies and relations of obligation (service and protection) that inevitably are a part of society. Although all the subjects are equal before the sovereign’s law, they are unequal in their power and social relations: those relations of inequality constitute the conditions for people’s realizing their various plans in action. By installing the sovereign as both the highest point in the honor hierarchy as well as the official donor of honorific titles, Hobbes ensures that the sovereign and the conditions of peace and order are incorporated into subjects’ daily negotiations of power and reputation (Frost 2008). That is to say, the relationship of Hobbesian subjects to the structure and function of the relations of power and honor replicates or mirrors the forwardlooking, world-engaging form of subjectivity produced through the workings of vital motion. And finally, the structure of subjectivity I have traced via Hobbes’s account of the impetus to persist in living is consonant with the “reciprocity theorem of rational agency” that Lloyd (2009) claims is at the heart of Hobbes’s moral philosophy (213; 16). In Lloyd’s magisterial and definitive analysis, the reciprocity theorem of rational agency is an iteration of the socalled Golden Rule to do unto others what one would have them do to oneself (213; 14); it informs and is given specific articulation through Hobbes’s rendition of the laws of nature. In Lloyd’s interpretation, Hobbes presumes the ability of people to consider not only the effects of their actions on others but also the ways that the effects their actions have on others’ actions produce, in turn, the conditions for their own successful actions (98, 120). Hobbes relies not on an egoistic or narrowly extended version of self-interest but rather a robust and rationally justifiable attention to the conditions that will provide for “peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living” (118). Thus, according to the principle of reciprocity that governs the theorem, it is a requirement of reason that a rational person “submit herself to government” (213) or to sovereign authority (214). It is a requirement of reason “[b]ecause such submission makes

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possible an environment in which agency may be effectively exercised” (214). Lloyd recognizes that this account of the mentality and disposition of Hobbes’s subject is not reconcilable with the egoistic version that scholars have tended to trace from Hobbes’s account of selfpreservation. Indeed, the irreconcilability of the “one-note . . . overly simplistic” egoistic version of the Hobbesian individual with the evidently “rich, complex, and insightful” (57) accounts of psychology that underpin his moral philosophy is the reason she inserts an interpretive break between Hobbes’s materialist metaphysics and his moral and political arguments: for Lloyd, the materialist account of the subject that supports the egoistic version of the Hobbesian individual should be treated as methodologically distinguishable from the rationally derived laws of nature that constitute the core of Hobbes’s moral philosophy and that scaffold his account of politics. She claims that if we can extract Hobbes’s political thinking from the problems associated with the obdurate presumption that the humans who populate his work are riven with “a simple, biologically based egoistic preoccupation with personal survival” (2), then we can proceed with the “reciprocity interpretation” of Hobbes in which “the familiar Hobbes is replaced by a more complex, but at the same time more human, picture” (9). The virtue of the account of subjectivity that I develop in this chapter, and that I argue can be seen to emerge from Hobbes’s account of the impulse persist in living, is the following: the structure of subjectivity is not only parsimonious with Lloyd’s argument about the reciprocity requirements that structure Hobbes’s moral philosophy but also, more robustly, provides the conceptual and ontological foundations for it. In closing, I would like to speculate about the role played by the form of political subjectivity that emerges from Hobbes’s account of the impetus of a living creature to persist in living. Hobbes rejects Aristotelian naturalism as well as divine rights theory about the origins and purpose of political society. In his argument, man is both “the Matter” and “the Artificer” of the “Artificiall man” that is the commonwealth (Leviathan, Intro., ¶1–2). And the sovereign, rather than being an ontological feature of an ordered and meaningful universe, is a fictive, artificial figure necessary for peace. Yet, when Hobbes dissolves organicism and divine rights theory as frameworks for making meaning of social relations, he cannot leave people shrugging off monarchs, governments, and laws as the projects of nobles whose goals are either distant from or irrelevant to the immediate purposes of their daily lives. Hobbes needs a way to invest people in the existence of

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the sovereign, to tie them and their daily activities to a peace-making sovereign; people must not only see but appreciate how the trials and tribulations of their daily lives affect and are affected by the broad political landscape. As Hobbes tells it, the persistence of the living body’s vital motion is bound up with the broader social and political landscape, with the “artificial man” or the commonwealth. The form of subjectivity that he extracts from his account of vital motion rebinds people’s daily lives and interactions to the sovereign through an argument for the conditions of their future lives (rather than, for example, through an argument for adherence to a natural order or for obedience to the injunctions of a divine ordinance). This form of subjectivity demands a specifically political orientation from subjects, a political way of thinking about their actions: they must refer to the ways their actions contribute to the larger project of peace and stability because it is through those conditions that they are able to pursue their desires successfully. We can see, then, that Hobbes folds the political landscape into the patterns and paths of appetite and aversion, fostering in each individual a political awareness – an awareness of the self as a specifically political subject.

chapter 5

Human Nature and Motivation: Hamilton versus Hobbes Michael J. Green

Thomas Hobbes’s account of human nature is given in the first part of Leviathan, titled “Of Man.” In this part, he tries to answer four questions. First, which faculties of the mind are unique to human beings? Second, which faculties of the mind are artificial rather than natural? Third, what explains the variation in different people’s thoughts and actions? Finally, and most famously, are people naturally sociable? Most philosophers who have commented on Hobbes have been far more interested in the last of these questions than they have been in the other three. Nearly every major monograph on Hobbes has a chapter on human nature devoted to the question of whether Hobbes thinks that human beings are naturally unsociable because they are exclusively motivated by egoistic concerns. I will discuss all four of Hobbes’s questions about human nature for two reasons. First, the fact that they are posed in Leviathan calls for explanation. Neither the organization of this material nor Hobbes’s purposes in discussing these questions are easy to discern. I seek to expose the underlying structure of these chapters and explain their relevance to the project of Leviathan. My second reason for beginning with Hobbes’s questions is that the neglected parts of Hobbes’s discussion of human nature are relevant to the questions about motivation that predominate in the secondary literature. In particular, they give us deeper insight into Hobbes’s accounts of conflict in the state of nature and the stability of the commonwealth. I will begin with Hobbes’s questions, then describe the state of the debate in the secondary literature, and finally show how Hobbes’s broader discussion of human nature can enrich the discussion of the narrower questions about motivation and sociability. In Elements of Law, Hobbes proposes that “Man’s nature is the sum of his natural faculties and powers.” He puts the faculties of the body to one side and distinguishes between the mind’s cognitive powers, also referred to as its “imaginative” or “conceptive” powers, and its “motive” powers, 93

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which concern action (EL 1.4–7). The first eleven chapters of Leviathan likewise focus exclusively on the mind and alternate between discussions of the cognitive and the motive faculties. The first five chapters are about these cognitive faculties: the senses; “imaginations,” or thoughts derived from the senses; causal reasoning based on experience; language as a way of marking and communicating thoughts; and reason as a kind of thinking made possible by language. The sixth chapter, on the passions, concerns the motive faculties. As with the chapters on the cognitive faculties, Hobbes first describes the relevant states of the mind and then describes how they are expressed in language. The next three chapters return to cognition: the seventh chapter is about knowledge and belief, the eighth uses the account of the passions to explain the intellectual virtues and vices, and the ninth contains the famous table of the sciences. Then Hobbes returns to the motive faculties. The tenth chapter seeks to explain a wide variety of behavior in terms of the pursuit of power, while the eleventh concerns differences in behavior that are relevant to social life. The first part of Leviathan ends with two chapters on social life and three chapters about what he calls the law of nature. The twelfth chapter is about the origins of religious belief and how it was used to establish political authority among the Gentiles. Hobbes finds these theocratic states unsatisfactory and proposes to start afresh without any political order at all. Thus the thirteenth chapter presents his celebrated arguments for the conclusion that the “natural condition of mankind” is one in which “every man is Enemy to every man” and life is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (Lev. 13.9). The last three chapters, on the laws of nature, present Hobbes’s moral theory. This theory provides the material for what he believes is a superior account of political authority based on a social contract. While Hobbes includes the laws of nature in the parts of Elements of Law and Leviathan devoted to human nature, he indicates that moral theory falls outside the topic of human nature when he declares that justice and injustice are not faculties of the mind or body (Lev. 13.13). With this overview of the structure of Hobbes’s theory of human nature in hand, I will turn to the questions about it that he sought to answer. Hobbes’s first question about human nature is: Which faculties of the mind are unique to human beings? Hobbes contends that many of the cognitive and motive faculties are shared with other animals. Concerning cognition, he holds that both human and non-human animals have sensations, thoughts derived from the senses, and trains of connected thoughts. In particular, both draw conclusions about relations between cause and effect based on their experiences. On the motive side, there is no difference

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in kind between the voluntary actions of human and non-human animals. Both have thoughts about things that cause them to have appetites or aversions, that is, movements toward or away from what is imagined. Both kinds of animal deliberate about what to do by having a succession of appetites and aversions concerning a course of action, and they both have a will when the succession ends and the last appetite or aversion leads to action. As we will see, Hobbes calls some faculties of the mind “artificial,” meaning that they develop only through deliberate instruction, unlike the natural faculties, which are either innate or develop through experience. All of the artificial faculties are unique to human beings. In addition, some of the natural faculties are uniquely human. Hobbes discusses two: curiosity and foresight. While both human and non-human animals can engage in causal reasoning, human beings are curious in ways that other animals are not. Both man and beast will seek the means to produce a desired effect, but only human beings will try to identify all of the possible effects that an object might be made to produce (Lev. 3.5). The reason why this is so, Hobbes believes, is that human beings have a special passion of curiosity, a “lust of the mind” to know “why and how” that non-human animals lack because they are satisfied with physical comfort (Lev. 6.35). Human beings are also concerned about the future to a degree that other animals are not. Nonhuman animals can think about the future, but so long as they enjoy their “quotidian Food, Ease, and Lusts,” they have “no foresight of the time to come” (Lev. 12.4). By contrast, even a comfortable human being will have a “perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power” because he will want to “assure . . . the way of his future desire” (Lev. 11.2). Curiosity and foresight are not entirely separate phenomena. Those who are concerned for the future will think about the effects that any imagined object can produce, even if they are not especially curious, because they will want to find potentially useful tools. And those who know that it is possible to take care of their future interests will pay greater attention to doing so. Non-human animals are not indifferent to their future, but it is not a practical concern for them because they do not know how to secure it. Hobbes’s second question about human nature is: Which faculties are artificial rather than natural? Natural faculties develop through experience alone, without deliberate instruction. For example, what Hobbes calls prudence, or the ability to make causal inferences, improves as one has more experience of causes and their effects (Lev. 3.7, 8.11). Similarly, those who have what Hobbes calls a good natural wit can think more quickly or

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steadily than others due to their having more experience or stronger passions to focus their attention on a desired aim (Lev. 8.3). The artificial faculties require language and, for that reason, are unique to human beings. They are “acquired” rather than being “naturally planted,” they are improved “by study and method” rather than the accumulation of experience, and they are typically learned from others, while an individual’s natural faculties develop spontaneously without explicit training (Lev. 3.11). Language is always deliberate rather than spontaneous. Hobbes begins his account of language by imagining that individual thinkers use language to assign arbitrary marks to their thoughts so that they can remember the connections among them (Lev. 4.3). But languages are primarily social: they are shared and taught. Those who share a language can do a variety of positive and negative things. They can convey knowledge, instruct, and entertain or sow confusion, lie, and insult one another (Lev. 4.3–4). Language users can also form complex social relations with others, as they can express their passions in making commands or requests, offering advice, and asking questions (Lev. 6.55). The most significant use of language is in reasoning and science. Because words can signify classes of things, language users can reason about more than just particulars. Reason as a faculty of the mind, according to Hobbes, is “reckoning,” or “adding and subtracting” “the Consequences of generall names” (Lev. 5.2). This greatly expands the causal knowledge that human beings have. They can express their causal generalizations as universal rules and think about how they would apply in particular circumstances (Lev. 5.6). Those who have “the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance of one fact upon another” in an area have what Hobbes calls a science of that area (Lev. 5.17). If they have been diligent in formulating their terms, they will know why a cause produces its effect, rather than relying on potentially spurious correlations, and so they will know how to produce the effects they want. For example, if we know that force is the product of mass and acceleration, we will know how much force to apply to an object with a given mass in order to accelerate it at the rate we desire. Hobbes’s third question is: What explains the variation in human thought and action? Experience is a source of cognitive variation: those who have more of it will make better causal inferences than those who have less. On the motive side, different passions are produced by different combinations of thoughts and appetites or aversions. For example, the passion of hope consists in an appetite combined with a belief that it is possible to get what is desired, while despair is the combination of an appetite and the

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belief that its satisfaction is impossible (Lev. 6.14–15). Hobbes notes that there is greater variation in the passions than there is in the senses, but he does not have much to say about why this is so beyond gesturing at differences in bodies, customs, and education (Lev. 8.14). The variations in the passions are used to explain natural cognitive differences. The desire for power produces what Hobbes calls a good wit because it causes those who have it to think quickly and steadily. By contrast, those who are indifferent to power will be dull-witted or giddy, that is, prone to moving from thought to thought without direction (Lev. 8.15–16). The desire for power drives behavior as well as cognition. Hobbes’s claim that “all mankind” have a “perpetuall and restlesse desire for Power” is well known (Lev. 11.2). However the desire for power does not produce uniform behavior for two reasons. First, those who have power behave differently from those who lack it. The most important source of power is social: a number of people working together for a common end. Because this is so, those without power will seek to subordinate themselves to a powerful protector, while those who have power will seek to enhance it by gathering followers (Lev. 10.3–10). Second, people who want different things will behave differently. While the point is obvious, it is important for the project of securing the peace. Those who want wealth or honor, those who are not contented with their situation, and those who desire military command will be inclined “to stirre up trouble and sedition,” because military honors come from war and the best chance of rapid advancement in wealth and status comes from “causing a new shuffle” (Lev. 11.4). For example, a young Alexander Hamilton wrote to a friend that “I contemn the grovelling . . . of a clerk . . . and would willingly risk my life . . . to exalt my station”; he ends his letter by saying, “I wish there was a war” (Chernow 2004, 30–31). The young Hobbes had different ambitions. After leaving Oxford, he began work in service to the Cavendish family. In his verse autobiography he describes how pleasant this time of his life was, saying “I at ease did live, of books” (VA lv). Hobbes was clearly one of those whose desires run to “Ease, and sensuall Delight,” or “Knowledge, and Arts of Peace” (Lev. 11.4–5). People who want these things are inclined to seek protection from the powerful so that they can devote their attention to their favored pursuits rather than self-defense. The fourth question Hobbes addresses is: Are people naturally sociable? It is evident that many of the faculties that he describes involve social interaction. Language is the product of human culture, and coordinated groups are the most important source of power. Hobbes’s question, then, is less about whether we are capable of social life and more about whether we

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can live in peace. It is well known that his answer is that this is not possible outside of the state. That is the lesson of his celebrated discussion of the “natural condition of mankind” in the state of nature (Lev. 13). What has received less attention is that before discussing the state of nature, Hobbes describes religion as a source of political order in functioning states. Hobbes argues that religious belief arises from the natural faculties unique to human beings: curiosity and foresight. Curiosity leads people to search for causes, and when they trace the causal chain back to the origin of the universe, they come to the idea of an eternal God who caused the universe to exist (Lev. 11.25). The concern for the future leads human beings to look for causes of their good or bad fortune. When natural causes cannot easily be found, they conclude that their lives are controlled by supernatural agents (Lev. 12.1–12). These natural seeds of religious belief are cultivated by leaders who claim to speak for the supernatural agents. This produces both different religions and states. The religious commonwealth can maintain the peace so long as its members believe that the leaders of the commonwealth speak for God. However, Hobbes believes, people inevitably lose faith in their leaders, and so these states fail. The first twelve chapters of Leviathan, then, tell a story of increasing complexity. This story moves from sensations to thoughts, reasoning and science, the passions, the intellectual virtues, social behavior, and finally the complicated practices of religion and the state. At this point, however, Hobbes throws the story into reverse. After expressing dissatisfaction with the religious basis of the state, he removes the state entirely. Instead of progressing to a higher level of social organization, Leviathan moves to the natural condition of mankind without any political order. Here, Hobbes gives his famous arguments for the conclusion that our natural faculties render us incapable of living in peace. Without the protection of the commonwealth, he maintains, everyone must focus on defense in order to stay alive and, what is more, this often requires aggressive behavior. Since this is so, he argues, the only way to secure order is by creating the artificial body of the state. At this point, I hope to have made the case for thinking that there is a continuous story running through Hobbes’s account of human nature. Why it ends abruptly with the reversion to the state of nature is just one question about how this story works and what its role in the larger project is supposed to be. The professional literature contains many excellent discussions of discrete topics that arise in the first part of Leviathan, but discussions of its unity, shape, and role would be most welcome.

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An excellent place to begin such a project is with Philip Pettit’s book Made With Words (Pettit 2008). Pettit’s focus, as his title suggests, is on the role of language in Hobbes’s philosophy, but one of his themes is that language plays a significant and sometimes surprising role in Hobbes’s account of human nature. For example, Pettit takes Hobbes to have held that human beings have the unique degree of curiosity and foresight that they do because they are language users (Pettit 2008, 26–7 and 91–2). If he is right, the line between the natural and artificial faculties is more permeable than it appears to be. Most discussions of Hobbes’s thinking about human nature concern a particular question: Is Hobbes a psychological egoist? To see why, I would like to begin with a familiar interpretation of Hobbes that can be found in books by J. W. N. Watkins and David Gauthier, among others (Watkins 1965; Gauthier 1969). This interpretation attributes four theories to Hobbes: a psychological theory, a theory of conflict in the state of nature, an ethical theory, and a political theory. The psychological theory is described as egoism, the view that all behavior is exclusively motivated by self-interest, but it is actually narrower than that. According to the psychological theory, the appetites and aversions that motivate behavior are all directed at helping the body to maintain its vital motions (Lev. 6.10). This is said to explain both why we are interested only in ourselves and, in particular, why we are necessarily averse to dying. However, it also excludes an obvious kind of egoistic motivation, namely, concern with punishments or rewards after death. The second theory, the theory of conflict in the state of nature, is that unchecked egoists will use violence when it serves their interests. The ethical theory then holds that the only way to justify ethical behavior is by showing that it is instrumentally useful in the pursuit of self-interest. Finally, the political theory holds that the state has to be harshly repressive because egoists can only be governed by the threat of punishment and cannot be counted on to behave ethically on their own. The strength of the familiar interpretation is that Hobbes repeatedly invokes egoistic concerns, especially the fear of death, at important points in his argument. For example, he uses the assumption that the object of every voluntary act is “some Good to himselfe” to establish the inalienability of the right of self-defense (Lev. 14.8). He also repeatedly returns to the fear of punishment or death when summarizing his argument. Thus he says that among the “Passions that encline men to Peace, are Feare of Death” (Lev. 13.14), that people will not keep their covenants without a “coërcive power” to “compel” them to do so (Lev. 15.3), that they will not keep the laws of nature unless they are bound by “feare of punishment” (Lev. 17.1),

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that the sovereign must have enough power to strike “terror” into subjects (Lev. 17.13), and that participation in the social contract is motivated by “fear of death” (Lev. 20.1). However, there is textual evidence that Hobbes was not a psychological egoist. This is ably discussed by Bernard Gert, Gregory Kavka, and S. A. Lloyd, so I will merely note a few illustrative examples (Gert 1972, 5–12; Gert 2010, 30–67; Kavka 1986, 44–51; Lloyd 2009, 60–94). First, Hobbes seems to have intentionally moved away from psychological egoism (see McNeilly 1968, 118–19; Gert 2010, 30). For example, in Elements of Law, Hobbes analyzes “good will or charity” as desires to express one’s own power (EL 9.17). Later, in Leviathan, he defines these passions as simply “Desire of good to another,” apparently removing the egoistic thought (Lev. 6.22). Second, Hobbes asserts that there are things people value more than their lives, such as avoiding the infamy of killing a parent (De Cv. 3.12). Third, he proposes a duty to defend the commonwealth in war, even though that obviously involves putting one’s life at risk (Lev. R&C.5). In addition to this direct textual evidence, Gert and Lloyd note that Hobbes holds that education can influence our desires (Gert 2010, 38–44; Lloyd 2009, 85–8). Thus even if Hobbes holds that people are naturally egoistic, it does not follow that they must be that way in society. Most of Hobbes’s readers are reluctant to attribute pure psychological egoism to him. How far they depart from it depends on the extent to which they think Hobbes is committed to the other theories in the familiar interpretation. Kavka, for instance, interprets Hobbes as having held that people are predominantly, rather than exclusively, egoistic. He believes they are especially concerned to avoid death and that whatever concerns they have for others are limited. This, he maintains, is all that Hobbes needs in order to support the other elements of the familiar interpretation (Kavka 1986, 64–82). Jean Hampton and Stephen Darwall take a similar approach (Hampton 1986; Darwall 1995). Gert, by contrast, believes that Hobbes has a quite different kind of ethical theory than the one identified in the familiar interpretation. Gert’s Hobbes believes that ethics involves the triumph of reason over passion, and so Gert attributes a motivational theory to Hobbes that allows reason to play this role (Gert 2010). In addition to disagreeing with the ethical theory, Lloyd rejects the political theory. She notes that Hobbes was concerned with what she calls transcendent interests, most notably the interest in serving God. Since Hobbes knew that many people fear God more than they fear earthly punishment, she believes, he cannot have thought that the political order could be maintained through the threat of punishment alone (Lloyd 1992; Lloyd 2009).

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In what follows, I would like to show that Hobbes’s fuller theory of human nature is relevant to the familiar interpretation in two ways that have not received much attention. These concern the explanation of conflict in the state of nature and prospects for a stable state. The relationship between psychological egoism and the causes of war in the state of nature is not as obvious as it is taken to be. In addition, the familiar interpretation exaggerates the difficulty of establishing political order in one respect while underestimating it in another. The relevance of psychological egoism to the account of conflict in the state of nature seems obvious. Egoistic people will use violence to get what they want whenever it suits them, and so a society of unrestrained egoists will be at war, assuming even a modest degree of scarcity. But what is interesting about Hobbes’s account of conflict in the state of nature has more to do with what is unique to conflict among human beings than with their self-interested motivations. Take, for example, the alleged physiological basis of egoism. Human beings are said to be exclusively egoistic because they are mechanically determined to have appetites for what helps their bodies to function and to be averse to anything that hinders their bodies from functioning. Non-human animals also have bodies, of course, and they also tend to have appetites for things that maintain their bodies and aversions to things that harm them. Yet different species behave differently. Ants and bees are naturally social and work for the common good without being directed to do so (Lev. 17.6). Other animals, including human beings, are naturally prone to conflict. Since all animals are material with apparently similar desires to maintain working bodies, something else must explain why they act the way they do. Human beings stand out even among animals that are prone to conflict. As Azar Gat notes, while many animals kill helpless young members of their own species, violent conflict among adult members of the same species is rare among non-human animals. The risk of severe wounds is too high, even for the likely winner. Among human beings, however, adults fight and kill adults. They do so not primarily in pitched battles but rather through catching one another by surprise in raids and ambushes. Gat speculates that human adults are more vulnerable to surprise than nonhuman adults because they rely on tools for self-defense and so they can be caught unarmed, while non-human animals always have the teeth and claws that they use to defend themselves. However, there are also social reasons why humans are vulnerable to surprise. The pervasive tactic in

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what Gat calls primitive warfare is to catch one’s opponent by surprise, often by attacking at night (Gat 2006, 114–32). Some raiders may set fire to shelters, while others wait by the door to shoot arrows or throw spears at those trying to escape. For this to work, the raiders have to use language to coordinate their attack and weapons to kill at a distance that minimizes the risk to themselves. The result, as Gat puts it, is that human beings are “quintessential first-strike creatures” (Gat 2006, 129). Language, for Hobbes, is a uniquely human creation, and weapons, like all tools, are a product of human curiosity into how anything one encounters could be used. Human beings are uniquely vulnerable to surprise because of the products of their curiosity and language: weapons and social coordination. This is why striking first, which Hobbes calls “anticipation,” is the best tactic for winning conflicts in the state of nature (Lev. 13.4). It is only because this is so that what Hobbes calls “diffidence” is a cause of conflict in the state of nature. Those who fear being caught by surprise can avoid this fate by striking first themselves. Because everyone in the state of nature knows this, and knows that the others know it, each will constantly raid the others if only for defensive purposes. Other animals lack the capabilities that human beings have, and so they are not prone to the same cycle of insecurity and violence. The other causes of conflict in the state of nature that Hobbes describes, competition and glory, are also the products of the faculties unique to human beings. Competition is a source of conflict when the available resources are believed to be scarce. This is true of many animals, of course, but human beings have a lower threshold for perceiving scarcity than other animals. Human beings are concerned about the future to an extent that other animals are not, and so they think that their resources are inadequate so long as they are uncertain about their ability to provide for the future. This means they will believe that resources are scarce even when their immediate needs are met, while non-human animals will not. For this reason, human beings are more likely to come to blows over a perceived shortage of resources than other animals are. In addition to competition for resources, Hobbes says that “glory” or “reputation” are causes of conflict. To illustrate the phenomenon he has in mind, he says that people respond violently to “trifles” that are a “signe of undervalue” directed at themselves, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their family (Lev. 13.7). The term “reputation” refers to a kind of power based on alliances with other people: “Reputation of power, is Power; because it draweth with it the adhaerence of those that need protection” and “So is Reputation of love of a mans Country . . . for the

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same Reason” (Lev. 10.5–6). Insults are a form of dishonor that undermine their target’s reputation for having power. We only dishonor those who lack power, and we assume that those who tolerate being dishonored do so only because they cannot respond (Lev. 10.24–6). The failure to react to an insulting trifle undermines one’s standing in the eyes of others. So the desire for glory or reputation causes conflict among human beings because they rely on social alliances to a greater extent than other animals do. Conflict among human beings in the state of nature, then, is driven by tools, foresight, and social groups made possible by language. Because this is so, Hobbes could dispense with psychological egoism entirely and reach the same conclusions about the state of nature. Psychological egoism is a theory about what people want. But Hobbes only needs to establish the negative point that people are not averse to harming others. This could be true regardless of what their affirmative aims are. They could be selflessly attached to their families or community and still fall into war, so long as they put less value on the interests of those who are outside their favored group. Even people who would sacrifice themselves for their group will fight if they think their group will not have enough resources, if they worry that the group is vulnerable to surprise attack, or if they believe that the group’s honor has been impugned. That is why Hobbes treats the behavior of states in international relations as confirmation of his theory of the causes of conflict in the state of nature (Lev. 13.12). Even if the sovereigns of the world are merely protecting their subjects rather than advancing their own interests, Hobbes thinks they will be hostile toward one another for the same reasons that drive individuals to war in the state of nature. While it seems easy to explain why predominantly egoistic people would fight in the state of nature, it is hard to understand how they could live together in the commonwealth. They will be committed neither to obeying the law nor to promoting the common good. Consequently, it seems, the state will have to secure order through repression. The threat of punishment will be its sole instrument for regulating antisocial behavior and the threats will have to be terrifying if order is to be maintained. While living with a boot on one’s throat might be preferable to living in the state of nature, it is not an inspiring picture of political life. What is worse, few commentators believe that the attempt to establish order through force alone would succeed. Hobbes’s remarks about the variation in human behavior suggest that the situation would not in fact be so bad. In those remarks, he distinguishes those whose ambitions are best achieved through war from those whose desires are best achieved by accepting the state’s authority. Alexander

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Hamilton wanted a war, while Thomas Hobbes sought a library. What will most people want once the omnipresent dangers of the state of nature have been left behind and peaceful pursuits are possible? The answer would depend on many factors, of course, and Hobbes did not venture an opinion of his own. That said, it is unlikely that society would be full of Hamiltons. Few people are willing to risk their lives for social advancement when a comfortable life is an available alternative. The relentless desire for power that Hobbes describes as a constant in human psychology is a desire for the means to secure one’s future desires. It is not necessarily a desire for political power. Instead, on Hobbes’s own analysis, it is typically expressed through subordination to those who are more powerful in the hopes of enjoying their protection. So most people’s ambitions in life would be best pursued peacefully, without challenging the state’s authority. Hobbes expected this kind of desire to develop on its own without any effort at education. Furthermore, those whose ambitions in life are best pursued through peaceful means will be accommodating even if they do not have particularly strong ethical commitments. The energies of those who are not satisfied with pursuing the arts of peace can be channeled into competition for honors distributed by the state (Lev. 10.34–6, 10.52). Accordingly, the state need not be repressive even if its subjects are determined to follow their own pursuits. This is one reason, derived from Hobbes’s account of human nature, for thinking that securing social order would not be as difficult to achieve as it seems to be. However, other considerations point in the other direction. Our natural curiosity and concern for the future inevitably lead to belief in God. While Hobbes does not think that fear of divine punishment is an adequate basis for the state, he is also quite aware that it is a potential threat to the political order. Punishment cannot be effective against people who believe that compliance with the sovereign runs the risk of offending God. So Lloyd’s point that Hobbes’s political theory cannot rely on the fear of punishment alone is strongly supported by his account of human nature. In closing, I would like to address the question of whether Hobbes is pessimistic about human nature. He certainly gives the impression of holding humanity in low esteem, and even those who think he has fairly noble ambitions for his ethical theory regard him as having a pessimistic view of human nature (Gert 2010, 35). Hobbes’s apparently sour attitude toward human beings colors the reception of everything he writes. Why should we look for guidance from someone who seems not to like us very much?

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Hobbes may well be a pessimist about human nature or the prospects for ethical thought. But he is very much an optimist about humanity. The natural condition of mankind is not very good. But human beings do not live in their natural condition. Unlike every other animal, they have changed their condition. Human beings have altered their cognitive abilities through the artificial faculties of language, reason, and science. They have thus vastly expanded their insight into the natural world and their power to shape it to fit their needs. They have also created the artificial body of the commonwealth to radically alter their social condition. Other animals live by tooth and claw, but human beings can live at peace and, as a consequence, have developed arts, culture, commerce, science, and industry. Every other animal remains in its natural condition. Human beings have made their own world through their own efforts and insights. Compared with the other animals, they are like gods. Hobbes worries that these achievements might be lost. He is not an optimist in the sense that he takes for granted that history will have a progressive arc. But he is an optimist in thinking that the progress that human beings have achieved through their artificial creations of language and the state can continue if they make the right choices. If we are not destined to succeed, neither are we destined to fail. The inspiring thing about us, for Hobbes, is that our future is in our own hands.

chapter 6

On Benevolence and Love of Others Gabriella Slomp

Hobbes is famous for his insights into the impact of man’s fear, glory, and greed on war and peace, not for his views on the bearing of men’s benevolence on the commonwealth.1 Are Hobbesian people even capable of love of others? In the literature, we find two main answers: one view is that Hobbes ruled out the possibility of disinterested benevolence among men; the other is that Hobbes considered actions driven by genuine benevolence possible but uncommon. After reviewing in broad outlines the two above positions, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that Hobbes did not consider it relevant to establish whether men are capable of genuine benevolence or not, because he maintained that the impact on peace of disinterested and self-interested benevolence is potentially the same: benevolent men can be as inept as egoists in differentiating apparent and real good for themselves and their loved ones, and the effect of misguided altruism on the commonwealth is as damaging as the effect of ill-advised egoism. The chapter proceeds in steps: first, I consider Butler’s and Hume’s different appraisals of Hobbesian benevolence, then I review the arguments one encounters in twentieth-century scholarship for and against the occurrence of genuine benevolence in Hobbesian man; finally, I put forward my own understanding and appraisal of Hobbesian benevolence. When organising interpreters into different camps, there is always the danger that one acts as Procrustes, stretching or amputating interpretations so that they fit the iron beds prepared for them. In my overview of the two different positions on Hobbesian benevolence, I do not make the Procrustean claim that the quotations or observations that illustrate those positions overlap precisely with the core ideas of the interpreters who have 1

I am very grateful to S. A. Lloyd for thorough and illuminating feedback on an earlier draft of this chapter. I wish also to thank Camillo Lamanna for constructive criticisms and copy-editing. All remaining errors and stylistic infelicities are my own.

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voiced them. For example, I have only offered to John Watkins and David Gauthier accommodation in one camp, even though they do share a number of views with the other.

Joseph Butler and David Hume on Hobbesian Benevolence Hobbes made some statements suggesting he was ambivalent about benevolence. On the one hand, he speaks of ‘the love men bear to one another, or the pleasure they take in one another’s company’ (Elements, I.9.16, 43), and he includes the ‘desire of good to another, Benevolence’ (Leviathan, 6.22) among the passions of man and gives benevolence some prominence by listing it ahead of ‘desire of riches, Covetousness’. On the other hand, throughout his writings Hobbes makes remarks that rule out the occurrence of disinterested benevolence among men. For instance: The only reason why something appeals to or is craved by a person is that it benefits him, self-advantage being the proper and sufficient object of the will (Anti-White, 487). We grieve over the loss of riches and of friends because we feel ourselves deprived of the potential and of the protection that have raised our hopes of advancement (Anti-White, 465). There is yet another passion, sometimes called love, but more properly good will or CHARITY. There can be no greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs: and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity (Elements, I.9.17, 44). So clear is it from experience to anyone who gives any serious attention to human behaviour, that every voluntary encounter is a product either of mutual need or of the pursuit of glory; hence when people meet, what they are anxious to get is either an advantage for themselves or what is called ευδοκιμειν which is reputation and honour among their companions (Citizen, 1.2, 23). For no man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help, nor of reconciliation of one man to another (Leviathan, XV, 16). For people always have been, and always will be, ignorant of their duty to the public, as never meditating anything but their particular interest (Behemoth, Dialogue I, 39).

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Hobbes’s ambivalence has given rise to very different interpretations of the nature of Hobbesian benevolence. Reflecting on the above cited passage from Elements of Law, Bishop Butler made the following famous comment: Suppose a man of learning to be writing a grave book upon human nature, and to show in several parts of it that he had an insight into the subject he was considering: amongst other things, the following one would require to be accounted for; the appearance of benevolence or good-will in men towards each other in the instances of natural relation, and in others (Hobbes of Human nature Ch IX Sec 17). Cautious of being deceived with outward show, he retires within himself to see exactly, what that is in the mind of man from whence this appearance proceeds; and upon deep reflection, asserts the principle in the mind to be only the love of power, and delight in the exercise of it (Butler [1726] 1969, footnote 1 to Section 6, 18).

Butler, then, reads Hobbes as saying that men are self-seeking and incapable of disinterested benevolence, and that what appears to be goodwill in human relations is in fact always driven by selfish motives. In his essay of 1967, Bernard Gert identifies Butler as the writer who gave ‘greatest impetus’ to the attribution to Hobbes of ‘psychological egoism’, which in Gert’s definition holds that people never act to benefit others (1969, 111). A different take on Hobbesian benevolence appears in the work of David Hume. In Appendix II to An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume distinguishes between a principle ‘which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment’ and that he described thus: This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations (Hume 1970, 295).

and another principle ‘somewhat resembling the former’, according to which: whatever affection one may feel, or imagine he feels for others, no passion is, or can be disinterested; that the most generous friendship, however sincere, is a modification of self-love; and that, even unknown to ourselves, we seek only our own gratification, while we appear the most engaged in schemes for the liberty and happiness of mankind. By a turn of imagination, by a refinement of reflection, by an enthusiasm of passion, we seem to take part in the interests of others, and imagine ourselves divested of all selfish considerations: but, at bottom, the most generous patriot and most niggardly miser, the bravest hero and most abject coward, have, in every action, an equal regard to their own happiness and welfare (Hume 1970, 296).

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Hume notes that the latter principle ‘has been the foundation of many system’, and in the modern period can be found in the works of philosophers who ‘lived irreproachable lives’ such as Hobbes and Locke. Hume explains: An epicurean or a Hobbist readily allows, that there is such a thing as friendship in the world, without hypocrisy or disguise, though he may attempt, by a philosophical chemistry, to resolve the elements of this passion, if I may so speak, into those of another, and explain every affection to be self-love, twisted and moulded, by a particular turn of the imagination, into a variety of appearances (Hume 1970, 296–7).

Unlike Butler, Hume maintains that Hobbes acknowledged the occurrence of benevolence and friendship ‘without hypocrisy or disguise’ among men, but turned – by means of ‘a philosophical chemistry’ – all otherregarding feelings into self-love, namely a principle that explains everything but predicts nothing. Granted that both killing and saving lives can be interpreted in terms of self-love, will people kill or save lives in the state of nature? The ‘philosophical chemistry’ by which Hobbes explained benevolent action as an instance of self-love is illustrated by John Aubrey’s well-known anecdote: One time, I remember, going into Strand, a poor and infirm old man craved his alms. He beholding him with eyes of pity and compassion, put his hands in his pocket, and gave him 6d. Said a divine (that is Dr Jasper Mayne) that stood by – ‘Would you have done this, if it had not been Christ’s command?’ ‘Yes,’ said he. ‘Why?’ said the other. ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I was in pain to consider the miserable condition of the old man; and now my alms, giving him some relief, doth also ease me’ (Aubrey 1975, 158–9).

Hume seems to attribute to Hobbes something close to what Gert and others have termed ‘tautological egoism’, which resembles psychological egoism but is different in one fundamental respect: while psychological egoism holds that man always pursues his desires ‘as opposed to the desires of someone else’ and thus denies benevolent action, tautological egoism maintains that man always pursues his desires, but these desires are not ‘opposed to anything’ (Gert 1969, 111; see also Gert 1972, 6–7) and may very well include benevolent and conscientious action (Gert 1972, 9). Another way of drawing the distinction between the two positions can be found in Rawls2 who contrasts ‘desires in a self’: 2

I owe this reference to S. A. Lloyd.

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(i) Self-centered desires: those for my own honor, power, glory; health and nourishment (ii) Self-related desires: for the honor and power of persons and groups related to me – my family, my friends, my nation, etc. (Rawls 2007, 445) with ‘desires of a self’: Affections for others are neither self-centred nor self-related desires: they include desires for the other’s good. Proper self-love is an affection for our good and is altogether different from selfishness (Rawls 2007, 445).

For Rawls, selfishness (and psychological egoism) is related to self-centred and self-related desires and is to be distinguished from self-love proper (and tautological egoism). To sum up, according to Butler, Hobbesian men are incapable of genuine benevolence; according to Hume, Hobbes accepts that men are capable of benevolence without hypocrisy, but ultimately Hobbes explains – not unlike a long tradition of philosophers before him – all actions of all men, be they heroes or cowards, benefactors or misers, as instances of self-love. If we accept the above definitions of psychological and tautological egoism, we can see that Butler attributed to Hobbes the former, while Hume hinted at the latter. A number of interpreters have found tautological egoism in Hobbes’s argument, and have emphasised that egoism so understood is unfalsifiable (Watkins 1965) and a truism (Kavka 1986). Gert himself did not deny that Hobbes was a tautological egoist but strongly rejected the view that Hobbes endorsed psychological egoism (Gert 1969, 111; Gert 1972, 7). During the twentieth century, one of the liveliest debates in Hobbes studies was about the occurrence and character of egoism in Hobbes’s theory; here I am concerned with the appraisal of benevolent action which has been part of the wider debate on egoism.

The Impossibility of Disinterested Benevolence The attribution of egoistic psychology to Hobbes goes back to his own times; indeed, the repudiation of Hobbes’s arch-egoist was the aim of many commentaries (Mintz 1962). But it was Bishop Butler’s understanding of Hobbesian psychology that was particularly influential on the scholarship of the best part of the last century (Taylor 1938; Gert 1967; Sorell 1986). In 1886, George Croom Robertson highlighted the merits of

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Butler’s psychological analysis (221) and endorsed his reading of Hobbesian human nature, even if he defended Hobbes’s intentions: It has hardly remained in serious question since that there is a principle of properly disinterested action in the human system, and that Hobbes, if he had good reason for dwelling upon the might of the selfish tendencies in man and showed true psychological insight in tracking them through the transformations they assume, gave an essentially one-sided and distorted view of human activity. What his opponents, in their contention, never did him justice to remember, was that, if he did exaggerate or bring exclusively into view the egoistic impulses in man, it was yet in order to bar out their anarchic consequences by the most effective agency of which he could think (Robertson 1886, 221–2).

Robertson attributed to Hobbes a ‘conception of man as moved by purely selfish impulses’ (Robertson 1886, 135) and noted that in his writings, Hobbes ‘can forget egoistic feeling’ only rarely (Robertson 1886, 136) as when he acknowledges that people are capable of putting a ‘certain nobleness or gallantness of courage’ above personal contentment (Leviathan, XV, 10). In 1904, Leslie Stephen put across a similar view and drew attention to Hobbes’s statements on charity, love, and laughter in Elements in order to support the claim that Hobbes ruled out genuine benevolence. For Stephen, Hobbes ‘is the most thoroughgoing of egoists’ that ‘not only admits the universality of self-love, but speaks as though this were one of the obvious truths which require no proof or explanation’ (Stephen 1904, 131). According to Stephen, for Hobbes ‘to love men means that we think of them as useful’ (Stephen 132); charity, good will, and parental love are ‘a modification of the desire of power’ (132) and friendship is a relationship purchased by contract (133). Stephen stresses ‘the uncompromising egoism’ endorsed by Hobbes (141) and remarks: He was perfectly content to profess the most unblushing egoism and carry it out consistently. His essential aim was to be scientific, to accept the obvious facts, and to carry out the conclusions logically. His nominalism naturally went with individualism. Each man obviously is a separate thing which must be explained by its own properties, and not by reference to any mysterious bond of unity with other things . . . Finally, his thorough materialism seems to make the assumption of selfishness inevitable (Stephen 1904, 143).

Writing in 1938, A. E. Taylor emphasised the influence of Bishop Butler’s interpretation of Hobbesian psychology ‘from his day to our own’:

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gabriella slomp When Butler set himself to expose the fallacies of the ‘selfish’ psychology of human action, he found admirable examples of them in some of Hobbes’s analyses of the ‘passions’, and he did the work of refutation so thoroughly that he has perhaps made the notion that there is nothing in Hobbes but this ‘selfish psychology’ (a charge which he himself is careful never to make) current from his day to our own (Taylor [1938] 1969, 36).

Taylor does not seem wholly convinced by Butler’s reading; however, he makes his famous case for the existence in Hobbes’s theory of ‘a very strict deontology’ by stressing that the latter is ‘disengaged from an egoistic psychology with which it has no logically necessary connection’ (1969, 36–7). In 1967, Bernard Gert denounced as ‘almost unanimous’ the reading of Hobbes as a theorist of ‘psychological egoism’ in Hobbesian scholarship; indeed, Gert presented his thesis that Hobbes did not hold an egoistic view of man as ‘original’ ([1967] 1969, 109). On the one hand, it is true that the attribution of the terms ‘egoistic’, ‘egotistic’, and ‘egocentric’ to Hobbes’s description of man occurs throughout the twentieth century in otherwise very different interpretations of Hobbes’s theory: [The Hobbesian Man is] calculating, egotistic, and alone even in society (Wolin 1960, 246). Hobbes’s theory of human nature [. . .] yields a uniformity-principle and also what may be called an egocentricity-principle (Watkins 1965, 71–2). Hobbes sees a rather large degree of ruthless egocentricity as a general human trait (Spragens 1973, 103–4). Hobbes veers between the notion that the individual is an animate solipsis . . . and the view that he is merely selfish and egoistic . . . Man is not alone, but he carries an island within himself (King 1974, 191). Hobbes does not deny that many will reject his conception of man. Men will want to argue that . . . men are in fact capable of sincere, honourable, selfless compassion for other men. What Hobbes maintains is that the very actions and behaviour of his doubters ‘disavow what their discourses approve of.’ The natural axiom of human behaviour is nothing more than that man, by natural necessity, desires his own good and shuns whatever is destructive of his well-being. All behaviour is egoistic, necessarily self-interested. . . . Every man seeks the society of others for his own benefit, not theirs (Herbert 1989, 114, 115).

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On the other hand, it is often unclear whether interpreters who ascribed egoism to Hobbes meant psychological egoism or tautological egoism, or if they understood psychological egoism in Gert’s sense or in a broader sense.3 Leaving labelling aside, interpreters brought to bear on the debate about the egoism of the Hobbesian man a number of arguments, and here I survey a few that are relevant for my focus on benevolence. It has been argued that egoism is an essential component of Hobbes’s argument about the state of anarchy which in turn provides the foundation for his political and moral theory; Hobbes’s equation of life and desire and his emphasis on the paramount importance of self-preservation made egoism inevitable (Herbert 1989), as did his claim that the right of selfdefence is inalienable (McNeilly 1968). It has been pointed out that a requirement of Hobbes’s political theory is to assume uniformity of human nature and commonality of motivation; for Hobbes to admit that there are significant differences in motivation among people ‘would have been fatal to his project of a political system deduced from universal psychological principles’ (Watkins 1965, 259). Nominalism has also been invoked to support the claim that Hobbes believed in commonality of motivations: it drove him to consider only what makes men resemble one another and not how they differ (Stephen 1904, Watkins 1965). If Hobbes had assumed that men are similar only in certain respects, this would have caused problems for his nominalism, as it would have come ‘dangerously close to conceding that a universal name was imposed because they share certain universal properties – the end of the thesis that “there is nothing in the world universal but names”’ (Watkins 1965, 259). Above all, interpreters have drawn attention to mechanistic materialism in providing Hobbes with reasons for regarding men as self-maintaining engines of identical design, who cannot have other-regarding aims. While Robertson had strongly denied the connection between Hobbes’s ‘selfish’ psychology and his metaphysics (1886, 135), a long string of interpreters have seen in Hobbes’s mechanistic theory the foundation of his psychological egoism: 3

For instance, Sorell rejected the view that there is psychological egoism in Gert’s sense in Hobbes’s works, but suggested that ‘egoism may be the right label for Hobbes’s position if the term is defined broadly enough’ (Sorell 1986, 99). For Sorell a definition of egoism that is ‘wide enough’ to accommodate Hobbes’s statements about self-interest and his concessions to limited benevolence is Nagel’s: ‘Egoism holds that each individual’s reasons for acting, and possible motivations for acting, must arise from his own interests and desires, however those interests may be defined. The interests of one person can on this view motivate another or provide him with a reason only if they are connected with some sentiment of his, like sympathy, pity or benevolence’ (Nagel 1970, 84, cited also by Sorell 1986, 99).

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gabriella slomp [S]ince the vital motions of the heart can only be excited by the prospect of some bodily change in its owner, all motivation is essentially egocentric (Watkins 1969, 97, italics in the original). From this account of vital and voluntary motion, it follows that each man seeks, and seeks only, to preserve and to strengthen himself. A concern for continued well-being is both the necessary and the sufficient ground of human action. Hence man is necessarily selfish (Gauthier 1969, 7).

To conclude, during the last century a significant number of interpreters have argued that Hobbes assumed the egocentricity or self-interestedness of man and ruled out the occurrence of disinterested benevolence because of the requirements of his political theory, his nominalism, and his mechanical materialism.

The Uncommonness of Disinterested Benevolence In 1967, Gert denounced the almost unanimous consensus among scholars in attributing to Hobbes an egoistic view of human nature; in 1987, Gary Herbert highlighted the opposite phenomenon, namely the ‘interpretative dismissal of Hobbes’s notorious “egoism” by many recent scholars’ (Herbert 1987, 86). Indeed, in the second half of the twentieth century we encounter a new trend in Hobbes studies that rejects the attribution of narrow psychological egoism to Hobbes, drawing particular support from Leviathan. [T]he account of the passions in Leviathan . . . is not predominantly egoistic, although an unambiguously egoistic account is given in other works (McNeilly 1968, 95). Nothing in Hobbes’s theory requires that men not have friends for whom they are willing to make some sacrifice (Gert 1972, 8). If psychological egoism holds that people never act to benefit others, then Hobbes was never a psychological egoist (Sorell 1986, 98). Why does [Hobbes] flirt with motivational reductionism even though, as I have amply documented, his portrait of the human psyche is actually rich and unparsimonious (Holmes 1990, 144)? Hobbes does not say in the Leviathan that people are psychological egoists, or that they pursue or care only about their own good (Rawls 2007, 45). Hobbes’s texts will not bear interpreting him as espousing psychological egoism (S. A. Lloyd 2009, 79; see also Lloyd 1992, chapter 4, 158–66).

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Over several decades, Bernard Gert led the camp that rejected the claim that psychological egoism occurs in or is needed by Hobbes’s political theory (Gert 1967, 1972, 2010). Interpreters contended that Hobbes changed his views about the passions over time and that the charge of psychological egoism is not applicable to Leviathan (McNeilly 1968); they refuted Butler’s interpretation of Hobbes’s concepts of pity, charity, and love (Sorell 1986); they drew attention to the multiple sources of identity of Hobbesian men and to the crucial role attached by Hobbes to education (Sorell 1986; Lloyd 1992, 2009). Nominalism was now being used to support the claim that Hobbes believed men to be different from one another; the well-known quote about self-inspection4 was now being invoked to emphasise the different contents of the passions in different men. Scholars opposed the view that in Leviathan we encounter a ‘prototype man’ and spoke of different models of man (Johnston 1986) or no model of man (Slomp 2000); they argued that Hobbes’s psychology is more complex and nuanced that some quotations would suggest (Holmes 1990); they rejected the idea that Hobbesian men see others only as means to attain their ends (Baier 1987; Stanlick 2002); they challenged the notion that natural men and citizens are the same (Gert 1972, 11; 2010); they questioned Gauthier’s suggestion that in biology a selfish principle must give rise to selfish behaviour. S. A. Lloyd drew attention to ‘transcendent’ interests – including moral and religious interests – that override fear of death and that are different in different men (1992) and argued that Hobbesian men are capable of otherregarding interests and benevolence (2009, 79): the notion of transcendent interests enables us to distinguish between a merely ‘tautological’ egoism and the robust psychological egoism in dispute in Hobbes studies. A tautological egoism could incorporate 4

‘But there is another saying not of late understood, by which [men] might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, nosce teipsum, read thy self, [which was meant] to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same in all men, desire, fear, hope, &c.; not the similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, &c; for these the constitution individual, and particular education, do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man’s heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts.’ (Leviathan, Introduction [3]; italics in the original). Supporters of the ‘uniformity of human nature’ thesis have often quoted only the first part of Hobbes’s remark (e.g. Watkins 1969, 104), while critics of the uniformity thesis have tended to draw attention only to the second part.

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gabriella slomp transcendent interests. Hobbes’s recognition that people can hold transcendent interests in things other than states of themselves speaks against interpreting him as espousing psychological egoism (Lloyd 2012, 126).

John Rawls not only found benevolence in Leviathan: [Hobbes] does say in Chapter VI that we are capable of benevolence; of desire of good to another; of good will; and of charity . . . He says that we are capable of loving people, and in Chapter XXX, he ranks conjugal affections as second in importance after our own self-preservation and before the means of a commodious life . . . He therefore does think that people are capable of benevolence and of genuine affection for other people, or concern for their good (Rawls 2007, 45).

but also suggested that for Hobbes the three ‘fundamental interests’ of civil societies in order of importance are: Our interest first in preserving our life, then our interests in securing the good of those who are close to us (what Hobbes calls ‘conjugal affection’), and finally, our interest in acquiring the means of a commodious life (Rawls 2007, 46).

To conclude, in the last forty years the rejection of Butler’s reading of Hobbesian benevolence developed from a minority position to the mainstream view in Hobbes studies. There is broad consensus that Hobbes acknowledged that men are capable of other-regarding feelings but nevertheless regarded disinterested benevolence as uncommon, altruism as exceptional, and that he considered men as generally inclined to look after themselves first and foremost. Edwin Curley voiced a widespread opinion when he wrote: Hobbes does not deny the existence of benevolent or conscientious actions, and he probably does not think that they always have an ulterior motive, though he is apt to see self-interest in any act of charity. But he certainly thinks that disinterested benevolence and action for the sake of duty are uncommon enough that political theory should not take much account of them (Curley 1994, XV).

The Inconveniences of Benevolence The long-standing scholarly debate on the possibility of genuine Hobbesian benevolence is a direct consequence of Hobbes’s ambivalent remarks on the issue. Why was Hobbes so hesitant to take a clear position? Here I argue that Hobbes maintained that all benevolence (self-interested or disinterested as it may be) is a potential inconvenience to the

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commonwealth and therefore the question of whether men are capable of benevolent action is politically irrelevant. To begin with, it is worth reminding ourselves of Hobbes’s definition of benevolence. In Leviathan, Hobbes distinguishes ‘benevolence’ from ‘good nature’ and defines the former as ‘love of others’ and the latter as ‘love to man generally’ (Leviathan, VI.22); he also differentiates benevolence from ‘love of one singularly, with desire to be singularly beloved, The Passion of Love’ (VI.33).5 The distinction Hobbes draws between ‘love of others’, ‘love to man generally’, and ‘love of one singularly’ shows that Hobbes understands benevolence as the love of some others. Thus, Hobbesian benevolence is selective: it includes some particular men and excludes the rest. In spite of his reference to ‘love to men generally’ in Leviathan (VI.22, ‘love to men generally’ does not occur in OL), there is agreement among scholars (e.g. Sorell 1986; Gert 1972) that Hobbes ruled out universal benevolence and rejected the idea that we love people because they are members of mankind. Hobbes writes, For if man naturally loved his fellow man. Loved him, I mean, as his fellow man, there is no reason why everyone would not love everyone equally as equally men (Citizen, I.2).

Hobbes suggests that the recipients of benevolence – the ‘others’ that people are inclined to love – are family and friends: ‘the nearest by nature are supposed to be nearest in affection’ (Citizen, IX, 18, 114). He indicates that we cannot be benevolent to strangers: The affection wherewith men many times bestow their benefit on strangers, is not to be called charity, but either contract whereby they seek to purchase friendship, or fear, which maketh them to purchase peace (Elements, I.9.17).

Why did Hobbes rule out universal benevolence? The answer is not to be found in Hobbes’s nominalism6 but rather in his understanding of human nature. In the well-known comparison between the behaviour of bees, ants, and men that occurs in all three political writings, Hobbes emphasises the desire of glory and the natural partiality of man: 5

6

In the same chapter Hobbes also distinguishes benevolence from ‘Love of persons for society, Kindness’; ‘Love of persons for pleasing the sense only, natural Lust’; ‘Love of the same acquired from rumination, that is, imagination of pleasure past, Luxury’. Driven by his nominalism, Hobbes thought that we can love Peter and Elspeth, John and Kirsten; we can even love the King, but we cannot love ‘man’, ‘mankind’, or the ‘citizenry’ because we cannot love universals which are just names. His nominalism, however, did not rule out the possibility of loving every single individual in one’s community. I owe this comment to S. A. Lloyd.

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gabriella slomp Why therefore may not men, that foresee the benefit of concord, continually maintain the same without compulsion, as well as they [bees]? To which I answer, that amongst other living creatures, there is no question of precedence in their own species, nor strife about honour or acknowledgement of one another’s wisdom, as there is amongst men; . . . Secondly, those living creatures aim everyone at peace and food common to all; men aim at dominion, superiority, and private wealth, which are distinct in every man and breed contention (Elements, I.19.5, 102). In the first place, men compete for honour and dignity, animals do not . . . Secondly, the natural appetites of bees and similar creatures are uniform, and make for the common good, which among them does not differ from private good; but for man virtually nothing is thought to be good which does not give his possessor some superiority and eminence above that enjoyed by other men (Citizen, V.5, 71). First, . . . men are continually in competition for honour and dignity, which these creatures are not; . . . Secondly, that among these creatures, the common good differeth not from the private; and being by nature inclined to their private, they procure thereby the common benefit. But man, whose joy consisteth in comparing himself with other men, can relish nothing but what is eminent (Leviathan, XVII, 7–8). To a man nothing is so pleasant in his own goods as that they are greater than those of others (OL Curley, 108).

Because of his desire for glory and his partiality, the Hobbesian man is disinclined to develop universal love: Hobbesian benevolence, in either selfless or selfish form, is not just selective but exclusionary and potentially divisive. In Hobbes’s account, benevolence or love of some others can undermine the commonwealth: officials may be enticed to bend rules for their loved ones; judges may be tempted to show preference to family and friends. For Hobbes, what makes a good judge is the ability to divest himself not only of ‘all fear, anger, hatred’ but also of ‘love, and compassion’ (Leviathan XXVI, 28). Hobbes argues that a major reason why democracy is inferior to monarchy as form of government is the fact that the many individuals who make up an assembly have more people they care about and want to help: And though [the sovereign] be careful in his politic person to procure the common interest, yet he is more, or no less, careful to procure the private good of himself, his family, kindred and friends; and for the most part, if the public interest chance to cross the private, he prefers the private: for the passions of men are commonly more potent than their reason. From whence

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it follows that where the public and private interest are most closely united, there is the public most advanced (Leviathan XIX, 4). And whereas the favourites of monarchs are few, and they have none else to advance but their own kindred; the favourites of an assembly are many, and the kindred much more numerous than of any monarch (Leviathan, XIX, 8).

So, for Hobbes, benevolence – as a form of partiality which may motivate iniquity and corruption – is potentially dangerous for the commonwealth: it can prejudice justice, subvert fairness, and jeopardise peace. The laws of nature recommend universal sociability and kindness and rule out special treatment for family and friends, whether motivated by genuine love or self-interest. For Hobbes, it is ‘arrogance’ and contravenes the laws of nature for the sovereign to favour undeserving relatives or friends: ‘sovereigns are obliged by natural law to impose the burdens of the commonwealth upon the citizens equally’ (Citizen, XIII.10, 147). The sovereign should never patronise anyone out of personal like or dislike; the only grounds for different treatment of subjects and the distribution of rewards must be the enhancement of the common good (Leviathan, XXX.24). Indeed, to rulers and officials: Natural law commands: in awarding rights to others, you should be fair [aequalis] to both sides . . . This law forbids us from giving more or less to one person as a favour (Citizen, III.15, 50, emphasis added).

From a Hobbesian perspective, the more personal relationships of love and affection there are between officials, rulers, and the people, the more sources of partiality and iniquity there may be, and the more vulnerable the commonwealth may become. As Hobbes adopted the impact on peace as his criterion to distinguish between virtue and vice, and maintained that ‘good dispositions are those which are suitable for entering into civil society; and good manners (that is moral virtues) are those whereby what was entered upon can be best preserved’, (De Homine XIII, 70, emphasis added), it is no surprise that he did not regard benevolence as a virtue. Benevolence in either its selfless or selfish form may foster partiality and compromise concord,7 unlike justice and equity which consolidate peace and are therefore moral virtues (De Homine XIII, 69). Just as Hobbes did not regard courage, prudence and temperance as virtues because they may be harmful to the state (Lloyd 7

I discuss this claim in relation to Hobbesian friendship in ‘As Thick as Thieves: Exploring Thomas Hobbes’s Critique of Ancient Friendship and its Contemporary Relevance’, forthcoming.

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2009, 140–1),8 likewise he warned about the effects of benevolence on the commonwealth. Whether officials, judges, members of democratic assemblies, or any others are driven to bend rules for their families and friends out of selfinterest or out of genuine generosity is ultimately irrelevant in so far as their actions are equally damaging to the political state. From the point of view of the good of the commonwealth, the self-interested merchant, who pays his taxes, obeys the law, is mean to family and friends, and never helps anyone unless there is something for him to gain is a better citizen than the big-hearted official who is willing to put his job on the line and flout protocol in order to help a worthy relative or friend in need. Not unlike egoists, Hobbesian benefactors (selfless or selfish as they may be) are prone to misunderstanding the real good of their beneficiary: they can see only the immediate, apparent benefits and are blind to long-term harms. Officials, for instance, fail to understand that by bending rules to help family and friends they undermine the state and by so doing endanger the conditions of the wellbeing of their loved ones. Many interpreters have pointed out that Hobbes’s distinctions between apparent and real good, and between immediate and long-term good, shed light on his appraisal of benevolent action. Hobbes writes: Moreover, good (like evil) is divided into real and apparent. Not because any apparent good may not truly be good in itself, without considering the other things that follow from it; but in many things, whereof part is good and part evil, there is sometime such a necessary connection between the parts that they cannot be separated. Therefore though in each one of them there be so much good, or so much evil; nevertheless the chain as a whole is partly good and partly evil . . . Whence it happens that inexperienced men that do not look closely enough at the long-term consequences of things, accept what appears to be good, not seeing the evil annexed to it; afterwards they experience damage (De Homine, XVI, 48).

The way forward for Hobbes is not to condemn egoism and to encourage altruism in men as preachers may do, because benevolence – be it selfinterested or disinterested – is often misguided. Rather, the political philosopher needs to provide enlightenment on the conditions of peace and on the real long-term good of self and other. 8

‘The Laws of nature articulate moral virtues, and moral virtues are the dispositions that create and sustain civil society, that is the commonwealth-based form of life requisite for peaceful, sociable, and comfortable living. Rational excellences that contribute to the interests of the agent but not reliably to the interests of the collective . . . are neither moral virtues nor among “the” Laws of nature Hobbes enumerates’ (Lloyd 2009, 141).

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Conclusion This chapter started with the observation that Hobbes seems to be of two minds about benevolence and that this ambivalence has given rise to a long-standing debate on whether the Hobbesian individual is capable of genuine benevolent action. I reviewed in broad outlines two different positions: one, expounded by Butler, according to which Hobbesian men are fundamentally selfish and incapable of disinterested love; the other which holds that Hobbes did believe that men are capable of genuine love and benevolence, but explained all acts as instances of self-love. I have suggested that these two positions developed in the twentieth century, with the supporters of the latter view gaining ground during the last few decades. I then put forward the claim that Hobbes did not regard benevolence in either form (selfish or selfless) as necessarily good for peace. I have argued that Hobbesian benevolence is not only selective, but exclusionary and potentially divisive for the commonwealth. I have contended that for Hobbes the distinction between self-interested and selfless benevolence is politically irrelevant because ignorant men, be they egoists or otherwise, will always damage the wellbeing of the commonwealth. From Hobbes’s perspective, well-meaning benefactors are as ignorant as self-serving egoists about the real ‘good’ of their loved ones and may engage in activities that undermine concord and peace. Only understanding, according to Hobbes, can help to establish, maintain and strengthen concord and peace, and prevent misguided benevolence as much as illadvised selfishness. Indeed, if all Hobbesian men were to transform overnight from self-interested into altruistic citizens, but remained ignorant about everyone’s real good, then there would be no reason to think that they would not still compromise the safety and wellbeing of their commonwealth.

chapter 7

Interpreting Hobbes’s Moral Theory: Rightness, Goodness, Virtue, and Responsibility S. A. Lloyd

Fifty years ago K. C. Brown wrote “there is still persistent and drastic disagreement . . . about what [Hobbes] actually meant his theory to be in the first place,”1 and the situation with respect to Hobbes’s moral theory has, if anything, worsened since then. Today we have carefully argued interpretations by respectable scholars finding Hobbes to have no moral theory at all, but only a theory of long-run self-interest.2 Equally carefully argued interpretations take Hobbes to be a moral subjectivist,3 projectivist,4 or prescriptivist,5 a moral contractarian,6 an ethical egoist,7 a rule egoist,8 a strict deontologist prefiguring Kant,9 or a virtue theorist.10 We have interpretations according to which Hobbes’s moral theory is derived from empirical psychology,11 independent of psychological theory,12 or analytically derived from definitions of key concepts.13 Moral norms are entirely conventional,14 or they depend on divine command.15 The range of interpretive disagreement is staggering. It may be helpful to clarify what we are asking about when asking whether Hobbes has a moral theory. On one influential account, moral 1 2

3 4 7 8 11

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Brown 1965, x. Nagel 1959; Watkins 1973; Hampton 1986. For example, Nagel writes “genuine moral obligation plays no part at all in Leviathan” and a Hobbesian man “is susceptible only to selfish motivation and therefore is incapable of any action which could be clearly labelled moral. He might, in fact, be best described as a man without a moral sense,” 69, 74. Tuck 1989. Tuck variously ascribes to Hobbes three quite distinct theories; moral relativism, moral scepticism, and moral subjectivism, xxvi-xxvii. 5 6 Darwall 2000. Holden 2016. Gauthier 1986. Gert 2001. Gert takes Hobbes to hold that morality requires the pursuit of self-preservation and other elements of self-interest, as “rationally required” ends. 9 Kavka 1986. Taylor 1938. 10 Ewin 1991; Boonin-Vail 1994. Strauss 1965; Gauthier 1969; Hampton 1986; Shelton 1992; Curley 1994; Kavka 1986 sharply distinguishes Hobbes’s descriptive psychological theory from his normative moral theory but attempts to “base” the latter on the former. Taylor 1938. 13 McNeilly 1968; Deigh 1996; Lloyd 2009. 14 Gauthier 1986. Martinich 1992; Byron 2015; Hood 1964; Warrender 1957, who writes that the laws of nature “have obligatory force only when regarded as the commands of God,” 252.

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theory is the part of moral philosophy that studies substantive moral conceptions by specifying how their basic notions of rightness, goodness, and moral worth are arranged to form a distinctive moral structure, showing how they relate to our attitudes, and what conditions they must satisfy if they are to play their expected role in human life.16 So understood, a moral theory will provide an account of goodness and of rightness and of the priority relation between the two. It will also provide an ideal of moral character, an account of moral responsibility, and an account of how persons can typically be motivated to do what morality requires of them. Once these elements have been specified, it becomes possible to fruitfully address meta-questions about what sort of a theory – error, realist, constructivist, etc. – that theory is.

1

Morality Requires Reciprocity

Hobbes famously offers the familiar “law of the Gospel; whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them”17 as the central principle of morality. He offers this reciprocity requirement in multiple formulations, positive and negative,18 in every version of his theory, and says it is the “core” or “sum” of the law of nature, that it “contains” all the law of nature, or that it just is the law of nature. It entails numerous behavioral requirements (including of gratitude, equity, justice, mutual accommodation) and prohibitions (including of arrogance, partiality, contumely, cruelty), but because every normal adult human is to be held responsible for observing them, “to leave all men inexcusable, they have been contracted into one easy sum, intelligible even to the meanest capacity, and that is Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself.”19 The law of nature is the moral law, and the science of it – its casuistry and its derivation – is “the true moral philosophy”.20 Hobbes grounds its claim on us in our status as rational creatures. “God himself, because He hath made men rational, hath enjoined the following law on them, and hath inscribed it in all hearts: that no one should do to another that which he would consider inequitable for the other to do unto him.”21 Equity, Hobbes says, the “law of nature which 16 18

19

Rawls 1975, 286. 17 14.5. References to Leviathan are by chapter and paragraph numbers. See Leviathan 14.5, 15.35, 26.13; De Cive 3.14, 4.12; Elements I.5.6, II.10.7 Hobbes does not differentiate between positive and negative formulations of the requirement to afford others reciprocal treatment. 15.35. 20 15.40. 21 De Homine 14.5, emphasis added.

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commands every man to allow the same rights to others they would be allowed themselves . . . is the same which Moses sets down (Lev. XIX.18): Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And our Saviour calls it the sum of the moral law”;22 and this requirement “is the natural law, having its beginning with rational nature itself.”23 Qua rational beings, men are subject to a reciprocity requirement. As these formulations of the natural law make plain, morality concerns our behavior toward others (those actions that may “redound to the harm or benefit of our neighbors”)24 and our “manners,”25 which Hobbes defines as dispositions to behave toward others in a way that promotes harmony (virtues) or undermines it (vices). The reciprocity principle suggests a very simple, familiar test of moral permissibility: consider how you would react were you on the receiving end of the action you propose to perform, and if you would blame such treatment as being wrong, you may not permissibly so act.26 Because the laws of nature are condensable into this one simple reciprocity principle, no one can plead ignorance as an excuse for immoral behavior.27 “The laws of nature are those we are bound to obey insofar as we are men,”28 and thus bind every competent adult, including sovereigns29 and atheists.30 No one is above the natural law, and its claim on us does not depend on belief in the existence of God. “Only children and madmen are excused from offences against the law natural,” Hobbes insists.31 It follows that the duty to abide by the laws of nature does not depend on the individual’s having promised or covenanted to do so. Ordinary obligations do require an agent’s voluntary act of covenanting or vowing,32 whereas the laws of nature not only do not depend on covenant, but they constrain what obligations we can undertake by means of covenants. Hobbes explains, “a covenant, if lawful, binds by the force of natural law . . . if unlawful, bindeth not at all,”33 and those who vow to do anything contrary to the law of nature “vow in vain” it being “unjust to pay such a vow.”34 The law of nature binds, not as a contractual obligation, but as a natural duty.35 22 25 29

30 31 32 33

Rudiments 4.12. 23 Rudiments 17.8, emphasis added. 24 Rudiments 2.1 note. Elements I.5.1. 26 15.35, De Cive 3.26. 27 27.4. 28 OL 26.1, emphasis added. Sovereigns commit iniquity when they violate the law of nature. 18. 6 and OL 18.6. For discussion of the set of duties under the law of nature particular to sovereigns, see Lloyd 2009, 33–48. Only God may legitimately hold sovereigns to account for their violations of natural law. Elements II.9.1. “Unbelief is a rejection of [all of God’s laws] except the natural,” 26.40, emphasis added. 27.23, emphasis added. 21.10 “there being no obligation on any man which ariseth not from some act of his own.” 14.33. 34 14.23. 35 Additional support for this conclusion appears in Lloyd 2017.

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2 Moral Casuistry Hobbesian moral casuistry is a matter of syllogistically discharging the major reciprocity premise by a minor premise specifying something we would blame others for doing, or for failing to do. Blame is a specific reactive attitude reflecting a belief that the action is wrong. For example, because I would blame others, who are my equals, for refusing to enter into a peace on equal terms with me when I am willing to do so with them, reciprocity requires that I must do so when they are willing. This reasoning yields the second law of nature. The application of this form of reasoning to establish the right of nature is particularly interesting. Because I would judge everyone to whom I own no special obligations unreasonable to blame me for doing what I sincerely believe necessary to save my own life, and for relying on my own judgment rather than theirs about what is necessary, I must reciprocally allow that they also do no wrong in doing whatever they conscientiously deem necessary to save their own lives. I must grant a universal right to all to act on their own judgment of what is needful for their own survival. The right of nature is thus not primitive, but is rather derived from the reciprocity requirement of the law of nature,36 and this fact explains why the right is limited to perceived needs of self-preservation. We would blame others for seriously harming us in pursuit of what they acknowledge to be trivial gains or superfluities. In general, we are inclined to blame others for every harm they do to us, so the general principle is that harming others is wrong. But because we would fault others for blaming us for harms we commit out of necessity or for self-preservation, reciprocity also operates to carve out a set of exceptions to that no-harm principle. Far from positing unlimited moral license, Hobbes writes that “all infliction of harm on men is a violation of natural Law and a wrong against God” except only what is excused as being “done of necessity, or in pursuit of peace, or for self-preservation.”37 The remnant of the right of nature retained in civil society in the form of the true liberties of subjects depends in the same way on the individual’s judgment that it would be unreasonable to fault her for not resisting what she sees as an urgent threat to her survival. Those retained rights are nothing more than exemptions from moral blame for doing in extreme 36

37

Hobbes writes if “every man would grant the same liberty to another, which he desires for himself, as is commanded by the law of nature, that same natural state would return again, in which all men may by right do all things,” Rudiments 10.8. De Cive 3.27 note, emphasis added. Were these exceptions not allowed by reciprocity, every harmful act would be immoral, even causally necessitated accidents like bumping into another when the bus jolts.

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circumstances what cannot be approved in ordinary ones, namely disobeying the sovereign’s command. They are certainly not legally enforceable claim rights, nor exemptions from civil punishment, for though the subject acts blamelessly in refusing the sovereign’s command, the sovereign also acts within its authority in punishing the subject for disobeying. Even when it comes to determining whom we should obey, Hobbes implicitly appeals to reciprocity, writing, “for when we demand that our fellow citizens obey someone’s power for our good, we admit by that very demand that his power is legitimate.”38 We admit, that is, that we too ought to obey him, because what we demand of others we are required under natural law also to do.

3 Reason As Consistency, Rightness As Reciprocity Hobbes speaks of the laws of nature as “theorems” of reason. But of what axiom are they theorems? Reason imposes a fundamental requirement of consistency. It is contrary to reason simultaneously to hold contradictory beliefs about the same proposition, and it is contrary to reason to hold contradictory reactive attitudes toward the same justifying consideration for an action. Hobbes calls it “absurd” for one to approve a consideration as justifying one’s own action while disapproving that very same consideration as justifying another’s relevantly similar action. A reason, for a person, is a consideration she takes to justify an action under a fixed description of that action; a consideration that she will offer to you but will not accept from you is not a reason, at least not coming from her. Hobbes consistently criticizes those who condemn in others what they approve in themselves. He finds it ironic that Cato should have such a reputation for wisdom, considering that with him “animosity should so prevail instead of judgment, and partiality instead of reason, that the very same thing which he thought just in his popular state, he should censure [that is, blame] as unjust in a monarchical.”39 That a man “gives a different judgment of an action when he does it than when someone else does the very same thing [is among the] obvious signs that what moral Philosophers have written up to now has contributed nothing to the knowledge of truth.”40 Hobbes insists that inconsistency in evaluative judgments, reflecting inconsistency in our reactive attitudes, is contrary to reason, and so, reason requires reciprocity. 38 40

De Cive 14.12. 39 Rudiments Epistle Dedicatory, emphasis added. De Cive Epistle Dedicatory.

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Reciprocity is the standard for right action, and violation of it is always wrong. However, its theorems, which comprise the particular laws of nature requiring peace-seeking, justice, impartiality, etc., need not be observed in foro externo in the social circumstance that no one else is observing them and one’s unilateral compliance with them would “assist the wicked” in victimizing oneself.41 This is an exemption approved by the reciprocity requirement rather than a suspension of the reciprocity requirement. We would blame those who blamed us for resisting damaging exploitation of our willingness to observe the laws of nature from those who will not reciprocally observe them, and so must allow that all permissibly resist such victimization. Reciprocity licenses only symmetrical behaviors, approving sociability toward those willing to be sociable, and the use of force and fraud against enemies in circumstances of war.42 “Reason,” Hobbes writes, “and the law of nature over and above all these particular laws, doth dictate this law in general” that we need only observe “those particular laws” when we do not expect to be harmed by “the neglect thereof in those toward whom we observe them.”43 Reciprocity, then, is an immutable requirement of reason that requires actual performance everywhere and always, even as it explains why theorem laws of nature mandating particular types of behavior sometimes bind only in foro interno. Not everything contrary to reason is wrongful, for mere errors of calculation, and failures to fit means to ends are contrary to reason. But contrariety to reason is necessary for moral wrongness – “we ought to judge those actions only wrong, which are repugnant to right reason”44 – and culpable fault (immorality) is a matter of being “blameable with reason.”45 Blameworthiness, rather than mere incorrectness, characterizes wrongness; whatever is not wrong is permissible, blameless, and allowed as right.46 Reason thus involves both rational requirements of consistency, such as that he who wills the end must will the means necessary to produce that end, and reasonable requirements of consistency, such as that one must allow to others whatever one requires for oneself. The reasonable requirement of reciprocity, which constrains pursuit of self-interest, is justified as a requirement of reason, but it is not justified instrumentally by application of a rational means/ends principle. Reason imposes co-equal and independent requirements of reasonableness and

41 44

14.36, De Cive 3.27. 42 14.4. De Cive 2.1. 45 De Cive 14.17.

43

De Corpore Politico I.4.10, emphasis added. Elements 14.6, De Cive 1.7.

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rationality, neither derived from the other, and each mandating a kind of consistency.47

4 Deriving the Laws of Nature Reason itself does not dictate ends. In order for there to be a universal moral duty to seek peace, each person must fault others for not seeking peace (and so be bound by reciprocity to do so herself). What, considering Hobbes’s insistence on the idiosyncratic diversity of the objects of our passions, reflecting differences in our bodily constitutions, upbringing, education, and experience,48 could form a universal basis for faulting others’ unsociable behavior? One popular suggestion among interpreters has been a posited alpha desire in all people to avoid their own temporal bodily death, which desire is supposed to arise inexorably from biological processes. Hobbes’s position was more subtle. The desire for temporal bodily self-preservation is natural49 and blameless,50 but often not dominant in socialized people. Hobbes recognized ambitious rebels, glory seekers, religious martyrs, gentlemen dueling for their honor, and many ordinary folk who wish to achieve salvation or to avoid damnation as caring more to achieve those ends than they do for their temporal bodily survival, and so as willing to risk, or sometimes even to sacrifice, their lives to satisfy their transcendent interests.51 Nor did he think all motivation is necessarily self-interested; all of one’s interests are interest of oneself, but they are not all interests in oneself – in one’s own health, wealth, reputation, or pleasure. Hobbes recognized desires of the self in things like the welfare of loved ones and the flourishing of causes.52 There is, however, one universal, inescapable desire no human agent can fail to have. Agents must want the conditions necessary for achieving their ends to obtain. Agents desire not just particular objects, but the conditions for satisfying whatever future desires they may have, Hobbes writing that “the object of a man’s desire is . . . to assure forever the way of his future desire.”53 This explains our perceived need to accumulate “power after power.”54 If we see that our ability to do whatever we from time to time 47

48 51 52

Contrary to the views of Gauthier 1969, Hampton 1986, and many others. Although Rawls 2007, 65–6 is correct to describe the laws of nature as reasonable principles, he errs in holding that in Hobbes “the grounds [sic] of the Reasonable is the Rational.” 50 Leviathan Introduction.3. 49 De Cive Epistle Dedicatory. De Cive 1.7. For the concept of a transcendent interest, and documentation of Hobbes’s appreciation of it, see Lloyd 1992. For a complete discussion of this issue, see Slomp’s chapter in this volume. 53 11.1. 54 11.2.

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may most want to do is impeded by a condition of universal war because of things like the interference of others and our insecure control of resources, we will necessarily “abhor” that condition. We will converge on the judgment that avoidance of that condition is “agreeable to reason in the actions of common life,” we will demand that other people do what is necessary to avoid that condition, and we will fault them for refusing to do so. Attempted derivations of the laws of nature based on the desire for selfpreservation typically assume that peace is necessary for any individual’s self-preservation, and that in order to achieve peace it is necessary that every individual follows the laws of nature. Yet, it is simply not true that peace requires every agent always to follow every law of nature; all peaceful states contain some ingrates, promise-breakers, and immodest and selfpartial people, as Hobbes acknowledged. Nor is it true that others will follow the laws of nature only if one does so oneself.55 The reason that any given person should follow the laws of nature cannot be that his doing so is necessary to prevent the existence of general warfare. He is just not that important. What is true is that if no one follows the laws of nature, peace cannot be achieved. It is necessary for avoiding general warfare that some critical mass of humanity observes the laws of nature, and so, because each deems that good, each must demand that other people around herself should observe those laws. Then, by reciprocity, reason requires her to observe them herself toward those people. The reciprocity requirement of morality gives individuals no asymmetrical option of personal exemption; either they demand that everyone follow natural law or they exempt everyone else along with themselves. They cannot rationally do the latter. Thus the reason they should act as the laws of nature require is not that doing so is instrumentally necessary to achieve self-preservation or any other particular end; it is rather that it is right (accords with reason) that they should do what they require others to do as necessary to achieving what they as rational agents must deem good. To ground the derivation of the particular laws of nature on contingent desires that individuals may or may not have would undermine the scientific status of Hobbes’s moral philosophy, which he advertises as its greatest virtue. A psychological minor premise must be imported into the derivation from the reciprocity rule of the law of nature to seek peace, but 55

It is not even true that unless I follow the laws of nature, I will be evicted from society into a state of nature. I might be fined or jailed, but more likely, I will join all those other people in society who sometimes act immorally but suffer no consequences at all. There is such a thing as successful wickedness, and it is not as rare as we might hope.

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that premise is required by Hobbes’s method of proof to be a postulate of a necessary desire. It is not only not necessary that people most desire their bodily self-preservation, it is often flat out false. Hobbes denies that there is any particular finis ultimus or summum bonum for humans.56 It is, however, both true and necessary that we, qua rational agents desire that the conditions necessary for the effective exercise of our agency obtain. We must desire the ordered social environment that general adherence to the laws of nature creates, because without it we can expect to be crossed at every turn, and we want to assure forever the way to our future desire.57 It is bad enough that inescapable natural evils interfere with us – sickness and accidents, and natural disasters. We cannot want to heap man-made evils (so-called moral evils) like being victimized by murder, enslavement, and pillage on top of those natural impediments to our doing whatever it is we most want from time to time to do. We have to demand general adherence to those laws of nature that create a navigable space in which we reasoning agents can act.

5

Goodness as Sociability

In Leviathan Hobbes writes that “moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind,”58 and that “good and evil are names . . . of what is conformable or disagreeable to reason in the actions of common life.”59 Names are marks or signs used for personal recall and for communication with others. These particular names, “good” and “evil,” concern our sociable behavior – how we treat each other and how we organize our shared social environment. This characterization of the meaning of the terms “good” and “evil” sets a standard for goodness that is not reducible to the speaker’s attitudes. The standard requiring conformity to reason is in this sense objective, but deciding whether that standard has been met is a matter of judgment, and no single person’s reason, nor any group’s reasoning, is guaranteed infallibly to track “right reason.” People frequently disagree about the justifiability of arrangements that mutually affect them, which fact Hobbes lists as one of the reasons men cannot live peacefully without government.60 In general, 56 60

11.1. 57 11.1. 58 15.40. 59 15.40. Unlike humans, naturally sociable creatures “do not see, nor think they see, any fault in the administration of their common business; whereas among men there are very many that think themselves wiser, and abler to govern the public, better than the rest . . . ” (17.9).

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divers men differ [in their judgment] of what is conformable, or disagreeable to reason in the actions of common life. Nay, the same man in divers times differs from himself, and one time praiseth (that is, calleth good) what another time he dispraiseth (and calleth evil); from whence arise disputes, controversy, and at last war.61

Even if people were conscientiously trying to judge what comports with reason in their common business, disagreement would remain because people’s appetites and aversions infect their use of the terms “good” and “evil,” and these passions differ widely across persons and even within persons over time.62 Hobbes observes that people tend to “call good” whatever they personally desire, approve, or will,63 regardless of whether their judgments track conformity to reason in the actions of common life. This is understandable, because we make evaluative judgments in other areas of life in which mere personal preference is an appropriate standard, and these may easily spill over into an area in which it is not. There is a common non-moral use of “good” and “bad” to pick out what is (un) pleasing, (un)desirable, or (not)useful to oneself without regard to sustaining society as reason directs. Hobbes observes that whatever a person wills “seems good” and is pleasant to her.64 People sometimes unwittingly substitute their personal tastes for standards of good and evil. Hobbes criticizes the “schools of the Grecians” as unprofitable precisely because “their moral philosophy is but a description of their own passions . . . they make the rules of good and bad by their own liking and disliking,” resulting in “the subversion of commonwealth.”65 Further, people may purposely manipulate moral language in pursuit of personal gain; unlike sociable creatures that lack words, “men can represent to others that which is good in the likeness of evil, and evil in the likeness of good.”66 And of course, anyone may err in a judgment of what comports with reason in the actions of common life. We find then in Hobbes two uses of ‘good’: as revealing the speaker’s favor toward whatever is the object of her will, and to indicate her judgment that something conforms with what reason requires in the actions of common life (moral goodness). The first has no normative implication in Hobbes; on it the good is not something that ought to be pursued, for one may will a course of action 61 63 64 65 66

15.40. 62 15.40. 6.7; “whatever anyone wants seems good to him precisely because he wants it” De Cive 1.10. Rudiments 1.2. 46.11. See also De Cive 3.32 “whenever someone dislikes another person’s good action, he applies the name of some vice related to it; likewise wickedness that pleases is given the name of a virtue.” 17.10, emphasis added.

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which reason condemns, such as revenge, or rebellion. The second does have normative implications because it is linked to right reason, but we should expect widespread disagreement in those judgments of goodness. We are now in a position to consider the relation of the good to the right in Hobbes’s moral system. Goodness is not prior to, nor conceptually independent of, rightness. Goodness is conformity with reason’s requirement in the domain of sociability, that is in the actions of common life, and what reason requires in that domain is reciprocity, but reciprocity is the primary principle of rightness. To be blameless with reason, hence right, action must conform to the reciprocity principle. Thus, goodness cannot be characterized independently of rightness, let alone as prior to it. Just as the reasonable and the rational, so the right and the good, both proceed from and express reason. This does indeed preclude understanding Hobbes’s moral theory as teleological or consequentialist.

6 Character and Virtue Hobbes distinguishes between the justice of an action and the justice of a person, explaining that refraining from all unjust actions is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a just person. The “virtue of manners” possessed by the just person involves a consistent concern to act justly, a specific set of reactive attitudes concerning injustice, and being motivated directly by considerations of justice. Hobbes takes justice to be one of the two central virtues, charity being the other, and it plays an important role in his argument for the immorality of political disobedience. There is, though, no reason to suppose he would not extend his distinction between the morality of actions and the morality of persons to cover cases other than justice, including modesty, gratitude, sociability, or equity. Action that conforms to the requirements of natural law will be right action, but if the actor was not motivated by the rightness of the action but instead by fear of punishment or hope of gain, that action was no evidence of a good moral character. Conversely, a person motivated in the right way and with the right attitudes who sometimes slips up in action through error or weakness may still count as virtuous. In the English Leviathan Hobbes writes that a just or righteous man is he who taketh all the care he can that his actions may all be just; and an unjust man is he that neglecteth it. . . . a righteous man does not lose that title by one or a few unjust actions that proceed from a sudden passion or mistake of things or persons; nor does an unrighteous man lose his character

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for such actions as he does or forbears to do for fear, because his will is not framed by the justice, but by the apparent benefit of what he is to do (15.10).

Here Hobbes seems to accept the Aristotelian view that “mistake of things or persons” – cases in which one simply does not realize what one is actually doing – do not count against one’s character, and suggests that neither may immoral actions done in the heat of passion. The latter view, however, seems not to be Hobbes’s considered position, for he elsewhere insists that we are to be held responsible for willingly doing things that may weaken our ability to do as natural law requires,67 as habitually indulging our passions may be expected to do. He insists that during the period between learning a law (which in the case of the laws of nature coincides with the advent of reason) and performance of the violation, the person should have “rectified the irregularity” of his passions, and so heat of passion is no excuse.68 This more stringent standard is reflected in the corresponding passage of the Latin Leviathan. There he writes that when the terms ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ are attributed to persons as opposed to actions they refer to a custom or habit, as a virtue or vice. Thus a man who has a constant will to give everyone what he has a right to, even if his actions have sometimes been unjust, is still just, provided he loves justice, himself condemns what he has done unjustly, even if he did it secretly, wishes he had not done it, and if he has done any harm, makes amends as far as he can. On the other hand, an unjust man is one who neglects justice, even if, from fear or some other unworthy cause, he has never done injury to anyone.69 Hobbes’s distinction here between worthy and unworthy causes of action is interesting. He specifies it in stark terms in the passage A. E. Taylor famously cited as evidence that Hobbes endorsed a strict deontology foreshadowing Kant’s:70 Although a man should order all his actions so much as belongs to external obedience just as the law commands, but not for the law’s sake, but by

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68 70

Rudiments 3.25: Hobbes specifically condemns drunkenness on the ground that “he who knowingly or willingly doth aught whereby the rational faculty may be destroyed or weakened, he knowingly and willingly breaks the law of nature. For there is no difference between a man who performs not his duty, and him who does such things willingly as make it impossible for him to do it.” 27.33. 69 OL 15.10. Taylor 1938. Like Taylor, van Mill 2001 attributes to Hobbes a concern for autonomous agency, which, on van Mill’s account, requires reasoned control of the passions, excision of fear as a motive, and compliance with disinterested norms (the laws of nature) in pursuit of worthy ends within a coherent life plan. Van Mill sees the laws of nature as rules of thumb for securing the social conditions necessary for the exercise of rational autonomy.

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s. a. lloyd reason of some punishment annexed to it, or out of vain glory; yet is he unjust.71

An action’s cause matters to the assessment of its moral worth and of the character of the agent. Hobbes suggests further that motivation by a sense of duty more reliably produces conformity to moral requirements than does fear of (uncertain) punishments in his response to the question “if men know not their duty, what is there that can force them to obey the laws? An army you will say. But what shall force the army?”72 Presumably, nothing but an internal sense of duty. It is telling that Hobbes’s conception of the person of morally virtuous character departs from the traditional conception that included courage, fortitude, and temperance as among the cardinal virtues. He declines to afford those admitted excellences of character the status of moral virtues because, although they reliably redound to the benefit of the individual who has them, their effect on social harmony may be negative rather than positive. He writes that these are not virtues of citizens as citizens, but as men, for these virtues are useful not so much to the state as they are to those individual men who have them: For just as the state is not preserved save by the courage, prudence, and temperance of good citizens, so it is not destroyed save by the courage, prudence, and temperance of its enemies . . . [G]ood dispositions are those which are suitable for entering into civil society; and good manners (that is, moral virtues) are those whereby what was entered upon can be best preserved.73

Hobbes here confirms that morality is not aimed at nor justified by serving the narrow self-interest of the individual, but comprises norms that establish and maintain a desirable social environment. Attributes advancing personal gain will not be moral virtues unless they reliably advance social harmony, nor “should one demand that the courage and prudence of the private man, if useful only to himself, be praised or held as a virtue . . . by any other men whatsoever to whom these same are not useful.”74 A virtuous person has the sensibilities, motivations, and habits that enable her to cooperate with others in sustaining a desirable social environment that should allow all to pursue their permissible ends without interference. This involves resisting her natural impulse to insist on her own private judgment as against others, holding her ego and prideful self71 74

Rudiments 4.21. De Homine 13.8.

72

Behemoth 59.

73

De Homine 13.8 (Gert 1978, 69–70).

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partiality in check, playing by the same set of rules she imposes on others, and doing so from a sense of duty rather than from fear of punishment. Hobbes illustrates his ideal of the virtuous person – whom he terms a “generous nature” – by his friend Sidney Godolphin. Godolphin had many personal excellences including native intelligence, eloquence, education, and breeding (all “powers” on Hobbes’s theory), but his moral virtue consisted in his combination of principled willingness to defer to the state’s command with his willingness to risk his life for his country.75 Hobbes concedes that generous natures are “rare” to find. Particularly rare is the judicious and courageous person who will forego acting on his personal conscience and defer, as a matter of principle, to what he may deem the erroneous conscience of his sovereign.

7 Motive and Responsibility Motivation matters to moral character, but it plays a different and arguably more important role in Hobbes’s moral theory in determining ascriptions of responsibility. Hobbes concedes that right-thinking Christians will not and should not obey the sovereign’s command if doing so entails the sacrifice of their eternal prospects. Because Hobbes identifies the effort to obey the laws of nature as one of the two necessary conditions for salvation,76 it is crucial to his project of persuading his Christian readers to obey the sovereign that he shows how their duty to obey the laws of nature is compatible with their duty as subjects to defer to their sovereign’s commands to perform even actions that they believe to violate (and which may truly violate) the laws of nature. When subjects institute a sovereign by authorizing it and/or transferring their right of self-government, they agree not to hold it liable for any errors in judgment it may make and not to treat any harms it does them as actionable injustices.77 But they do not thereby become morally responsible for the actions it commands.78 Hobbes argues that when a subject does what her sovereign commands, despite her disapproval of the commanded action, only because she acknowledges her duty to obey the sovereign, responsibility for the subject’s obedient action belongs to the 75

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Leviathan. A Review and Conclusion.4: “I have known clearness of judgment and largeness of fancy, strength of reason and graceful elocution, a courage for the war and a fear for the laws, all eminently in one man, and that was my most noble and honored friend, Mr. Sidney Godolphin.” Leviathan 43.4, 43.5. Based on the principle “no wrong is done to a consenting party”; De Cive 3.7, Leviathan 18.6. For elaboration of the argument I offer below, see Lloyd 2017.

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sovereign and not to the subject. He explains that the subject obeying his sovereign’s command to act is the cause of the action but not the author of the action: “The author of a deed is he who commands that it be done; the cause is he through whose powers it is done.”79 An action belongs to the person who commands it: [W]hatsoever a subject . . . is compelled to do in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s.80

Hobbes explains that when the subject obeys the sovereign’s command “under terror of his laws” to act wrongly, we “cannot from thence argue that he approveth it, but [only] that he doth it for fear, and that it is not his act, but the act of his sovereign.”81 The general principle Hobbes concludes is that “the external actions done in obedience to [laws], without the inward approbation, are the actions of the sovereign, and not of the subject, which is in that case but as an instrument, without any motion of his own at all; because God hath commanded [subjects] to obey them [the sovereign’s laws].”82 An individual is morally responsible only for her own acts. Whether some deed she performed at her sovereign’s command is the sovereign’s act rather than her own act depends on her motive in performing it. If she disapproves of the action and does it only because her sovereign commands it, or only because she fears the sovereign’s punishment for disobedience, then the act is the sovereign’s and not hers. If instead she does the act because she personally judges it to be the right thing to do on the merits, the action is hers as well as the sovereign’s. Hobbes assigns responsibility for an action to the person whose “natural will” it expresses, writing that “to make a particular man unjust, which consisteth of a body and soul natural, there is required a natural and very will.”83 Subjects are artificial persons duty-bound to act on whatever the public (sovereign) wills; but they are simultaneously natural persons with their own natural wills, upon 79

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OL xlvi.22. In fact, Hobbes implies the stronger claim that one is author of an action only if he commands that it be done: people do many “things which God does not command, nor is therefore author of them,” L xxi.4, (emphasis added). This stronger claim implies that in a natural person “authoring” his own actions, his will is his command, so to speak, to himself. L xlii.11, emphasis added. OL is even more explicit: “if someone is a subject, as Naaman was, and is compelled by his king to do something, whatever it is, in such a way that he does it not of his own accord, but in obedience to the laws of his country, it is not his act, nor is it to be imputed to him, but to the king, i.e., it is an act of the commonwealth, and is to be imputed to the laws; and that it is not he, but his king, who has denied Christ.” 82 45.22, emphasis added. 42.106. Elements II.2.4. See Lloyd 2017 for discussion of this position.

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which alone moral responsibility depends. Hobbes insists that only God can search hearts, or perceive the motives that decide questions of moral responsibility and moral virtue.

8 Moral Motivation What can motivate moral behavior on Hobbes’s theory? Hobbes acknowledges that people could be motivated simply by their recognition that an action is morally required, that they could act, that is, “for the law’s sake”; but he finds this sort of internal motivation rare. If it were true that cheaters never win, narrow self-interest might suffice to motivate conformity with the laws of nature; but Hobbes concedes that the wicked do sometimes prosper in this life. Fear of divine punishment might motivate moral behavior, if such punishments were not so remote and so uncertain due to the prospect of divine forgiveness. Considering the benefits to others of our acting morally, our concern for the welfare of others, which Hobbes recognizes under the heading benevolence or charity, might motivate us; but most people’s benevolence is limited.84 One tremendously powerful source of motivation that might be harnessed to provide a more reliable support for moral action is the human desire to elicit others’ admiration and to avoid their contempt. Hobbes lays it down as a basic feature of human nature that each man cares very much that others should value him at least as highly as he values himself,85 which is a high bar to set because each also thinks himself wiser than most other men.86 He goes so far as to say that men’s voluntary encounters all seek either advantage or “reputation and honour among their companions.”87 In a civil society, where the natural laws bind in foro externo and are determinately specified by civil law, what morality requires is public knowledge. Everyone knows that everyone else knows that it is contrary to reason to do oneself what one would condemn in others. Because we know that the lawbreaker must demand that we observe the laws of nature, and know he knows that reciprocity is required, we will rightly conclude that he, in breaking them, is not governed by his own reason. Whether his failure is due to hypocrisy, weakness of will, or a childish or bestial lack of reason, it gives us grounds to look down on him as inferior in reason to 84 85 86 87

And in any case, as Gabriella Slomp shows in her chapter in this volume, benevolence may equally motivate misguided persons to attempt to advance others’ interests by immoral means. 13.5. “such is the nature of men . . . that they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves” 13.2. De Cive 1.2.

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ourselves; and he can anticipate that we will do so. The motivation to conform to reason’s requirements (of rightness as reciprocity and goodness as sociability) might thus be provided by the natural human concern for status. Further, Hobbes’s insistence that “all the mind’s pleasure is either glory (or to have a good opinion of oneself), or refers to glory in the end,”88 suggests that we desire the good opinion of others largely as evidence for a case we are trying to build in our own mind for our own value. The pleasure of self-admiration is what we crave, and moral behavior may become an important requisite to enjoying that.89

9 The Philosophical Status of Hobbes’s Moral Theory What should we conclude from this effort to gather Hobbes’s moral theory? First, he does have a recognizably moral theory. That theory is prescriptive, governs actions affecting the interests of other people, and imposes constraints on the pursuit of self-interest (as is typical of moral theories). In it the right depends on an idea of conformity with reason, where reason requires consistency in evaluative attitudes, expressed as a dictate of natural law. Moral good and evil are determined by their conformity to that same reciprocity requirement of reason in the actions of common life, rather than by personal feelings of appetite or aversion. Hobbes’s theory does not reduce morality to personal profit or enlightened self-interest. Although morality never demands disastrous self-sacrifice from us, and conforming to its demands often does benefit us, the reciprocity constraint it imposes on us is neither justified in terms of selfinterest, nor guaranteed never to cross it. The moral theory is thus not any form of ethical egoism, direct or indirect (rule). We also see that moral normativity does not depend on any facts about what God commands. The normativity of the laws of nature does not depend on their being literal law, and so does not depend on their being the commands of one whom we are formerly obligated to obey. That is not to say that moral norms are not also laws laid down by God to his subjects; some clearly are so in God’s prophetic kingdom, as Hobbes explicitly aims to demonstrate in every version of his political theory. The laws of nature 88 89

Rudiments 1.2. For development of the idea that the Hobbesian desire for glory, or self-admiration, may under certain social conditions be tapped to provide a motive for moral behavior see S. A. Lloyd, “All the Mind’s Pleasure: Glory, Self-Admiration, and Moral Motivation in De Cive and Leviathan” in Douglass and Olsthoorn (eds.), Hobbes’s On the Citizen: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, forthcoming).

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would make an equally strong claim on us even if God did not command their observation, because they make a claim on us in virtue of our human nature as agents in pursuit of ends justified by reasons. That means that Hobbes’s is not essentially a divine command theory of morality. Our account also explains why the normativity of natural laws does not depend on their having been embedded into positive law by a civil sovereign, nor on our having entered into some enforceable contract to observe them. It follows that Hobbes is not a moral contractarian, and that it is not the case that all morality is conventional. The requirements of the laws of nature are not voluntary obligations, but natural duties. Hobbes’s theory is also not intuitionist, because the rules of morality are not presented entire to our minds and apprehended by some (mysterious) faculty of moral intuition. They are theorems, derived by reasoning from the content of the concept of ‘accordance with reason’ and the basic social conditions for agency, along with our own reactive attitudes. This makes Hobbes a constructivist about the content of practical reasons, and a constitutivist about the authority of practical reason.90 Hobbes’s moral theory does see the value of a virtuous character, but it is not a virtue ethic that identifies right action by what the good person would do, rather than by independently ascertained moral rules. To make some theory a virtue ethic it is not enough that it applauds and encourages the acquisition of virtuous character traits. What matters is what comes first, conceptually. In Hobbes, the reciprocity rule for right action comes first, and a virtuous person is one who is reliably motivated in the right way to do what the rule requires. A projectivist account of moral rightness according to which our judgments of moral right project those reactive attitudes through which we hold one another responsible, is ruled out because wrongness requires more than the mere fact of blaming; it requires that actions be “blameable with reason”; and as we have seen, reason requires that our reactive attitudes be consistent over a given action type. A projectivist account of goodness is similarly ruled out because goodness likewise involves conformity with reasonable standards. We have found that moral judgments enjoy a modest degree of objectivity, because even though they are always perspectival, that is, made from the agent’s perspective, only consistent sets of reactive attitudes can constitute moral judgments. That makes moral judgments more than mere projections of our actual reactive attitudes. It would be 90

For insightful analysis of the moral theory herein described, see Noah Smith, “Review of Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes,” Notre Dame Philosophical Review, 2010.

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more accurate to say that moral judgments are picked out by idealized sets of consistent reactive attitudes of blaming, from the perspective of the agent. Hobbes developed an original and distinctive moral theory according to which perspectival applications of reciprocity establish moral norms for each individual. Happily, humans and their social circumstances are enough alike that there is substantial convergence among their norms, and complete convergence on a basic norm, reciprocity, which, he argues, entails a duty to defer any remaining moral disputes to a sovereign adjudicator. His is a provocative and productive idea that might bridge the gap between – or counteract the excesses of – the Kantian demand for universality, and the ethical egoist’s demand for exclusive attention to his own interests.91 It is a moral theory worth further investigation. 91

Lloyd 2009, 231.

chapter 8

Interpreting Hobbes on Civil Liberties and Rights of Resistance Susanne Sreedhar

In contemporary Western liberal democracies, the term “civil rights” or “civil liberties” refers to a cluster of rights, freedoms, or entitlements that people have simply by virtue of their membership in society. The cluster includes, for instance, freedom of conscience and expression, freedom from torture or arbitrary arrest, privacy rights, and procedural protections such as the right to a fair trial. In the United States, civil rights have come to refer particularly to freedoms from discrimination and rights to equality, and are associated with mass movements for social justice. The fundamental shared feature of this cluster of rights is that they constrain the legitimate exercise of state power. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes also argued that there are some inalienable rights that people necessarily retain when they enter into the social contract. Parties to the social contract could not give up these rights, even if they tried. Further, Hobbes conceives of those rights as rights against the sovereign, albeit only in the sense that they are rights to disobey or resist a particular exercise of sovereign power. But that is where the similarity with “civil rights” as we now think of them ends. For Hobbes, people outside civil society (i.e., in the state of nature) have in effect unlimited natural rights; those rights are limited only by their conscience, as they interpret the limitations imposed by natural law. They give up almost all their natural rights when they institute a commonwealth and become its subjects, but there are rights that every subject retains. The most prominent is a right of self-defense, which Hobbes primarily conceives as the right to resist the state’s attempts to kill you. This right of self-defense applies even when the state has properly tried you and sentenced you to death. There is the right to resist “wounds, chains, and imprisonment” (Leviathan 14.8; see also 14.29). There is the right to refuse to testify against yourself and to lie in court to protect yourself or certain 141

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other people who stand in a certain relation to you; Hobbes mentions spouses, parents, children, and benefactors (Leviathan 14.30; De Cive 2.19). There is the right to refuse to go to war or to flee the battlefield (Leviathan 21.16). There is also, perhaps surprisingly, the right to refuse to obey commands that would cause serious harm to one’s reputation (De Cive 6.13). Finally, there is the right to use certain necessities of life; Hobbes mentions air, food, water, a home, medicine, and the use of fire (Leviathan 21.12; Elements of Law I.17.2). These rights are all rights of resistance or disobedience, and they have a particular normative status. Many scholars agree that Hobbes’s retained rights are what contemporary legal theorists, following Wesley Hohfeld, call “privileges,” “liberty rights,” or “permission rights,” where having the right to do X gives you the moral permission to do X.1 A “claim right,” by contrast, affords the right holder not just a permission to do X but it also generates a duty on others to respect that right. For Hobbes, civil rights – the inalienable rights of subjects – are permission rights only. They are “the particulars of the true liberty of a subject,” which he explains as “the thing[s] which, though commanded by the sovereign, he [a subject] may nevertheless without injustice refuse to do” (Leviathan 21.10). For Hobbes, a right is a liberty, a freedom from obligation. So, while Hobbes thinks that subjects have a right of self-defense, all he means by it is that if a subject refuses to obey a command to commit suicide or resists the imposition of the death penalty, she has not committed a wrong, an “injustice” in Hobbes’s terminology. She never gave up the right to protect herself and so she is morally permitted to do so. But there is no corresponding duty on anyone else to respect her right. In this sense, then, Hobbes’s use of the word “right” is quite different from our own. Hobbes’s views on rights raise a host of questions for contemporary readers. Thus, this chapter first provides an overview of the problems and possibilities of a relatively new approach to Hobbes commentary that boldly tries to apply some of Hobbes’s theory to contemporary issues that did not exist in Hobbes’s own time. Then, in trying to establish more grounding in the text of Hobbes for some of these issues, we will turn to a discussion of explorations of Hobbes’s own formulation of individual inalienable rights, considering what I call “local” and “global” issues in his theory. 1

There is debate about the suitability of Hohfeldian taxonomy for capturing the nuances of Hobbes’s account of the normativity of rights and obligations (Hohfeld 1920). See, for example, Curran, Lost in Translation (2006) and Can Rights Curb the Hobbesian Sovereign? (2006). For a response to Curran and a defense of using Hohfeldian language to describe Hobbes, see Yates 2013.

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Contemporary Applications Although Hobbes’s views on civil rights and liberties do not coincide with present-day views, there have been some notable attempts to apply Hobbesian insights to issues of contemporary concern. In the last few years, three volumes devoted either in whole or in significant part to such applications have been published: Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy (Routledge, 2017). Since it is unlikely, and in some cases impossible, that these issues would have occurred to Hobbes, this body of work is not Hobbes interpretation in any traditional sense. Rather, these scholars are asking what Hobbes might have said about various issues had he been exposed to them; or, more precisely, they are asking what follows from Hobbesian principles in the context of certain debates about which Hobbes himself could not have known. Notably, some of these inquiries come from feminist philosophers. For example, Joanne Boucher argues that Hobbes’s views on self-preservation can be marshaled in defense of women’s right to abortion. For Boucher, Hobbes’s right of self-defense “intersects with and may be seen as deepening [Judith Jarvis Thomson’s and Eileen McDonagh’s] arguments in favor of abortion rights” (2012, 221). Similarly, Joanne H. Wright (2012) invokes Hobbes’s views on the nature of consent to illuminate feminist debates over elective breast augmentation. Eleanor Curran (2017) uses Hobbesian arguments in support of the right of same-sex couples to marry. Other scholars have focused on some of the standard topics in applied moral philosophy such as medical ethics (Rhodes 2017), physician-assisted suicide (Boucher 2017), and informed consent (Adams 2017). Other scholars address topics that Hobbes himself acknowledged but cast those topics in more contemporary terms. Here, we find discussions on how Hobbes can be applied to free speech (van Mill 2017), the welfare state (Narveson 2017), terrorism (Anderson 2017), fiscal policy (McArthur 2013), global justice (James 2013), and human rights (Green 2013). Since Hobbes had views on how the government should manage its finances, what services it should provide to subjects, and how it should conduct itself in relation to other states, these discussions have stronger ties to Hobbesian discourse than discussions on, for example, surgical breast augmentation. Because Hobbes was one of the forefathers of “realpolitik,” it is not surprising that people turn to him to think about challenges facing current

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international relations. Even these scholars, though, must fill in certain blanks in Hobbes’s arguments to adapt them to contemporary problems. It is important to note that this is a particular genre of writing, asking what Hobbes would have said about an issue that did not or could not arise in his time. It is striking how many of those who are writing in it claim to fit Hobbes into a framework that is palatable to contemporary audiences, most often a liberal one. One possible explanation for this is that academics tend to be fairly liberal, and so they mine the history of philosophy for figures and ideas that seem to support their own political leanings. Interestingly, though, the figure in question here is Thomas Hobbes, not John Locke or John Stuart Mill, whose views lend themselves much more readily to the liberal project. On the contrary, Hobbes is one of the figures most associated with authoritarianism, and arguably saw himself as an enemy of what we would now associate with civil rights or liberties. This genre, then, involves a selectivity in focus. I offer this observation not as a criticism. I believe there is value in this kind of exercise, and I myself have contributed to all three volumes mentioned above. It is noteworthy, however, that scholars who write in this genre tend to draw on certain parts of Hobbes’s theory: his individualism, his emphasis on the limits of political obligation in terms of natural rights, and his arguments about the moral constraints on how the sovereign should rule. They tend not to invoke, for example, his defense of monarchy or his criticisms of limited or divided government. Applications of Hobbes to contemporary issues are thought provoking and controversial, and it will be interesting to see how these discussions continue to develop. New topics for application are likely to emerge. How, if at all, can Hobbesian principles be applied to Internet privacy, for instance, or genetic engineering? As new issues arise, scholars will likely reread Hobbes for new insights. It is best, however, to come to these discussions on the soundest possible footing – that is, beginning the inquiry first and foremost with attention to Hobbes’s text and the nature and quality of the arguments therein. The remainder of this essay, therefore, attends to fundamental interpretive and philosophical questions about Hobbes’s articulated views on civil rights.

Local and Global Disputes What does a survey of the larger landscape of scholarly commentary on this specific aspect of Hobbes, the inalienable rights of subjects, reveal?

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In the history of commentary on this subject in roughly the last half century, two main areas of inquiry emerge. First, there are what we might call “local” questions about the account of civil rights itself. What exactly are the rights that Hobbes thinks people retain? He is clear on the right of self-defense, but others are ambiguous or merely gestured at. What are his arguments in favor of these rights? Do those arguments work? That is, are they logical and plausible? Second, there are “global” issues concerning the place of that account within his larger political theory. Is his account of retained rights consistent with his theory as a whole? Is it compatible with his insistence on absolutism, his prohibition on justified rebellion, and/or his description of the social contract? The local and global issues are logically distinct, though the scholars who have spent the most time with Hobbes on the rights of subjects tend to address both; notable examples include Jean Hampton (1986), Gregory Kavka (1986), Susanne Sreedhar (2010), and Eleanor Curran (2007). Local questions raise a host of thorny issues. Hobbes devotes relatively few words to the issue of retained rights, at least directly; nonetheless, understanding his account of those rights is no easy task. There are two places in Leviathan where we find explicit attempts to justify the inalienability of the right of self-defense. The first appearance of the right of selfdefense in Leviathan reads as follows: Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or renounceth it, it is either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to himself or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act, and of the voluntary acts of every man the object is some good to himself. And therefore there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words or other signs to have abandoned or transferred. As, first, a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them who assault him by force, to take away his life, because he cannot be understood to aim thereby at any good to himself (Leviathan 14.8).

Later in that same chapter, he repeats his insistence that the right of selfdefense is inalienable. He says, “to promise that which is known to be impossible is no covenant,” and explains that “the promise of not resisting force in no covenant transferreth any right, nor is obliging” (Leviathan, 14.25) because man by nature chooseth the lesser evil, which is danger of death in resisting, rather than the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all men, in that they lead criminals to execution and prison with armed men, notwithstanding that such criminals have consented to the law by which they are condemned (Leviathan, 14.29).

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Here, the right of self-defense is represented as the right to resist punishment, and this is how Hobbes usually discusses it. James Martel calls it “the right to kick and scream on the way to the gallows” (2000, 34). A favorite scholarly illustration of Hobbes’s claim is the case of Socrates: on Hobbes’s account, he had the right to refuse to drink the hemlock. If he had refused, Socrates would have been executed anyway, just as Martel’s criminal who kicks and screams on his way to the gallows ends up hanging just the same. Hobbes’s right of self-defence thus threatens to be futile in the face of the state’s aggregated power. Nonetheless, he does give explicit, specific, centrally located arguments that the right of self-defense is inalienable. Indeed, the very first thing he does after explaining how rights in general can be alienated is to argue that there are some rights that it is impossible to alienate. It is clear that Hobbes took the inalienability of the right of selfdefense to be an important, nonnegotiable part of his theory. Some clues to the wider importance of this right can be found in Hobbes’s defenses of it. Commentators identify distinct arguments in the text, though they carve up the terrain in different ways and label the arguments differently. Claire Finkelstein finds the “argument from benefit,” the “argument from involuntariness,” and the “argument from incapacity” (2001, 338–9). Jeremy Waldron identifies the “argument based on the unintelligibility of any covenant purporting to renounce the liberty of self-defense” and the “argument based on the impossibility of performing any such covenant” (2000, 719). Sreedhar names the “conceptual impossibility argument” and the “psychological impossibility argument” (2010, 30–2). Gregory Kavka simply calls them “the first argument for inalienability” and “the second argument for inalienability” (1986, 322–3). One common factor among these diverse commentators is that they tend to reconstruct the core arguments along the same lines. The scholars mentioned above, in particular, tend to agree that these arguments – as Hobbes presents them in Leviathan chapter 14 – do not work. In the various formulations of the argument, the crucial premise is that death is the worst evil: there can be “no good to oneself” in suffering it (Leviathan 14.8); it is always the “greater evil” (Leviathan 14.29). While one of the ideas Hobbes has traditionally been associated with is the claim that humans act in their own self-interest and that avoiding death at all costs is the fundamental element of self-interested behavior, most commentators have rejected this part of Hobbesian psychology.2 It is not difficult to imagine scenarios in which death is not the greater evil, and it is 2

Hobbes himself seems to recognize that there can be fates worse than death (e.g., De Cive 13.6).

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possible for people to choose it. For some, dishonor or damnation might be worse. Even if death were the worst possible thing, it is possible to see how it might be in a person’s best interest to transfer the right to resist it. Claire Finkelstein offers one such counterexample: For one can readily imagine situations in which a person might seek to benefit by abandoning his right to resist attackers. Suppose you have a knife to my throat, and you threaten to kill me now unless I agree to give up my right to self-defense for all future occasions. It would clearly be to my benefit to accept the terms of the agreement for the sake of avoiding certain death now. At least, as Hobbes would say, there is time of life gained (2001, 338).

The explicit formulations Hobbes gives of the inalienability argument are notoriously problematic. But does the failure of the explicit arguments for the right of self-defense in Leviathan chapter 14 mean that subjects in Hobbes’s commonwealth do not have the right of self-defense? That seems to be the position of some scholars (see, for example, the discussion of Steinberger below). However, even some of Hobbes’s harshest critics on this point ultimately admit that Hobbesian subjects would have a right of self-defense after all. After rejecting the official arguments Hobbes gives for the right of self-defense, Gregory Kavka is content to say that people have it anyway. Kavka reasons that the social contractors would deem it “pointless” to give up the right of self-defense and so they would retain it (1986, 336). In contrast, Finkelstein argues that Hobbesian social contractors would actively choose to keep their right of self-defense because they would want “the right to reject the sovereign’s authority in the event that he no longer rules with their welfare as his primary guiding principle. In other words, by retaining the right to self-defense, they have retained a natural right to revolution” (2001, 357–8). For both Finkelstein and Kavka, Hobbesian social contractors are able to give up their right of selfdefense, but they would choose not to for one reason or another. In other words, it is not that they cannot give up the right of self-defense; it is that they will not. Note that the Kavka/Finkelstein move has two important features. First, they explain the retention of the right of self-defense using reasons Hobbes did not give, and in the case of Finkelstein, using reasons Hobbes would reject. Pace Kavka, Hobbes did not think that subjects have a right of selfdefense merely because it was pointless to give it up. Finkelstein claims that social contractors would decide to retain the right of self-defense because they want a right of revolution in case the sovereign abuses his power. They retain it as what she calls, “the central political protection” (2001, 332).

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Finkelstein’s position would have been totally alien to Hobbes, since the centerpiece of his political theory is the prohibition on revolution, which is “warre renewed” (Leviathan 28.23). In the preface to De Cive, Hobbes describes the very purpose of the work to be the prevention of rebellion and regicide (8). Second, the conclusion that Kavka and Finkelstein establish is not the conclusion that Hobbes himself wants to establish. Hobbes thinks of the right of self-defense as inalienable, that it is impossible to give up. Kavka and Finkelstein establish a much weaker thesis, namely, that though the right of self-defense can be given up, it would not be. They think the right of self-defense is un-alienated, not that it is inalienable. In the context of theorizing about rights, that is a significant difference. In my own work, I have tried to articulate an interpretation of the Hobbesian right of self-defense that avoids both of these implications (Sreedhar 2008, 2010). I agree that the official arguments of Leviathan chapter 14 are indeed weak, at least as they are usually understood; however, I argue that we can reconstruct a successful argument for the right of self-defense by appealing to ideas found elsewhere in Hobbes. My account aims (1) to establish the relevant conclusion (that it is impossible for social contractors to alienate the right of self-defense), and (2) to support that conclusion with reasons that Hobbes not only accepts but actually articulates himself at other places in the Leviathan and, importantly, in The Elements of Law and De Cive. However, there is a way in which my interpretation is not as far from the Finkelstein/Kavka position as it first might seem. My reconstruction depends on making a distinction between the social contract that establishes the commonwealth and grounds all political obligation and other contracts, which could serve any number of purposes and contain any number of provisos. I think that Hobbes’s own arguments do not support the claim that the right of self-defense cannot be given up in any contract whatsoever. Instead, I think he can only support the inalienability of the right of self-defense in the social contract. Luckily, this is, in my view, the only contract he cares about where self-defense is concerned. If the story ended there, it would be complicated enough. But Hobbes is no fan of the facile, and his views on inalienable rights take some unexpected turns. He extends his account of retained rights, adding rights that range from the ordinary (the right to resist wounds as well as death, the right to refuse to testify against oneself) to the remarkable (the right to refuse military service) to the bewildering and downright odd (the right to refuse to obey commands to do things that are entirely safe but dishonorable and the right to refuse to incriminate a benefactor). Readers have been

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understandably perplexed and even annoyed. Why would the right to defend yourself from physical harm give you the right to defend your reputation? The right to refuse to testify against yourself, which Hobbes sees as including the right to lie in court, seems to be a fairly natural extension of the right to resist punishment, but why does this right cover giving testimony against your benefactor? Is Hobbes really defending the right to be what we would now call a draft-dodger or a deserter? Hobbes gives little or no explanation for most of these additional rights. It is clear from the way he introduces the “true liberties of subjects” in Leviathan chapter 21 that he thinks of them as derivatives of the original inalienable right of self-defense, but he gives frustratingly little idea about how that derivation is supposed to go. It is hard to know what to call these other rights. I refer to the “corollaries” of the right of self-defense. Finkelstein talks about Hobbes’s “panoply of defensive rights” (2013, 57). There are a variety of other titles commenters have come up with to refer to this strange collection of additional rights that Hobbes claims subjects retain in a commonwealth. None of these labels is particularly satisfying. The dissatisfaction we feel at attempts to capture what Hobbes is talking about reflects, I think, something important about his thought. He probably did not have a coherent, well-defined, or developed idea of these retained rights, either individually or as a whole. For some, the fact that his remarks seem so ambiguous and odd is a reason to dismiss or disparage them. For example, Glenn Burgess (1994, 69) refers to these corollary rights as “peripheral, of little practical political significance, perhaps even embarrassing logical implications of his own theory that Hobbes would have liked to sweep under the carpet.” For others, it is an invitation or challenge to figure out what he had in mind and how it is all supposed to fit together in his account. I will now turn to some of the most notable attempts to understand and clarify various other retained rights in Hobbes’s philosophy. Understanding and clarification does not, however, entail justification or endorsement. Many of those who have excavated the text to provide insight into his thinking on the corollary retained rights conclude that they do not fit into the Hobbesian theoretical edifice. Making headway on this problem does not, therefore, necessarily lead to a more favorable view of Hobbes. Hobbes’s views on military service have received some attention in the secondary literature because his claims about it are striking: although he considers that a drafted soldier has the right to flee the battlefield “without injustice,” an enlisted soldier – one who has “enrolleth himself a soldier, or taketh imprest money” – does not (Leviathan 21.16). Apparently, then, he

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thinks it is possible to give up one’s right of self-defense, understood to be the right to take the necessary means to protect one’s life. Deborah Baumgold (1983, 1988) was among the first to devote attention to this matter and she resolves the conflict in the following way. She reads Hobbes as offering a theory of role duties and argues that people in their role as soldiers can give up their right of self-defense, but they cannot give it up in their role as subjects. There are many more local problems about how to make sense of these various rights of resistance, how we should understand in what they consist and on what grounds they are justified. I argue that there is a coherent account of retained rights that can be reconstructed. I identify three principles in Hobbes’s political theory – “the reasonable expectations principle”; “the fidelity principle”; and “the necessity principle” – and attempt to demonstrate that all Hobbes’s examples of retained rights can be explained by one or more of these principles (Sreedhar 2008, 2010). By making a distinction between what he calls “mere obedience to law” and “fidelity to law,” Larry May (2013) likewise defends Hobbes’s claims about rights. Eleanor Curran (2007) also thinks that there is a coherent account of retained rights, though she interprets them as positive rights. It is extraordinarily difficult to iron out the details of many of Hobbes’s claims about retained rights, so there is much more work to be done on the local level. Different types of difficulties appear on the global level. On a global level, critics charge that Hobbes’s inalienable rights generate an inconsistency in his political theory because his doctrine of retained rights is incompatible with other central commitments: his account of absolute sovereignty and/or his prohibition on rebellion. The problem of rebellion poses the largest conceptual and practical threat to the cogency of the Hobbesian commonwealth. If critics like Finkelstein are right that Hobbes must allow for rightful rebellion, then not only was Hobbes confused when he claimed that rebellion was always wrong but he has also introduced a fatal contradiction into his own system. Hobbes’s contemporary, Bishop Bramhall, was the first to make this sort of charge, famously calling Leviathan a “rebel’s catechism” (1995, 145). If correct, this accusation is indeed devastating for Hobbes, since a main aim – if not the main aim – of Leviathan was to turn men away from rebellion. More than three hundred years later, Jean Hampton developed this criticism, arguing that it is the ultimate downfall of Hobbes’s theory; she says, “this problem is so serious that it renders the entire Hobbesian justification for absolute sovereignty invalid” (1986, 197).

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Another way to put this criticism is to say that Hobbes’s inalienable rights are inconsistent with absolute sovereignty (Gauthier 1988; Warrender 1957). The most extreme defense against such a charge of inconsistency is simply to deny that Hobbes was committed to one of the assertions. Peter Steinberger (2002) takes this route, denying that Hobbesian subjects have inalienable rights of resistance against their state. Steinberger says, The authority of the [Hobbesian] state qua state is absolute and unlimited, hence the obligation of the citizens is equally absolute. But when the state fails to accomplish the things it was designed to accomplish – when, indeed, it subverts the very ends for which it was created – then the contract that the citizens had entered into with one another has now been abrogated, hence has been rendered null and void, in which case the state is literally no longer. The citizens are no longer citizens but are immediately plunged back into a condition of mere nature, and each individual is obliged only to maximize his or her interests as he or she determines. (859)

When the conditions for the right of self-defense or any of its corollaries kick in, the person (no longer a citizen or subject) encounters a hostile power (no longer a state, even though it calls itself one). Steinberger’s solution to the problem is admirably clean. He defines it away. Steinberger emphasizes Hobbes’s care with definitions, and argues that the state, properly understood, is the entity that protects subjects, so whatever unprotected people are resisting, it is not their state. Since the state is the thing that protects citizens, “the right to resist is never a right to resist the state” (860). It is, rather, the right to protect oneself when the state fails. It is tempting to go this semantic route, since it preserves both Hobbes’s absolutism and wholesale prohibition on rebellion. Steinberger gives the strongest and most developed articulation of this position, but we find similar moves made by others in the secondary literature.3 For example, Johan Olsthoorn (2014) argues that there is no such thing as a rebellious subject because once a person is rebelling, he or she is no longer a subject. Unlike Steinberger, Olsthoorn does not generalize the point to encompass Hobbes’s entire account of political disobedience; instead, he limits his argument to the case of rebellion. 3

Renato Janine Ribeiro says, “People absolved of their allegiance because their lives are threatened by the ruler recover their full right of nature. They are no longer subjects, so we cannot talk of rebellion” (2011, 57). See also Davis (2006). Lloyd makes a similar point, though not in the context of resistance. She says, “Acceptance of protection is enough to make me a member (assuming I have no prior incompatible obligation); and lack of protection is enough to extinguish my membership” (1992, 72).

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While this solution is attractive, it has certain shortcomings that are common to all such attempts to define away the problem. It is clear that Hobbes does think of some of the cases as situations where lack of protection serves to end the person’s membership in civil society – for instance, when a soldier is taken prisoner of war or when the garrison is under the control of another sovereign. But it is equally clear that this is not how Hobbes views many of the cases of justified resistance. The person who lies under oath to protect herself or her benefactor is not, therefore, also freed from all her political obligations such that she is no longer morally required to, for example, pay taxes. This is simply not how Hobbes conceives of retained rights. He talks about them as rights of subjects. Perhaps it is better to interpret Hobbesian sovereignty as less than absolute, à la Gauthier, rather than take on Steinberger’s position on Hobbesian political obligation. Steinberger tacitly recognizes this; he says that Hobbes must allow a “full-fledged theory of revolution,” but immediately qualifies this, adding “or its functional equivalent” (856). He has to add this qualification because, strictly speaking, revolution is impossible on Steinberger’s account: as soon as subjects rise up, they are in the state of nature and there is no state for them to rebel against. Steinberger is not alone in seeing a semantic problem here. To whom do we ascribe Hobbesian rights of resistance? Are they rights that are exercised by members of the commonwealth or are they simply expressions of the full natural right of people in the state of nature? Maximilian Jaede (2016) directly confronts the semantic problem and offers an interesting way out. He stipulates that there is no fact of the matter about whether someone is a subject or not and argues that it is the duty of sovereigns to decide. Jaede’s solution thus incorporates the question whether rebels remain subjects into the existing Hobbesian edifice, making it just another question that comes under the sovereign’s purview for authoritative interpretation. At this point, it is helpful to take a step back and discuss three considerations in the secondary literature as a whole. The first is the difficulty arising from a lack of clear boundaries around the set of retained rights; the second is a question about judgment; and the third is attention to the duties of the sovereign. First, it is common for scholars to interpret Hobbesian retained rights as broad, including life, liberty, and what Steinberger calls a “relatively commodious, free and happy life,” the “good life” with a “plausible array of creature comforts” (2002, 858, 857). Hobbes seems to be positing that if

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obeying a command makes the quality of your life fall below a certain level, you have the right to disobey that command. This idea of a threshold for a decent life, what I call a “minimum quality of life” (Sreedhar 2010, 99), unites the various permissions to disobey orders to testify against loved ones or those you depend on economically, claims about retaining the right to food, air, and medicine, and even the claim about disobeying commands that so threaten one’s reputation that one might prefer death to the dishonor that results. However, the boundaries are unclear at the local level; Hobbes does not give us a way to delineate with any certainty where that threshold lies. As a result, Hobbesian resistance rights have a tendency to expand, and this tendency motivates worries about his views on rebellion and absolutism on the global level. On these grounds, Hampton argues that Hobbesian political obligation ceases to be genuine obligation; rather than being obligated to obey, subjects engage in a series of “expected-utility calculations” (1986, 201). This seems to me one of the central sources of problems for Hobbes: he is clear that people leave the state of nature not simply to preserve their lives but for hopes of a better life, yet he is unclear about exactly what that means. Moreover, there is obviously a connection between the various disparate rights to resist sovereign power and the lack of this “better” life. But since he does not tell us exactly how bad one’s life has to be in order for the right to resist to kick in, he opens himself up to all sorts of challenges. Thus, what he seemed to conceive as a relatively narrow set of resistance rights has tempted some interpreters to call into question all instances of political obedience. A second ambiguity in Hobbes generates a related question: who has the right to judge? For Hobbes, people have the liberty to disobey commands that threaten to make their lives fall below a certain level of quality or security, though as I said above, it is not clear where that level is. But does the right to judge whether there is a right to resist belong to the subject or the sovereign? On the one hand, the “true” liberties of subjects are the parts of natural right that are retained in the social contract, and the Hobbesian right of nature is a right of judgment, namely, a right to act on one’s own judgment about what is necessary for one’s self-preservation. Thus, it seems that the subjects themselves will judge whether or not their lives are sufficiently good to warrant their obedience to law. On the other hand, people surrender their rights to act on their own judgments when they agree to the social contract. It is my view that, contra Jaede, the retained rights must be rights of judgment on the part of the subjects who retain them. But this remains an open question.

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Of course, it is also the case that subjects will judge, whether they have the right to or not. As Alan Ryan points out, this inevitable consequence of Hobbes’s theory seems to invite subjects constantly to judge the quality of the sovereign’s rule and might thereby foment rebellion. Because it was built on individualist and rationalist foundations, [it] must, in spite of its author’s intentions, leave room not only for individual resistance but also, in extremis, for fully fledged rebellion. Leviathan may well have framed the minds of many gentlemen to a conscientious obedience, but it also framed in many others a disposition to ask whether the sovereign had failed to secure our peace and safety or was visibly about to do so (1996, 241).4

Rightfully or not, people will judge the quality of their lives under any given sovereign’s rule and resist or rebel accordingly. Notice that this way of putting the point avoids the semantic problem about whether to call “rebels” “subjects” just as it disallows any semantic solutions. It holds whether the rebels are thought of as subjects or as occupants of the state of nature. Other scholars take a different approach, embracing a putative Hobbesian right of rebellion, instead of trying to explain it away. Claire Finkelstein sees this as a benefit for his theory, as do Eleanor Curran and Renato Janine Ribeiro. Though it is only a permission right, Finkelstein argues, it holds some sway over the motivations of sovereigns; she reasons that sovereigns who knowingly and purposefully violate the self-defense rights of their subjects violate natural law and are accountable to God, which gives sovereigns a reason to respect such things.5 Interestingly enough, these kinds of interpretations move the discussion closer to the question with which this essay began about how Hobbes can be relevant today. Hobbes himself would never have countenanced a right of rebellion, but most people now take this right to exist. As difficult as it is to iron out the details of Hobbes’s account of retained rights, perhaps it is even more difficult to determine whether this account strengthens or weakens his political theory as a whole. Here, I will make a final observation about what commonly arises in discussions that take up these subjects. While scholarly discussions about 4

5

For a similar point, see Shelton (1992, 260). Similarly, Clarendon, one of Hobbes’s contemporaries, protests that Hobbes is “so cruel as to devest his Subjects of all that Liberty, which the best and most peaceable men desire to possess, yet he literally and bountifully confers upon them such a liberty as no honest man can pretend to, and which is utterly inconsistent with the security of the Prince and People” (Clarendon (1995, 234)). In this sense, Finkelstein’s project, like Kavka’s before her, must be Hobbesian.

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Hobbes’s retained rights range from the annoyed (Burgess 1994) to the intensely critical (Hampton 1986; Ribeiro 2011) to the laudatory or apologetic (Sreedhar 2010; May 2013), they almost inevitably converge on the same topic: the role of the sovereign in preventing the problematic exercise of these rights. When acting rightly, the Hobbesian sovereign is a beneficent dictator. Civil society should provide the basic necessities of life, the provision of which grounds political obedience. For example, Ribeiro suggests that the sovereign “pave the way for economic development” so subjects can pursue their various desires and thus avoid the discontent that might motivate and perhaps justify their disobedience (2011, 44). I maintain that sovereigns should avoid going to war unnecessarily because doing so threatens to trigger the right to disobey by putting conscripted soldiers in danger (Sreedhar 2013). Others have suggested that we rethink Hobbes’s views of motivation. Perhaps Hobbes needs subjects to be motivated by what S. A. Lloyd (1992) calls “transcendent interests” – interests that override the interest in temporal self-preservation – in order to secure a sufficient percentage of the population who are willing to risk their lives for their country. A crucial function in this regard is the civic education that Hobbes so firmly insists on. It appears, then, that Hobbes’s arguments about resistance rights have as much to do with the behavior of the sovereign as they do with what subjects are allowed to do. Perhaps this approach is more direct (or less tendentious) than it seems, though: Hobbes’s supreme political belief is that subjects serve their own self-interests best when they establish and maintain a stable sovereign authority. The existence of these rights may represent a means to curtail certain exercises of sovereign authority that would ultimately be self-destructive to that authority. Of course, for Hobbes, the sovereign’s duty to act for the welfare of the people is a duty to natural law and God, not to the people, and the significance of this cannot be understated (see, e.g., Lloyd 2009, 33–49). Nevertheless, in the critical discourse about Hobbes, interpreters ultimately steer the conversation toward what duties sovereigns have to prevent subjects from being in the kinds of conditions where they would be justified in rebelling. The convergence among commentators on this point is telling. Whatever ambiguities and concerns civil rights introduce into Hobbes’s philosophy, the solution to those problems, in practice if not in theory, lies with the Hobbesian sovereign and his or her ability to create and maintain the kinds of conditions in which most subjects have as little cause to exercise their civil rights as possible.

chapter 9

Hobbes and Christian Belief Johann Sommerville

This chapter is about the vexed question of whether Hobbes held Christian beliefs, and also about some of the things he said concerning beliefs that were commonplace among his Christian contemporaries and predecessors. Arguably there is something invidious about prying into Hobbes’s beliefs. He himself insisted that even the sovereign ought not to try to discover the private beliefs of individuals. The law, he said, was “the Rule of Actions onely” and should not be extended “to the very Thoughts and Consciences of men, by Examination and Inquisition of what they Hold, notwithstanding the Conformity of their Speech and Actions” (Lev. 46:471/378; 37). If it is wrong for the sovereign to launch an inquisition into privately held beliefs, it is presumably at least as wrong for lesser mortals to do so. Moreover, it may be impossible to determine what his beliefs were, since our main evidence must be the things he said, and (as he implied) speech and writing might not always be reliable guides to belief. A further difficulty that we have in interpreting Hobbes is that he sometimes employed irony, or joked, or played on words, in ways that suggest we cannot always take what he said as straightforward expressions of his own opinions. But perhaps we may at least propose a range of beliefs he is likely to have held, given what he said. It is arguable – as George Wright convincingly contends – that whether or not Hobbes was in some sense a Christian makes little difference to how we should interpret his broad theories on politics or religion.1 In what follows, we shall touch upon that point, and more generally survey what Hobbes said about Christianity, and about God and revelation.

1

Wright 2006, 181–2.

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Christianity Hobbes discussed Christianity at length, especially in Leviathan and later in Historia Ecclesiastica.2 The latter is a Latin poem, which surveys the history of the church from ancient times to the eve of the Reformation. It ends with a description of a true Christian, or the kind of person to whom Christ will give eternal happiness. He is unambitious, mild, compassionate, and not prone to anger. He tries to live justly, and to correct his own faults, while being willing to forgive those of other people. The rest of the book makes it clear that (in Hobbes’s view) many who claimed to be Christians were no such thing. The earliest Christians had been simple folk, but as the faith grew so did the movement’s wealth and power. Ambitious people acquired influence over unsophisticated Christians. The simple Christian message was corrupted by the seditious teachings and meaningless jargon of clerics who took their ideas from Greek philosophy rather than from Christ and the Apostles. Ordinary people could not understand these educated clergymen, and dared not contradict them. Soon, different groups of clergy came into conflict with each other on abstruse points of doctrine. They asserted authority over religious matters and used it to increase their power in the secular sphere. The pope was the most successful at this. To win converts, pagan rites were Christianized, further distorting Christian teachings. Popes asserted power over kings, and disastrous consequences followed. Earlier, the frauds and cheats of the pope and the clergy had already begun to arouse criticism, and Luther had started the Reformation. But clerics continued to preach subversive principles, which resulted in the killing of Charles I in England and Henry III and Henry IV in France.3 In Leviathan, Hobbes similarly rejected claims by any Christian church to authority that is independent of civil sovereigns. Discussing church-state relations, he asserted that “Temporal and Spirituall Government, are but two words brought into the world, to make men see double, and mistake their Lawfull Soveraign” (Lev. 39:322/248; 5). He contended that the simple principles of the first Christians had been distorted by grasping clerics and overlaid with incomprehensible dogmas drawn from pagan superstitions, 2

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Hobbes, Historia Ecclesiastica: Critical Edition, Including text, translation, introduction, commentary and notes, ed. Patricia Springborg, Patricia Stablein, and Paul Wilson, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2008, 77–100, provides evidence for dating the composition of the poem to 1659–71. It was first published in 1688. Hobbes, Historia Ecclesiastica, 578–81, lines 2230–42 (true Christian); 356–9, lines 487–98 (ordinary people cannot understand clergy); 468–79, lines 1311–402 (Christianization of pagan rites); 444–7, lines 1157–62 (Charles I, Henry III, and Henry IV).

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and from Greek philosophy and its later derivative, scholasticism. These dogmas served the purpose of promoting the interests of the clergy at the expense of civil sovereigns. Hobbes argued that in every Christian state, the sovereign should have full authority over religious as well as secular matters. He asserted that if we interpret the Bible correctly we will conclude that in order to attain salvation we must make “a serious Endeavour to Obey” God, and that meant obeying God’s appointee, the sovereign, and also the moral rules which reason established – namely the laws of nature.4 Christ, he said, “hath not given us new Laws, but Counsel to observe those wee are subject to; that is to say, the Laws of Nature, and the Laws of our severall Soveraigns” (Lev. 43:404/322; 5). Christ did not legislate, and the moral rules that bound Christians were precisely the same as those that applied to everyone else. The sovereign could make laws on all matters including religion, and subjects would be obliged to obey them. A sovereign might try to command us to believe or disbelieve something, but such an order would be “of no effect; because Beleef, and Unbeleef never follow mens Commands. Faith is a gift of God, which Man can neither give, nor take away by promise of rewards, or menaces of torture” (Lev. 42:343/271; 11). But though the sovereign could not successfully forbid me to believe something, he could prohibit me from expressing my belief. If the sovereign tells me that he has received a direct revelation from God, I may not believe him, and there is nothing he can do about that. He can, however, forbid me from voicing my views, and “may oblige me to obedience, so, as not by act or word to declare I beleeve him not; but not to think any otherwise then my reason perswades me” (Lev. 32:256/ 196; 5). On Hobbes’s interpretation of the Bible, it tells us that we will obtain salvation if we fulfill two requirements, of which obedience to laws is one. The other is belief that Jesus is the Christ – the son of God, who will rule the world upon his return. The “Onely Article of Faith, which the Scripture maketh simply Necessary to Salvation, is this, that JESUS IS THE CHRIST” (Lev. 43:407/324; 11). So, if what the Bible says is true, we will get saved provided that we strive to obey the law, and we believe that Jesus is the Christ. Of course, the Bible and Christian churches had a good deal to say about other points. In Hobbes’s opinion, whether or not you believe any of the non-fundamental principles enunciated in Scripture, or by some group of Christians, is irrelevant to salvation. 4

An excellent introduction to Hobbes’s theories on the laws of nature is Lloyd in Martinich and Hoekstra, eds 2016, 264–89.

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So the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the Lutheran idea of consubstantiation were equally unimportant. Hobbes claimed that there are “many things in Gods word above reason.” If we encounter material in the Bible that is “too hard for our examination,” he said, we should simply accept the words and not “labour in sifting out a Philosophicall truth by Logick, of such mysteries as are not comprehensible” (Lev. 32:256/195; 3). “For it is with the mysteries of our Religion,” he proceeded, “as with wholsome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the vertue to cure; but chewed, are for the most pan cast up again without effect” (Lev. 32:256/195; 3; a similar passage is in DC18:4, 238–9). It is possible to read Hobbes’s reference to pills as a jesting rejection of doctrines which his contemporaries defended passionately. Equally, he can be interpreted as making the perfectly serious point that some beliefs cannot be analyzed philosophically, and that it is therefore otiose to attempt to do so. It follows from Hobbes’s account that whatever Christian group we belong to we may attain salvation provided we believe in Christ and obey the law. He held that some self-styled Christians, such as papalist Catholics, had usurped power from sovereigns, and discouraged people from paying due obedience to them. You would not be saved if you believed that Jesus was the Christ, but failed to obey your sovereign – instead heeding the erroneous ideas of such supporters of papal power as Cardinal Bellarmine, whose theories Hobbes attacked in the lengthy forty-second chapter of Leviathan. But you would be saved if you acknowledged your sovereign’s authority and obeyed his laws, though you might accept Catholic teachings on some non-fundamental points. Hobbes stated that in every Christian commonwealth the sovereign is “the Supreme Pastor” and all other pastors “are but his Ministers,” even if he has granted authority to ordain pastors to another sovereign, “as divers Christian Kings allow that power to the Pope” (Lev. 42:373/295–6; 70). Sovereigns, he declared a few pages later, “may (as many Christian Kings now doe) commit the government of their Subjects in matters of Religion to the Pope.” If they do this, the pope acts as a subordinate, and the sovereign can terminate the pope’s commission when he deems it necessary (Lev. 42:378/300; 80). The Christian states that Hobbes had in mind when he talked about how some sovereigns licensed the pope to rule the church for them likely included France and Venice. In France, Gallican thinking thrived, and rejected the papalist arguments of Bellarmine, as did Paolo Sarpi and his allies in Venice. Hobbes was living in France when he wrote

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Leviathan, and he certainly knew of the ideas of Sarpi and other Venetians.5 Franck Lessay takes a somewhat different line when he tells us that at “one point” Hobbes “seems to envisage the possibility that the civil sovereign might commit the care of religious affairs to the Pope,” and refers to the second of the passages mentioned above. He affirms that Hobbes is here making “a thinly veiled joke.”6 But there is nothing akin to pleasantry in Hobbes’s straightforward statement that many Christian kings now in fact do commit the government of their subjects on religious issues to the pope. Here Hobbes does not envisage a possibility but states what is happening. Moreover, his position on this point is congruent with the rest of his theory. It is not compatible with the thinking of the many Protestants who maintained that Catholicism was fundamentally false and pernicious, and that the pope was Antichrist. Hobbes held that Antichrist had not yet come, rejecting the notion that he was the pope (Lev. 36:299/ 232; 20; 42:381–2/303–4; 88). Hobbes was not joking when he talked about sovereigns who delegate power over religion to the pope. But not infrequently he did play on words, and express himself humorously or ironically. For example, he listed various propositions maintained by Bellarmine, including “That the Pope has (in the Dominions of other Princes) the Supreme Temporal Power INDIRECTLY” (Lev. 42:394/314; 121). Bellarmine’s claim was that in secular matters princes were not under the direct temporal power of the pope, but that they were his subordinates on spiritual questions, and that spiritual authority was superior to temporal, so that he could intervene indirectly in the temporal affairs of their states if the spiritual good required such action. For instance, Queen Elizabeth I of England supported heretics against the true Catholic faith, and therefore Pope Pius V, who did not hold direct temporal power in England, was justified in using his spiritual power indirectly in the temporal sphere by deposing the Queen from her throne. The word “indirect” also had the meaning “in a devious, deceptive, or underhanded way.” Hobbes’s comment on the proposition of Bellarmine quoted above was that it “is denyed; unlesse hee mean by indirectly, that he has gotten it by Indirect means; then is that also granted” (Lev. 42:394/314; 121). Hobbes wrote at length against Bellarmine’s theory of indirect papal power in temporal matters. He often used arguments that had been 5 6

Hobbes’s links to Sarpi and other Venetians are discussed in Malcolm 2002, 8, 66, 458; Sommerville 1992, 6–8. Lessay in Sorell and Foisneau, eds 2004, 265–94, at 266–7.

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employed by earlier anti-papalists. For example, Bellarmine’s critics observed that the early Christians had not taken up arms against pagan Roman emperors, and contended that this was because they rightly believed that it was wrong actively to resist rulers. Bellarmine and his allies responded that the early Christians had refrained from resisting because they lacked the forces to do so successfully, not because resistance was unjustified. In reply, the Cardinal’s adversaries claimed that the Christians had ample forces, but rejected resistance as immoral. Typically, they observed that the Roman army came to include many Christian soldiers, who could have resisted the emperor effectively. Hobbes took the same basic line, but added his own entertaining twist. He affirmed that “our Saviour” did not lack “forces to depose Caesar, or at least Pilate” since Christ (as he says in Matthew 26:53) could have asked his Father for an immediate consignment of “twelve Legions of immortall, invulnerable Angels to assist him” (Lev. 42:400/ 318; 131). Surely, rather fewer angels could have defeated not only Pilate but also Caesar. As we have seen, Hobbes asserted that the only thing we need to believe in order to get saved is that Jesus is the Christ. He spelled out some of the implications of this core belief when he discussed the position of Christians under an infidel or non-Christian king and the possibility that they would face martyrdom. He suggested that once Christianity had been properly explained to the king, there would be little danger that he would persecute its practitioners. For what Infidel King is so unreasonable, as knowing he has a Subject, that waiteth for the second comming of Christ, after the present world shall bee burnt, and intendeth then to obey him (which is the intent of beleeving that Jesus is the Christ,) and in the mean time thinketh himself bound to obey the Laws of that Infidel King, (which all Christians are obliged in conscience to doe,) to put to death, or to persecute such a Subject? (Lev. 43:414/331; 23)

Christians, in short, are people who believe they are bound scrupulously to obey their sovereign’s laws until the world is burned and Christ returns. The infidel king is arguably likely to think them odd or even crazed, but not dangerous. Interestingly, Hobbes (unlike a number of apologists for the Christian religion) did not emphasize its reasonableness. On his account, the infidel king will tolerate Christians because they obey him, not because they use good arguments to support Christianity. True, their religion does give them an incentive to obey that members of many other groups lack, for the Bible says that salvation depends upon obedience.

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Unlike paganism and even Judaism, Christianity was much concerned with personal immortality.7 Hobbes noted that in Christian countries “all men either beleeve, or at least professe the Scripture to bee the Word of God, and in other Common-wealths scarce any” (Lev. 43:406/324; 8). One explanation of this fact offered by some was that divine providence had especially favored certain lands and that Christians have spread the truth (namely Christianity) there, persuading people to recognize it by their virtuous lives and the force of their arguments. Hobbes’s account was more prosaic. Those who did believe, he said, did so because that is what they had been taught. The “means of making them beleeve which God is pleased to afford men ordinarily, is according to the way of Nature, that is to say, from their Teachers.” So in Christian countries people believe the Bible is the word of God because “they are taught it from their infancy; and in other places they are taught otherwise” and therefore do not believe it (Lev. 43:406/324; 8). Of course, people could later come to reject things that they had been taught in infancy, and Hobbes himself grew to reject Aristotelian philosophy. Did he also abandon belief in Christian teachings? He lived in Christian countries, and there (as he said) people either believed or professed that the Bible was the revealed word of God. So far, we have examined some of the teachings that Hobbes said could be found in the Bible. Did he believe they were things that God had revealed, or did he merely profess such belief? Let us turn to what he said about God and revelation.

God and Revelation Hobbes maintained that by natural reason we can know that there is a God, but we can discover little about Him. The “nature of God is incomprehensible,” he claimed, adding that “we understand nothing of what he is, but only that he is; and therefore the Attributes we give him, are not to tell one another, what he is, nor to signifie our opinion of his Nature, but our desire to honor him with such names as we conceive most honorable amongst our selves” (Lev. 34:271/208; 4). He claimed that reason showed that in each commonwealth there should be public and uniform 7

Mortimer, “Christianity and Civil Religion in Hobbes’s Leviathan,” in Martinich and Hoekstra, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes, 501–19, at 506. Other important, and contrasting, recent discussions of aspects of Hobbes’s religious thought include Lupoli, “Hobbes and Religion without Theology,” in the same volume at 453–80, and Collins, “Thomas Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History,” also in the same volume, at 520–44.

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worship of God, and that we should honor God as our sovereign commands us (Lev. 31:253/192; 38). Hobbes argued that natural reason can discover little about God. Of course, Christians held that revelation gives us much more information about the divine will than mere reason can provide. Hobbes spent much of Leviathan, and a fair proportion of De Cive and the Elements of Law, quoting and analyzing the words of the Bible. A plausible conclusion might be that he believed the Scriptures were an authoritative guide to revealed religious truths. An alternative hypothesis is that he knew that many of his contemporaries revered the Bible, and therefore found it useful to support his views with Scriptural arguments, even if he did not believe that the Bible contained genuine revelations. Or perhaps he enjoyed concocting outlandish interpretations of biblical passages to irritate conventional churchmen. The royalist cleric Henry Hammond, who served as chaplain to Charles I, referred to Leviathan as “a farrago of all the maddest divinity that ever was read,” and contended that Hobbes destroyed the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and heaven and hell.8 The barrister John Whitehall declared that Leviathan was full of “Errors and Blasphemies” and that it tended to “the extirpation of all sense of Religion out of the minds of Men.”9 Whitehall noted that Hobbes expressed doubts about whether we are bound to believe things that others say have been revealed to them by God, and asserted that he thus “makes an end of all belief in the Scriptures.” He thought it likely that Hobbes was in fact a Muslim.10 In the opinion of William Lucy, Bishop of St David’s, Hobbes’s assertion that we cannot rely on claims made by others that they have received revelations from God unless we ourselves have also been favored by a divine revelation to that effect serves “to render Christian religion suspected.”11 These arguments deserve attention. Hobbes tells us that when “God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately; or by mediation of another man, to whom he had formerly spoken by himself immediately.” How God speaks to a man immediately, he proceeded, “may be understood by those well enough, to whom he hath so spoken” – though he went on to argue that many people who think they have had revelations are in fact mistaken. Still, let us suppose someone has had a genuine divine revelation, and that he tells another person about it. How is that second person to be sure that the first really did have 8 9 11

Henry Hammond to Matthew Wren, October 21, 1651, in “Illustrations of the State of the Church during the Great Rebellion,” in The Theologian and Ecclesiastic 9(1850), 295. 10 Whitehall 1679, A4b-A5a. Ibid., 90 (quotation); A3b-4a, 61 (Muslim). Lucy 1673, 148.

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a revelation? “For if a man pretend to me, that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce, to oblige me to beleeve it.” If the person who claims to have had the revelation is my sovereign then (as we saw) he cannot oblige me to believe him, though he can forbid me from publicizing my disbelief (Lev. 32:256/196; 5). Someone might say that he received a revelation in a dream. But to say that God spoke to him in a dream, declared Hobbes, “is no more then to say he hath dreamt that God spake to him.” Dreams generally have natural causes, and dreams that God has spoken to you probably stem from “foolish arrogance, and false opinion” of your godliness or virtue (Lev. 32/256–7/196; 6). Hobbes concluded that God “can speak to a man” by dreams and visions, but that “he obliges no man to beleeve he hath so done to him that pretends it; who (being a man) may erre, and (which is more) may lie” (Lev. 32/257/196; 6). He argued that we “had need to be very circumspect, and wary, in obeying the voice of man, that pretending himself to be a Prophet” says that we should do the things that God has informed him will lead to happiness. “For he that pretends to teach men the way of so great felicity, pretends to govern them” “which is a thing that all men naturally desire, and is therefore worthy to be suspected of Ambition and Imposture” (Lev. 36/ 297/230; 19). Scripture, said Hobbes, consisted of revelations given by God to prophets. The Bible, he claimed, specified that genuine prophets perform miracles and that they support the religion already established. “The teaching of the Religion which God hath established,” he declared, “and the shewing of a present Miracle, joined together, were the only marks whereby the Scripture would have a true Prophet, that is to say, immediate Revelation to be acknowledged” (Lev. 32/259/198; 8; cf. EL 11:7: 70–1/45–6). The difficulties of ascertaining who were true prophets, and which were genuine miracles no longer mattered too much nowadays, Hobbes contended, since the age of miracles was now past – a view that was common among Protestants.12 So too was the idea, which Hobbes adopted, that Scripture now told us all we need to know about religion, rendering further prophesy redundant. It was out of “this Scripture,” he affirmed, that “I am to take the Principles of my Discourse, concerning the Rights of those that are the Supream Governors on earth, of Christian Common-wealths; and of the duty of Christian Subjects towards their Soveraigns” (Lev. 32/259/198; 9). In other words, the last two parts of 12

Thomas 1971, 146–73. Sommerville, Hobbes, 199n15.

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Leviathan were an exposition of what the Bible said (and not necessarily of what was in fact true) about the rights of Christian sovereigns and the duties of their subjects. As we saw, Hobbes noted that “in Christian Common-wealths all men either beleeve, or at least professe the Scripture to bee the Word of God, and in other Common-wealths scarce any” (Lev. 43/406/324; 8). So some people in Christian countries may not actually believe that the Bible contains divine revelations, though they find it convenient to profess that this is so. Hobbes noted that Catholics commonly argued that their church infallibly guarantees the reliability of Scripture as God’s word. We know the Bible is divinely inspired, they said, because the church tells us so, and the church is infallible. Protestants, on the other hand, often contended that when godly people read Scripture, they received private spiritual testimony that had been divinely revealed. Hobbes rejected both arguments. He claimed that the Catholic theory was viciously circular in that there was no evidence that the church was infallible except for the support provided on that point by the Bible. In Matthew 16:18 Christ tells Peter that he will build his church upon him, and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Catholics commonly saw this as a declaration of the infallibility of the church and the pope. Hobbes responded that this made the infallibility of the church dependent on the truth of Scripture (especially Matthew 16:18) and the truth of Scripture dependent on the infallibility of the church. “For how,” said Hobbes, “shall a man know the Infallibility of the Church, but by knowing first the Infallibility of the Scripture?” (Lev. 43/406/323; 7). He held that the Protestant idea that a private spirit gives individuals knowledge of the truth of the Bible was even more questionable. How, he asked, “shall a man know his own Private spirit to be other than a beleef, grounded upon the Authority, and Arguments of his Teachers; or upon a Presumption of his own Gifts?” In any case, the claims of both Catholics and Protestants about the infallibility of the church or of the individual private spirit were not in fact grounded in the Bible: “there is nothing in the Scripture, from which can be inferred the Infallibility of the Church; much lesse, of any particular Church; and least of all, the Infallibility of any particular man” (Lev. 43/406/323; 7). Hobbes asserted that the Catholic contention that the church’s infallibility at once depends on and proves the truth of biblical revelation is viciously circular. Arguably the same goes for what he himself said about Scripture, miracles and prophecy. He informs us that the Bible declares that we should accept the claims of people who say they have had a divine revelation only if, firstly, they teach the religion already established and,

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secondly, they perform miracles (Lev. 32/259/198; 8). These two signs are the Scriptural means of confirming genuine revelations. But what grounds can there be for accepting that the two signs are themselves authentic revelations? Before the two signs were revealed, there were no reliable grounds for acknowledging as accurate any claims to revelation. So whoever first revealed the two signs did so groundlessly, and there is therefore no basis for believing they are true revelations. Hobbes affirmed that “By the Books of Holy SCRIPTURE, are understood those, which ought to be the Canon, that is to say, the Rules of Christian life” (Lev. 33:260/199; 1). There were, he said, two senses in which a writing could be canonical. A canon is either a rule given to us by a teacher or counselor as a piece of advice, or a law which we are obliged to obey (Lev. 42:356/281; 36). It was sovereigns who made laws.13 In a Christian country, individuals ought not to question the interpretation of the Bible authorized by the sovereign’s laws. However, when he wrote Leviathan Hobbes held that there was no sovereign in England (Lev. 38: Lev. 38:311/241; 5). He was therefore entitled to offer his own interpretation of the Bible, and in Leviathan he did so at considerable length. He observed that his analysis of what Scripture said about the Kingdom of God and other points was not dogmatically asserted, but simply suggested. I do but propound, maintaining nothing in this, or any other paradox of Religion; but attending the end of that dispute of the sword, concerning the Authority, (not yet amongst my Countrey-men decided,) by which all sorts of doctrine are to bee approved, or rejected; and whose commands, both in speech, and writing, (whatsoever be the opinions of private men) must by all men, that mean to be protected by their Laws, be obeyed (Lev. 38:311/241; 5; cf. Answer to Bramhall in EW4:355, and An Historical Narration concerning Heresy in EW4:407).

Hobbes’s assertion that there was no sovereign in England when he wrote Leviathan, and that he could therefore offer his own interpretation of the Bible suggests that in other works, written when there was a sovereign, he felt the need to tailor his view to accord with the sovereign’s interpretation. In what follows we shall look at some of the differences between the teachings on Christian beliefs of Leviathan, De Cive, and The Elements of Law, and at some modern accounts of his arguments. 13

A valuable discussion of Hobbes’s views on the history of the books of the Old Testament, and his argument that they were made canonical by the sovereign power of Ezra, is in Malcolm 2002, 383–431, especially at 425–6.

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Hobbes’s Shifts on Christian Belief In The Elements of Law and De Cive, as in Leviathan, Hobbes affirmed the need for an absolute and indivisible sovereign in every state. The sovereign both made and interpreted law. But in De Cive, Hobbes said that a Christian sovereign was “obliged to interpret holy scripture” “by means of duly ordained Ecclesiastics.” Moreover, he there contended that the ecclesiastics or pastors in question had been guaranteed infallibility by Christ: “Our Saviour promised this Infallibility (in matters essential to salvation) to the Apostles until the day of judgement, i.e. to the Apostles and to the Pastors who were to be consecrated by the Apostles in succession by the laying on of hands” (DC17:28, 233). These claims are strikingly similar to those advanced by conventional English Protestants (or Anglicans), and authorized by King Charles I. The Anglicans argued that it was the clergy who were the proper interpreters of Scripture. Of course, they acknowledged that the sovereign was the Supreme Governor of the church of England, but they denied that this gave her or him the powers of clerics. Monarchs were Supreme in the sense that clerics could exercise spiritual powers (such as interpreting the Bible, preaching, and administering the sacraments) only with the permission of the sovereign. In Leviathan, Hobbes dropped the claims that the clergy are the proper interpreters of the Bible and that sovereigns are obliged to consult them. He contended that the sovereign is fully empowered to perform all the functions which Anglicans reserved for the clergy (Lev. 42:374/297; 72). One idea about Hobbes’s shift in argument on these points is that when he wrote De Cive he was a supporter of “the institutions of the Church of England,” and that he intended to provide them with “a new and systematic foundation,” but that in Leviathan he deserted Anglicanism.14 An alternative approach suggests that Hobbes’s claim in De Cive that sovereigns are obliged to interpret the Bible by means of properly ordained clerics is “highly anomalous” as it cuts against his main argument up until that point in the book, namely that the sovereign is “the supreme interpreter” of laws. Already in De Cive, the case continues, Hobbes had broken with “orthodox Anglicanism.”15 Whichever of these two accounts is correct, we need to explain what Hobbes meant by saying that the sovereign is “obliged” to consult the clergy in interpreting Scripture. It is difficult to see 14 15

Tuck in Martinich and Hoekstra, eds., 2016, 481–500, at 495. Another interesting recent account of Hobbes on conscience is Hanin 2012, 55–85. Malcolm 2012, 40–1. Similar interpretations may be found in Nauta 2002: 577–98; Sommerville 1992, 119–27 and 195n22; Sommerville in Springborg, ed. 2007, 358–74, at 369–70.

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how there can be any law obliging a king to seek the advice of ecclesiastics. Sovereigns are not bound by the civil law (DC12:4, 134), natural law is silent on Christian clerics, and Christ introduced no new laws, though he did offer advice (DC17:6–9, 208–13). Perhaps the most satisfactory explanation of Hobbes’s meaning concerning the obligation to consult clerics may be gleaned from another passage in De Cive. There, he asserted that in Old Testament Israel, “the authority to interpret God’s word” was “in the hands of the Kings.” Hobbes noted that someone might object that kings rarely have the learning needed to interpret the Bible accurately, but responded that the same applied to other people also, and that a king could easily appoint experts to help him. To “deny that authority to Kings, because they cannot perform the task themselves, is the same as saying that the authority to teach Geometry should not depend on Kings, unless they themselves are Geometers” (DC16:16, 199–201). In other words, the authority to interpret the Bible belongs to the sovereign and the sovereign alone, but it makes practical sense for him to consult experts, as it would in geometry or any other field. Hobbes’s Anglican critic John Bramhall thought that in attributing infallibility to churchmen (in DC17:28, 233), Hobbes had given them “too much” (Hobbes, The questions concerning liberty, necessity, and chance, in EW5, 259). Hobbes countered the criticism, and explained his meaning. The clergy were authorized by “the supreme ecclesiastical doctor” who was the sovereign. So if you obeyed a cleric you were obeying your sovereign – “and in obeying him no subject can be deceived, because they are by God himself commanded to obey him.” True, the ecclesiastics might teach us opinions that were false, but “though we may be deceived by them in the belief of an opinion, we cannot be deceived by them in the duty of our actions” (EW5, 269). In other words, it is impossible for us to be at fault in obeying the orders of clerics who are acting as agents and mouthpieces for the sovereign. The same presumably applies to the orders of the police, and all public servants. Anglicans admitted that clerics can exercise their spiritual powers – for instance, the right to ordain ministers – only with the sovereign’s permission. Responding to Bramhall, Hobbes countered that “the right to ordain, and the right to exercise ordination” were the same thing (Hobbes, The questions, in EW5, 142–3). In Hobbes’s view, we do not have rights we cannot lawfully exercise, and the clergy therefore had no rights that were independent of the sovereign. In The Elements of Law, Hobbes argued that in a Christian state we ought to obey our sovereign in religious matters, but contended that under a pagan ruler a Christian might reasonably lay down his life rather than

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obey “the Commands of an Infidell” if he thought that such obedience would result in him being “damned eternally” (EL2:6:14; 214/118). In De Cive, Hobbes likewise prescribed martyrdom as the correct choice for Christians in such circumstances (DC18:13, 245). But he shifted attitude in Leviathan, where he claimed that the biblical example of Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:17–19) permitted believers to deny the true God and outwardly worship a false idol if they were commanded to do this by their sovereign. In these circumstances, he said, the action of the person who denies God “is not his, but his Soveraigns; nor is it he that in this case denyeth Christ before men, but his Governour, and the law of his countrey” (Lev. 42:343–4/271; 11).16 When Hobbes discussed religious matters in De Cive and Leviathan he sometimes referred to the old and the new covenants. Alternative expressions for these terms are the Old and New Testaments. The Bible and commentators on it often talked about a covenant between God and the Jews, or God and Christians, and Hobbes used similar terminology. Richard Tuck tells us that he consistently “accorded a special area of freedom to the Christian or Jew – who alone of all the peoples of the world are entitled to ignore the determination made by their civil sovereign of a contentious set of beliefs (if their sovereign does not share their religion)” and argues that this “suggests very strongly that Hobbes was not the atheist of his popular reputation.”17 The claim here is that Jews and Christians made covenants with God that allow them sometimes to disobey the sovereign on religious matters, whereas among other peoples (“gentiles”) sovereigns “straightforwardly” “determine the content of faith.”18 But Hobbes held that although sovereigns can influence our beliefs – by taking charge of what we are taught – they cannot determine them, since we can reject what our teachers have told us. Hobbes argued that as a matter of fact gentiles (unlike Jews and Christians) accept the verdict of the law on religious matters (EL2:6:2, 193/107), but said nothing to suggest that this was an invariable or necessary truth. In The Elements he asserted that it cannot “be expected, that a man should performe that, for which he beleeveth in his hart he shalbe damned eternally” (EL2:6:14, 214/ 118). This evidently applies to everyone, and not only to Jews or Christians. In De Cive he said that “Men expect eternal happiness or damnation at the will of those who determine what doctrines and actions are necessary for 16 17

Hobbes’s position on Naaman conflicted with the teachings of mainstream Christian groups, but had sometimes been voiced by earlier unorthodox thinkers: Zagorin 1990, 136–47, 327. Tuck 1992, 498. 18 Tuck 1992, 494.

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eternal salvation, and so will obey them in everything” (DC17:27, 231). Again, this manifestly applies to all people. In Leviathan, Hobbes argued that if our sovereign tells us to do things that conflict with our religious beliefs we may obey him and are not obliged to undergo martyrdom. Some people, he observed, might claim that this principle conflicts with true Christianity, which requires martyrdom. Responding, he put the case of a Muslim who was ordered by the sovereign “to bee present at the divine service of the Christian Church, and that on pain of death.” If the Muslim could licitly obey, then so could Christians in similar circumstances. But to say that the Muslim had to suffer martyrdom was in effect to authorize “all private men, to disobey their Princes, in maintenance of their Religion, true, or false” (Lev. 42:344/271; 11). Arguably, nothing in his earlier writings contradicts these points. Hobbes’s discussion of what the Bible says includes a good deal on the old and new covenants between God and Jews or Christians. Edwin Curley has suggested that on Hobbes’s own account it is impossible for people to covenant with God, since covenants involve a mutual transfer of rights, and it is hard to see how humans can transfer any rights to an omnipotent God.19 If Hobbes thought that it was impossible for people to covenant with God then arguably what he is telling us about the Bible is that it is (at least in part) incoherent. As we saw, some of his contemporaries regarded him as a vigorous critic of Christian doctrines, not least on the Trinity and heaven and hell. In the English Leviathan, Hobbes parted company with pretty much all Christian groups in the account he gave of the Trinity. He argued that in Old Testament times Moses and the High Priests had represented God, the first person of the Trinity. Later, he said, the Apostles and their successors – clergy in all times and places – represented the third person, the Holy Ghost (Lev. 42/339/267–8; 3; he retracted the idea that Moses was a person in the Trinity in the third chapter of the Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, ed. Malcolm, 1232–3; 11–12). It is not entirely clear whether he intended this view of the Trinity to contribute to his wider theories, though one suggestion is that he aimed to show that divine sovereignty, like sovereignty here on earth, was indivisible: God could be represented, but not divided into 19

Curley in Sorell and Foisneau, eds. 2004, 199–216, at 207. A different approach may be found in Martinich in Sorell and Foisneau, eds., 2004, 217–40.

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different persons.20 Unsurprisingly, he was seen as denying the divinity of Christ, and as interpreting the Holy Ghost out of existence.21 His materialism also sat uncomfortably with the views of most of his contemporaries on God and spirits, including ghosts – Holy or otherwise. Hobbes also suggested revising conventional Christian views concerning what the Bible says about the afterlife. He noted as plausible the ideas that Scripture declares the wicked will be punished eternally underground, or among deceased giants under water, or in a lake of fire, or in a place of utter darkness, and maintained that the Bible definitely states that they will be resurrected and will then suffer “a grief, and discontent of mind, from the sight of that Eternall felicity” which the saved enjoy (Lev. 38:314/244; 14). Moreover, they will be afflicted by bodily pains, and will eventually die a second and final death. Before that death they may marry and have children, who in their turn may propagate the species and “engender perpetually.” The saved, by contrast, will live eternally, but neither marry nor reproduce (Lev. 44:433/346; 29). He later substantially revised and distanced himself from this discussion of hell when its unorthodoxy threatened to lead to trouble for him and withdrew the contention that the wicked will propagate perpetually (Lev. 44:431–4/345–6; 27–30).22 Hobbes made it clear that beliefs concerning the Trinity and heaven and hell are not fundamental. So why did he put forward unorthodox views on these matters, which were likely to lead to attacks on Leviathan? In advancing novel positions, he implied that the clergy had erred in their interpretations, and this served his general purpose of undermining their claims to independent religious authority. Another idea is that he intended to show that the Bible is unclear on what happens to us after death, and therefore that we should not worry ourselves unduly about the issue.23 It has also been suggested that the aim of Hobbes’s account of the afterlife was the “liberation of men from fear,” though arguably someone who accepted his views might reasonably fear the bodily and mental pains that the wicked will suffer.24 Again, if we do not fear the afterlife we have less incentive to obey the sovereign than we would otherwise. It is also possible that Hobbes’s odd interpretations of Scripture were intended ironically, or as satire. Quentin Skinner has convincingly argued that in discussing religious issues Hobbes “makes systematic use of the 20 22 23 24

Metzger 1991, 218. 21 Whitehall 1679, 133–4. Malcolm 2002, 349–50, 364–5. Lev. ed. Malcolm 992–3. McClure 2011, 1–27, at 27; see also McClure 2016, especially 110, 119–29. Tuck in Philippson and Skinner, eds., 1993, 120–38, at 132.

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various devices specifically recommended by the theorists of eloquence for contriving a tone of irony and ridicule,” and he detects irony in (for example) Hobbes’s discussion of angels.25 Frequently, Hobbes’s target when he employed irony was not the simple un-philosophical Christian who acted ethically towards others and obeyed his sovereign, but ambitious clerics who used scholastic philosophy to distort Scripture in their own worldly interests. But at times his discussion of the Bible was sufficiently ironical in tone and unorthodox in content for it to be reasonable for his contemporaries to doubt that he was a Christian, as they understood that term. 25

Skinner 1996, 14, 405.

chapter 10

Hobbes on Persons and Authorization Paul Weithman

In the English-language version of the Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes famously says that a commonwealth is made by Covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, “I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner” (Leviathan XVII.13).

“This done,” Hobbes continues immediately, “the multitude so united in one Person is called a Commonwealth.”1 The fact that the multitude might authorize an assembly to rule shows that when Hobbes says the multitude is “united in one Person,” he does not mean that it is united in virtue of its having authorized one person to rule them. Rather, he means that when the multitude authorizes either a monarch or an assembly, it is thereby united into one person. This may strike us as an odd claim, but it is one Hobbes makes in one form or another in a number of works written over the course of many years. Thus in the Elements of Law 19.8 (1640)2 he had defined “civil society” as “a multitude of men, united as one person by a common power.” What he says in Leviathan is, in this respect, a reiteration of what he had long claimed. But though Hobbes was consistent in describing the commonwealth as a person, he gives quite different accounts of how that person is generated, for in De Cive he offers an account that does not depend on subjects’ authorization of a sovereign (See De Cive V.7). The concepts of authorization and representation, so central to Leviathan‘s account, are new to that work, where they are first introduced in chapter 1 2

I am grateful to Michael Green and S. A. Lloyd for helpful comments on an earlier draft, and to Lloyd for extraordinarily generous and insightful editorship. Here I refer to the date by which the manuscript of the Elements was completed. The work was not published until 1650.

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XVI. Having introduced them, Hobbes evidently found the concepts useful, for he deployed them again in the chapter of De Homine (1658) devoted to artificial persons, of which he says that the commonwealth is “the greatest” (“maximus”). He also retained them in Leviathan, chapter XVI when he rendered the whole work into Latin (1668). The novelty of Leviathan’s account has long piqued the interest of Hobbes’s readers. Some have asked skeptically what authorizing the sovereign can give her that transferring the right of self-government to her cannot, thereby suggesting the sufficiency of Hobbes’s earlier account3 and the redundancy of “I authorise” in the passage from Leviathan quoted above.4 Others have countered that the notion of authorization does real theoretical and political work for Hobbes.5 I shall touch on this and other interpretive controversies in what follows, and shall indicate places where work still needs to be done. To lay the groundwork for my discussion of persons and authorization, I shall look first at the kind of knowledge Hobbes hoped to convey in Leviathan and De Homine.

I Persons I.1

Maker’s Knowledge

In an essay on Hobbes’s scientific methodology, David Gauthier says “Hobbes assumes that an agent knows what she does or makes . . . and may reason from the characteristics of the construction as cause to the properties of the object constructed as effects.”6 Let us call the kind of knowledge Hobbesian agents have of what they do or make maker’s knowledge. Gauthier finds Hobbes’s assumption about the availability of maker’s 3

4

5

In her landmark study of Hobbes on representation, Pitkin argued that Hobbes introduced authorization in Leviathan because he believed an account that relied on it gave the sovereign significantly more power than the account he had given in De Cive; see Pitkin, “Hobbes’s Concept of Representation – II,” 912–13. Skinner has argued that Hobbes introduced representation into his account in Leviathan, not because he came to think De Cive’s account lacking, but because he wanted to coopt the language of representation used by his parliamentary adversaries and to turn it against them; see Skinner 2005, 168–9. Abizadeh does not explicitly contrast the different ways in which De Cive and Leviathan say that a commonwealth is generated, but he argues that authorization is necessary to give the sovereign the “symbolic power” he thinks she needs to maintain order; see Abizadeh 2013, 129–35. Gauthier and Kavka have argued that authorization is merely a metaphor that does do any work that a grant of rights does not do; see Gauthier 1969, 170–6 and Kavka 1986, 388–91. Martinich has argued, on the contrary, that it is the alienation of rights which is superfluous, for “authorization can stand alone and explain the origin of government” and alienation is entailed by authorization; see Martinich 2012, 323. As we shall see in Green 2015. 6 Gauthier 1997, 512.

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knowledge to be most evidently at work in his discussion of geometry: Hobbes thinks that someone who knows how to generate a unit circle using a pencil and a string, for example, can move from that knowledge to demonstrative knowledge of the circle’s properties. But Gauthier shows that the assumption is also at work in Hobbes’s later treatments of civil science, including the treatments in Leviathan and De Homine.7 One of the aims of those works, then, is that of enabling its readers to attain maker’s knowledge.8 What Hobbes wants Leviathan’s readers to attain maker’s knowledge of is “the Seat of power” (Leviathan, Ded.) or what he later calls “the seat of Soveraignty” (Leviathan Intro.1). As Quentin Skinner has pointed out, some of Hobbes’s intellectual and political opponents claimed that sovereign power rested in the monarch. Others claimed it rested in the people. Disagreeing with both, Hobbes located it in the state. This is what Skinner calls Hobbes’s “epoch-making” theoretical innovation.9 But what makes Hobbes’s position so innovative is also what makes it so difficult to understand. In the English Leviathan, Hobbes speaks indifferently of the “State” and the “Commonwealth” (Leviathan Intro.1). His equation of the state with the commonwealth suggests that he does not mean by “the state” what we sometimes mean by it: a set of governing institutions or of quasi-permanent government officials. His disagreement with those who would locate sovereignty in the monarch or the subjects implies that he does not equate it with one or the other of them either. Hobbes clearly thinks that the France, Spain and Venice of his own time are commonwealths (Leviathan XLII.120). But his seeming refusal to identify the commonwealth with the ruler, the ruled or their governing apparatus raises questions about its nature and ontological status. What kind of thing do the names “France,” “Spain” and “Venice” denote? What does it mean to say that what they denote exists? And when states act, how do they do so? These are important questions, and not just for Hobbes scholarship. The nature of the commonwealth may well determine conditions of membership in it. The claim that a commonwealth is constituted by common ancestry and language, for example, has implications for who can and cannot belong to it.10 Questions about the ontological status of the state are important because we talk and act as if states exist, and we seem to condition our behavior on their existence.11 7 10

Gauthier 1997, 517. Runciman 2000, 278.

8

Following Pettit 2008, 143. See Runciman 2000, 276.

11

9

Skinner 2005, 177.

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We have seen that Hobbes claims the commonwealth is a person, but it is not immediately clear how that claim can help to answer these questions, since it seems every bit as mysterious as Hobbes’s claim that the commonwealth rather than the monarch or the people is “the Seat of Power.” But I believe the Hobbes of Leviathan and De Homine thinks it does help, for he thinks we can gain maker’s knowledge of the nature, ontological status and powers of that person by seeing how it is generated. To see how, let us turn to the definitions of “person” that Hobbes gives in those two works. I.2

Hobbes’s Two Definitions

Hobbes’s most detailed treatment of persons is found in the sixteenth chapter of the English Leviathan, which is entitled “Of Persons, Authors and Things Personated.” Hobbes opens that chapter by saying that: A PERSON, is he, whose words or actions are considered, either as his own, or as representing the words or action of an other man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction. When they are considered his owne, then is he called a Natural Person: And when they are considered as representing the words or actions of an other, then is he a Feigned or Artificiall person. (Leviathan XVI.1–2)

In the more economical definition of De Homine Chapter XV, he says that: a person is he to whom the words or actions of men are attributed, either as his own or another’s: if his own, the person is natural; if another’s, it is artificial. (De Homine XV.1)

A question raised by both definitions is what Hobbes has in mind in describing one kind of person as “Naturall.” Does he mean that there are some things but not others whose nature it is to be a person? Or does Hobbes use the word to stress that some kinds of persons but not others are naturally occurring? The latter answer immediately raises questions about the ontological status of the artificial persons with whom natural persons are contrasted. For if the contrast Hobbes wants to mark is between two ways that persons can come to be, then artificial persons must be so-called because they occur by artifice rather than by nature. They are, in a word, artifacts. In that case, it is at least possible that they exist on all fours with naturally occurring persons, just as other artifacts are sometimes thought to exist on all fours with instances of natural kinds. The juxtaposition of Hobbes’s two definitions raises a further question, since there is an obvious difference between them. According to the first

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clause of the definition from Leviathan, a person is a speaker of words or a performer of actions which are attributed, perhaps to another. According to his later definition, a person is “he to whom . . . [the] words or actions, [perhaps of another] . . . are attributed.” Thus if my lawyer enters into a purchase agreement on my behalf, the Hobbes of both works thinks that the agreement is properly attributed to me. According to the definition in Leviathan, my lawyer is the person in the transaction. According to the definition in De Homine, I am the person. Some scholars have passed over this difference in silence, apparently thinking that it does not affect what is of greatest interest in Hobbes’s account.12 Others have thought that Hobbes was drawn to the later definition because it enabled him to dispense with the thorny question of what kind of person a representative is.13 These answers are not mutually exclusive and indeed I think both are correct. To begin answering the other questions raised by Hobbes’s two definitions, as well as the questions broached earlier about the nature and responsibilities of the state, I turn to his simpler treatments of persons in chapter XV of De Homine. For that definition’s relative simplicity makes it easier to limn the main lines of Hobbes’s view. I.3 Persons Natural and Artificial At the end of De Homine, chapter XV, Hobbes says that persons “can have possessions and other goods.” He then adds immediately that they “can act in law” (De Homine XV.5). I take this addition to expand the chapter’s opening definition of “person.” And so I take it to imply that a person is “he to whom the words or actions of men” and “possessions and other goods” “are attributed” by law. More expansively: a person is he who can be recognized by the law as an agent and as an owner of property, as able to initiate legal actions, and as able to enter into legally binding contracts – that is, as someone to whom are attributed a range of actions to which legal accountability attaches. But I think it important that Hobbes does not say a person “can act only in law” and so does not imply that a person is he to whom words, actions, possessions, obligations and liabilities are attributed only by law. Rather, Hobbes’s interest in the notion of a person is an interest in identifying the sort of thing that can perform actions which have 12

13

See, for example, Copp 1980, 582. Copp observes that Hobbes defines “artificial person” differently in the two works but says that “nothing essential in Hobbes’s position turns on this difference.” He does not comment on the fact that “person” itself is defined differently in the two works. Runciman 2000, 275, note 15.

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moral as well as legal significance, actions to which moral as well as legal responsibility attaches. One might think that only human beings can be persons. But Hobbes’s remark at the end of De Homine, XV is made by way of saying that “inanimate things” – Hobbes mentions temples and bridges – can be persons. They can be persons because they can be legally recognized as owning the “money need[ed] for [their] upkeep” and because they can be legally recognized actors, as when a temple might be said to assume responsibility for a debt. Temples and bridges are artificial persons, according to Hobbes’s definition, because the acts attributed to them are performed by others, such as the individual human beings whose signatures or oral assurances signal the debt’s assumption. Of special importance for present purposes are those artificial persons that the Hobbes of De Cive calls “civill person[s]” (De Cive V.9). That category includes “companies of merchants” but it also includes the commonwealth itself (De Cive V.9–10). In Leviathan Hobbes seems to re-map the terrain, treating the commonwealth as categorically distinct from associations of “men joyned in one Interest or one Businesse” (Leviathan XXII.1). But though Leviathan does not employ the term “civill person,” I think the distinction Hobbes draws there is best regarded as one drawn within the more capacious category he identifies in De Cive. For Hobbes continues to regard the commonwealth and these associations as having something important in common: they are genuine unions rather than multitudes. Indeed, in the Elements, Hobbes claims that he was the first to recognize this deep underlying similarity between the commonwealth and what he called there “subordinate corporations” (Elements of Law XXVII.7). We have seen that the Hobbes of De Homine distinguishes all these artificial persons from natural persons by reference to whose actions are attributed to them. But the distinction between artificial and natural persons also tracks a distinction between ways of coming to be. For according to the account Hobbes provides in Leviathan XVI, what is common to all artificial persons – to commonwealths, subordinate corporations, and the persons of inanimate things such as temples and bridges – is that they are all brought into being by the authorization of a representative whose actions are the ones attributed to the artificial persons in question. When the congregation or the priest of a temple authorizes a representative to secure the temple’s upkeep, for example, they or he thereby constitute the temple as an artificial person to which the actions of the representative will be attributed. When a number of merchants or of

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would-be subjects agree to authorize a representative to act for them, they thereby constitute themselves as a single artificial person.14 In Leviathan XVI.4, Hobbes adds that the representative “beare[s]” that artificial person (Leviathan XVI.4). With this latter, correlative distinction in hand, we can solve one of the puzzles about Hobbes’s definitions of “person.” According to the Hobbes of De Homine, it is the nature of artificial persons to be capable of “act[ing] in law,” of holding property, of entering into contracts and of bearing liability. Indeed, that is precisely what artificial persons are constituted for. And so while it belongs to the nature of artificial persons to be persons, that cannot be what distinguishes them from the persons in Hobbes’s other category nor can it be why he reserves the term “natural” for the latter. Rather, Hobbes describes some persons as “artificial” because unlike natural persons, they are artifacts, necessarily brought into being by the voluntary acts of other persons. He describes natural persons as “natural” because they are naturally occurring. Rational adult human beings just are persons, for Hobbes. No voluntary acts on their part or anyone else’s are required to make them so. I.4 Thomas Hobbes and Edward Coke It is evident from Leviathan XXVI.11 and 24 that by the time Hobbes published that work, hence well before he published De Homine, he was acquainted with the first volume of the Institutes of the Laws of England by the great English jurist Sir Edward Coke. In that volume, Coke distinguishes two sorts of persons: “persons natural creative of God . . . and persons incorporate or politick created by the policy of man.”15 The Hobbes of De Homine was, I believe, drawing the same fundamental distinction. On the side where Coke places those he describes as “persons natural creative of God,” Hobbes places those who fit the more concise description “person [who] is natural.” On the other side of the distinction, where Coke places “persons incorporate or politick,” Hobbes places artificial persons. Coke’s label “persons incorporate or politick” might suggest that that category corresponds, not to Hobbesian artificial persons, but to the subcategory of artificial persons which we saw the Hobbes of De Cive label “civill persons.” It might therefore seem that Hobbes’s second category includes something Coke’s second category does not: the 14 15

For the claim that subordinate associations have representatives, see Leviathan XX.5. Coke, Institutes, I.1.

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commonwealth itself. But since De Homine’s artificial persons are all brought into being by deliberate acts of authorization – and since Coke’s word “policy” refers to expedient or advantageous action, and so could refer to Hobbesian acts of authorization – Hobbes’s second category can be mapped onto Coke’s after all. I draw attention to the congruence of Hobbes’s treatment and Coke’s because Coke’s influence on Hobbes’s treatment of persons has not, to my knowledge, been investigated. I also do so because, as we shall see, Coke introduces a distinction within that category of “persons . . . created by the policy of man” that Hobbes may well have used to handle a complexity in his own account. The commonwealth is, of course, the artificial person in which Hobbes is most interested. Since the commonwealth is a person it will – according to the definition of “person” found in De Homine – be a subject to whom the words and acts of another or others can be attributed. The other who utters the words and performs the acts attributed to the commonwealth is the one whom members of the commonwealth have authorized to represent them: their “Sovereign Representative” (De Cive VII.14). Thus once we see that a commonwealth is made by an act of authorization, then – provided we understand authorization – we can answer one of the questions about the commonwealth that I raised at the beginning of this section, the question of how it is possible for a commonwealth to act. It acts in virtue of the sovereign’s acting. Because that answer follows from the fact of authorization plus the definitions of “authorize” and “representative,” it is demonstrable. It is a piece of what I called “maker’s knowledge.” Moreover, once we see how the state is made, we can begin to answer questions about its ontological status. Immediately after Hobbes says that a multitude is made one person when it is represented by one man or one person, he adds that “UNITY cannot be otherwise understood in multitude” (Leviathan XVI.13). And so a commonwealth is made one person when and only when it is represented. It follows that existence of the state depends upon, and is coeval and co-terminus with the existence of, the Sovereign Representative. A. P. Martinich seizes on this conclusion, and on what Hobbes says about how commonwealths can and cannot act, to defend an ontologically minimalist view of the Hobbesian commonwealth. Martinich says that “Hobbes wants to reduce the commonwealth to as close to nothing as he can”16 and that “[r]eversing the illusion of those who try to ‘make men see 16

Martinich 2012, 317.

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double’ and mistake their lawful sovereign, Hobbes tries to get men to see single by conflating the commonwealth with the sovereign.”17 But these claims are too minimalist. What Hobbes wants is not that subjects conflate the commonwealth with the sovereign so that they see the two as one, but that they see the sovereign as bearing the person of the commonwealth. To understand more clearly what the ontological implications for the state are of seeing the sovereign this way, we need to look at the distinctions Hobbes draws among kinds of artificial persons. Those distinctions emerge from Hobbes’s attempts to grapple with some complications which his account of persons must accommodate. I.5 Some Complications One complication arises because Hobbes allows that one natural person can authorize another to represent her. As we have seen, the Hobbes of De Homine takes this to imply that she thereby brings an artificial person into being to whom her representative’s actions are attributed. “Attribute” and its cognates are technical terms for Hobbes and we will eventually need to see what they mean. But it will be a constraint on the explication of their meanings that my representative’s actions are attributed to me in some sense of “attributed.” That means that the artificial person who is brought into being when I authorize a representative is identical with me.18 This implication does not render Hobbes’s theory inconsistent, since Hobbes does not say that natural and artificial personhood are mutually exclusive. But it does put some pressure on the claim that Hobbes’s account of persons follows Coke’s closely, since a single natural person would have to incorporate himself and be identical with the resulting “person incorporate.” This seems, at the very least, to be an odd consequence. But Coke’s treatment of persons makes provision for just this possibility. Immediately after distinguishing natural persons from “persons incorporate,” Coke says of the latter that “there be two sorts, viz. either sole or aggregate of many.”19 A corporation sole is precisely a corporation that comes into being when one person incorporates himself so that, for example, the resulting corporation can hold property. And the great historian of English law Frederick Maitland argued that for Coke, the corporation sole is identical with the sole natural person who holds office in the corporation.20 If Hobbes accepted Coke’s treatment of corporations 17 19

Martinich 2012, 316. Coke, Institutes, I.1.

18 20

See the illuminating remarks of Skinner 1999, 12–13. Maitland 1900, 238.

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sole, then he could handle the seemingly awkward consequence of his allowance that a single natural person can appoint someone to represent her, and he could do so without altering the account I have attributed to him. The problem is that a corporation sole as Coke conceives it is an ineffective artifice. For a corporation which is identical to a natural person is incapable of doing two of things that it is often thought corporations were invented to do: insulate the incorporator from legal and moral responsibility and insure the continued existence of the corporation on the death of its only officeholder.21 These incapacities are presumably what led Maitland to disparage the corporation sole as a “mere ghost of a fiction.”22 They can be avoided only by distinguishing the corporation sole from the natural person of the incorporator,23 a distinction Hobbes’s account of persons was not able to accommodate. But the second of the two incapacities would not have deterred Hobbes since he did not think artificial persons were created to insure such continuity. As we have seen, he thinks that artificial persons exist only so long as they are borne by representatives. It is an implication of this view that the artificial person with a single natural person as representative ceases to exist on the representative’s death.24 Nor would Hobbes have been deterred by the first incapacity – the incapacity to limit liability – since, as we shall see when we explore Hobbes’s differences with the view of “civill person[s]” that was common in his time, he did not want to insulate incorporators from responsibility for the acts of the artificial persons they create, at least in the case of the commonwealth. A second complication is that, as we saw in De Homine, Hobbes allows that inanimate objects such as temples and bridges can be persons. In Leviathan, he says that such things – as well as false gods – can be “personated,” by which he means that they can all have persons which can be borne by their representatives (Leviathan XVI.9). One problem posed by these cases is that of saying how the personhood of inanimate objects comes into being. Another and related problem is that inanimate objects lack the capacity to authorize the representatives who bear their persons. Hobbes handles these cases by claiming that inanimate objects 21 23 24

See Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 658–9. 22 Maitland 1900, 241. Blackstone 1753, 39. This leaves Hobbes with the problem of explaining why a commonwealth whose sovereign is a monarch does not dissolve on the monarch’s death. That is a problem I do not believe Hobbes ever resolved satisfactorily. For the problems with Hobbes’s treatment of succession see Hampton 1986, 129–31 and the sources cited there.

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and false gods are “personated” when the “Owners or Governors” of those things (in the case of bridges and temples; see Leviathan XVI.9) and the state (in the case of false gods; see Leviathan XVI.11) perform the requisite acts of authorization. The act occurs when those agents authorize representatives to bear the artificial personalities that are thereby brought about. In such cases, Hobbes says, the representation is “by fiction.” To see the questions this form of representation raises, it will help to recall the taxonomy of persons attributed to Hobbes so far. I began with Hobbes’s definition of “person” in De Homine as one to whom action is attributed, and I observed that the first distinction he draws is between natural and artificial persons. Relying on De Cive, I then said that within the category of artificial persons, Hobbes distinguishes things like temples and bridges from those unions he calls “civill person[s].” And I said that within the latter category, he distinguishes the state from “subordinate corporations” such as unions of merchants. Since representation by fiction is what creates the artificial personality of temples and bridges, it seems to follow that those artificial persons come to be by means of a fiction. This raises the question of whether those persons should be described as fictional persons. That question, in turn, raises the further questions of whether items in Hobbes’s other category of artificial persons – namely, “civill persons” – also become persons by fiction or are fictional persons. Of special interest, of course, is the question of whether the state is fictional, since the answer to that question would seem to bear on the state’s ontological status. David Runciman has argued against Quentin Skinner that Hobbes’s state is indeed a person by fiction. More specifically, Runciman argues that because the sovereign bears the artificial person of the Commonwealth, she represents the commonwealth. But, Runciman contends, the sovereign’s representation of the state must be representation by means of a fiction. For in representing the state, the sovereign is not really representing an agent that is independently capable of taking responsibility for its own action, any more than the representative of a bridge is representing such an agent. “Instead,” Runciman says, “the multitude separately perform the real actions which allow responsibility to be attributed to the state as a single unit, and continue to perform the real actions which follow from that attribution.” That is to say, subjects perform actions which sustain the fiction that the state exists independently and can own up to the actions it is said to perform. It follows, Runciman concludes, that the state is a person by fiction.25 25

Runciman 2000, 272–3; the quoted passage is from 273.

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Runciman’s response to Skinner is compelling. It would, however, be stronger still were he to remedy an oversight. Runciman worries that his argument will seem implausible because it makes of the state a special case: no doubt thinking of the differences between Hobbes’s bridges and temples and the state itself, Runciman says that “the state is the only person by fiction which is not previously an ‘owned’ entity.”26 But by parity of Runciman’s own reasoning, other “civill persons” such as mercantile combinations are also persons by fiction, yet they are not previously owned either. In overlooking this point, Runciman sees a weakness in his own argument that is not there. More important, he misses the extent of the fundamental similarity Hobbes asserts between states and “subordinate corporations.” Pointing to that similarity might have helped Runciman address another and potentially more serious objection to his reading of Hobbes. In Runciman’s view, the fact that the state is a person by fiction does not imply, what we saw Martinich thinks, that Hobbes “wants to reduce the commonwealth to as close to nothing as he can” and that he tries to get men to “conflat[e] the commonwealth with the sovereign.” Rather, as Runciman and Skinner both emphasize, it is important to Hobbes that the state operate in the worlds of law and politics, where other agents acknowledge its existence and react to its deeds. Thus Runciman says that “the state must have a presence in the real world.” But he adds immediately that “there is nothing in that world with which it can be identified” and that it has “a peculiarly delicate presence.”27 The problem is that it is not at all clear what the state’s “peculiarly delicate presence” comes to. So long as the Hobbesian state is treated as sui generis, any elaborations of its ontological status may well seem ad hoc. If, however, Hobbes’s assertion of fundamental similarity between the state and “subordinate corporations” is taken seriously, then the question of how his state exists can be assimilated to that of how such corporations exist. While the existence of corporations is itself not well understood, some of the best literature shares Hobbes’s assumption that we can understand their existence only by understanding how they are made.28 Perhaps some of the work in this fertile area can eventually help us attain maker’s knowledge of the way Hobbes thinks the state can exist and act. I raise this possibility to indicate where further work on Hobbes needs to be done. 26

Runciman 2000, 274.

27

Runciman 2000, 274.

28

Searle 2005.

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Authorization, Ownership, and Rights II.1 Authorization and Civil Bodies

We have seen that the Hobbes of Leviathan thinks the state is made by an act of authorization and that after distinguishing natural and artificial persons, Hobbes draws a distinction between artificial persons whose words and actions are and are not “Owned” by those to whom they are attributed. “Own,” its cognates, and its correlates are terms of art for Hobbes and their meaning is contested. I observed earlier that in the Elements, Hobbes claims to be the first to see the deep similarity between commonwealths and corporations. Hobbes’s stress on this similarity between the state and corporations, and his grouping them together in the category of “civill person[s],” underline his important claim that the commonwealth is an artifact contrived with a specific end in view. It therefore helps to distinguish Hobbes from theorists who think the commonwealth springs naturally from preexisting ties of language or blood. It also sets the agenda for later thinkers in the social contract tradition like Kant, who responded to Hobbes on precisely the associational character of the state.29 Whether Hobbes’s insight was as thoroughly original as he claimed, many of his contemporaries would have disagreed with it. He himself was able to arrive at it and defend it because his view of authorization differs from theirs. To see how, it is helpful to turn again to the writings of Coke. In his opinion in the landmark Case of Sutton’s Hospital, Coke said that one of the “things that are of the essence of a Corporation [is] Lawful authority of Incorporation.”30 A corporation could be authorized, he continued, only “by the Common Law, as the King himself, and by authority of Parliament; by the King’s Charter (as in this case) and by prescription.”31 Coke’s dictum is one version of the then-common view that all corporations had to be authorized by the state.32 On that view, authorization seems most fundamentally to be state permission to bring a corporation into being. It follows from this view of authorization that the commonwealth cannot authorize itself. That is why, on the common view, the commonwealth cannot be a corporation. I do not know whether Hobbes was familiar with Sutton’s Hospital. If he was, his familiarity with it may account for his use of a hospital as an example of an artificial person in Leviathan and De Homine. His 29

Kant in Reiss 1991, 73.

30

Coke 1612, ¶17.

31

Coke 1612, ¶17.

32

Holdsworth 1922, 383.

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acquaintance with the case is suggested by the fact that his own treatment of “subordinate corporations” seems to follow Coke closely (Leviathan XXII.3). Be that as it may, Hobbes and proponents of the common view agreed that bodies such as merchants’ associations “are made by Authority of the Sovereign Power of the Common-wealth” (Leviathan XXII.3). But this overlap should not blind us to their deep disagreement. For Hobbes, as we have just seen, authorization fundamentally involves ownership rather than state permission. That conception of authorization allows Hobbes to argue that subjects make a commonwealth by authorizing a sovereign representative, just as he thinks the sovereign can bring subordinate corporations into existence by authorizing their representatives (Leviathan XXII.1–2). Thus it is Hobbes’s conception of authorization that ultimately allows him to assert that commonwealths and corporations are importantly similar. If this assertion is indeed novel, its novelty is due to the distinctive way Hobbes understands authorization. This difference entails a further one. If authorization is mere permission to incorporate, then responsibility for a corporation’s action can be lodged with the incorporators or with the corporation itself. Theorists of the common view therefore insulated the King and Parliament from responsibility for the actions of the corporations they authorize by denying that authorization entails ownership. Hobbes thinks authorization does entail ownership. He insulates the sovereign from liability by claiming that since subjects authorize the sovereign, they ultimately own the acts of the corporations the sovereign authorizes.33 II.2

Authorization and the Surrender of Rights

In the passage about the institution of the commonwealth that I quoted at the outset, Hobbes says that authorization of the sovereign comes in tandem with the surrender of rights. Some readers have argued that the two do not just come in tandem, but that authorization entails the surrender – or, in the case where the author also retains the right to act, the extension – of rights.34 More specifically, they contend that someone with authority to perform an action has the right to do it and that someone who has been authorized to do something, and so does it by another’s authority, has been granted that right. This interpretation seems to be firmly grounded in the text of Leviathan, for Hobbes writes: 33

See Leviathan XXII.9, sentence 2.

34

See Martinich 2012, 323.

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For that which in speaking of goods and possessions, is called an Owner, and in latine Dominus, in Greeke Kurios; speaking of Actions, is called Author. And as the Right of possession, is called Dominion; so the Right of doing any Action, is called AUTHORITY. So that by Authority, is alwayes understood a Right of doing any act: and Done By Authority, done by Commission, or Licence from him whose right it is (Leviathan XVI.4).

The interpretation opens the door to the reading of Hobbes according to which authorization is merely a metaphor that does do any work that a mere grant of rights does not do.35 That it opens the door to this reading might be thought to tell against it since Hobbes seems to consider authorization a philosophically important concept. On the other hand, a merit of the interpretation is that it promises to block one of the undesirable implications of the view that authorization entails responsibility. In the passage from Leviathan about how the commonwealth is made, Hobbes says that subjects “Authorise all” actions of the sovereign. If authorization made subjects responsible for all of the sovereign’s actions and if the sovereign were to violate a law of nature, then the subjects would be responsible for the violation. This, it may be thought, would unfairly place them in a moral dilemma, since subjects are obliged by the laws of nature to exit the state of nature and authorize a sovereign.36 On the interpretation now in view, however, the dilemma does not arise. For authors can only own those actions of their representatives that they themselves had the right to perform. Since subjects do not have a right to violate a law of nature, they cannot authorize the sovereign to violate it and so do not own and bear responsibility for the violation.37 II.3

A Fallacious Argument

Despite its appeal, the claim that someone can only authorize actions she has the right to perform faces a serious difficulty which comes to light by looking carefully at how Hobbes would defend it. I shall lay out what I take to be his argument for the claim in premise-and-conclusion form. It follows from what Hobbes says when he introduces the term “author” that (1) If I own A’s Ø-ing, then I am the author of A’s Ø-ing. What Hobbes says immediately afterwards when he introduces the concept of authority implies that: 35

Gauthier 1969, 170–6; Kavka 1986, 388–91.

36

Lloyd 2016, 177.

37

Lloyd 2009, 283–4.

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(2) If I am the author of A’s Ø-ing, then A Ø’s by my authority. In the passage quoted above from Leviathan XVI.4, Hobbes says “the right of doing any Action is called AUTHORITY.” In De Homine, he asserts an instance of this general claim which draws out its implications for actions done by another’s authority. He says: (3) “they are said to have authority that act by right of another.” (2) and (3) seem to imply: (4) If I am the author of A’s Ø-ing, then A Ø’s by my right of Ø-ing. From (4), it follows that (5) If I am the author of A’s Ø-ing, then I had a right to Ø. And from (1) and (5), it follows that: (6) If I own A’s Ø-ing, then I had a right to Ø. With (6) in hand, we can see how Hobbes reaches the conclusion that “If I authorize someone to Ø, then I had a right to Ø” – a conclusion that can be re-expressed as: C: I can authorize someone to Ø only if I have a right to Ø.

Hobbes reaches C because he says that when members of a multitude authorize a sovereign representative, each one “owne[s], and acknowledge [s] himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie” (Leviathan XVII.13). He says this because he thinks that: (7) If I authorize someone’s Ø-ing, then I own her Ø-ing. And (6) and (7) entail the claim I re-expressed as C. The problem with this defense of C is that (6) is false. I can surely take ownership of – and bring it about that I own – an act that I had no right to do. If I order someone in my employ to violate my neighbor’s property rights by cutting down a tree of hers that blocks my view, Hobbes would say that the action is in some sense my action and that I own it. To remove any doubt that I own it, I could explicitly assume ownership of my agent’s action by a public declaration in which I assert ownership. But the action undertaken by my agent is not one I had a right to perform.

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Moreover, Hobbes himself must think (6) is false. This is evident from his response to an objection to the unconditional requirement to obey one’s sovereign – an objection according to which the requirement implies that subjects would be obliged to comply with their sovereign’s command to blaspheme. In reply, Hobbes says: [W]hatsoever a subject, as Naaman was, is compelled to do in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s; nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men, but his governor, and the law of his country (Leviathan XLII.11).

Whatever Hobbes means by saying that subject’s act of blasphemy is the sovereign’s rather than the subject, he surely means that the sovereign and not the subject owns the blasphemy. Moreover, Hobbes can hold that the sovereign and not the subject is to blame, as he quite clearly does, only by claiming that the sovereign owns the action. Yet Hobbes would surely deny that the sovereign has the right to blaspheme. So Hobbes can exculpate the subject in this case only by denying (6). But without (6), Hobbes cannot sustain this argument for C, and so the interpretation of Hobbes according to which he endorses C lacks argumentative support. The problem with Hobbes’s defense of C is that in moving from (1) and (5) to (6), the argument equivocates on the term “author.” For I will sometimes own A’s Ø-ing in Hobbes’s sense of “own” if I bear responsibility of some kind for A’s Ø-ing, without any implication that I had the right to Ø myself, as we saw in the case of the sovereign who owns her subject’s blasphemy. My responsibility implies that I am the author of A’s Ø-ing in these cases, and (1) will be true only if I am the author in the sense that I exercised or should have exercised some kind of control over whether or how A Ø-ed. This use of “author,” as implying production of or control over states of affairs – but not necessarily the right to produce them – is common enough in our time and is also found in Hobbes’s.38 But authorship in this sense is not correlative with “authority,” as (2) says, at least if “authority” is understood in the sense expressed by (3). For the move from (2) to (5) to be sound, “author” must mean something different and narrower in steps (2), (4) and (5) than it does in (1). But then the move from (1) and (5) to (6) – and therefore the argument for C – trades on an equivocation. 38

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a contemporaneous translation of Eusebius refers to someone as “the author of . . . mischief.”

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Michael Green has also argued that Hobbes was mistaken to assert C.39 Green rightly observes that Hobbes was misled by the assimilation of the ownership of action to property ownership.40 And so following Green we might say: “ownership,” like “author,” has two senses. I enjoy ownership of an action, and so am author of it in one sense, if I am in a position to exercise the right kind of control over whether and how it occurs. I enjoy ownership of a piece of property when I have a right to its use, enjoyment and disposition – in short, when I have a right to control it – and not just when I am in a position to control it, regardless of how I got there. This is a significant difference which Hobbes seems to have overlooked. What he thought was an illuminating connection between authorship and ownership is instead an equivocation on “ownership” and its cognates. That fundamental equivocation led to the equivocation on “author” that undercuts the arguments for (6) and C. So the interpretation of Hobbes according to which he endorses C is indeed based on the text of Leviathan, but that text contains a fallacy. Once we see that Hobbes cannot defend (6) and C, and so has to admit that I can authorize actions I have no right to perform, we can see what philosophical work authorization can do that rights-transfer cannot. For Green has argued compellingly that Hobbes’s account of authorization enabled him to offer a novel and powerful argument for sovereign immunity. That argument, unlike contemporaneous arguments for the same position such as Edward Coke’s, extended immunity to the king’s ministers. It thus prevented Parliament from checking the king by impeaching and prosecuting ministers whom it accused of doing wrong on the king’s behalf. Hobbes’s novel account of authorization was therefore important, not just to his assertion of similarity between the commonwealth and other associations, but also to his argument for undivided sovereignty.41 Of course, the cost of securing sovereign immunity via authorization as here understood is that it makes subjects responsible for their sovereign’s wrongful actions, contrary to Hobbes’s contention in the Naaman passage and elsewhere. Whether Hobbes has the resources to resolve this apparent inconsistency is a large question that awaits further investigation. 39

Green 2015.

40

Green 2015, 31.

41

For the full argument, see Green 2015, 37–46.

chapter 11

The Character and Significance of the State of Nature Peter Vanderschraaf

[I]n the pure natural state, or before men bound themselves by any agreements with each other, every man was permitted to do anything to anybody, and to possess, use and enjoy whatever he wanted and could get. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive

Hobbes made the State of Nature a canonical tool of political philosophy. The idea of a State of Nature was not entirely original to Hobbes. The Sophists, Thucydides and Plato presented descriptions of what life presumably was like before the emergence of organized governments and laws. In the modern era, Grotius discussed a version of the State of Nature some years before Hobbes published his works on social philosophy.1 Where Hobbes went far beyond his predecessors was in proposing general conditions for a State of Nature, analyzing how parties in a State of Nature would interact and using the results of this analysis as the starting point of a fully developed moral and political theory. Scholars continue to debate precisely what roles the State of Nature plays in this theory. Some view Hobbes as attempting to develop a theory of morality as a set of rules for mutual advantage that use a State of Nature as the baseline against which advantage is to be measured.2 Hobbes’s bestknown application of the State of Nature is as a cornerstone of his watershed justification of government, using appeal to it to explain why government is necessary, and perhaps to motivate ongoing compliance with one’s government. Exactly how it does this is also a matter of dispute: government may be needed to secure some measure of personal security, or to make the laws of nature effective by interpreting and enforcing them, or 1 2

Grotius in ed. van Ittersum 2006, Prolegomena, 33–4, and ed. Tuck 2005, book II, chapter II, section II.3–4, 425–7, book II, chapter VII, section XXVII, 622–3. See especially Gauthier 1979, 547–59 and Barry 1989.

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to create an environment hospitable to citizens’ being able to pursue their various ends and life-plans.3 Hobbes’s characterization of the State of Nature is open to alternate interpretations, some of which I discuss in Section 1. Interpreters have variously conceived a State of Nature as: (a) a condition of unsocialized, atomistic individuals,4 (b) a condition of unbounded liberty in which there are no constraints on conduct, including the laws of nature, even in conscience,5 (c) a condition of rightful universal judgment because no one has obligations to obey anyone else,6 or (d) a condition where there is no power capable of enforcing any duties or contractual obligations people might have.7 I argue for an interpretation according to which Hobbes’s State of Nature summarizes the circumstances of a community consisting of individual persons or groups apart from any norms or other institutions its constituent members have created together. Hobbes’s argument for the State of Nature being a state of war is welltrodden philosophical ground. Yet Hobbes scholars continue to find new ways of understanding and evaluating this argument. In Section 2 I give another analysis of Hobbes’s argument for the war of all against all in light of some of the important recent work on this argument. I argue that Hobbes concludes that parties in a State of Nature go to war not so much on account of their flawed natural characteristics, but rather because they are unable to detect who among them tend to be prone to aggress against others. A companion conclusion is that the ability to generate reliable public information is a prerequisite for parties to exit the State of Nature.

1

Characterizing the State of Nature and Its Alternatives

Hobbes gives no official definition of the State of Nature. In various texts Hobbes describes a State of Nature as anarchy,8 and in Leviathan Hobbes states that the natural condition of humankind obtains “during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe.”9 As this quote clearly confirms, Hobbes maintains that the parties that can be in or out of a State of Nature can be individual persons. But Hobbes also asserts that the sovereigns of actual commonwealths are in a State of Nature with 3 4 7 9

For fine representative presentations of each of these views in order, see Gauthier 1969, Venezia 2015 and Lloyd 2009. 5 6 Hampton 1986. Martinich 1992 and Byron 2015. Lloyd 2009. 8 Kavka 1986 and Taylor 1987. De Cive Preface 14, 14–15, Leviathan 17:1, 31:1. Leviathan 13:8.

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respect to one another.10 This indicates that Hobbes believes State of Nature parties can also be collective entities capable of personification and being under authority as Hobbes conceives of these notions,11 such as families, tribes, corporations and even entire countries. From this set of texts one might infer that Hobbes defines a State of Nature as a state where parties interact with no internal or external party capable of enforcing any norms, including the laws of nature, and any covenants they might form with each other. Such a lack-of-enforcer definition makes it particularly clear how Hobbes understands the nature of commonwealth as a multitude governed by an absolute sovereign. Other texts suggest a definition that focuses on permissions: Parties are in a State of Nature exactly when they are at liberty to treat each other as they conscientiously judge necessary for their preservation.12 Near the end of Part II of Leviathan Hobbes gives a simple characterization of “the condition of meer Nature, that is to say, of absolute Liberty, that neither are Soveraigns, nor subjects.”13 One can restate this liberty in terms of the Right of Nature, which Hobbes does officially define: The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.14

Parties are in a State of Nature exactly when each may regulate her conduct regarding these parties solely according to her own private judgments regarding what promotes self-preservation. The Right of Nature extends only to what is required for self-preservation, and in fact Hobbes gives examples of conduct such as acts of gratuitous cruelty that would not be permitted according to this right.15 But the Right of Nature itself leaves it up to the individual to decide matters such as which tortures and humiliations one inflicts on a captive are needed to deter others’ aggressions. So the Right of Nature sets no boundaries other than conscience on one’s conduct, and certainly none that could be enforced by others. Using some 10 12 13 14

15

Leviathan 13:12. 11 Leviathan 16. Sreedhar and Venezia draw similar conclusions in their works, though neither proposes an official definition of the State of Nature. See Sreedhar 2010, 11–16, and Venezia 2015, §5.1–2. Leviathan 31:1. Other texts supporting a conscientious liberty definition include Elements of Law I 14:12, 92, and De Cive 1:10, 28. The De Cive text is the epigraph of this chapter. Leviathan 14:1. See also Elements of Law I 14:6–10, 89(55)-91(56) and De Cive 1:9–10, 27–38. Grotius anticipates the Hobbesian Right of Nature in Commentary of the Law of Prize and Booty Prolegomena, 23. De Cive 3:27, 53–4.

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Hohfeldian rights vocabulary, Hobbes’s Right of Nature spells out a very extensive set of permission rights, but no immunity or claim rights.16 So one can restate the conscientious liberty definition in yet another way: Parties are in a State of Nature exactly when each has permission rights bounded only by personal conscience and no claim or immunity rights with respect to the others. The private judgment component of the Right of Nature suggests a third and more flexible definition, namely, that a State of Nature is simply a state where each permissibly governs her conduct according to her own private judgments over a given choice domain because she has no obligation to defer to the judgement of others with respect to this domain.17 This definition detaches the private judgement component from the wide scope of actions one can judge permissible for herself according to the Right of Nature. Hobbes does echo Grotius by stating in several texts that in a State of Nature one is one’s own judge.18 I think the conscientious liberties definition is the most satisfactory definition, because Hobbes consistently assumes that State of Nature parties have no enforceable duties of restraint with respect to each other. But the private judgment definition makes clear how alternatives to the State of Nature defined in terms of conscientious liberties can vary along the dimension of choice domain as well as the specific individuals who may exercise private judgments with respect to a given choice domain. At one extreme, everyone exercises permissible private judgement over all matters. At the other extreme, a perfect totalitarian regime, a single person judges every issue for everyone.19 Hobbes himself expresses doubts that any sovereign could regulate all of the choices of its subjects, and in fact declares that in a commonwealth the subjects may choose for themselves in areas where the sovereign has refrained from making relevant rules.20 Hobbes’s State of Nature is sometimes described as a relational concept. But the State of Nature is perhaps better thought of as a lack-of-relations 16 17 18 19

20

Gauthier 1979, Kavka 1986, §7.3, and Sreedhar 2010, 13, also recognize that the Right of Nature summarizes permission rights. This is how Lloyd 1992, 261, defines the State of Nature. Elements of Law II 29(10):8, 260–2(142), De Cive 1:9, 27–8, Leviathan 14:4, 30, The Rights of War and Peace 2.7:27. This person of course need not be a single natural person. Lloyd 2009 adopts just such a continuum view of the State of Nature, 19–25. Martinich adopts a related view, interpreting Hobbes as distinguishing between a primary State of Nature where there are no laws at all and a secondary State of Nature where God is the only common power and the laws of nature are the only laws. See Martinich 1992, Chapter 3. Leviathan 21:6, 18.

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concept, where the missing relations are enforceable duties. Parties are out of a State of Nature with respect to each other when they are under the authority of some external party capable of enforcing their covenants, enforcing the laws of nature, resolving all disputes among the parties, and enforcing its decisions. Subjects under the authority of the sovereign of their commonwealth is Hobbes’s best-known example of this case. A Hobbesian commonwealth also illustrates how some of the duty relations between parties out of a State of Nature can be unilateral, since there is no covenant between a sovereign and its subjects, and therefore the sovereign cannot commit injustices against its subjects,21 although it can act iniquitously in violation of natural law.22 But as indicated in the previous paragraph, a set of parties can also exit a State of Nature with respect to each other via self-enforcing covenants. The sovereigns of actual commonwealths illustrate this, since these sovereigns are not themselves under a common power keeping them all in awe and some occasionally do form alliances and agreements enforceable by mutual sanctions. Hobbes also makes an oblique reference to self-enforcing covenants in his response to the Foole’s skeptical challenge against the rationality of performing one’s end of a covenant as justice requires. When Hobbes warns the Foole that a known covenant violator will not be received or retained in any society whose members unite for peace and defense, he is referring to communities that enforce covenants internally by effectively shunning those guilty of violating community norms regarding these covenants.23 These various examples show how the alternatives to the State of Nature vary along another dimension, namely, according to which counterpart parties each party has enforceable duties towards others. Such duties can be created by contract, covenant or free-gift.24 Are Hobbesian States of Nature ever realized in the world, or is the State of Nature better thought of only as a theoretical construct? There is a directly parallel question regarding Hobbes’s sketch of the origins of commonwealths: Are commonwealths ever created by design or institution, or is commonwealth by institution a thought experiment only? The textual evidence suggests Hobbes would give similar answers to both 21 22 23

24

Leviathan 18:4, 6. Hobbes gives some of examples of the Sovereign’s obligations to its subjects under the natural law in De Cive 10:2, 116–17 and Leviathan 29:22, 30: 1–3, 7, 15, 17–18, 20. Leviathan 15:5. Other community enforcement interpretations of Hobbes’s response to the Foole are given in Kavka 1986, §4.3, Sugden (1986) 2004, 165–9, and Skyrms in eds. Coleman and Morris 1998, 12–22. Leviathan 14:9–12.

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questions. Hobbes characterizes commonwealth by institution as a system of covenants parties in the State of Nature form with each other to select and then authorize some candidate as their sovereign. Hobbes describes at least part of this system as a set of bilateral agreements between all pairs of individual parties made as if each explicitly states she will authorize a particular sovereign-candidate on condition the others reciprocate.25 Since any sizeable multitude would likely be unable to actually form such a rich system under any conditions, and since Hobbes maintains that parties in a State of Nature are generally unable to actually make or keep covenants with each other, one might conclude that for Hobbes these covenants are hypothetical. Similarly, remarks like “[t]o return once again to the natural state and to look at men as if they had just emerged from the earth like mushrooms and grown up without any obligation to each other” smack of a counterfactual understanding of the State of Nature, and Hobbes opines that this state has never obtained throughout the world.26 But Hobbes cites biblical examples he claims are instances of commonwealths created by institution.27 In a similar vein, Hobbes also claims that various peoples of times past and present have been in their natural condition and that the people of a formerly peaceful commonwealth that have gone to civil far have reverted to their natural condition.28 In fact, just as Hobbes’s alleged examples from the Bible of commonwealth by institution are at best commonwealths only partly created by covenants between State of Nature parties,29 Hobbes’s empirical examples of people allegedly in their natural condition are more like near approximations than literal instances of States of Nature. While it might be true that in each of Hobbes’s examples there is no common power regulating the conduct of all parties and that these parties act with few restrictions in many of their interactions, in no case is it clear that the parties have no enforceable duties with respect to each other at all. Even opposing combatants in a civil war are not necessarily in a State of Nature with respect to each other according to the unbounded liberty definition, if for no other reason than that their own commanders might place limits on how enemy combatants may be 25 27

28 29

Leviathan 17:13. 26 De Cive 8:1, 102, Leviathan 13: 11. De Cive 11:1, 127. Hobbes claims here that the Israelite people established a commonwealth by design at least twice, once when they consented to have Moses rule them as God’s viceroy, citing Exodus 19: 5–8 and 20:18–19, and again when they consented to Saul as their king, citing I Samuel 10:27, 11:12 and 12:12. Elements of Law I 14:12, 92, De Cive 1:13, 30, Leviathan 13: 11–12. Given the Biblical accounts recorded in Exodus and I Samuel, in neither of the cases Hobbes cites were the Israelites fully in a State of Nature with respect to each other, and in neither case was the candidate Hobbes claims they authorized as sovereign chosen by themselves.

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treated. In the end, despite his own claims Hobbes’s State of Nature has a status analogous to that of an ideally competitive market, in that its defining conditions are seldom if ever perfectly realized but in many cases are quite closely approximated.30 And the close approximations of literal States of Nature that occur in times of war, famine and other catastrophes serve to illustrate how important the alternatives to this state can be.

2 The War of All Against All Hobbes declares that all men “in reason” believe that peace is good and argues that following the laws of nature is the means of achieving peace.31 But Hobbes also claims that war is the inevitable fate of those who remain in a State of Nature, a war in which there is no law.32 This is perhaps the most famous conclusion of all of Hobbes’s corpus, and certainly one of the most important. And not all are prepared to accept Hobbes’s conclusion, including some of Hobbes’s most important contemporaries. Locke and Pufendorf adopt accounts of the State of Nature similar to Hobbes’s account, and Locke argues that peace is possible in this state while Pufendorf concludes that Hobbes is flat-out mistaken and that the State of Nature should be peaceful.33 How Hobbes argues for his conclusion is a good deal more interesting than surface appearances might suggest. A number of scholars have argued that Hobbes incorporates proto-gametheoretic reasoning in his arguments, most especially in his argument for the inevitability of war in the State of Nature.34 Here I will summarize a reconstruction of Hobbes’s argument that incorporates game theory:35 Party 1 and Party 2 are in Hobbes’s State of Nature with respect to each other. Each can either seek peace with (P) or Anticipate against (A) the other. If both seek peace, they enjoy a peaceful coexistence that might include mutually beneficial exchange or productive joint labor. If both Anticipate, in the ensuing war each is equally likely to emerge the victor. And if one Anticipates while the other seeks peace, the Anticipator gains mastery over the peace seeker. The payoffs of the Figure 1 matrix 30 31 33 34 35

Sreedhar draws a similar conclusion in her illuminating entry “State of Nature,” in ed. Lloyd 2012, 219–22. Leviathan 15:40. 32 Leviathan 13:8, 13. Locke in ed. Laslett (1690) 1988, Second Treatise §19-§21, Pufendorf in ed. Carr., trans. Seidler (1672) 1994, 93–268, Book II, Chapter 2, 140–8. Some of the central works that give game-theoretic reconstructions of some of Hobbes’s arguments are Gauthier 1969, Hampton 1986, Kavka 1986 and Taylor 1987. The following is based upon the Bayesian game-based reconstructions of Hobbes’s argument proposed in Vanderschraaf 2006, 243–79, and in Chung 2015, 485–508.

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peter vanderschraaf Party 2

Party 1

P

A

P

L1 + v1

0

A

L1

L1 2

P = seek peace, A = Anticipate, L1 > 0, v1> 0

Figure 1. Modest Party’s payoffs in a Hobbesian state of nature encounter

summarize Party 1’s relative preferences over the possible outcomes in their encounter. L1 > 0 reflects the value Party 1 places on her own life in freedom and v1 > 0 reflects the additional value she places on peaceful coexistence with Party 2. Party 1, a modest individual, achieves her best payoff L1 þ v1 at ðP; PÞ where both seek peace, her second best payoff L1 at ðA; PÞ where she Anticipates and Party 2 seeks peace, her third best payoff L21 at ðA; AÞ where both Anticipate and her worst payoff 0 at ðP; AÞ where she seeks peace and Party 2 Anticipates. By following A, Party 1 is sure to avoid subjugation, her worst outcome, but she then also forecloses any possibility of the peaceful coexistence that is her best outcome. Party 1’s best choice depends upon her beliefs regarding Party 2. If Party 2 is also modest, then ðP; PÞ is the best outcome for both and consequently an equilibrium outcome as well, so P can then be Party 1’s best choice. But if Party 2 is aggressive, then he actually prefers the ðP; AÞ outcome where he gains mastery over Party 1 over the peaceful ðP; PÞ outcome, in which case A is Party 2’s strictly dominant choice and Party 1’s best response is then necessarily A.36 If Party 1 could ascertain Party 2’s type, then she would be able to follow a contingency strategy of choosing P if Party 2 is modest and A if Party 2 is aggressive, and this contingency strategy could be part of a mutually beneficial equilibrium where both choose P if Party 2 is indeed modest. But Party 1 in fact cannot ascertain Party 2’s type, and must make her choice knowing there is some chance that Party 2 is aggressive. 36

In this case strict dominance means that A is always Party 2’s unique best choice in terms of maximizing his expected payoff over any set of beliefs he may have regarding Party 1’s choice.

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P(θ = θ2) = π

θ1

P

P (L1 + v1,L2 + v2)

A

(L1,0)

P

A

θ2

A

(0,L2)

P

(L1 + v1,L2 )

(0,L2 + g2)

( L21 , L22 )

A

(L1,0)

( L21 , L22 )

P = seek peace, A = Anticipate, Li , vi > 0, gi > 0, i ∈ {1,2}

θ1 = Party 2 is modest, θ2 = Party 2 is agressive. Figure 2. State of nature game

The matrices of Figure 2 summarize the State of Nature Game in which Party 1 and Party 2 engage.37 The black boxes indicate Party 2’s knowledge of the true state of the world θ characterized by his own type, modest ( θ 1 ) or aggressive ( θ 2 ). The grey box reflects Party 1’s uncertainty over these states. From Party 1’s perspective, either θ 1 or θ 2 might be the true state θ , and she assigns to these states the probabilities Pð θ ¼ θ 1 Þ ¼ 1  π 1 and Pð θ ¼ θ 2 Þ ¼ π 1 . Party 1’s 38 1 unique best choice is A when π1 > π 1 ¼ L12v þ2v1 . And given the very high value Party 1 places on her own life in freedom, the value of π 1 approaches zero, so that π 1 > π 1 is indeed the case. By this argument, A is the unique best choice of any modest State of Nature party so long as this party assigns some minimal positive probability to the partner she encounters being aggressive. And A is always an aggressive State of Nature party’s unique best choice. So in all the bilateral interactions in a State of Nature, 37

38

Following the usual conventions in game theory, in each cell defined by the joint choices of the two parties, the row party’s (Party 1’s) payoff is the first coordinate and the column party’s (Party 2’s) payoff is the second coordinate of the payoff vector. For instance, in the ðP ; AÞ outcome of the θ 2 state where Party 2 is aggressive, Party 1’s payoff is L1 and Party 2’s payoff is L2 þ g2 . If Party 1 follows P then Party 2’s unique best response is s2 ¼ P if  θ 1 ; Aif  θ 2 . So a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for A to be a best strategy for Party 1 against Party 2’s best response is for her expected payoffs to satisfy E1 ðu1 ðP ; s2 ÞÞ ¼ ðL1 þ v1 Þð1  π 1 Þ < L1  ð1  π 1 Þ þ L21  π 1 ¼ E1 ðu1 ðA; s2 ÞÞ 1 or π 1 > L12v þ2v1 .

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each party does best by Anticipating against the other party. The end result is a war of all against all. One can question both the soundness of this game-theoretic argument and how closely this argument reflects Hobbes’s actual reasoning. I think this argument does capture the basics of Hobbes’s analysis of typical State of Nature interactions, although the argument of course incorporates mathematical concepts and vocabulary Hobbes did not have available to him. I also think some of the premises of this argument are dubious. But at the very least, this argument can help one pinpoint what Hobbes’s original argument might or might not involve. Hobbes claims that in the State of Nature “there is no way for any man to secure himselfe, so reasonable, as Anticipation,” until one perceives that there are no longer any serious threats against oneself.39 What is Anticipation, and what are its alternatives? In Leviathan Hobbes defines Anticipation as “by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men as he can,” but given Hobbes’s express declarations that adult people are roughly equal in their natural powers,40 one is unlikely to gain permanent mastery over others in many State of Nature encounters. In De Cive Hobbes describes Anticipation as attacking another preemptively in an attempt to get the better of the other,41 which suggests a more general definition of Anticipation against others as the permanent or even temporary seizure of some of their natural or instrumental power. Since Hobbes maintains that laying down the right to all things is the means of securing peace, the natural State of Nature alternative to Anticipation is to seek peace as the first Leviathan law of nature explicitly requires. This would imply at the very least that one also follows the second Leviathan law requiring one to lay down one’s rights to all things and the third Leviathan law requiring on one to honor one’s promises, since Hobbes concludes these laws follow as corollaries of the first Leviathan law. Why would Anticipation be “so reasonable” in a State of Nature if all “in reason” perceive peace to be good and would find a condition of war so miserable? Here is where Hobbes’s distinction between modest and more aggressive people does important work. Several times Hobbes distinguishes between two types of people, those who would be willing to live within modest bounds and others who are vainglorious and desire the fruits of conquest.42 The more aggressive type of person would actually prefer to Anticipate against others who seek peace for the glory and other spoils of 39 41

Leviathan 13:4. 40 Elements of Law I 14:1–2, 88(55), De Cive 1:3, 25–6, Leviathan 13:4. De Cive, Preface 12, 11. 42 De Cive, Preface 12, 11, 1:4, 26, Leviathan 11:2, 13:4.

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conquest. The modest person would presumably be glad to follow the positive requirements of the first three Leviathan laws of nature, but only so long as she does not make herself “a prey to others” in case those she is with fail to also follow these positive requirements.43 Unlike the more aggressive person, the modest person prefers peaceful coexistence over conquest. If everyone were modest, then a State of Nature peace might be possible since at such a peace each would be at her best State of Nature outcome. But peaceful coexistence among all cannot be maintained if some are aggressive, effectively ?infecting” the State of Nature. Hobbes observes that even in civil society people take precautionary measures like locking their doors and arming themselves, which he takes as evidence that people cannot help but tend to mistrust others.44 One reason Hobbes gives for this tendency is our general inability to distinguish between different types of people: we cannot tell the good and the bad apart, hence even if there were fewer evil men than good men, good, decent people would still be saddled with the constant need to watch, distrust, anticipate and get the better of others.45

Here Hobbes does not explicitly equate evilness with a tendency towards aggression, but he can do so, or he can maintain that people are just as unable to tell the modest and the more aggressive apart. Or he can simply restate the above argument so that θ 1 is the state where Party 2 is a good person who most desires peace and θ 2 is the state where Party 2 is an evil person who prefers to Anticipate against others who seek peace. The names of the types are not so important as are their associated preferences over State of Nature alternatives and our presumed inability in identifying others’ types, so I will continue to refer to θ 1 -types as modest and θ 2 types as more aggressive. Hobbes concludes that as a consequence of their inability to distinguish between individual types, in the State of Nature those who are modest have no choice but to Anticipate for self-protection, even if they outnumber those who are aggressive. Here is one point of possible weakness in Hobbes’s argument. If one attributes to State of Nature individuals the ordinary account of rational decision as maximizing expected utility or payoff,46 then Anticipation is a modest individual’s unique best choice only if she is sufficiently pessimistic in the sense that her probability that her current interaction partner is aggressive is sufficiently high. As the above argument shows, this 43 46

Leviathan 15:36. 44 De Cive Preface 11, 10–11, Leviathan 13:10. As do Hampton 1986, Vanderschraaf 2006 and Chung 2015.

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probability can be sufficiently high if the value one places on one’s continued life in freedom is sufficiently high relative to the additional value one places on peaceful coexistence and if one believes one has only an equal chance of either retaining or losing this continued life in freedom in a war with the other. If one places a much higher relative additional value on peaceful coexistence, or if one believes the relative expected costs of war are not so high, as could be the case if one expects neither side is likely to subjugate the other in a conflict, then the argument no longer goes through. One might modify the argument by attributing to State of Nature parties a different and more cautious criterion for making decisions, such as the maximin rule, or the disaster avoidance principle Gregory Kavka actually attributes to Hobbes, according to which one chooses the alternative that minimizes one’s chances of suffering a disastrous outcome.47 One then recovers Hobbes’s conclusion that State of Nature parties would all end up Anticipating against each other on the grounds that Anticipation is how one “plays it safe.” However, the agents who followed such unorthodox decision rules while in a State of Nature would be incapable of relinquishing their Right of Nature permission rights in order to contribute to the creation of a commonwealth, since to do so is to increase one’s risk of becoming others’ prey.48 One can modify the argument in a different way, by allowing parties to update their beliefs regarding each other’s conduct according to what they observe in the State of Nature. Then the persistent Anticipations of even only a few aggressive parties can ignite a contagion of Anticipation throughout the State of Nature. As more parties observe more of their counterparts Anticipating, all of the parties’ probabilities that those they will encounter will Anticipate gradually converge to unity.49 Since these probabilities change over time, 47

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Kavka 1986, §5.3. Kavka argues that State of Nature parties would employ disaster avoidance reasoning in a commonwealth by institution process. But Kavka makes it clear that his revisionary Hobbesian theory is a hypothetical contract theory, and he acknowledges that it is by no means clear that actual parties in a State of Nature would be able to suspend their war in order to create commonwealth. Kavka argues that compliance with community enforcement norms requiring one to keep promises is compatible with disaster avoidance reasoning even for communities that remain in a State of Nature with respect to each other. See Kavka 1986, §4.3. But Kavka does not clearly address the question of how disaster avoidance reasoners could ever form groups and establish community enforcement norms to begin with. For similar reasons, the Prisoner’s Dilemma model sometimes attributed to Hobbes is the wrong model of the State of Nature. If the State of Nature did have a two-party or multi-party Prisoner’s Dilemma structure, then by definition Anticipation would be every party’s strictly dominant choice and no alternative, including commonwealth, could ever be a stable alternative to the war of all against all. I pursue this idea in Vanderschraaf 2006.

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this updating approach introduces an evolutionary element into the analysis that Hobbes does not consider himself, but which also recovers Hobbes’s conclusion that State of Nature parties inevitably go to war. What are the fruits of conquest aggressive people seek, and what are more modest people trying to protect? Hobbes identifies several causes of friction between people that are likely to cause them trouble, particularly when they are in their natural condition: in the nature of man, we find three principall causes of quarrel. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh man invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other mens persons, wives, children, and catell; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue . . .50

Hobbes also says “the most frequent cause why men want to hurt each other arises when many want the same thing at the same time.”51 Given Hobbes’s explicit claim that people relentlessly seek power in his formal sense of means to further their own ends,52 and given how Hobbes states the Right of Nature, one might naturally conclude that Hobbes believes conflicting claims over scarce resources is the main root of State of Nature conflict.53 But such a conclusion overlooks the fact that many actual violent conflicts, including civil wars and wars between nations, erupt for reasons other than material scarcity. One might desire mastery over other persons and their spouses and children not only for their labor and their service as bodyguards or troops, but because she wants them to conform their lives according to her own beliefs, or even because she is angered at how she perceives they have slighted her in offhand remarks or gestures. Interestingly, Hobbes claims that “Man is most troublesome, when he is most at ease: for then it is that he loves to shew his Wisdome, and controule the Actions of them that governe the Common-Wealth.”54 Some read Hobbes as arguing that the primary cause of war is not competition for resources but a passion for glory or a commitment to defending one’s beliefs even at the risk of losing life or limb.55 Indeed, while Hobbes claims that conflict over things is the most frequent cause of conflict, he also claims that the most intense conflicts are those between different sects of 50 53 55

Leviathan 13:6–7. 51 De Cive 1:6, 27. 52 Leviathan 11:2, 10:1–2. Gauthier 1969, 18, adopts this position. 54 Leviathan 17:11. Abizadeh 2011, 298–315, concludes that passion for glory is the primary cause of war in his fine critical study. Lloyd 1992 gives a splendid systematic analysis of the role of transcendent interests in Hobbes’s political theory.

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the same religions and different political factions in the same commonwealth, because disagreement with one’s opinion is taken as an insult to one’s judgment or intelligence.56 Perhaps Hobbes is best understood as arguing that either competition over scarce resources or disputes over belief systems or desire for glory can be a sufficient cause of war, and that parties in the State of Nature Anticipate not only in order to avoid violent death but to avoid having to submit to the whims and insults of another who does not even provide the protection a sovereign would provide. And this underscores the importance of a sovereign not only as the agent that provides its subjects protection, but as the agent that sets standards of acceptable expression of opinions and doctrines and serves as the final arbiter in disputes.57 When Hobbes argues that the State of Nature leads to war, he needs to leave the door open to the parties exiting this state and achieving peace. The game-theoretic reconstruction of Hobbes’s argument of this section indicates that the parties are trapped in war so long as they cannot generate public information. Ever since Hobbes first presented his argument, many of his readers have concluded that Hobbes reaches his bleak conclusion primarily on the basis of intrinsic traits he attributes to State of Nature parties that most would take to be character flaws. These readers argue that Hobbes thinks State of Nature parties go to war because of their overriding self-regard,58 or because they are overly ruled by their passions,59 or because they are overly short-sighted.60 And Hobbes certainly gives texts supporting such interpretations and does state point-blank that people are not naturally fit for society.61 But such interpretations suffer from a common drawback: if people are so naturally flawed that in a State of Nature their flawed natures are enough to drive them into a war of all against all, then they should not be capable of creating civil society. On the other hand, as argued above a general inability to identify those prone to aggression can be enough to spark a State of Nature war even when the aggressive are relatively few in number. I regard this as the true core of Hobbes’s State of Nature argument. And a moral to draw from Hobbes’s argument is that parties can establish credibly enforceable reciprocal duties only if they can 56 58

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De Cive 1:5, 26–7. 57 De Cive 6:8, 79, 11, Leviathan 18:9, 11. Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, was one of the most prominent of Hobbes’s contemporaries to interpret Hobbes this way in his posthumously published Hyde 1676. Zagorin discusses Clarendon’s critiques of Leviathan in ed. Springboard 2007, 460–77. Leo Strauss defends this view in Strauss 1936. Abizadeh 2011 presents a recent defense of a variation on this view. 61 Hampton 1986, Chapter 3 gives a sophisticated defense of this view. De Cive 1:2, 21–2.

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generate certain public information. This moral is more general than Hobbes’s stated moral that establishing and maintaining an absolute sovereign is a necessary means to lasting peace.62 To be sure, a Hobbesian sovereign serves as a focal entity that guides each subject’s conduct in large part because she knows her fellow subjects are similarly guided by this sovereign. But at least in principle, State of Nature parties may be able to generate the mutual expectations that would support a lasting peace by means less drastic than surrendering their political freedom to a Hobbesian sovereign. The international arena may illustrate this point. Pufendorf takes the continued relatively peaceful coexistence of nations as refuting evidence of Hobbes’s analysis of the State of Nature.63 If Hobbes were right, then should not the nations of the earth have all submitted to a common world sovereign long ago? Hobbes can argue that the nations of the earth can coexist in relative peace and even enter into some cooperative ventures because they are relatively few in number and their interactions are relatively easy for their sovereigns to monitor individually. Hence these nation-level sovereigns can create and follow their own contingency strategies for enforcing compliance with the agreements they make in the absence of a common sovereign.64 In a similar vein, if large multitudes of individual people become capable of generating reliable public information, as opposed to widely disseminated “alternative facts,” regarding their conduct in certain interactions, they may become far more capable of governing themselves without the aid of a sovereign than Hobbes could have imagined. 62 64

Leviathan 17:13. 63 Pufendorf 1672, Book II, Chapter 2, Paragraph 8, 145–56. In Leviathan 13:12 Hobbes famously likens the sovereigns of nations to gladiators in the arena, suggesting that Hobbes thinks the nations of the earth are in fact at war according to his definition of war in De Cive 1:12, 29–30 and Leviathan 13:8 as a period when all parties know that all are willing to engage in combat at any moment. But in Leviathan 22:29 Hobbes states that leagues among commonwealths are lawful and profitable while they endure, so he is well aware that nations can establish self-enforcing agreements.

chapter 12

Hobbes’s Confounding Foole Michael Byron

Justice and the Third Law of Nature In chapter 14 of Leviathan, Hobbes spells out the first and second laws of nature, which require us first to seek peace,1 and second to lay down our right to all things along with others in order to create a peaceful commonwealth.2 After explaining the nature and limitations of contracts and covenants, which effect the transfer of rights, Hobbes turns in chapter 15 to the other laws of nature. The third law requires us to promote justice, and this in a precise sense: namely, we must keep covenant.3 Hobbes remarks that, “when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust; and the definition of Injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant” (Leviathan, ¶15.2). Two paragraphs later, a Foole denies justice: “The Foole hath said in his heart: ‘there is no such thing as justice’” (Leviathan, ¶15.4).4 1

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“And consequently it is a precept, or general rule, of reason that every man ought to endeavor peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it, and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war” (Leviathan, ¶14.4). All citations to Leviathan employ the chapter and paragraph numbers of Curley’s 1994 edition. I have changed Hobbes’s Roman numerals to Arabic for clarity: so “¶14.4” refers to chapter xiv, paragraph 4. All emphasis is original unless otherwise noted. “From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down the right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself” (Leviathan, ¶14.5). “From that law of nature by which we are obliged to transfer to another such rights as, being retained, hinder the peace of mankind, there followeth a third, which is this that men perform their covenants made, without which covenants are in vain . . . And in this law of nature consisteth the fountain and original of Justice” (Leviathan, ¶15.1). Sorell reminds us why we must take Hobbes’s official definitions seriously: “The most questionable step in Kavka’s (1986) account is the one taken earliest: namely that of attributing to Hobbes a broad conception of justice while admitting that this is different from justice in Hobbes’s narrow sense. The fact is, that this narrow sense of justice – justice in the sense of keeping agreements – is the only sense that Hobbes relies on in defining ‘justice,’ and, whatever else is clear about Hobbes’s scientific methodology, acts of definition are centrally important to it” (Sorell 2001, 239). The archaic capitalization and spelling, “Foole,” denotes Hobbes’s own interlocutor, to whom he attributes specific beliefs or statements, such as denying the existence of justice and of God.

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In the Foole, Hobbes finds a suitable figure to pose an objection to his postulation of keeping covenant as a law of nature. His response has been the focus of considerable scholarly debate, not least because Hobbes could have been clearer about his reasoning. Indeed, some readers struggle to distinguish the standpoint of the Foole from Hobbes’s own. Hobbes’s rebuttal of the Foole’s objection provides crucial support for his defense of the commonwealth as a bulwark against the atrocities of the state of nature, and so we should try to understand how he aims to do it. Hobbes’s definition of justice in chapter 15 might well puzzle readers: two chapters prior, Hobbes had stated that, “To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent: that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice” (Leviathan, ¶13.13). The scope of this claim concerning justice seems to be the state of nature. Without a common power to enforce law, he says that there is effectively no law; and without law, the concept of justice lacks application. It is not that all actions in the state of nature are unjust; rather, they are neither just nor unjust, as we cannot apply the concept of justice. Mere pages later, Hobbes articulates the third law of nature, which certainly must apply in the state of nature – or we could never leave it – and he seems to impose a rational requirement of justice, defined there as keeping our covenants. If the concept of justice has application in the state of nature, then presumably there is law – at least the third law of nature – and thus presumably a common power to enforce it. LeBuffe (2007, 31) notes what he calls a “tension” here: he observes that in chapter 14, Hobbes states that where there is no common power to enforce their covenants, people will (sometimes?) have good reason not to keep them; but in chapter 15, the third law implies that they always have good reason to keep them. “This result [in chapter 15], however, comes into tension with the earlier [chapter 14] analysis of the state of nature: is Hobbes’s view that it is sometimes rational to break covenant or that it is never rational? The Fool’s objection to the third law of nature is forceful because it exploits this tension.” A careful reading undermines LeBuffe’s claim. LeBuffe contends that “without such a power to publicize and enforce the terms of cooperation people will have good reason not to keep their promises to one another, The substance of those beliefs requires unpacking, which is part of my brief; but other fools and other modes of folly exist, and it will be useful to identify Hobbes’s target in this fashion.

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which he calls covenants.”5 The basis for this interpretation is a passage where Hobbes points out that some covenants may become void. If a covenant be made wherein neither of the parties perform presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war of every man against every man) upon any reasonable suspicion it is void . . . For he that performeth first has no assurance the other will perform after, because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power; which in the condition of mere nature, where all are equal and judges of the justness of their own fears, cannot possibly be supposed (Leviathan, ¶14.18).

Note that Hobbes does not say here (or anywhere) that, in LeBuffe’s phrase, “it is sometimes rational to break covenant” (31): the third law of nature entails that it is neither rationally permissible nor required ever to break covenant. Indeed, Hobbes’s point is that such a covenant becomes void in these circumstances, and it is conceptually impossible to break a voided covenant.6 Further, Hobbes does say that without a common power, we may reasonably come to fear that our covenant partners will not perform, and that this new fear can void a covenant. But this point concerns first performance, and it can void covenants almost instantly. The Foole’s claim, as I elaborate below, is that even second performance – doing my part of the covenant after you have done yours – can be irrational. Hobbes denies that fear of nonperformance by the other party justifies breaking covenant for second performers, as obviously the first to perform has already done so. The passage LeBuffe cites does not apply to the interpretation of the Foole.7 So we can set aside the putative tension and identify Hobbes’s position with the third law of nature: justice requires keeping covenant, recognizing that sometimes in a state of nature genuine covenants can become void and obligations dissolve. Why then does the Foole deny that justice is a rule of reason? 5

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LeBuffe (2007, 31) cites ¶14.8 when he attributes this view to Hobbes, but this citation is surely a typographical error: ¶14.8 is a paragraph about inalienable rights, and so about impossible covenants: those are covenants that people cannot make, no matter what they might say. Instead, I believe that LeBuffe meant to cite ¶14.18, as he does subsequently in his detailed discussion of the point (39). To be a voided covenant, the agreement must initially have satisfied the definition of a covenant, but then circumstances subsequently arose that rendered it void. Hence it was formerly a valid, binding covenant, but later due to circumstances it became void and so nonbinding (Leviathan, ¶14.20). The conceptual moment in which the covenant exists might be vanishingly brief: see the discussion of Section 7 below. Thanks to Michael Green for helping me to see this point.

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The Foole’s Challenge Here is what the Foole says: [E]very man’s conservation and contentment being committed to his own care, there could be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto, and therefore also to make or not make, keep or not keep, covenants was not against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit (Leviathan, ¶15.4).

This glimpse into the Foole’s mind reveals a principle of practical reason: do what conduces to one’s benefit. It follows, according to the Foole, that one may rationally break covenants, contrary to the third law of nature, when doing so pays. Of course the Foole recognizes that people use the word “justice” to apply to keeping covenants, just as they use the word “injustice” to apply to breaking covenants.8 But that is mere talk: breaking covenants, according to the Foole, is not irrational – not prohibited by reason – when it conduces to one’s benefit. So justice, denoting a requirement to keep covenant per the third law of nature, is not a rule of reason. Lloyd reconstructs the Foole’s argument thus: 1. If injustice is ever reasonable, justice cannot be a rule of reason. 2. If an action most conduces to one’s ends, then it is reasonable to perform that action. 3. Injustice sometimes (most) conduces to one’s ends. 4. Hence [by (2) and (3)], injustice is sometimes reasonable. 5. Therefore [by (1) and (4)], justice cannot be a rule of reason (Lloyd 2009, 304). Hobbes disputes the soundness, not the validity, of this argument. In particular, he denies premise 2, the Foole’s principle of practical reason. Premise 1 is no threat, as it seems to be a conceptual truth about rules of reason; and premise 3, which seems to be an empirical truth, need pose no threat either. The folly, and the threat to Hobbes’s third law of nature, lies in the Foole’s principle. Much of the debate concerning the Foole and Hobbes’s reply to him turns on how Hobbes’s conception of practical reason differs from the Foole’s. One point worth noting before examining Hobbes’s rebuttal is a small one that Hobbes makes in elucidating the Foole’s position. “[The Foole] 8

“[The Foole] does not therein deny that there be covenants, and that they are sometimes broken, sometimes kept, and that such breach of them may be called injustice, and the observance of them [called] justice” (Leviathan, ¶15.4, emphasis added).

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questioneth whether injustice, taking away the fear of God (for the same fool hath said in his heart there is no God), may not sometimes stand with that reason which dictateth to every man his own good” (Leviathan, ¶15.4, emphasis added). Hobbes seems to assert that his Foole adopts not only an unjust principle, but atheism as well. The reason to mention the passage now is that the Foole’s position constrains how Hobbes may reply, given his dialectical intention to respond to the Foole on his own terms. Hobbes declines simply to assert that injustice is contrary to God’s will, as that is expressed, for example, in the third law of nature. To do so would beg the question against the Foole, who is evidently an atheist: instead, Hobbes attacks the premise that it is rational to do what most conduces to one’s ends, the Foole’s crucial and distinctive premise 2. Another preparatory point is that Hobbes has already provided a rational justification of the third law of nature when he addresses the Foole’s challenge. He is entertaining a potential undermining defeater for the third law. The point is worth recalling when Hobbes deploys other premises that go unchallenged by the Foole. Because Hobbes is rebutting a potential defeater, he is entitled to use his other premises without begging the question against the Foole.

Hobbes’s Rebuttal Hobbes begins his reply to the Foole with a preliminary point concerning the scope of the injustice in question. For the question is not of promises mutual where there is no security of performance on either side (as when there is no civil power erected over the parties promising), for such promises are no covenants, but either when one of the parties has performed already, or where there is a power to make him perform, there is the question whether it be against reason, that is, against the benefit of the other to perform or not. And I say it is not against reason (Leviathan, ¶15.5).

For a covenant to be broken, it must first exist, and where no common power ensures performance there may be no covenant to break.9 Instead, the Foole’s putative “rational injustice” occurs in two situations: first, in any situation (including a state of nature) when one party has already performed. In such cases, the other party can have no “reasonable suspicion” that the first party will not perform, and so the basis for voiding a contract (mentioned in ¶14.18) will not apply; hence reason requires 9

See Section 7 for more on whether it is possible to covenant in a state of nature.

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the second party to perform. Second, where there is “a power to make him perform,” it is rational to do so in virtue of that power. In both cases, the Foole believes that reason permits him to break covenant when profitable. Hobbes next offers a three-pronged argument against the Foole. First Hobbes claims that, when we act in self-destructive ways that unexpectedly turn out to profit us, the action is not therefore reasonable. This argument aims to disconnect premises 2 and 3 of the Foole’s argument. Grant premise 3, that sometimes injustice pays.10 It does not follow that we ever have reason to act unjustly: indeed, given the account of human nature that Hobbes has developed, we have reason (coming in a moment) to expect that injustice will generally not pay. As we have already remarked, Hobbes may legitimately appeal to that account here because he is rebutting a potential defeater to his account, not proving it. The mere fact that a course of action unexpectedly yields a net benefit does not justify choosing it nor make it “reasonably or wisely done.” [F]irst, that when a man doth a thing which, notwithstanding anything can be foreseen and reckoned on, tendeth to his own destruction (howsoever some accident which he could not expect, arriving, may turn it to his benefit), yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done (Leviathan, ¶15.5).

The Foole’s error is analogous to thinking that, because a conclusion turns out to be true, the argument that led to it must be cogent, strong or valid. We confer the status of “reasonably or wisely done” on actions that we reasonably expect to pay, not those that pay contrary to what we expect. A good decision does not guarantee a good outcome; but neither does a good outcome show that the decision leading to it was good. The Foole is thus guilty, first, of a failure of wisdom: as Lloyd remarks, “[The Foole’s] error in affirming [premise] (2) is, on Hobbes’s analysis, a conceptual error (an absurdity), and thus a failure of scientific reasoning or sapience” (Lloyd 2009, 305).11 10

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Reading Hobbes as granting premise 3 and agreeing with the Foole that injustice sometimes pays quite disarms the critique of Zaitchik (1982), according to which Hobbes must reply to the Foole by demonstrating that injustice never pays. Zaitchik misreads the threat posed by the Foole: that threat is not about whether injustice ever pays, but about whether it is ever rational to break covenant contrary to reasonable expectation. Foisneau (2004, 115) remarks that in earlier works Hobbes had been content to point out the contradiction between making and breaking a covenant – first committing, then de-committing to a course of action. “However, this logical analogy is not sufficient to ensure the consistency of the theory of justice. At most, it allows us to stigmatize those who do not keep their promises as behaving in an absurd way. Leviathan’s contribution consists in shifting the debate from the dogmatic affirmation of the illogicality of an unjust action to a possible refutation of the fool’s argument,

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Hobbes argues, second, that the reason we should expect injustice not to pay is that the Foole who breaks covenant will be either “silent” or “explicit”12: the explicit Foole “declares he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him,” and such a Foole, says Hobbes, “can in reason expect no other means of safety than what can be had from his own single power.” Yet, in a state of nature, such a policy is self-destructive, because in the war of all against all, “no man can hope by his own strength or wit to defend himself from destruction without the help of confederates” (Leviathan, ¶15.5). The explicit Foole thus dooms himself, and he should not expect that his injustice will be profitable, nor a rule of reason. That leaves, third, the silent Foole, who attempts to conceal his perfidy for the sake of gaining admission to a defensive confederacy of the sort Hobbes thinks necessary for survival in a state of nature. The explicit Foole will be excluded immediately from society, and the silent Foole cast out upon discovery13: both will subsequently perish. We know from experience that counting on others’ errors is not a reliable means to any good, much less one as valuable as survival. Even in silence it is thus imprudent to adopt the Foole’s principle of practical reason. This conclusion undermines the Foole’s objection to the third law of nature, thus reestablishing that law. Lloyd reconstructs Hobbes’s rebuttal of the silent Foole as follows. 6. To be prudent is to form one’s expectations by correct extrapolation from past experience [definition of “prudence”]. 7. If experience shows that an action can be expected to be harmful, then (even should it turn out well due to unforeseeable events) it is imprudent to expect that the action will be profitable [by 6]. 8. Experience shows that relying on the errors of others for the success of one’s actions can be expected to be harmful [empirical premise]. 9. Any expectation that unjust action will be profitable requires relying on the errors of others [empirical premise].

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according to which there is no contradiction between making a contract and breaking it for one’s benefit.” That Hobbes accuses the Foole of a conceptual error does not entail that the error is a logical contradiction, so Foisneau’s point here is consistent with Lloyd’s interpretation, at least as I understand them. A fuller treatment of Hobbes’s theory of justice is beyond the scope of the present chapter. This terminology is Hoekstra’s (1997). Hayes (1999) offers a brief critique of the adequacy of Hoekstra’s “explicit vs. silent” schema. Such a Foole “cannot be received into any society that unite themselves for peace and defence but by the error of them that receive him; nor when he is received, be retained in it without seeing the danger of their error; which errors a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security” (Leviathan, ¶15.5).

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10. Therefore [by (7), (8), and (9)], it is imprudent to expect that unjust action will be profitable (Lloyd 2009, 307). This argument begins with Hobbes’s definition of prudence (Leviathan, ¶3.7), a capacity to learn from experience that we share with non-human animals (¶3.9). Premise (7) applies this definition with an example of incorrect extrapolation. Premises (8) and (9) capture the empirical claims that Hobbes makes in ¶15.5, and the adequacy of the argument turns on them, especially on (8).14 So Hobbes rebuts the Foole on two main grounds. First, the Foole is irrational because insapient: he adopts a principle of practical reason that contains a conceptual error. Second, he is irrational because imprudent: he fails to learn from experience that injustice seldom in fact pays. A strength of Lloyd’s interpretation of this argument is that it allows us to capture both dimensions of the Foole’s error. The Standard Interpretation, on the other hand cannot do as well.

The Standard Interpretation Space does not permit a detailed critique of the school of interpretation – deriving in its contemporary modes from Strauss (1942) and Nagel (1959) – that begins by attributing to Hobbesian agents a narrowly egoistic psychology.15 Gert (1967) demonstrates the defects of such a view, and Lloyd (1992) undermines the related idea that Hobbesian agents pursue self-preservation above all else. Rather than take aim at the interpretation itself or its distinctive commitments, we can instead consider the difficulties that the view has in making sense of the Foole’s objection and Hobbes’s rebuttal. Consider Hampton (1986), who occupies the uncomfortable standpoint of identifying Hobbes’s view with the Foole’s. According to her Hobbes, rational agents as such exhibit an egoistic moral psychology, and so does the Foole (Hampton 1986, 19–24). Rational agents maximize expected utility, and so does the Foole (Hampton 1986, 16–17). And rational agents employ an act-governed rather than a rule-governed criterion of practical 14 15

Lloyd (2009, 307ff) elaborates on Hobbes’s resources for defending his empirical premises. The standard interpretation comes in many flavors, but their family resemblance is built on attributing (some version of) the following to Hobbes: a narrowly egoistic conception of motivation; an instrumentalist (often maximizing) conception of practical rationality; a conception of an agent’s primary motivation in terms of the preservation of one’s life and aversion to one’s bodily death; a subjectivist or desire theory of the good. The three versions I consider, from Hampton, Gauthier and Kavka, are representative in embracing all of these commitments.

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rationality; and so does the Foole (Hampton 1986, 93). Hampton’s standpoint is uncomfortable not least because Hobbes states flatly, “This [Foole’s] specious reasoning is nevertheless false” (Leviathan, ¶15.4). Hampton never manages to explain how Hobbes could plausibly think that the Foole’s reasoning is “specious and false” when it is identical to his own.16 Gauthier (1979) agrees that the Foole is an egoistic, act-governed, expected utility maximizer, and as a result he characterizes Hobbes’s reply to the Foole as “rather lame” (Gauthier 1979, 548). That reply does, however, contain the germ of the idea of constrained maximization that Gauthier (1986) built into an original Hobbesian moral theory. Constrained maximization contrasts with the Foole’s “straightforward” maximization. Rational agents on this view constrain their maximization of expected utility with a disposition to cooperate under fair terms for the sake of mutual benefit (Gauthier 1986, 167). Though Gauthier regards constrained maximization as non-lame, it is not a response available to Hobbes.17 The striking feature of Gauthier’s interpretation of Hobbes’s response to the Foole is its lack of interpretive charity. Hampton’s commitment to the standard interpretation drives her to identify Hobbes’s view with a view that he calls foolish and false. Gauthier attributes a “lame” response to Hobbes. Interpretive charity should motivate us to inquire whether any more adequate interpretation of Hobbes’s reply to the Foole is available, even perhaps at the expense of the presuppositions of the standard interpretation. Kavka (1995) gives a rival reading of Hobbes’s reply to the Foole that still embodies a commitment to the standard interpretation’s distinctive presupposition of an egoistic moral psychology. Unlike Hampton and Gauthier, however, Kavka undertakes to show that Hobbes’s response to the Foole is (a) distinct from the Foole’s view (so unlike Hampton’s reading), (b) grounded in a conception of practical reasoning that is strictly 16

17

The view of the Foole defended by Nunan (1989) is substantially the same as Hampton’s. Kavka (1995, 12–13) contends that Hampton’s interpretation raises other problems, for example by entailing that Hobbes held a pro-revolutionary position, when in fact Hobbes was robustly anti-revolutionary. Kavka (1995) offers three undercutting defeaters against Gauthier’s interpretation: he contends that Hobbes’s political philosophy is strictly forward-looking, contrary to the conception of constrained maximization; that Gauthier’s interpretation undercuts a “key tenet” of Hobbesian political theory, namely that cooperation is rational only on account of the threat of sanctions from the sovereign; and that the conception of constrained maximization is open to “very serious” substantive objections (Kavka 1995, 17–18). Venezia (2015) offers additional considerations grounded in the normativity of law that undercut Gauthier’s interpretation.

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forward-looking (so unlike Gauthier’s reading), and (c) consistent with other central commitments in Hobbes’s moral and political theory (and so charitable). On Kavka’s view, Hobbes thinks that rational agents make choices about keeping covenant under conditions of uncertainty, which problematizes maximizing expected utility: without detailed information about outcomes and their probabilities, the maximizing calculus loses traction. Instead, according to Kavka, Hobbesian rational agents adopt a principle of “play it safe,” which underwrites action that minimizes the risk of disaster. The Foole, by contrast, does not “play it safe.” Banking on his ability to predict when breaking covenant will pay, he risks being evicted from the commonwealth when he betrays his fellow subjects. This failure to adopt “play it safe” constitutes the Foole’s irrationality. Finally, Kavka argues that Hobbes’s “rule-egoism” is consistent with precommitment to “play it safe” under conditions of uncertainty.18 According to Kavka, [T]he Foole may be using the language of certain or actual outcomes, in which case he is simply claiming that it is rational for me to unilaterally violate an agreement on whatever occasions I will, ex post, benefit more by violating than keeping it. Hobbes need not deny this latter claim. He need only point out that we never know at the time of action whether now is one of those occasions (Kavka 1995, 7).

A few pages later, Kavka strengthens the claim to say that, not only does Hobbes not need to deny the Foole’s premise 2, but he does not in fact do so: “As noted above, Hobbes does not deny this claim in his response to the Foole; he merely deflects it by noting that one never does know such things with certainty” (Kavka 1995, 10). Yet this reading misses Hobbes’s first argument against the Foole, which clearly does exactly what Kavka says it does not do. Hobbes contends that the Foole is insapient because he adopts a principle of practical reason which systematically fails to incorporate reasonable expectations. And when Hobbes contends that the Foole is imprudent, he does so on the grounds that the Foole has not formed the proper expectations regarding the likelihood of benefiting in the long run from breaking covenant.19 The latter argument deploys empirical premises that are surely vulnerable to criticism. Hobbes might be wrong, but his justification for the rationality of keeping covenant is not adequately captured as playing it 18 19

See Kavka (1995, 21ff) for complete development of the argument. For a related critique of the standard interpretation based on its conflation of wisdom and prudence, see Rhodes (1992).

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safe in the face of uncertain outcomes. Even were breaking covenant prudent on occasion, it would still be insapient. Disaster avoidance might support Hobbes’s reasoning concerning the imprudence of injustice, but the one-dimensional framework of the standard interpretation is insufficient for capturing Hobbes’s argument for insapience. It also offers no account of the identity of the two Fooles.

The Two Fooles Hobbes glosses the Foole’s position as follows: [The Foole] does not therein deny that there be covenants, and that they are sometimes broken, sometimes kept, and that such breach of them may be called injustice, and the observance of them [called] justice; but he questioneth whether injustice, taking away the fear of God (for the same fool hath said in his heart there is no God), may not sometimes stand with that reason which dictateth to every man his own good; and particularly then, when it conduceth to such a benefit as shall put a man in a condition to neglect, not only the dispraise and revilings, but also the power of other men (Leviathan, ¶15.4).

A puzzling and seldom remarked issue is: why does Hobbes think that the Foole who denies justice is the same as the Psalmist’s fool, who denies God? To save words, we can follow Lloyd in labelling them the “unjust Foole” and the “atheistic Foole”20: Hobbes says that the unjust Foole is an atheistic Foole. Is that merely an entailment, or does he mean a stronger identity claim?21 Where s is a person, U an unjust Foole, and A an atheistic Foole, we can distinguish two conditionals: (1)

8sðUs ) AsÞ

which represents “all unjust Fooles are atheistic Fooles,” and 20

21

See Lloyd (2009, 316). “Atheistic Foole” seems apt enough, but “unjust Foole” perhaps less so. The Foole is capable of acting in ways that others would judge to be just. Being an unjust Foole does not imply that he always breaks covenant. In another way, the Foole does indeed contrast with Hobbes’s “just man,” because the Foole is one whose will “is not framed by the justice, but by the apparent benefit of what he is to do” (Leviathan, ¶15.10). On the just man, see Harvey (2002) and Venezia (2015). Lloyd remarks that Hobbes might mean merely to assert a conjunction, that the Foole is both unjust and an atheist; and further that Hobbes might have in mind a common explanation stemming from the Foole’s irrationality. That proposal must of course apply to the Foole as such; and it is therefore not materially distinct from the reading I propose in the text, provided only that we read the necessity of the entailment relations as de dicto rather than de re. I take it that this is the natural and obvious way to interpret the modality of the entailment relations Hobbes seems to employ.

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8sðAs ) UsÞ

which represents the converse of (1), “all atheistic Fooles are unjust Fooles.” The biconditional that conjoins them is: (3)

8sðUs ⇔ AsÞ

which represents the claim that the two Fooles are identical. Our question is: when Hobbes says that “the same [unjust] Foole hath said in his heart there is no God,” is he asserting (1) or (3)? Hobbes can clearly justify (1). Suppose that (1) were false, and an unjust Foole could be a theist. An unjust but theistic Foole who was otherwise rational would never break covenant because to him injustice is always detectable by God. In terms of Lloyd’s reconstruction of the Foole’s argument from Section 2 above, this theistic Foole would reject premise (3) and deny that injustice could ever conduce to one’s benefit. Denying premise (3) is sufficient to distinguish him from the unjust Foole, not least because a theistic Foole poses little threat: whether or not he accepts the unjust Foole’s false principle of practical reason in premise (2), the theistic Foole, cowed by the likelihood of divine punishment, will keep covenant. So no theist will be an unjust Foole, or equivalently, all unjust Fooles will be atheists, just as conditional (1) asserts. Is commitment to conditional (1) all there is to Hobbes’s remark linking the Foole’s injustice to atheism? Hobbes has the resources to justify the identity claim, biconditional (3). Having already justified one component conditional, it remains to justify the other. Conditional (2) does not follow from the reasoning given so far: the claim that all atheistic Fooles must be unjust Fooles requires an independent argument. For all that we have said about him, the atheistic Foole might have other (necessary) grounds for always keeping covenant. Indeed, Hobbes’s defense of the laws of nature as rational theorems is accessible to atheists and can give them reason to follow the third law apart from its status as God’s command.22 So conditional (2) is not yet justified, as so far at least it seems possible to be an atheistic Foole without being an unjust Foole. It is also insufficient to justify conditional (2) to point out that the unjust and atheistic Fooles are irrational in the same ways. According to Lloyd, the atheistic Foole is like the unjust Foole in being both imprudent and insapient. Atheism as Hobbes argues in chapter 11 of Leviathan, depends upon faulty reasoning, because anyone who sees that effects have causes and those causes 22

For a discussion of the normative status of the rational theorems, see Byron (2015 chapter 2).

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michael byron prior causes “must come to this thought at last: that there is some cause, whereof there is no former cause, but is eternal, which is it men call God.” Atheism is, on Hobbes’s account, a failure of reasoning [and so insapient]. It is also a failure of prudence (understood as facility in extrapolating from experience), according to Hobbes’s supplementary argument that “by the visible things of this world and their admirable order, a man may conceive there is a cause of them, whom men call God.” The faults of the unjust Foole and the atheistic Foole with whom Hobbes identifies him are thus strictly parallel on the deflationary definitional interpretation, regardless of whether those fools are explicit or silent (Lloyd 2009, 316; Hobbes quotations from Leviathan, ¶11.25).

Lloyd argues that her reading of the laws of nature does a better job of explaining the irrationality of the Foole than Hoekstra’s (1997) “explicit fool” interpretation. Even granting that claim, all that she has shown is that the two Fooles commit parallel errors, not that the two are identical (biconditional (3)), nor indeed even that the unjust Foole must be an atheistic Foole (conditional (1)).

Identical Fooles We can approach the claim that all atheistic Fooles must be unjust Fooles – conditional (2) – via another textual puzzle. Hobbes seems to imply that covenants are possible in a state of nature. “If a covenant be made wherein neither of the parties perform presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war of every man against every man) upon any reasonable suspicion it is void” (Leviathan, ¶14.18). In order possibly to become void, a covenant must first exist and so be possible in a state of nature. Later, while rebutting the Foole, Hobbes seems to imply that covenants are not possible in a state of nature. “For the question is not of promises mutual where there is no security of performance on either side (as when there is no civil power erected over the parties promising), for such promises are no covenants” (Leviathan, ¶15.5). In a state of nature with “no security of performance,” mere promises are not sufficient to constitute a covenant, so covenants will be impossible. Does Hobbes think that covenants are possible in a state of nature or not? The distinction between a primary and a secondary state of nature might explain away the appearance of contradiction. Martinich (1992) develops this distinction – which does not appear in the text – in order to explain why Hobbes says that justice is inapplicable in a state of nature (chapter 13) and then says that justice is a law of nature and applies everywhere (chapter 14).

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I modify the distinction to address some problems (Byron 2015), but the main motivation for the distinction remains the same. And although the primary/secondary distinction remains controversial,23 its explanatory power warrants its deployment. Its usefulness here further underwrites that warrant. On this reading, covenants are possible in a secondary state of nature, where people acknowledge God as a common power capable of enforcing covenants, but not in a primary state of nature, whose inhabitants recognize no common power.24 In chapter 13, recall, Hobbes claimed that in a state of nature, “The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice” (Leviathan, ¶13.13). A primary state of nature by definition is one in which nobody has submitted to God (or anyone else) and which has no subjects in what Hobbes calls God’s kingdom by nature.25 Not being subjects of any kingdom or commonwealth, the inhabitants of the primary state of nature recognize no common power and are therefore under no legal obligations, including the laws of nature.26 Yet the laws of nature are also rational theorems that are normative for all beings with reason. A primary state of nature includes only atheists, and Hobbes clearly means to link denial of God with denial of justice, in his “no common power, no law, no injustice” formula. But if covenants are possible in a primary state of nature, why would justice not require keeping them? The impossibility of covenants in a primary state of nature would explain why the concept of justice lacks application there. If justice is keeping covenant, a situation without covenants would be one without 23 24

25

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For two recent lines of objection, see the discussion in Byron and Venezia (2016) and Olsthoorn’s contribution to Byron et al. (2017). Hobbes does not define the term “common power,” but he seems to mean a power (a) capable of and (b) responsible for enforcing covenants that is (c) recognized by all parties to a covenant. Because those in a primary state of nature recognize no power in this sense, none exists. As a necessary being, God exists everywhere, including a primary state of nature; but without recognition, God would not count as a common power. Contracts where both parties perform at once – some forms of commerce, for example, that involve immediate exchange of goods – seem to be possible even in a primary state of nature, as their execution does not rely on trust, and thus does not require a common power for security (Leviathan, ¶14.9). Hobbes writes that, “They, therefore, that believe there is a God that governeth the world, and hath given precepts, and propounded rewards and punishments to mankind, are God’s subjects; all the rest are to be understood as enemies” (Leviathan, ¶31.2). Those in a primary state of nature fail to submit to God, are God’s enemies, and have no sovereign. Inhabitants of a secondary state of nature, in contrast, can be motivated to keep covenant and obey the other laws of nature not only by fear of punishment – both in this life, from what Hobbes calls “natural punishments,” and the next – but also by a positive desire to please God. Such positive motivations are the result of what I call the value-conforming desire (Byron 2015, chapter 3). For an argument linking legal obligation to submission, see Byron (2015, chapter 3).

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justice or injustice. Perhaps the formula Hobbes should have used is: “no common power, no covenants; no covenants, no injustice.” In fact, in the passage quoted earlier where Hobbes seems to suggest that covenants are possible in a primary state of nature, he goes on in that very sentence to deny that such a covenant could persist long enough to bind. If a covenant be made wherein neither of the parties perform presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war of every man against every man) upon any reasonable suspicion it is void . . . For he that performeth first has no assurance the other will perform after, because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle men’s ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power; which in the condition of mere nature, where all are equal and judges of the justness of their own fears, cannot possibly be supposed (Leviathan, ¶14.18).

Note the strong modal claim at the end: in a condition of “mere nature,” with no common power (including God) – a primary state of nature – we cannot possibly suppose that words alone will bind people against their passions and ambitions. Though covenants might exist momentarily in a primary state of nature, or be conceptually possible, they become void immediately.27 None persists long enough to be kept or broken. In that case, justice lacks application.28 This interpretation also explains the apparent slippage concerning the possibility of covenants in a state of nature. A secondary state of nature is populated by theists who have submitted to God, thereby recognizing a common power. So Hobbes has no problem explaining how covenants, including a covenant to found a commonwealth, are possible there. But in a primary state of nature, covenants are possible only in the thinnest sense: 27

28

The interpretation is complicated slightly by the fact that just after the quoted passage, Hobbes states: “The cause of fear which maketh such a covenant invalid must be always something arising after the covenant made (as some new fact or other sign of the will not to perform), else it cannot make the covenant void. For that which could not hinder a man from promising, ought not to be admitted as a hindrance of performing” (Leviathan, ¶14.20). This provision affects the primary and secondary states of nature differentially: in a primary state of nature, where no one can reasonably expect second-performer compliance, covenants will be merely notionally possible and usually will not be made at all; in a secondary state of nature, with God recognized as a common power, people can make covenants in good faith, and yet those covenants become void later due to some new fact. This difference does not affect my argument concerning covenants in the primary state of nature. Thanks to Sharon Lloyd for pointing out this concern. We might observe that from the Foole’s standpoint in a primary state of nature, it is impossible to break covenant. Because they become void immediately, covenants are impossible to break except notionally (“breach of them may be called injustice,” says the Foole in ¶15.4). The idea that, from the Foole’s standpoint, breaking covenant is neither immoral nor irrational undercuts the thesis of Robson (2015), who contends that the unjust Foole has prudential reasons to keep covenant grounded in the likelihood that he will feel guilty about not doing so.

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people might utter the words to covenant, but because “reasonable suspicion” is necessarily present, such covenants become void instantly. In practice, no one in a primary state of nature can be bound by covenant.29 In short, the atheistic Foole denies God and thereby locates himself in a primary state of nature, and his denial of a common power entails that he must deny justice as well. We saw earlier that the unjust Foole necessarily denies God, which justifies conditional (1); and conversely, the atheistic Foole necessarily denies justice, which justifies conditional (2). In asserting both, we justify the identity claim, (3). So in the theory of a primary state of nature we find a conceptual connection between justice and God that explains the identity of the unjust and atheistic Fooles. This interpretation accounts for Hobbes’s assertion that the unjust Foole is the “same Foole” who says in his heart that there is no God.

Conclusion The argument shows that Hobbes can consistently claim that the unjust Foole is identical with the atheistic Foole. Should he? We can make a cumulative case argument in favor of attributing the identity claim.30 The first consideration is the one just mentioned: Hobbes can justify the identity claim. That provides some reason to read “the same [unjust] Foole hath said in his heart there is no God,” as meaning that the unjust and atheistic Fooles are identical. One natural reading of sameness is identity. Next, we noted earlier that Lloyd (2009, 316) demonstrated that the unjust and atheistic Fooles exhibit “parallel” defects in rationality. They are both imprudent, in failing to grasp the lessons of experience, and insapient, 29

30

Hobbes confronts a dilemma here. If covenants are impossible in any state of nature, then he is wrong to think that people might found a commonwealth by institution, which is the result of a covenant in a state of nature. On the other hand, if covenants are possible and enforceable in a state of nature, then Hobbes is wrong to think that the commonwealth is essential for survival. I have space only to gesture toward an answer. Although covenants become possible and practical in a secondary state of nature, the civil institutions of the commonwealth make them far more reliable and sustainable, thus making our survival much more probable than a state of nature. When we consider that states of nature exist on a continuum between total war and a commonwealth (see Lloyd 2009, 19ff), this approach appears to be a promising way to break the dilemma. Thanks to Michael Green for prompting this line of thought (and apologies for being unable to develop it further here). A cumulative case argument is often described by analogy: the cases supporting the conclusion are independent, like the legs of a table, and though none of them might be sufficient on its own, together they support the weight.

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in reasoning incorrectly. By reading Hobbes as asserting an identity claim, we can explain this parallelism in a way that otherwise remains coincidental. Finally, attributing this identity to Hobbes fits with his Christian commitments, which are more or less orthodox (at least in this regard). The inverse of the unjust and atheistic Foole is God, whom Hobbes regards as the ground of all goodness. Hobbes’s strong commitment to keeping covenant and so to his idea of justice is bound up with his covenant theology.31 So the identity of the unjust and atheistic Fooles satisfies Hobbes’s theological commitments as well. Reflecting on Hobbes’s reply to the Foole enhances the value of distinguishing between a primary and a secondary state of nature. Hobbes must be able to account for how covenants can bind in a state of nature. The commonwealth (by institution) is founded in a state of nature by covenant, so if covenants are impossible in any state of nature, we could never leave it. A secondary state of nature inhabited by theists can explain how such covenants can be binding, and thus how justice and injustice are possible even in a state of nature. By definition, a primary state of nature has only atheists, and thus no common power to enforce covenants. Hobbes can thus maintain that, for all practical purposes, covenants in a primary state of nature are impossible. Reconstructing his view this way, we can explain why a primary state of nature makes justice and injustice impossible. Given the third law of nature’s account of justice as keeping covenant, where we cannot covenant, we cannot either keep or break covenant, nor act justly or unjustly. Reading Hobbes this way explains not only the Foole’s injustice, but his atheism too. 31

For more on Hobbes and covenant theology, see Martinich (1992) and Lessay (2007).

chapter 13

“Not a Woman-Hater,” “No Rapist,” or Even Inventor of “the Sensitive Male”? Feminist Interpretations of Hobbes’s Political Theory and Their Relevance for Hobbes Studies Eva Odzuck

What are “Feminist Interpretations of Hobbes’s Political Theory?”1 As early as the 1960s, Schochet dealt with the role of women in Hobbes’s political theory and with the patriarchal family as a model for the state.2 Hirschmann, one of the most renowned feminist interpreters of Hobbes today, remarks: “It is oddly fitting that the first contemporary ‘feminist’ essay on Thomas Hobbes was written by a man.”3 That the lines between Hobbes research and feminist interpretations of Hobbes cannot be drawn strictly but serve only an analytical purpose, can be seen, by this example: Schochet’s “feminist essay” influenced the most prominent figure of feminist interpretations, Pateman, who builds on it in her early work The Problem of Political Obligation and in what became a classic of feminist work, The Sexual Contract. Also, we can find other important Hobbes scholars, even earlier than Schochet, such as Strauss (1936),4 or later, but before the increasing feminist interest in Hobbes in the 80s, such as Chapman (1975) and King (1974),5 who focused on patriarchy or the family and asked questions of relevance for feminist interpretations. Despite these interdependencies and relations, it makes sense to reserve the title “feminist interpretations” for scholarly works that originated in the context of a specific feminist academic movement that turned to the history of political thought with the intention to lay bare hidden presumptions of liberalism that were, according to these feminists, responsible for 1 2 3 4 5

I want to thank Alexandra Chadwick, Ioannis Evrigenis, Sharon Lloyd, Peter Schröder and Samuel Zeitlin for helpful comments. Schochet, “Thomas Hobbes on the Family and the State of Nature.” Hirschmann, “Gordon Schochet on Hobbes, Gratitude, and Women,” 125. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 103. Chapman, “Leviathan Writ Small”; King, The Ideology of Order.

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current problems of women in liberal democracies.6 Early feminists, however, did not always focus on Hobbes, but instead there was a tendency to ignore him or to give him perfunctory treatment in only a few pages, such as in Okin’s Women in Western Political Thought, Clark and Lange’s The Sexism of Social and Political Theory, Elshtain’s Public Man, Private Woman and Eisenstein’s The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism. This changed in the late 1970s and the 1980s, when feminist scholars began to turn to Hobbes’s works.7 Despite important differences, we can find some commonalities that might justify provisionally grouping feminist interpretations of Hobbes’ political theory together: Often, feminist interpretations employ neo-Marxist methodologies or assumptions (such as social constructivism, standpoint epistemology or psycho-analytical approaches like object-theory), and they share the aim of identifying and problematizing hidden assumptions and implicit premises of contract theory and liberalism. In Section 1, I will present and discuss three important examples that might give us a sense of the richness and inherent diversity of feminist interpretations of Hobbes and show that feminist questions and perspectives can be of great systematic relevance for understanding the foundations of Hobbes’s political philosophy. In Section 2, I aim to show how feminist topics and questions have been addressed in Hobbes scholarship so far. I will discuss three selected examples from the last ten years that might serve as an indication of the extent to which the feminist challenge has been addressed by Hobbes scholarship. In a short conclusion and summary (Section 3), I will sketch options for fruitful collaboration between feminists and Hobbes scholars.

1

Feminist Interpretations – Neo-Marxist Methodology and Critics of Contract Theory

Pateman’s The Sexual Contract has come to be regarded as “the classic of feminist theory.”8 She turns to the contractualist thinkers in order to reveal that social contract theory is not only “a story about freedom”: “The social contract is a story of freedom; the sexual contract is a story of subjection. 6 7 8

Compare Tucker, “Feminist Political Theory.” Compare Hirschmann and Wright, Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, 2. See Jaquette, “Contract and coercion: power and gender in Leviathan,” 200. For a helpful insight into Pateman’s intellectual development, her personal way to Hobbes and the place of her different works on Hobbes, see Hirschmann (and Wright), “Hobbes, History, Politics, and Gender,” 19.

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The original contract constitutes both freedom and domination.”9 In her analysis of social contract theory, Pateman provides clear and provocative claims about “contract theory,” which is, in general, regarded as “a theoretical strategy that justifies subjection by presenting it as freedom.”10 Pateman shows some analytical fascination with Hobbes, because Hobbes was far more outspoken than later political theorists in that he spelled out most clearly the close connection between conquest and contract, and because he saw all contractual relations, including sexual, as fundamentally political relations. Besides, she emphasizes that Hobbes, unlike other contract theorists, regarded men and women as fundamentally equal, and, unlike classic patriarchalism, “Hobbes insists that . . . in the state of nature, political right is maternal, not parental.”11 While gametheoretic readings of Hobbes established a focus on the Hobbesian commonwealth by institution story, depicting freely contracting individuals, Pateman forcefully puts Hobbes’s darker, often underanalyzed story back on the table: Hobbes’s narrative about a commonwealth by acquisition12 tells us a story about how a legitimate title to dominion can be acquired by force, threat, subjection and acquisition. Focusing on Hobbes’s equality premise and on Hobbes’s acknowledgment that “for the most part, Common-wealths have been erected by the Fathers, not by the Mothers of families,”13 her main puzzle and basic question is this: Why is it that, given a general equality between men and women in the state of nature, women are nevertheless excluded from the social contract? I think Pateman’s general reasoning that women must have been conquered because otherwise, they would not have agreed, is brilliant.14 Nevertheless, I’m not sure that Pateman’s motherhood explanation is helpful or even necessary: Pateman begins with the Hobbesian equality premise and argues that, given this premise, it is hard to understand, why women would have agreed to their subjection. Accepting the equality premise, Pateman concludes that in the natural state, “[t]here can . . . be no dominion of one adult over another because individuals of both sexes are strong enough and have wit enough to kill each other.”15 Her solution is that, during pregnancy and with children, women lose power and thus can be more easily conquered than at other times.16 But I am not sure that we need pregnancy and motherhood as additional explanations, because I have 9 12 13

Pateman, The Sexual Contract, 2. 10 Ibid, 39. 11 Ibid, 44. On the strange role of “trust” in the acquisition story compare Odzuck, “The Concept of Trust in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy.” Leviathan 20.4. 14 Pateman, The Sexual Contract, 49. 15 Ibid, 45. 16 Ibid, 49.

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a different understanding of the equality premise. The exact wording of the famous and often quoted equality premise tells us not that there are no differences between the sexes, but rather that the differences are not so large that who prevails can be determined easily without war: For there is not always that difference of strength or prudence between the man and the woman as that the right can be determined without war.17

If, however, the state of nature is a state of war, as Hobbes insists it is, and if “anticipation” and “augmentation of dominion over men” is what Hobbes expects and recommends,18 it follows that there are differences between men and women that can be determined and unveil themselves in actions of war and warfare. If women in general are less strong or less smart than men, the possibility and likelihood of a subjection of women – although not a necessary one – can thus be assumed from the very beginning, without the additional motherhood premise. In fact, Hobbes tells us that men and women differ with respect to natural fitness concerning actions of labor and danger and with respect to wisdom, courage and their general aptness to govern wisely. The context of both passages is the right of succession, and the question whether – other things being equal – a man or a woman should govern. Hobbes’s answer clearly prefers the male heir in both cases due to a supposed natural superiority of men over women in “actions of labour and danger.” He recommends taking rather a male than a female, because men are naturally fitter than women for actions of labour and danger.19 Likewise, Hobbes claims men’s general superiority over women in wisdom, courage, and the ability to govern wisely: Again, seeing every monarch is supposed to desire to continue the government in his successors, as long as he may; and that generally all men are endued with greater parts of wisdom and courage, by which all monarchies are kept from dissolution, than women are; it is to be presumed . . . that he preferreth his male children before the female. Not but that women may govern, and have in divers ages and places governed wisely, but are not so apt thereto in general as men.20

So, if Hobbes depicts the state of nature as a state of war and tells us that there are natural differences between the sexes,21 which influence the 17 18 20 21

Leviathan 20.4. Compare also the passages in The Elements of Law 2.4.2 and De Cive 9.3. Leviathan 13.4. 19 Leviathan 19.22, italics mine. The Elements of Law II.4.14, italics mine. Compare Hoekstra, “Hobbesian Equality,” 82: “. . . according to Hobbes, the mature will be stronger than the immature, men are more likely to subdue women than women men, and the old will be more prudent than the young.”

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aptness for dangerous actions and can be detected in war, it is plausible and likely that men could have subjected women even before women get pregnant or give birth to children. Of course, there might be, from time to time, women who are stronger or more powerful with respect to natural or instrumental power, and there might be men that are less powerful and will be subjected, too. But it appears that the equality premise hides power differences between the sexes that influence the result of the war of all against all from the very beginning.22 Even if there is, in principle, the possibility for anyone to be killed by anyone, it is nevertheless plausible and likely that people with advantages in natural or instrumental power – other things being equal – would be more effective in subjecting others. Despite her problematic reading of the equality claim and the assumption of a natural maternal right, Pateman’s discussion successfully highlights the fact that Hobbes presents us with a vision of family life that understands all relations between fathers, mothers and children as power-relations modeled on the image of masters and servants.23 This analysis is therefore also helpful for understanding the puzzling relation between conquest and consent in Hobbes: Submission to overwhelming power in return for protection, whether the power is that of the conqueror’s sword or the mother’s power over her newly born infant, is always a valid sign of agreement for Hobbes: “preservation of life being the end, for which one man becomes subject to another, every man [or infant] is supposed to promise obedience, to him [or her], in whose power it is to save, or destroy him.”24

Pateman thus pinpoints crucial problems of Hobbes research that still capture the minds of important Hobbes scholars, such as Hobbes’s puzzling notion of equality, which should be acknowledged even if it is not strictly true25 and the role of force in consent and contract.26 As a second example of feminist Hobbes interpretation, I will focus on two of Hirschmann’s writings.27 In her 1989 paper “Freedom, Recognition, 22

23 24 25 26

27

Hoekstra, “Hobbesian Equality,” 97, claims that the equality premise has been used frequently in the history of political thought, even in religious contexts, “in arguments for subordination, for that subordination could then be revealed to have been authorized by one’s own actions . . .” In this respect, she revises her earlier views on the role of women in family and claims that women become usually the servants of men, see Pateman, The Sexual Contract, 47f. Ibid, 45. A different claim in Hirschmann, “Hobbes on the Family,” 244, according to which the right “follows from the work that a parent . . . does in caring for the child.” See Bertmann, “Equality in Hobbes”; Kidder, “Acknowledgement of equals,” and, for a rich discussion Hoekstra, “Hobbesian Equality.” For an overview over the different and ongoing efforts in Hobbes scholarship to explain the relation between Hobbes’s de facto theory and Hobbes’s consent theory of obligation compare Hoekstra, “The de facto Turn.” For her other publications, see the bibliography.

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and Obligation: A Feminist Approach to Political Theory,” Hirschmann employs a neo-Marxist epistemology. She adopts a conceptualization of “Marxian ‘standpoint epistemology’”28 and makes use of the “objectrelations-theory,” from the school of psychoanalytic theory. One of the basic claims of her paper is that dominant concepts of liberal theory are not neutral, but are based on an epistemology that leads, in consequence, to an exclusion of women.29 Like Pateman, she draws on Hobbes’s commonwealth by acquisition story and claims that here, the narrative of a freely chosen contract is used to mask relationships of power and domination.30 Like Pateman, she sees clearly that this is not really a gender-specific problem of the theory but can affect other groups with power disadvantages as well and that the presumptions of freedom and equality might be “at least potentially oppressive” for other groups.31 She nevertheless claims to pursue a distinctly feminist analysis, because, according to her, the solution to this problem may be found in the feminist experience and worldview. Only at the end of her paper does she indicate an insight into the limits of her own epistemological approach, noting that “one cannot merely add women’s experience to the dominant discourse.” She points out that the “ideology . . . that all obligations are created”32 is not only negative for women, who are dragged down by this ideology, but is negative for men, too, because men are not allowed to accept their given obligations or responsibilities as sons or fathers but should act, according to this ideology, as unbound, free, independent actors in public and therefore must miss something important and meaningful about human relations. However, this finding does not depend on her materialistic standpoint epistemology, which assumes that women as “women have greater potential to understand more fully the relationship between men and women.”33 While I am skeptical with respect to that epistemology, I think her general claim that Hobbes’s distinct epistemology is far from being neutral but has normative implications for fundamental political concepts – such as the anthropological premise of the separate and isolated individual which allows us to think of obligation only in contractual terms – is still worth considering and important for Hobbes scholarship today. It is also helpful for our purposes to understand some commonalities and singularities of the different positions from the discussion between Pateman and Hirschman in the Review of Politics. Pateman criticizes Hirschmann for using a superfluous approach and is critical of 28 31

Hirschmann, “Freedom, Recognition, and Obligation,” 1229. Ibid, 1240. 32 Ibid, 1242. 33 Ibid, 1230.

29

Ibid, 1232.

30

Ibid, 1239.

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Hirschmann’s (supposed) goal to give up the priority of freedom.34 Hirschmann, in turn, criticizes Pateman’s motherhood explanation of why women could be subjected. Given Hobbes’s psychology, she argues, it would be more plausible to assume that faced with the alternatives of keeping a child and being subservient to a man or abandoning the child and maintaining her ability to fight, Hobbesian women would chose the latter – a problem that Pateman herself concedes in her book.35 Against Pateman, who claims that Hobbesian men as men have vital class interests (here we can see her neo-Marxian influence) and are interested in subjecting women,36 Hirschmann defends men from this conspiracy thesis and claims that she is interested not in individual motives, but in the bias of the conceptual vocabulary.37 Because of the interdependence between anthropological and epistemological premises and the vision of politics, she proposes a reconsideration of our original position in the state of nature: It would seem that the original situation imposed on women by their nonconsensual obligations reflects particular aspects of human existence that should . . . [be] explored and examined as material for a new feminist understanding of human relationships.38

Grave doubts that the natural condition of humans is adequately described as a war of all against all, the focus on the (non-gender-specific) powerrelations frame of the natural condition, as well as the insight that this is no neutral premise but strongly affects the vision of politics, the shape of the commonwealth and the legitimacy of political actions, are important ideas worth considering for Hobbes studies. Di Stefano’s work is also deeply influenced in language and form by a neo-Marxist approach. She begins her paper “Masculinity as Ideology in Political Theory: Hobbesian Man Considered” with a materialistic approach to knowledge, claiming that “the material rootedness of knowledge lends itself to a new and exciting critical interpretative focus in political theory” and “requires an interpretative method akin to that used in psychoanalytic explanations of symptoms and outward behavior.”39 In short, her claim is that Hobbes’s thought, as a man’s thought “reflects and perpetuates a distinctively masculinist orientation to the realm of politics that continues to be male-dominated and governed by masculinist presumptions in our time.”40 The psychoanalytic assumptions about 34 35 36 37

Pateman, Hirschmann and Powell, “Political Obligation, Freedom and Feminism,” 181–2. Pateman, The Sexual Contract, 49. Pateman, Hirschmann and Powell, “Political Obligation, Freedom and Feminism,” 181. Ibid, 186. 38 Ibid, 186. 39 Christine Di Stefano, “Masculinity as Ideology,” 634. 40 Ibid.

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a “boy child . . . forced to demonstrate his masculinity in overdetermined ways” are used to explain the content and form of Hobbes’s political theory and his influence on male readers.41 It’s not clear how this approach can be helpful in analyzing and understanding the content of Hobbes’s works. Nevertheless, it might be too easy to simply lay aside Di Stefano’s critique due to some methodological reservations. While one can question whether Hobbes’s relation to his mother was really the source of his famous mushroom-image,42 it is nevertheless important to spell out the political implications of that image. Di Stefano argues that Hobbes can uphold his claim about a hostile nature that “made man unfit for society” only because Hobbes “expunged human reproduction and early nurturance, two of the most basic . . . features of distinctively human life, from his account of basic human nature.”43 In an astonishing parallel to Strauss’s reading of Hobbes,44 whom one might not suspect to be a warrior for feminist politics, Di Stefano claims that Hobbes’s invention was to design an individual whose rights precede society and obligation.45 While Hobbes could have chosen the care of mothers and fathers for their children as an example of how peaceful humans can and do live together and how care and help could strengthen bonds between humans and shape the identity of the care-giver and the care-taker, he chose to present “a creature that is self-possessed and radically solitary in a crowded and inhospitable world, whose relations with others are unavoidably contractual and whose freedom consists in the absence of impediments to the attainment of privately generated and understood desires.”46 Hobbes chose, in other words, to treat “the relation between parent and child and sovereign and subject in the same essential way: the terms of allegiance and obedience are strictly external to the pre-constituted identities of the participants.”47 Di Stefano claims that “such a fantasy deals a blow to parenthood in general and the organic notion of generational continuity through time.”48 Her focus on the “heroic subject” in Hobbes and its relation to the further assumptions of a hostile nature and a solitary creature in a dangerous world are also convincing.49 Within that framework of premises, which regards life as a competitive race,50 augmentation of power and security of the means to 41 42 43 45 49 50

Ibid, 640. De Cive, VIII.1: “To return once again to the natural state and to look at men as if they had just emerged from the earth like mushrooms and grown up without any obligation to each other . . .” Ibid, 638. 44 See Strauss, Hobbes’s Political Philosophy, 129. Di Stefano, “Masculinity as Ideology,” 638. 46 Ibid, 643. 47 Ibid, 639. 48 Ibid, 640. Ibid, 643. Compare Hobbes’s famous description of life as a race in The Elements of Law I.IX.21. See also Kauffmann, “Thomas Hobbes,” 266.

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live and to live well seem to be the most important goals. This concept of human life is highly influential for Hobbes’s notion of politics, but it is not without alternatives: Integrating the perspective of generational continuity could potentially, as Di Stefano subtly indicates, contribute to a steady and unagitated notion of human life and of politics and shape a responsible attitude toward the social and natural world we leave for future generations. We can use these inquiries into the normative foundations of Hobbes’s political theory without accepting neo-Marxist and psychoanalytical epistemologies. Despite the sometimes exhausting presence of psychoanalytical assumptions about man as such and how man in general feels, sees the world, and acts, Di Stefano’s analysis deserves attention in Hobbes scholarship, since she shows that the foundations of Hobbes’s political philosophy are neither neutral nor without alternatives, but that notions of “nature,” “time” and the notion of the citizen as “mushroom” or “orphan” deeply shape visions of politics and of good, necessary or legitimate political actions.

2 The “Feminist Challenge” and Hobbes Scholarship Given the influence and interdependence between Hobbes studies and feminism, it might be hairsplitting and unrealistic to divide the two camps neatly. As we have seen, feminist topics such as patriarchy or the family have been topics of research in Hobbes’s philosophy, if rarely. But even if feminists were not the first to approach Hobbes with that set of questions, it is clear that feminist approaches since the 70s and 80s put them vividly back on the agenda, so that we should inquire how Hobbes scholars have dealt with this “feminist challenge” posed by feminist interpretations. Taking handbooks and companions as an indication of the reception of feminist approaches, we won’t find much in the early ones: Neither the 1996 Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, edited by Sorell, nor the 2007 Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, edited by Springborg, contains a chapter on feminist interpretations or the topics identified as relevant, such as the commonwealth by acquisition or the family. This seems to be changing, however: The 2012 collection of essays Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Hirschmann and Wright, which contains contributions from both important Hobbes scholars and feminists, can be seen as indicating a change in the direction of a common conversation. Also, the 2013 Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes, edited by Lloyd, contains important articles by Sreedhar on “equality” and “parental

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authority” that focus on feminist topics and integrate a discussion of and references to feminist interpretations, and that companion ends with a chapter on “Subjects, Servants and Slaves: Hobbes on Sovereignty by Conquest” in the section “Enduring Debates and Open Questions.” In addition, the 2016 Oxford Handbook of Hobbes edited by Hoekstra and Martinich contains a chapter by Hirschmann on “Hobbes and the Family.” Overall, the handbooks indicate that contemporary Hobbes scholarship has accepted the feminist challenge and turns more attention to topics such as the family, women, the relation between force, consent and liberty, and the equality premise. In this section, I want to turn to three Hobbes scholars who have started a dialogue with feminists. I chose these three dialogues both because they are illuminating with respect to the somewhat limited content of the discussed topics, but also because they point beyond themselves in a direction where feminists and Hobbes scholars could more fruitfully collaborate. The first example is Newey’s paper with the telling title “Not a womanhater.” Newey sets the goal of showing, against feminist interpretations, “how far Hobbes goes in removing the shackles of patriarchal ideology in his own theory.”51 According to Newey, the topic of rape in the state of nature is helpful for understanding gender relations in Hobbes. Newey tells us that, despite Hobbes’s claim that even agreement extracted through force counts as consent, and the fact that in the case that there is no opportunity to resist, it might be possible to use the concept of “rape” for the Hobbesian state of nature, Hobbes does not assume or justify a “natural right to commit rape.”52 Newey acknowledges Hobbes’s “right to everything; even to one another’s body” and on the conclusion that “there is nothing which may not be of use in securing the preservation of one’s life.”53 He reminds us that, according to Hobbes, “one has a ‘right’ to do whatever is within one’s power to preserve one’s life” and that Hobbes “reserves the discretion to each individual to decide whether or not, in given circumstances, a given action will conduce to his own selfpreservation.”54 But he contends that it would be absurd to believe that rape could be conducive to self-preservation: “It is hard to imagine circumstances in which a man’s exercise of his right to self-preservation will require him to rape a woman.”55 Taking Hobbes’s explanations about the content of the right to everything, his recommendation to increase dominion for reasons of anticipation, and his theory of power seriously, I think it is not very hard to imagine that rape might be conducive to self51

Glen Newey, “Not a woman-hater,” 11.

52

Ibid, 13.

53

Ibid.

54

Ibid, 14.

55

Ibid.

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preservation. Hobbes recommends increasing dominion for reasons of anticipation, claiming that “augmentation of dominion over men” (and thus potentially, war) is conducive to self-preservation.56 Also, according to Hobbes’s theory of power, “reputation of power is power,” and to be “feared of many” (or the reputation thereof) is power.57 According then to Hobbesian logic, rape (and the reputation of being a rapist) could cause fear (and the reputation of being feared), and could therefore be conducive to power, and therefore be conducive to self-preservation, and “by consequence . . . it ought to be allowed to him.” Further support for this line of reasoning appears in Hobbes’s explanation of things that are honourable by nature, in which he explicitly refers to rape as a potentially unjust or unclean but honourable action by nature, because it is a great action and a sign of Power: Honourable is whatsoever possession, action, or quality, is an argument and signe of Power. And therefore To be . . . feared of many, is Honourable; as arguments of Power . . . Dominion, and Victory is Honourable; because acquired by Power; . . . Nor does it alter the case of Honour, whether an action (so it be great and difficult, and consequently a signe of much power,) be just or unjust: for Honour consisteth onely in the Opinion of Power. Therefore the ancient Heathen did not thinke they Dishonoured, but greatly Honoured the Gods, when they introduced them in their Poems, committing Rapes, Thefts, and other great, but unjust, or unclean acts . . .58

Increase of power, by whatever means, is allowed and recommended by Hobbes as a means to self-preservation, and given the fact that he considers rape to be a potentially power-increasing action, it can easily be argued against Newey that natural right also comprises a right to rape. These comments aim not at arguing for the claim that Hobbes was a woman-hater, because this logic of power and natural honor is genderneutral in the sense that it endangers all people with less power, or with less ambition to power, such as children, old people or other men that are either weaker or not interested in playing the brutal and war-increasing game of power-seekers. But they should point to deeper questions of Hobbes research, such as the meaning and function of the Hobbesian equality premise and the normativity of power. Newey, and, as we will see, other Hobbes scholars turning to feminist questions present Hobbes as an important critic of Filmer’s patriarchal arguments, because he acknowledges the equality of the sexes, allows for matriarchal dominion and thus should be understood to “undermine 56

Leviathan, 13.4.

57

Leviathan, 10.5, 10.7.

58

Leviathan, 10.37–8, 10.48.

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arguments from nature to specific configurations of gendered power.”59 Newey regards Hobbes as “a thoroughgoing egalitarian”60 and he claims to go beyond Pateman’s interpretation in this respect. But Newey does not even try to answer Pateman’s question: “Why is it, that women are most of the time excluded from the social contract?” Newey’s contention, that patriarchy is “simply an accident” and “arises only contingently”61 begs the question because it does not explain Hobbes’s claims that most of the time, men will be the head of families and the male heirs (a claim about a likelihood and thus different from a mere accidental perspective). Also, he ignores Hobbes’s claim that there is a natural difference between men and women with respect to actions of danger and labour62 – a claim that needs explaining by a view that sees Hobbes as a “thoroughgoing egalitarian.” Interestingly, Newey himself holds a neo-Marxian epistemological perspective and thus is a wonderful conversation partner for someone interested in the foundations of Hobbes’s political theory. On the one hand, he praises Hobbes for having developed a mechanism to detect ideologies, especially unveiling how “the notion of the natural . . . [puts] extant power-relations beyond question” and defends him against the accusation of having developed just another ideology.63 On the other hand, Newey tells us that, maybe, everything is ideology, that no Archimedian point exists wholly beyond the reach of ideology, and that Hobbes’s political theory might also be ideological (for example in a capitalistic sense, as Macpherson claimed).64 By accepting that the foundations of Hobbes’s political theory might not be neutral, Newey opens a space for a thorough analysis of these foundations. Although Newey’s intention had been to shield Hobbes from critique, although the question of whether Hobbes was a women-hater might not be most pressing, and although his arguments were not always convincing, Newey’s question – “how can Hobbes tell a story in which the powerful achieve dominion that is not, in the pejorative sense, ideological,”65 is one of the most important reactions to the feminist challenge and provides reasons for those Hobbes scholars who are not satisfied with 59 62

63

64

Newey, “Not a woman-hater,” 17. 60 Ibid, 18. 61 Newey, “Not a woman-hater,” 21. Newey even claims, ibid, 12: “. . . at no point does Hobbes make any suggestion that this person must or should be male.” See my discussion of Hobbes’s equality of the sexes premise above in part one. Ibid, 22. Newey differentiates between naturalism and pseudo-naturalism with respect to Hobbes, ibid: “Rather, the radical egalitarian naturalism that he espouses undercuts the pseudo-naturalistic basis for conventional gendered power-relations.” 65 Ibid. Ibid.

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Newey’s epistemological premises or his answers to return to the foundations of Hobbes’s political theory.66 Another example of a recent conversation with feminist interpretations can be found in the work of Sreedhar, one of the very few Hobbes scholars who seriously accept the feminist challenge. In doing that, however, she concentrates on defending Hobbes against reproaches of being a sexist, a misogynist or a women-hater and tries to clarify and justify his role as a forefather and fruitful counselor for modern feminist goals. In a 2012 paper, Sreedhar confines herself to exploring “the extent to which Hobbes deserves his place on the list of the condemned.”67 While Hoekstra argued that Hobbes does not deserve the fame of having invented (or of having put back on the agenda in his century) the idea of natural equality,68 Sreedhar claims that Hobbes’s equality premise stood “in stark contrast to this traditional and widely accepted view” about human nature that “presumed a natural inequality among various types of people.”69 She argues that we can find in Hobbes’s works a “thesis about gender egalitarianism.”70 Quoting the De Cive formulation of the passage where Hobbes enfolds his premise about a difference between sexes, she claims that “[i]n all three of his major political works, Hobbes explicitly claims that there are no general differences between men and women sufficient to justify the subordination of women to men.”71 But the De Cive passage that she quotes does not say, as we have seen, that there are no natural differences between male and female – quite the contrary. It says that there is an “inequality of natural strength” and implies that war is a means “to enable the male to acquire dominion over the female.”72 She defends her general claim of “Hobbes’s anti-essentialism about gender”73 by a close reading of crucial passages. First, Sreedhar discusses De Cive 9.16. She is right in insisting on the point that Hobbes refers to tradition in that passage, but the conclusion that for Hobbes “the choice of a male heir to rule rather than a female heir is merely a matter of custom”74 is by no means necessary. More problematic is that, contrary to the 66 67 68 69 72 74

Compare Strauss’ claim about the “original motivation-nexus“ that motivated Hobbes’s mathematical method and materialistic metaphysics, in Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 170. Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 772. See Hoekstra, “Hobbesian Equality,” esp. 93–9. Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 773. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid, 774. De Cive, 9.3. 73 Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 775. Ibid, 777. Her reading thus follows Slomp, “Hobbes and the Equality of Women,” 452, who claims that “Hobbes . . . points to unopposed custom and not to biological characteristics as the explanation for male ‘predominance.’”

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wording of the Leviathan passage,75 which explicitly uses the word “naturally” to describe differences between men and women, she insists that Hobbes here only “invokes stereotypes” and does not want to make a claim in his own name about natural differences that enable men better to fight and to rule.76 As we have seen, Hobbes does seem to make these claims in his own name when he says “that generally all men are endued with greater parts of wisdom and courage . . . than women are” and “that women are not so apt thereto [to govern] in general as men.”77 In defending her interpretation, she abstracts from Hobbes’s claim that sovereigns need the “cardinal vertues of war,”78 and tells a likeable but un-Hobbesian story about human development such that “by the seventeenth century, sovereigns are no longer in need of these capacities.”79 Sreedhar tries to diminish the importance of the Leviathan passage about natural differences with quantitative considerations that “such claims appear relatively infrequently,” and that we can’t find “many of the additional stereotypes that one might expect to see,” and by stating that Hobbes did not claim “that women are incapable of rational thought.”80 It is not clear that Hobbes’s standpoint is really so neutral and that he is “simply explaining” but not “justifying and reinforcing patriarchy.”81 In fact, Hobbes tells us that men and women differ by nature and that – other things being equal – this is the reason why the male heir is usually chosen, because he is likely to do a better job in actions of labor and danger, and likely to possess more wisdom and courage,82 and this is far from a neutral standpoint. In sum, the textual evidence does not unambiguously support Sreedhar’s reading of Hobbes having endorsed a principle of gender-neutrality. Her chapter in Feminist Interpretations of Hobbes is more balanced. By claiming that “this theory also undercuts arguments for sexual equality and diversity as well as a moral requirement that sex be consensual,”83 75 76

77 78

79 80 82 83

Leviathan 19.22. Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 778. While Sreedhar is certainly right to highlight that Hobbes allows individual exceptions to these stereotypes, it is important to note that he nevertheless explicitly endorses the generalization. The Elements of Law II.4.14. Leviathan, 13.13. Compare also the Latin Leviathan, 10.47, where Hobbes describes “promptness to fight” as “the greatest virtue” and Leviathan 27.35, where Hobbes describes the “examples of Princes” with respect to courage and duels as more important than the laws for governing the actions of men. Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 779. Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 778. 81 Ibid, 777. Compare also Hobbes’s remarks about “men of feminine courage” in Leviathan 21.16 and his discussion of weepishness of women and children in Leviathan 6.43. Sreedhar, “Towards a Hobbesian Theory of Sexuality,” 271.

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Sreedhar concedes that Hobbes might have justified rape and other violent, non-consensual sexual actions with women, children or men that could be conducted as a consequence of differences in power. Although she is aware of these brutal consequences of Hobbes’s position and claims that “enthusiasm for this approach can only be moderate,”84 she nevertheless defends the Hobbesian account on the supposition that his position is “neutral” and, in that sense, attractive for liberal democracies. Sreedhar claims that Hobbes is “denying a natural basis for normative sexuality,”85 and that “Hobbes offers suggestions that start from a position of neutrality regarding the moral status of various practices.”86 She concludes: “Thus, Hobbes’s metaethics serve to deny any claim to found sexual normativity in a conception of ‘nature.’”87 But can a theory of sexuality that disregards consent and allows for rape and other violent, non-consensual sexual actions be regarded as neutral? Is not Hobbes’s claim “that Nature . . . dissociate[s], and render[s] men apt to invade, and destroy one another,”88 his claim “no Law, no Injustice,”89 and the accompanying claim that power-augmentation is allowed for reasons of self-preservation, already based on a certain conception of nature and normative in that it allows and justifies actions of that kind?90 Why should we assume that Hobbes’s legal positivism should lead to “a relatively ‘good’ sexual policy”91? If augmentation of power is the sovereign’s goal and population growth considered as an adequate means to that, how can the policies framed by the logic of interstate wars be described as resulting from “a position of neutrality”? Despite acknowledging that Sreedhar went further than most other contemporary Hobbes scholars in accepting the feminist challenge and in putting these topics (back) on the agenda of Hobbes research, I am not convinced that Hobbes’s position is a neutral one. On the contrary, I think that feminist approaches did a lot to create awareness for the normative foundations of Hobbes’s political philosophy: power-relations and war, far from being a neutral, non-normative description of the natural state, are normative premises that shape Hobbes’s understanding of what politics is and what right, just and legitimate political actions are.92 84 88 90 91 92

Ibid, 276. 85 Ibid, 271, italics mine. 86 Ibid, 276, italics mine. 87 Ibid, 267. Leviathan 13.10. 89 Leviathan 13.13. Leviathan 13.4: “And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men being necessary to a man’s conservation, it ought to be allowed him.” Sreedhar, “Towards a Hobbesian Theory of Sexuality,” 275. Here, a dialogue between Hobbes scholars focusing on the problem of coerced consent and feminists could be very fruitful. Amidst the usual tendencies to describe Hobbes’s position as “neutral” and interpreting him as having opted for “social constructivism” instead of “nature,” I find Hoekstra’s claim in “Hobbes’s De facto Turn,” 72 and n. 188, that Hobbes is, of course, a “political

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A similar perspective, focusing on formal neutrality, is taken in S.A. Lloyd’s chapter in that volume on power and sexual subordination. Lloyd ends her chapter with the claim “that Hobbes should receive the credit for the important feminist work he did”93 and claims “that there is nothing inherently misogynistic in Hobbes’s theory.”94 Lloyd’s chapter stands out for her logically clear and elegant argumentation for the “not a woman-hater” claim: In analyzing and explaining the Hobbesian logic of power-relations, she argues convincingly that the important question for Hobbes is not about male or female, but about power and power differences, and that, in this sense, Hobbes cannot be described as a “woman-hater.” By elaborating on Hobbes’s theory of power, she shows how, through the dynamics of power-relations, marginal group differences in natural powers can easily lead to “significant group differences in instrumental powers” and lead to subjection of some groups despite marginal natural differences.95 Here, Lloyd makes clear that power disadvantages are not (only) gender-specific, but that all people who are by nature (or by contingent, accidental reasons) less powerful than others could have severe disadvantages in the Hobbesian system.96 It is because of this astonishingly clear insight into the premises and normative consequences of Hobbes’s logic of power-relations that I have problems in following her proposal to save Hobbes with Hobbes’s help. Lloyd considers Hobbes’s claims about matriarchy as a possible defense of Hobbes against the charge of having intended to subject women. She holds that “the outcome of conflict could easily have been radically different, and in fact could have led to the subordination of men as well.”97 I am convinced by the claim that “nothing in Hobbes necessitates the subjection of women.”98 Nevertheless, I would respond that – other things being equal – according to Hobbes’s premises about the natural differences between men and women, and according to Lloyd’s convincing explanation of how small differences in natural powers can become very important, it would be more likely to expect a patriarchy. But Lloyd claims quite the contrary, namely that for Hobbes a “mixedgender but matriarchal society” would have been “the more natural story for Hobbes to have told” because most men would be under obligations

93 96 97

naturalist,” because he draws on “the fact of power and the facts about human nature,” very refreshing. Lloyd, “Power and Sexual Subordination,” 60. 94 Ibid, 49. 95 Ibid, 56. An insight that already Pateman insisted on, and that influenced critical race theory, such as Charles Mills’s The Racial Contract. Lloyd, “Power and Sexual Subordination,” 50. 98 Ibid, 58, italics mine.

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of obedience to their formerly caretaking mothers, hence troops under female command.99 Lloyd and Sreedhar both describe Hobbes’s claim that a mother has the right of Dominion over her child, as “striking.”100 But in my view, this is not striking at all. If we take Lloyd’s brilliant analysis of power-relations as a clue to understanding Hobbes’s supposed “theory of maternal rights,” we can understand how Hobbes dissolves generation as a title to dominion completely and instead grounds the right to dominion solely on powerrelations: According to Hobbes,101 the mother has a right over her child not because she was pregnant, gave birth or nourished it, but because she had power and could have any time stopped caring and killed or exposed her child. If we look only at the power-relation between child and mother, as if these two were isolated and alone in the state of nature, the mother would have the right of dominion. But because there are other people who could successfully kill (or nourish and protect) mother and child, the mother could, and very likely would, lose her title. In Hobbes’s words, But if she expose it, and another find, and nourish it, the dominion is in him that nourisheth it. For it ought to obey him by whom it is preserved; because preservation of life being the end, for which one man becomes subject to another, every man is supposed to promise obedience to him, in whose power it is to save, or destroy him.102

While Hobbes does only mention the action of the mother’s choice to expose here, I think it is, within a Hobbesian universe of power-relations crowded with men and women of different power, simply not plausible to assume that the mother is and stays alone and unsubjected. Because giving birth to a baby and breastfeeding further diminishes the bodily strength of women and because a woman might not be as ready to fight with a baby in her arms than without, it is not unlikely that a mother (even if she was free and unsubjected before, which is possible but unlikely, given Hobbes’s claim about differences in strength, wisdom and courage) would lose that title of dominion very soon. Since it is plausible to assume that there are men (or potentially also stronger women) who could destroy her, she would, according to Hobbes’s logic, subject herself and with that subjection also lose dominion over her child. At least, Hobbes makes clear that in those cases where the mother is the father’s subject, the child is in the father’s power.103 99 101 103

100 Ibid. Ibid, 58. See also Sreedhar, “Hobbes on The Woman Question,” 775. 102 See Pateman, The Sexual Contract, 44 f. Leviathan 20.5, italics mine. Leviathan 20.6.

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In the end then, Hobbes’s claims that usually the fathers are the heads of families104 and the contractors seem to fit very well with the logic of powerrelations outlined by Lloyd. The supposed “natural maternal right” is only accidentally or temporarily a gender-specific right (because the mother might have short-term power-advantages due to her knowledge of the pregnancy). More adequately, this should be described as a powerrelation between mother and child, that is, as a power-relation, always trumped by the natural right of the stronger or a more powerful person. Since Hobbes claimed that there are differences between the sexes, and since Lloyd convincingly argued that these natural differences can snowball into grave instrumental differences, I am inclined to believe that Hobbes both “knew and should have known, that these dynamics were likely to result in the systematic subordination of women prior to the social contract.”105 If we combine Lloyd’s criterion of judgment with our reconstruction of the maternal right being trumped by other power-relations, then Hobbes’s theory of matriarchy cannot save Hobbes. On the contrary, if we accept Lloyd’s criterion, we should, in Lloyd’s words, “judge his theory to be discriminatory” not “despite its formal neutrality,” but because it was, from the very beginning, in accepting the logic of power as a normative premise, not neutral.106

3 To Be Continued: The Conversation Between Hobbes Scholars and Feminists The dialogue so far between feminists and Hobbes scholars is important, but could be still more fruitful. It is a very good sign that these topics are present in the new handbooks and that renowned Hobbes scholars accept the feminist challenge and turn their attention to feminist questions and topics. In the end, then, the feminist challenge for Hobbes scholars can be seen in the fact that feminist interpretations put some admittedly old (but maybe not sufficiently answered) questions back on the agenda of Hobbes research, namely, the relation between Hobbes’s natural philosophy and his political philosophy, his view of a hostile nature and his equalitypremise, the commonwealth by acquisition narrative, the frequent abstraction from procreative and generative connections between humans in Hobbesian individualism, and the role of power as both a normative premise and conclusion of Hobbes’s political philosophy. The questions of whether Hobbes was a misogynist, a woman-hater, or even “deserves 104

See Elements of Law, 2.4.7.

105

Lloyd, “Power and Sexual Subordination,” 50.

106

Ibid, 50.

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credit for having created the sensitive male,”107 are perhaps not the most important questions and the reflex to shield Hobbes from critique and to defend Hobbes may not always be justified. In facing the important question of the normative foundation of Hobbes’s political philosophy and of this tradition of liberalism, we could honor Hobbes as an indispensable conversation partner for the self-reflection of liberal societies, without necessarily expecting his answers or his version of liberalism to be right. Further, the goal of defending Hobbes against his feminist critics might not be the only promising task for Hobbes scholars. Instead, carving out that this is a feminism based on power-relations between humans, legitimating violent actions towards others and the suppression of people with less power, Hobbes scholars might also help to stimulate feminism to leave standpoint epistemology and to look for alternative conceptions of nature and politics that could contribute to a more peaceful relation between men, women, children and all citizens of our liberal democracies. 107

See Harvey C. Mansfield, Manliness, 173 f.

chapter 14

The Productivity of Misreading: Interpreting Hobbes in a Hobbesian Contractarian Perspective Luc Foisneau

Unlike Kantian contractarian ethics, which puts moral personality at the forefront, Hobbesian contractarian ethics presents itself as the result of an agreement among purely self-interested beings.1 Introducing a natural obligation to respect the covenants that have been formed among themselves by agents deprived of moral sense has been of utmost interest for Hobbesian contractarians. As David Gauthier explicitly says, “in Hobbes we find the true ancestor of the theory of morality that we shall present.”2 Reading Hobbes as having stripped man of his moral personality, Gauthier wants to demonstrate that even rational egoists need moral norms. Contrary to Kantian contractarian ethics, the Hobbesian theory of morality that he presents is therefore not about the choice of moral principles, but about proving that moral obligation is a condition of rational social cooperation.3 There are, of course, different kinds of questions that can be raised by Hobbesian ethical contractarianism. What we shall do in this chapter is consider the type of use of Hobbes’s texts that has been made by the main representative of this school, David Gauthier. We know the importance of game theory in Hobbesian contractarian ethics, but it is also interesting to consider how that sort of ethical theory relies on interpreting particular texts. Although those interpretations can be deemed erroneous, we would like to show how misinterpreting Hobbes has contributed to fruitful inventions in contemporary ethics. More particularly, studying Gauthier’s ethical method can help to see how mistaken interpretations of Hobbes have been a source of renewal in contemporary ethics. In the first part of this chapter, we will show how a misinterpretation of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice led to the invention of Gauthier’s new 1 2 3

I want to thank Sharon Lloyd for her suggestions in the process of editing the present chapter. Gauthier 1986, 10. Concerning the moral limits of Hobbesian contractarian ethics, see Hampton in ed. Vallentyne 1991, 46–50.

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contractarian ethics, and why that new ethical theory can be described as a Hobbesian one. In the second part, we will show how Gauthier uses Hobbes’s answer to the Foole in order to characterize one of the central problems of his own contractarian ethics. The question is: Why should we be obliged to abide by our covenants if it is in our direct interest not to do so? In the last part, we will investigate what the productivity of those various misinterpretations is, both from the perspective of Gauthier’s Hobbesian contractarian ethics and, more generally, from the perspective of reading Hobbes.

1

Between Hobbes and Rawls: Hobbesian Contractarian Ethics

In Morals by Agreement, David Gauthier uses an interpretation of Hobbes as a resource from which to develop a theory of morality based on a contractual device containing no significant ethical presupposition.4 In Hobbes’s thought, Gauthier finds two central ideas for his contractarian ethics: first, that there is nothing naturally “good” or “bad” in the actions of an individual,5 and, second, that morality proceeds from an agreement on terms of cooperation. Those two ideas, according to him, introduce a break in a long-standing tradition, that of medieval Christian moral thought, which held that good and bad are real qualities, and that morality is about the capacity to act virtuously, not about the capacity to reach agreement with others. The bad reputation of Hobbes’s moral theory is due to this transformation, which puts a sense of self-interest in the place of a sense of the good in itself. Though this new ethics reintroduces a moral dimension in the guise of cooperation, its point of departure in self-interest constitutes a real break with the previous natural law tradition: “Hobbes transformed the laws of nature . . . into precepts of reason that require each person, acting in his own interest, to give up some portion of the liberty with which he seeks his own survival and well-being, provided others do likewise.”6 The latter proviso expresses the contractarian dimension of Hobbes’s theory of the law of nature: 4

5 6

The reference to Hobbes is present in various chapters of Morals by Agreements, but it plays a central part in chapter 6, “Compliance: maximization constrained,” where Gauthier offers a developed exposition of Hobbes’s argument about justice, famously associated with the discourse of the “Foole” (158–65; we retain the original spelling or “Foole” to indicate the origin of the problem in Leviathan). For Gauthier’s general interpretation of Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy, see Gauthier 1969. “Perhaps the classic philosophic formulation of a conception of value both subjective and relative was offered in the seventeenth century by Thomas Hobbes” (Gauthier 1986, 51). Gauthier 1986, 10. Italics are mine.

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I accept to renounce some portion of my natural rights on condition that you renounce the same portion of yours. In this picture, morality is not based on autonomous practical reason, nor on a moral sense inherent to the human character, but rather on a contractual device that reduces the chances of conflict among individuals who consider themselves to have a natural right to defend their lives by any means. Further, in Gauthier’s theory, the contractarian idea appears as the rational justification of moral constraints when the invisible hand of the market does not function, the perfect market of classical economists7 being supposed to operate without any moral constraint on the will to maximize personal utility. Sometimes one has to submit to moral constraints in order to benefit from the advantages that come from social cooperation. One question is about calling those constraints moral:8 Can those constraints properly be called moral if they are just the expression of our self-interest? Compared to stronger moral imperatives, such as the Kantian one, Gauthier’s constraint could indeed be seen as a pale imitation of, if not as a counterfeit, morality. The questions that must therefore be asked are whether or not we can really speak of morality within the framework of morals by agreement, and, if it is appropriate to do so, what the structure of the moral problem in such a framework is. In particular, what is the point of a Hobbesian contractarian ethics as compared to a Kantian contractarian ethics? In order to answer those questions, one way to proceed is to see how Gauthier found his way into the emerging theories of justice thanks to what may be called a productive misreading of Rawls. The development of Rawls’s theory of justice – from its initial formulation at the end of the 1950s9 up to the revised version of A Theory of Justice10 – can give us an indication of the difficulty the first critics of this author had in understanding the rupture he caused in the moral tradition. As one 7

8

9 10

“The first conception central to our theory is therefore that of a morally free zone, a context within which the constraints of morality would have no place. The free zone proves to be that habitat familiar to economists, the perfectly competitive market” (Gauthier 1986, 13). See also Gauthier 1982, 41–54. “The idea that an initial social bargain would result in a moral principle invites a number of questions. One is why we should take the bargaining outcome to be a moral principle” (Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 26). “Justice as Fairness,” Philosophical Review, lxvii (1958), 164–94; reprinted in eds. Laslett and Runcinan 1962. Rawls’s subsequent work in Political Liberalism to reframe his theory of justice so that it does not rely on the acceptance of a Kantian interpretation is not relevant to the present argument.

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of the very first readers of the work, Brian Barry underlined the reasons for their hesitation in his commentary: Another problem stems from the fact that Rawls seems to have modified his positions during their long gestation period. While initially the emphasis was placed on morality understood as a system of mutual self-defence, analogous, in a sense, with a revised and corrected version of the Hobbesian theory of “natural law,” the focus then shifted [i.e. in A Theory of Justice] to the desire to act justly being considered as a central part of human development, a natural extension (based on reflection) of love for others and loyalty towards certain particular associations. The desire to be just and to help perpetuate a just society is something of which a man cannot deprive himself without compromising the integrity of his moral being.11

This, one of the earliest comments on A Theory of Justice,12 gives us a good understanding of the tension that existed for the first commentators on Rawls: whether to make an interpretation freely inspired by Hobbes, which premised the just system on rational self-interested agents, or an interpretation inspired by Kant, which conceived Rawlsian contractualism as based on a moral conception of the self. This tension in the interpretation reflects a deeper tension between two understandings of the constraints associated with moral agreements: on the one hand, that which links our moral constraint to follow just rules to our natural duty of justice, as Rawls does in A Theory of Justice;13 on the other hand, that of Gauthier, who aims to deduce moral constraints from a morally neutral conception of the rational agent. In the former case, man’s natural duty is a presupposition, from which it is possible to establish the obligation to obey just institutions;14 in the latter case, the moral constraints imposed on individuals are supposed to be deduced on the basis of a morally neutral original situation.15 11 12 13

14

15

Barry 1973, 2–3. On Barry’s awareness of the distortions he introduced in his interpretation of Rawls, see Barry 1973, 3. According to Rawls, this link is as follows: “There is nothing inconsistent, or even surprising, in the fact that justice as fairness allows unconditional principles. It suffices to show that the parties in the original position would agree to principles defining the natural duties which as formulated hold unconditionally. We should note that, since the principle of fairness may establish a bond to existing just arrangements, the obligations covered by it can support a tie already present that derives from the natural duty of justice.” (Rawls 1971, § 19, 100.) In Political Liberalism, Rawls will still have it that citizens must be stipulated to possess the capacities needed to cooperate on fair terms, of which the ability to have and act from a sense of justice is one. But, clearly, his account of how they come to have that capacity is no longer Kantian. Moral neutrality is considered by Gauthier as one of the strong features of his Hobbesian contractarianism: “A contractarian theory of morals, developed as part of the theory of rational choice, has evident strengths . . . No alternative account generates morals, as a rational constraint on choice and action, from a non-moral, or morally neutral, base” (Gauthier 1986, 17).

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The transition from making a distinction between these two contractarian ethics in terms of use to a distinction in terms of kind is, without doubt, inevitable, and in some ways enlightening. However, it has the detrimental effect of immediately making Gauthier’s theory of mutual advantage and, as a result, the Hobbesian theory that served as its model, appear to be fundamentally lacking in the area of morality.16 That is precisely the objection that Gauthier wishes to answer with the help of an interpretation of Hobbes’s answer to the Foole in Chapter XV of Leviathan. Indeed, Gauthier is well aware that his contractarian theory of morality may also be perceived as a weak theory, since in it the morality of agents is not based on natural duties but on a “context of mutual benefit.” His point is to show that weakness as a strength, because it reflects a principle of parsimony. Just as Locke said that “a Hobbist . . . will not easily admit a great many plain duties of morality,”17 Gauthier observes that the same may be true of the “Hobbist’s modern-day successor.”18 That is why, in an article aptly entitled “Between Hobbes and Rawls,”19 he tries to show that it is possible to simultaneously envisage a morally neutral original situation and a moral understanding of the constraints imposed on social interactions through the device of the contract. In support of his argument, and without in any way disputing the strong Kantian dimension of the Rawlsian undertaking,20 Gauthier tries to show his debt to Rawls by recalling the extent to which his theories borrowed from the Hobbesian interpretation of Rawls made in 1977 by Robert P. Wolff in Understanding Rawls.21 Although Gauthier openly acknowledges that Wolff’s interpretation cannot be defended, not in light of Rawls’ previous work nor even in light of the totality of A Theory of Justice, Gauthier insists that this “does not affect its interest.”22 On the contrary, we might be tempted to say that this interpretation had the twofold merit in Gauthier’s eyes of, on the one hand, coinciding with the way in which he himself had initially understood Rawls’ project and, on the other 16 18 19 20

21

See Kymlicka 1992, chap. 3. 17 Locke MS, quoted in Dunn 1969, 218–19. Gauthier 1986, 17. For interesting comments on the latter book, see ed. Vallentyne 1991. Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 24–39. “We began, or so we thought, with a need for principles of justice to enable persons to escape the generalized prisoner’s dilemma of unconstrained interaction. But we find now that according to Rawls’s Kantian interpretation, the real need for principles of justice is to enable persons best to express their nature as moral persons in social union with their fellows” (Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 31). Wolff 1977. 22 Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 24.

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hand, of defining what would become his Morals by Agreement23 project. Referring back to Wolff’s misinterpretation of Rawls will therefore allow us to better grasp Gauthier’s understanding of the contractarian foundations of his moral theory. Wolff’s initial supposition was, first, that Rawls took as his point of departure the morally neutral idea that men seek happiness and, second, that the notion of a rational device alone was enough to rationally establish a moral philosophy, without appeal to substantive moral convictions. Refusing to have recourse to such convictions, Rawls, according to Wolff, had the idea of building a formal model of society made up of narrowly rational, self-interested individuals in what contemporary theory of rational choice calls a “bargaining game.”24 Rawls’s intuition was that if he posited a group of individuals whose nature and motives were those usually assumed in contract theory, then with a single additional quasi-formal, substantively empty constraint, he could prove, as a formal theorem in the theory of rational choice, that the solution to the bargaining game was a moral principle having the characteristics of constructivity, coherence with our settled moral convictions, and rationality, and making an independent place for the notion of the right while acknowledging the dignity and worth of moral personality.25 The essential point is that the result of the Rawlsian bargaining game would be a moral principle by which all the participants would be rationally constrained to abide, even in cases where it would not be in their self-interest so to do. Wolff’s interpretation is very un-Rawlsian, since it ignores the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness,26 which situates the original position from the start in a moral perspective. However, Wolff’s reading of Rawls is surprisingly close to Gauthier’s project in Morals by Agreement, which can therefore be interpreted, paradoxically, as a Hobbesian version of A Theory of Justice. In the context opened up by Wolff’s hermeneutic error, morality appears to be the result of three distinct ideas: first, the morally neutral idea of a rational agent; second, the idea of a social contract considered as the result

23

24 26

“When I first read Wolff’s account, I realized how well he had captured my own initial understanding of Rawls’s aim, and how presciently he had characterized what had become my own [i.e., Gauthier’s] project in moral theory” (Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 25). For one of the origins of the problem, see Nash 1950. 25 Wolff 1977, 16. Cf. Rawls 1971, § 40, 251–7.

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of a rational negotiation among self-interested agents whose motivations, by assumption, are not moral; and, third, the idea that the negotiation results in a moral constraint.27 In the distorting mirror of this fruitful misinterpretation, the principles governing society, considered here as an undertaking of cooperation with a view to mutual advantage, are the product of a negotiation between rational agents; if the rationality of the agent is measured by her capacity to act without taking into consideration the interests of others, it is easy to see why the premises of Gauthier’s argument are said to be morally neutral. The rational agent is a personal utility maximizer and not a moral agent because she is not able to take into consideration the fact that others are not just rational agents following their own interests but also moral persons. The same moral neutrality cannot be attributed, however, to the obligation imposed on the agents to abide by the principles that they have established through a morally neutral negotiation. In fact, while the moral character that A Theory of Justice confers on individuals in the original position precludes questioning the status of the obligation to respect the principles of justice – since the resulting choice in favour of the principles of justice reflects an initial moral commitment to abide by those principles – the situation is different if we deprive Rawls’s theory of its Kantian premise, as is the case in Wolff’s interpretation. Since it puts to one side the Kantian interpretation of A Theory of Justice, Understanding Rawls might have been called “Misunderstanding Rawls.” But that omission is a breakthrough for Gauthier, since it opens the way to a problem Rawls did not want to raise, and maybe did not see: If we take as our point of departure a morally neutral state of nature, that is, including neither moral persons nor laws of nature, how is it possible that individuals who are only seeking to maximize their advantages should consider themselves morally obliged to respect the principles of social cooperation? It is here that Hobbes’s moral philosophy takes on its full meaning and begins to resonate with the preoccupations of Gauthier’s moral theory.

2

Interpreting Hobbes’s Answer to the Foole in a Hobbesian Contractarian Perspective

In this second part, it is not my intention to put forward a technical analysis using terms of game theory28 of Gauthier’s answer to the Foole’s 27 28

Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 25–6. That interpretation is to be found in Morals by Agreement, ch. 6, 166–89, starting with the clear statement: “Let us begin our answer to the Foole . . . ” (166).

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objection that having agreed to terms of social cooperation does not suffice to create a moral obligation to abide by the agreement. After recalling the key elements of the Foole’s objection, I shall show what Gauthier makes of Hobbes’s answers to that objection and how this interpretation helps both to understand Hobbes and to open the way to a new moral theory. It is important to emphasize that the objection Hobbes raises is a radical objection,29 which, if he did not refute it, would run the risk of overturning his entire political theory. Granting that justice lies in respect for covenants entered into, and given that the aim of every covenant is the good of the person who agrees to it, might it not sometimes be good for oneself to act unjustly? It is clear that the question concerns neither the beneficial effect of social covenants, which the fool in no way contests, nor the definition of justice as the keeping of covenants, but rather knowing whether Injustice, taking away the feare of God, (for the same Foole hath said in his heart there is no God,) may not sometimes stand with that Reason, which dictateth to every man his own good; and particularly then, when it conduceth to such a benefit, as shall put a man in a condition, to neglect not onely the dispraise, and revilings, but also the power of other men.30

If rationality is the foundation of moral obligation, and if it is sometimes rational not to keep one’s covenants, then Hobbes’ third law of nature dictating that covenants be kept cannot be a moral obligation, as Hobbes insisted it is. Gauthier notes a difference of status between the law of nature requiring justice and the preceding laws: the first two laws come from the strong and simple idea that everyone has reason to prefer preservation in a peaceful state to death or wounds in a warlike state. The choice in favor of peace rather than war seems obvious (first law of nature), and since war goes with the refusal to limit one’s right to everything, it is also obvious to agree with others to renounce such an unlimited right to all things (second law of nature). Both laws are direct answers to the right of nature that expresses, according Gauthier, “a straightforward maximizing view of rational action, subject to the material condition, central to [Hobbes’] psychology, that each seeks above all his own preservation.”31 But the arguments that justify the first two laws do not so obviously apply to the third: “Hobbes recognizes that it is one thing to make an agreement or covenant, quite 29 30

The objection begins with an adaptation of a biblical quotation taken from Psalms 14 and 53: “The Foole hath sayd in his heart, there is no such thing as Justice” (Hobbes 2012, 222). 31 Ibid. Gauthier 1986, 159.

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another to keep it.”32 When Hobbes says that if the third law does not apply we are still in the condition of war, he does not prove that “conformity to it yields any direct benefit.”33 It is one thing to say that making an agreement is rational, since “each gains from the mutual renunciation it involves”; but another thing to say that one must abide by it, since “each does not maximize his expected utility in keeping a covenant, in so far as it requires him to refrain from exercising some part of his previous liberty.”34 One may conclude that although it is rational to make an agreement (to get out of the state of war), it is not rational to consider oneself morally obliged to abide by this agreement, if one can benefit by not complying with it. That is precisely the Foole’s point when he says in his heart, there is no such thing as Justice; and sometimes also with his tongue; seriously alleaging, that every mans conservation, and contentment, being committed to his own care, there could be no reason, why every man might not do what he thought conduced thereunto; and therefore also to make, or not make; keep, or not keep Covenants, was not against Reason, when it conduced to ones benefit.35

Gauthier’s reformulation of the Foole’s objection is true to the original, and the difference from a Rawlsian approach to the question of compliance could not be more stark. Wolff believes rightly that for Rawls the constraint imposed through the condition of respecting commitments that are undertaken is “so minimal, so natural” that it goes without saying that the obligation that comes with the principles of justice should be respected. In the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness, the question of obligation is not central because the obligation to act on just principles is part of what having a moral personality, which includes having a sense of justice, means. Hobbes might similarly have considered it obvious that the social contract should be respected, as long as its legitimacy was recognized by each of the contracting parties. However, on Gauthier’s interpretation of the Foole’s argument, Hobbes rejects any “appeal to moral personality in the premises of the contract argument.”36 Gauthier’s interest in the Foole’s argument is precisely that he sees it as addressing the “problem of commitment” that Rawls’s theory bypassed. If one thinks that men have no moral sense by nature, there is no reason to presuppose that they will automatically respect the commitments they have made, especially if those commitments contradict their immediate interests. It remains to be proved that 32 36

34 35 Ibid. 33 Ibid. Ibid. Hobbes 2012, 222. Gauthier in eds. Gauthier and Sugden 1993, 31.

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there really is an obligation to respect agreements, and that is why Gauthier finds it indispensable to turn to interpretation of Hobbes. Gauthier takes Hobbes’s answer to the Foole to aim to prove our obligation to respect our commitments. If Gauthier puts to one side the first part of Hobbes’s reply, which reminds the Foole that the rationality of an action should be measured according to what can be anticipated and not according to an accidental result, it is, I conjecture, because he does not see the part it plays in the second argument.37 Gauthier interprets Hobbes’s second response to the Foole as highlighting the fact that participants to the covenant could not be supposed to ignore the Foole’s unjust disposition, and so would act on the basis of their knowledge of his deceitful intention. We might say that there is no veil of ignorance as to the intentions of the Foole when he agrees to covenant. Hobbes speaks of a confederacy: The “confederate” is not yet the “subject” of the civil state, but he is part of an association based on the principle of mutual defence, an association that can only fulfil its aim if there is a certain loyalty among its members. The structure of this defence community is not, in fact, that of a republic with a sovereign, but that of a confederation with no central authority – in other words, a pact of non-aggression and mutual defense among individuals who have given up some of their rights in favour of all members but no one person in particular. We can assume that the members of this embryonic community do not entirely escape the logic of the state of nature. The question that remains is whether it is rational to allow into this community a member declaring that “he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him.”38 Hobbes’s reply is that such a man “cannot be received into any Society, that unite themselves for Peace and Defence, but by the errour of them that receive him.”39 It is important to specify the nature of the error that would be committed by the confederates were they to admit the unjust man: in the English version of Leviathan, it is said that the unjust man intends and sometimes declares to others his intention to violate the law of justice;40 in the Latin version, one cannot tell whether the Foole is explicit or silent.41 In the first case – the only one considered by Gauthier, who does not refer to the Latin version – the error is to tolerate 37 38 40 41

Gauthier 1971, 161: “Hobbes’s first argument reminds the Foole that the rationality of choice depends on expectations, not actual results. It need not detain us.” Hobbes 2012, 224. 39 Ibid. “The Foole hath sayd in his heart, there is no such thing as Justice; and sometimes also with his tongue” (Hobbes 2012, 222). The reference to the tongue is clearly a condition of publicity. “Dixit Insipiens, Non est Iustitia” (Hobbes 2012, 223). On the distinction made by Kinch Hoekstra between the silent and the explicit Foole (Hoekstra 1997, 620–54), see Lloyd’s discussion in Lloyd 2009, 311–15.

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within the confederation a person who declares his intention not to respect the agreements he has made; in the second case, the real intentions of the unjust man are not declared, and one can suppose that he keeps his intentions to himself if “in his heart” is implicit in “has sayd (dixit).” This second solution, the Foole keeping silent, would appear more likely: Why would the unjust man shout from the rooftops that he did not intend to keep his word, thereby running the risk of ruining his plans? But the first situation is more interesting for Gauthier, because it allows for a situation of relative transparency of the intentions of the Foole. As this condition of transparency42 cannot be deduced from the Latin version, it makes the latter version less suitable for Gauthier’s argument because his interest is in knowing whether it would be rational to behave as a Foole in a confederacy where the confederates can be aware of the Foole’s unjust intentions. The essential Hobbes’s passage, quoted by Gauthier, is this: He therefore that breaketh his Covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any Society, that unite themselves for Peace and Defence, but by the errour of them that receive him; nor when he is received, be retained in it, without seeing the danger of their errour; which errours a man cannot reasonably reckon upon as the means of his security.43

In order to refute the Foole’s second argument, Hobbes has to prove that the Foole acts contrary to that reason which approves (says Gauthier) the direct maximization of self-interest. Why should it be irrational to be a direct maximizer in the situation of confederacy? Because not respecting one’s commitment makes the society more fragile in a situation in which such a fragility can be fatal to the confederation. A confederation has no sovereign power to protect it, but depends on its members to protect each other. Respecting the terms of the covenant is, in such a situation, a condition of collective security. The question is whether it is rational to adhere to a direct maximizing conception of rationality within such a confederacy, and Hobbes answers that it is not, because the Foole’s success would depend on the irrationality of the other confederates, and it is not rational to assume that everyone else will behave irrationally. 42

43

In his game theoretical justification of moral maximization strategies, Gauthier prefers to speak of “translucency”: “However, transparency proves to be a stronger assumption than our argument requires. We may appeal instead to a more realistic translucency, supposing that persons are neither transparent nor opaque, so that their disposition to co-operate or not may be ascertained by others, not with certainty, but as more than mere guesswork” (Gauthier 1986, 174). Hobbes 2012, 224.

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To understand this argument, we need to consider a passage that Gauthier does not quote: [A]nd therefore if he [i.e., the Foole] be left, or cast out of Society, he perisheth; and if he live in Society, it is by the errours of other men, which he could not foresee, nor reckon upon; and consequently against the reason of his preservation; and so all men that contribute not to his destruction, forbear him onely out of ignorance of what is good for themselves.44

What makes this argument crucial is that Hobbes considers the argument of the Foole from a social perspective: The irrationality of the Foole’s maxim is due to the fact that it does not take others’ points of view into consideration, and that the Foole reasons as if his own actions could only be assessed from a narrowly self-interested perspective. Therefore, the reason for his irrationality – Hobbes speaks of an “error” – is that the Foole voluntarily ignores the effects of others’ point of view on the outcome of his own action. Not taking others’ interests – “what is good for themselves” – into account is not a moral but an epistemic mistake, so to speak, since the Foole acts as if others could not see what he is really up to and could not in consequence retaliate against him for his unjust actions. What Hobbes says is that rationality, in such a situation, requires taking others’ interests into consideration, and that not doing so is equivalent to making an “error.” But why should it be an error to expect the ignorance of others? After all, it could be said that the Foole is considering that there is some probability that others won’t care about his unjust behavior, or better still, won’t even see it. Indeed, as there are many people in a confederacy, not everyone considers others’ actions and intentions with equal scrutiny. Since the rationality of the Foole would then be based on probability, one could speak of the Foole’s wager: Although he does not hide his unjust intentions, or knows they can be deduced from his actions, he considers that many people won’t care, or won’t behave according to their knowledge of his being unjust. Hobbes’s argument against this position appears in his first response: “[W]hen a man doth a thing, which notwithstanding any thing can be foreseen, and reckoned on, tendeth to his own destruction, howsoever some accident which he could not expect, arriving, may turne it to his benefit; yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done.”45 In the confederacy situation, it is true that the Foole could benefit from the errors of his confederates, but those errors are accidents that could not be “foreseen, and reckoned on,” and therefore it is not rational for the 44

Ibid.

45

Ibid.

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Foole to count on them. Even if he succeeds, and some knaves do indeed succeed, his behavior cannot be considered “reasonable” nor “wise,” since not taking others’ interests into consideration could have been expected to have a negative impact on the Foole’s own satisfaction. The question we now have to tackle is whether Hobbes’s second answer to the Foole introduces a change in his conception of rationality. Gauthier thinks it does: [F]or Hobbes to take full advantage of this response to the Foole, he must revise his conception of rationality, breaking the direct connection between reason and benefit with which he began his reply. Hobbes needs to say that it is rational to perform one’s covenant even when performance is not directly to one’s benefit, provided that it is to one’s benefit to be disposed to perform.46

One can wonder to what extent such a change – which requires the Foole to be capable of fulfilling his commitments with no direct, immediate benefit – is not simply begging the question. Such a disposition to perform covenants made means that the Foole would be ready to act justly if he can be persuaded that so acting is in his interest. What has to be proved, therefore, is that acting justly is not in contradiction with the interests of the agent but is the best way to contribute to the maximization of his interests. The problem is that Hobbes does not speak of such a change in rationality, as Gauthier concedes,47 and does not say “that it is rational to perform one’s covenant even when performance is not directly to one’s benefit, provided that it is to one’s benefit to be disposed to perform.”48 Hobbes implies it only indirectly, by refuting the contrary idea that it would be rational to ignore others’ interests in having the Foole behave justly. It might be said that the Foole would no longer be a Foole if he could be persuaded that it is rational for him to develop a disposition to justice. His foolishness is linked to his incapacity to see any further than his own immediate interests. But could the argument for justice be based on a utility-maximizing argument, and if so, would that imply a change in the Hobbesian conception of rationality? Gauthier has it that the conception of rationality identifying reason with immediate benefit is different from the conception of rationality identifying reason with what may be called 46 47

48

Gauthier, 1986, 162. Gauthier, 1986, 162: “But this he never says. As long as the Foole is allowed to relate reason directly to benefit in performance, rather than to benefit in the disposition to perform, he can escape refutation.” Ibid.

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social benefit – that is, the benefit associated with the disposition to respect covenants so as to be part of a confederacy. But it may be doubted that these conceptions are really different; in both cases rationality is defined in terms of benefits that relate to an individual’s interests. There would certainly be a difference in rationality if the social benefit could be considered independently from the individual benefit, but in Gauthier’s understanding of Hobbes’s second answer to the Foole the social benefit remains associated with the individual’s benefit, or to use Hobbes’s terms with “the reason of his preservation.”49 The reason for which one should comply with the third law of nature will still be selfish. So, it seems to me, there is no trace of a revision of rationality in Hobbes’s second answer to the Foole. The notion of a disposition to justice framed into the process of formation of a peaceful confederation is not Hobbes’s but Gauthier’s. It is to be found neither in Hobbes nor in Rawls, but indebted to the interpretation of both. What is striking is the fact that Hobbesian rationality goes much further than a simple utility calculus based on the knowledge of one’s interests: my actions can only be said to be rational if I consider that others with whom I interact are also capable of making a true analysis of my intentions as far as justice is concerned. The possibility of exiting the Hobbesian state of nature therefore relies on the capacity of interacting agents to act on the knowledge of others’ intentions not to be deceitful. A confederacy could thus be seen as the cognitive condition for establishing a civil state, since the confederates are characterized by their capacity to avoid making too many errors as to the dispositions of others to justice. But that solution is not perceived by Gauthier, who looks in another direction, namely, the effect of sovereignty on individual rationality. We shall now examine this other line of argument. In order to try to bring Hobbes out of what he sees as a deadlock, Gauthier suggests that Hobbes “revise[s] his conception of rationality.”50 Instead of requiring – contrary to the axiological neutrality of the state of nature – a disposition to act morally (for how else to consider the rationality of the disposition to respect one’s commitments?), Hobbes conceives, according to Gauthier, a political transformation of right reason resulting from the institution of the State. We should here quote the main text of the polemics between Hobbes and Bramhall, 49

Hobbes 2012, 224.

50

Gauthier 1986, 162.

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The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, to which Gauthier refers as a key passage: All the real good, which we call honest and morally virtuous, is that which is not repugnant to the law, civil or natural; for the law is all the right reason we have, and, (though he, as often as it disagreeth with his own reason, deny it), is the infallible rule of moral goodness. The reason whereof is this, that because neither mine nor the Bishop’s reason is right reason fit to be a rule of our moral actions, we have therefore set up over ourselves a sovereign governor, and agreed that his laws shall be unto us, whatsoever they be, in the place of right reason.51

Gauthier deduces from this text that we should answer the Foole by telling him that injustice is not compatible with the reason of the sovereign’s law. Just as it is not rational to hold on to one’s right to all things when one realizes that it conduces to our destruction, so it is not rational to make use of one’s natural reason in the presence of the sovereign when one realizes that the function of the sovereign is to be an artificial right reason. Even so, everyone keeps making use of his natural reason, and at no point does Hobbes say that the sovereign’s reason should be internalized by his subjects.52 What would be the reason for the Foole’s obedience – assuming he obeys at all? It is, says Gauthier, the threat of punishment; the solution to the Foole’s objection Gauthier puts forward is a political solution, not a moral one. That solution does not solve the problem of the rationality of the just action; it only brings into the picture an external motivation to behave justly in the civil state. There is indeed a constraint on the choice of a just action, yet that constraint is not an internal constraint linked to the rationality of acting justly, but an external constraint based on the idea that unjust action would result in state punishment. It turns out that the plan to deduce morality on the basis of axiologically neutral premises is not guaranteed to find in Hobbes such strong support as Gauthier would have expected. One way of answering Gauthier’s interpretation could be to reevaluate Hobbes’s theory of the laws of nature.53 Indeed, there is no evidence that Hobbes was thinking what Gauthier is supposing him to think – that Hobbes sought to derive the laws of morality from the supposedly axiologically neutral premises of an exclusive concern 51 53

Hobbes 1966, 194. 52 For a defence of the opposite thesis, see Byron 2015. Lloyd directs her redefinition of the law of nature against the presupposition that is at the basis of Gauthier’s approach to it, “arguing against the common presumption that Hobbes defined a Law of Nature as a precept forbidding an agent to do what is destructive of his own preservation and requiring him to pursue his preservation” (Lloyd 2009, 99).

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for self-preservation. Nevertheless, the interest of that misinterpretation lies in the fact that, by attributing to Hobbes an axiological neutrality that is not his, and to Rawls a theory of bargaining he never seriously considered, Gauthier has succeeded in setting out the problem of the origin of moral rules in a new way.

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Index

absolutism, 22, 33, 44, 145, 151, 153 action, voluntary, 71, 73, 80 altruism, 52, 106, 116, 120 analysis historical, 10, 18, 27 philosophical, 1, 6, 10–12, 19, 24 psychological, 111 textual, 1, 10 anticipation, 102, 200–3 atheism, 33, 210 by consequence, 33 authorization, 6, 173–4, 180–3, 185–7, 190 Baumgold, Deborah, 150 Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert, 159–61 benevolence, 4, 106–14, 116–20 Bible, 5, 33, 43, 47, 158, 161–5, 168, 196 Bramhall, John, 32, 36, 38, 56, 150, 168, 255 Brown, K.C., 122 Butler, Joseph, 106, 108–11, 116 Calvinism, English, 31–2 casuistry, moral, 123, 125–6 Christianity, 6, 33, 36, 43, 156, 157–62, 166, 170 circle, hermeneutic, 17 civil law, 137, 168 Coke, Edward, 6, 179–81, 185, 190 commonwealth by acquisition, 8, 225, 228, 231, 240 by institution, 195–6, 225 competition, 102, 118, 203 consent, 143, 227, 232, 237 consistency, 5, 12, 51, 126–8, 138 constructivism, 62, 139, 224 contextualism, 2, 30, 34 contract, social, 20, 94, 100, 141, 148, 153, 185, 224–5, 240, 247, 250 contractarianism, 20 feminist, 26–7 Hobbesian, 9, 242–57

contractualism, Rawlsian, 245 covenant, 47, 89, 169, 206, 218, 249 curiosity, 3, 57–66, 85, 95, 98 Curley, Edwin, 6, 32, 44–5, 47, 116, 170 Curran, Eleanor, 143, 145, 150, 154 death, 50, 52, 74, 99–100, 115, 128, 145–8, 153, 171, 182 DiStefano, Christine, 229–31 duty, 26, 42, 52, 75, 100, 124, 128, 134–5, 142, 152, 164, 195 egoism, 23, 74, 99, 120 psychological, 4, 99–101, 103, 109, 112–13, 115 tautological, 4, 109–10 equality, 8, 22, 44, 46, 141, 225, 235 fairness, justice as, 247, 250 faith, 6, 31–2, 34 family, 26, 117–18, 223, 227 feminist challenge, 8, 231–5, 240 Finkelstein, Claire, 146–9, 154 Foole, 207–13, 216–18, 250–4 atheistic, 8, 216–18, 221 explicit, 212 Psalmist’s, 216 silent, 212 unjust, 8, 216–18, 221 game bargaining, 247 theory, 21–3 Gauthier, David, 20, 99, 174, 214, 242–4, 246, 255–7 Gert, Bernard, 52, 72, 100, 108–9, 112, 114–15 glory, 52, 102, 117–18, 138, 203 God, 8, 31, 33, 47, 100, 104, 138, 155, 162–5, 210, 217, 219, 221 goodness, 5, 123, 130, 132, 139 Green, Michael, 190

279

280

Index

Hampton, Jean, 10, 19–27, 52, 100, 145, 150, 153, 213 hell, 163, 170–1 Hirschmann, Nancy, 223, 227–8, 231 Hoekstra, Kinch, 218, 232, 235 Hume, David, 20, 106, 108–10 interests, transcendent, 100, 115, 128, 155 interpretations, feminist, 223, 235, 240

nature human, 4, 43, 93–9, 101, 104, 108, 111–14, 117, 137, 139, 211, 230, 235 nature, state of, 93, 99, 101, 191–7, 255 as war, 226–7 primary, 219, 222 secondary, 191–7, 219–20, 222 Newey, Glenn, 232–5 Nominalism, 113

Jaede, Maximilian, 152–3 judgment, 7, 37, 125–6, 131, 140, 153, 192, 194 justice, theory of, 2, 244

obligation, 27, 38, 51, 90, 124–5, 139, 142, 144, 148, 151–3, 168, 192, 194, 196, 219, 228–9, 230, 238, 242, 245, 248–51 Olsthoorn, Johan, 151

Kant, Immanuel, 20, 26–7, 133, 185, 245 Kavka, Gregory, 20, 100, 145–7, 202, 214–16

passions, the, 22, 51, 56, 64, 67–8, 78–9, 80–1, 94, 96, 100, 112, 115, 128, 131, 133, 204, 220 Pateman, Carole, 8, 223–9, 234 peace, 4, 24, 37, 42, 52, 88–92, 97–9, 104–6, 117–9, 121, 125, 128–9, 195, 197–201, 204–6, 249, 251–2 perception, 15, 17, 22, 54, 72, 74, 75, 77–83, 85 persons, 177, 181–4 artificial, 136, 174, 176, 178–9, 181–3, 185 natural, 136, 176, 178–9, 181 phantasm, 64–6, 78–82, 84 philosophy natural, 33, 53, 75, 240 physics, 50–1, 53, 60, 68 Plamenatz, John, 18–19 power, 58, 87, 97, 228, 232, 237, 240 projectivism, 139–40

language, 3–4, 53, 57, 65, 71, 94, 96, 99, 102, 175 law of nature, 91, 94, 119, 123–4, 126, 128–30, 132, 138, 155, 187, 200, 207–10, 212, 218, 222, 243, 249 LeBuffe, Michael, 207–8 liberty, 7, 44, 142, 192–3, 232, 243, 250 liberty, civil, 141 Lloyd, S.A., 23, 25, 43, 52, 75, 87, 90–1, 100, 115, 155, 209, 211–13, 216–18, 221, 238–9, 240 logic, 37, 47, 72 of inference, 11, 27 love, 4, 106–7, 111, 117–9, 121 Martinich, A.P., 6, 24, 51, 180, 218, 232 materialism, 3, 44, 56, 67, 70–3, 75, 171 mechanistic, 52, 113 matter, 4, 54, 56, 64, 66–8 sentient, 65 memory, 3, 53, 64–6, 82, 83 metaphysics, 113 materialistic, 70, 73, 91 method, 1, 3, 39–43, 46, 50–3, 55, 60–3, 67, 68, 229 philosophical, 39 methodology, 11, 24, 27, 75 scientific, 174 mind and body, 63, 71 miracles, 6, 45, 164–6 motion, 54, 79–81, 82–5, 136 life as, 76–7 vital, 52, 54, 75, 78, 81, 82, 84–5, 89–90, 92 voluntary, 56, 84–5 motivation, 4, 51, 74, 93, 99, 113, 134–5, 137, 154, 155, 256 moral, 5, 9, 137–8 movement, 54–6, 60, 67, 71–2, 79, 84–5

rape, 232–3 Rawls, John, 9, 19–20, 51, 109, 244–8 reciprocity, 5, 87, 90–1, 123–7, 129, 138 reductionism, 53–5, 56, 114 religion, 2, 6, 30, 32–3, 41–3, 47, 98, 158–9, 161, 163–4, 169 reputation, 87, 90, 102–3, 137, 142, 203, 233 responsibility, 5, 7, 135–7, 182–3, 187, 189 moral, 123 revelation, 162–6 right of nature, 125, 193–4, 203, 249 rightness, 5, 123, 132, 139 rights, 144–55 civil, 141 natural, 141, 144, 244 permission, 142, 194, 202 retained, 125, 142, 145, 148–50, 152–4 surrender of, 186–7 Runciman, David, 6, 183–4 Ryan, Alan, 154

Index salvation, 6, 31, 135, 158–9, 161, 170 Schochet, Gordon, 8, 223 science, 29, 32, 39–40, 60 Scripture, 165 self-defense, 99, 113, 145–8 self-interest, 90, 119, 122, 134, 138, 146 self-preservation, 40, 51, 74, 91, 113, 125, 128, 155, 233 sense, 77 Skinner, Quentin, 6, 10–16, 34–5, 171, 175 sociability, 5, 23, 25, 93, 119, 132 society, civil, 116, 152, 155 sovereignty, 32, 48, 75, 150–1 Sreedhar, Susanne, 25, 145–6, 231, 235–7, 239 Steinberger, Peter, 147, 151–2 Strauss, Leo, 29, 50, 73, 213, 223, 230

subjectivity, 3, 75–6, 86–92 subversion, 29, 42–8 system, 3, 13, 50–3, 63, 67–8 Taylor, A.E., 51, 75, 111, 133 teleology, 55–7, 59 textualism, 29 theory moral, 138–40 Trinity, 46–7, 163, 170–1 war, 87, 129, 197–200, 249 Warrender, Howard, 22, 51, 151 Watkins, J.W.N., 50, 71–3, 99, 112–14 Wolff, Robert P., 246–8, 250

281