Online Colloquium (5) – Reply by Byron – Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth

This online colloquium has been established to discuss the recent work of Michael Byron (Kent State) Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth. We began first with an introduction to the text by Professor Byron and responses by Michael Krom – here – (St Vincent State), Deborah Baumgold – here – (University of Oregon), and Johan Olsthoorn here -(KU Leuven). We end with a reply by Professor Byron. Many thanks to Palgrave for supporting this colloquium.

Reply to Critics

I am grateful for the comments and criticism from Deborah Baumgold, Michael Krom, and Johan Olsthoorn. And I am especially grateful for this opportunity to discuss my work afforded by Joanne Paul and the European Hobbes Society.

Allow me to offer the briefest of responses to the thoughtful remarks from my colleagues. Baumgold and Krom both suggest, rightly, that I need to say more about Hobbes’s theory of religion, especially in light of what I have said about submission to God. The question Baumgold raises, “whether religious education might be a subject in its own right, separate from and even at odds with theology” opens a promising avenue of research. Krom, for his part, makes explicit the connection between Hobbes’s marginal note, “And to do all this sincerely from the heart,” and the passage in Leviathan it marks, which enjoins Christian agape. And although we need not think that sincerity is essentially or exclusively Christian, it is probably fair to say that Hobbes believes not only in the correctness of the Christian religion but in its being the measure of effectiveness of a commonwealth.

Olsthoorn’s rather longer comment engages the book more directly on a range of points. He first challenges the book’s exclusive focus on Leviathan, on the grounds that “other works in which Hobbes discusses justice and related themes are largely, or even completely, ignored.” Second, he charges that the book employs “a surprisingly limited range of Hobbesian concepts,” omitting to delve into, among other things, the natural right to all things. These defects, if that is what they are, might indeed be grave were the purpose of the book to explicate Hobbes’s theory of justice. But as the book aims instead to examine the roles that submission and subjection play in Leviathan, it is less clear that these features of the book constitute bugs.

Third, Olsthoorn complains that the book engages a “limited set of secondary sources,” which made me “overlook relevant alternative interpretive moves.” The charge of not including everything relevant is difficult to refute; I suppose I plead guilty, and beg to be excused on the grounds that my aim was not so much an exhaustive discussion of 350 years of literature, but to introduce a fresh bit of interpretation without utterly abandoning scholarly depth. Opinions regarding the balance I struck are bound to differ.

I will, however, dispute the specific example of a relevant omission: Gauthier’s reading of the laws of nature as obliging “in conscience without disallowing any particular action in practice” has less explanatory power than my interpretation. I can explain the notion that the “laws of nature are ceaselessly operative in conditions of war without being violable” in terms of the distinction between the rational theorems and the proper laws. The rational theorems apply to anyone with the power of reason; thus, the precepts of the laws of nature are in a way “ceaselessly operative.” Yet they are obligatory, and possibly violated, only where there is a “common power” to enforce them. The varieties of normativity in play explain what Hobbes says without appeal to the wooly notion of “obliging in conscience.”

Olsthoorn contends that my view treats “law and obligation as purely subjective: to be obligated by natural law is to see yourself as being obligated to God to obey it” (original emphasis). He states quite correctly that on my view the laws of nature are (or can be) obligatory prior to a (civil) sovereign’s “scriptural legislation,” and he infers that therefore anyone obligated by them in a secondary state of nature must be effectively a prophet, who has received the word of God directly. This is a non sequitur.

Anyone with reason may deduce the content of the laws of nature as rational theorems. Theists recognize those precepts as also divine commands addressed to subjects of God’s natural kingdom, and thus proper laws that obligate them. In a common- wealth, the authoritative interpretation of the precepts is the exclusive province of the sovereign. But in a state of nature, people have no authority but themselves. Flip Olsthoorn’s question: he seems to suggest that in a state of nature scripture is uninterpretable. That surely cannot be Hobbes’s view.

When Olsthoorn says that law and obligation are on my view “subjective,” he smears the view. True, to be obligated by natural law entails that one see oneself as obligated. No one is an accidental theist. But merely seeing oneself as obligated does not constitute obligation. Legal obligation is constituted by submission to a (divine or civil) sovereign.

Olsthoorn raises an intriguing issue when he reminds us that for Hobbes even the intent to sin is a violation. “Pace Byron, it does not follow that we ought to conform our value schema to that of the sovereign.” A larger problem lurks. Hobbes does not define intention in his psychological theory, and it is not clear given his hydraulic account of motivation where intention might fit in the genesis of action. Medieval philosophers like Aquinas regard intention as a function of will, but Hobbes has flattened will into the last desire before action. Intention might be will, but that would make the concept redundant. This question deserves detailed examination, which space does not allow. In the meantime, my view is grounded in Hobbes’s motivational theory in a way that tries to explain how “sincerely from the heart” might become an apt modifier of subjects’ actions.

Online Colloquium (4) – Olsthoorn on Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth

This online colloquium has been established to discuss the recent work of Michael Byron (Kent State) Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth. We began first with an introduction to the text by Professor Byron and responses by Michael Krom – here – (St Vincent State) and Deborah Baumgold – here – (University of Oregon). Today we have our final response, from Johan Olsthoorn (KU Leuven). Next week we will post a reply by Professor Byron. Many thanks to Palgrave for supporting this colloquium.

Response by Johan Olsthoorn

Michael Byron’s tightly argued and well-written short monograph on Hobbes has many virtues. Inter alia, it presents a new and logically coherent interpretation of an enduring problem within Hobbes scholarship: which persons are morally obliged to obey the laws of nature as laws and why? The laws of nature offer sound practical advice to everyone keen to survive amidst others (Lev. 15.34). Abiding by these laws is obligatory, Byron argues, only for God’s subjects (i.e., persons who acknowledge God’s sovereignty and providence). According to Hobbes, precepts have the status of laws only if issued to individuals who had earlier bound themselves to obey the lawgiver (Lev. 26.2). On Byron’s reading, this holds true for the laws of nature as well.

Byron contends that his voluntarist conception of moral obligation permits a superior interpretation of why and in what sense justice can be said to ‘apply’ in a state of nature (p. 13). Leviathan boldly proclaims that “the Notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have… no place… where there is no common Power” (Lev. 13.13). This claim is befuddling. Isn’t natural law operative outside the commonwealth? And isn’t abiding by the laws of nature ‘just’ and their violation ‘unjust’? To solve this puzzle, Byron turns to the idea of a dual state of nature, developed by Kavka (1986) and Martinich (1992) (pp. 13-19). God exists but does not rule in the primary state of nature. Natural law governs conduct in this state in the form of good counsel, not as law. Since just and unjust have meaning only in relation to law, it follows that there is no justice or injustice in the primary state of nature (p. 3). The secondary state of nature does contain proper laws, rendering it possible for actions to be just or unjust. These laws are the laws of nature seen ‘as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things’ (Lev. 15.41). Absent human government, anyone who has bound themselves to obey the word of God inhabits the secondary state of nature.

Submission and Subjection in Leviathan deserves praise for developing an original and ingenuous interpretation of Hobbesian moral obligation. Having myself recently published an alternative explanation for the state-dependency of justice and injustice (Olsthoorn 2015),[i] I hope the reader will forgive me for focusing on this theme first. Three general methodological choices, I submit, impair Byron’s interpretation. First, Byron focuses exclusively on Leviathan: other works in which Hobbes discusses justice and related themes are largely, or even completely, ignored. Second, he draws on a surprisingly limited set of Hobbesian concepts. On the textbook interpretation of Hobbes, for example, the natural right to everything precludes the possibility of injustice outside the state. Submission and Subjection all but fails to mention this right.

Third, Byron engages a fairly limited set of secondary sources. His nigh exclusive conversation with Hampton, Lloyd, and Martinich has arguably made him overlook relevant alternative interpretive moves. For instance, he does not consider the well-known suggestion by Gauthier (1969: 48-52) that the laws of nature are ceaselessly operative in conditions of war without being violable. Put differently, in the state of nature (which is a state of war), natural law obliges in conscience without disallowing any particular action in practice. After all, when peace cannot be obtained, right reason allows us ‘by all means we can, to defend our selves’ (Lev. 14.4). Leviathan therefore states that prior to the formation of the state, the laws of nature are ‘not properly Lawes, but qualities that dispose men to peace, and to obedience’. ‘For it is the Soveraign Power that obliges men to obey them’ (Lev. 26.8). Byron may rightly object that justice remains, on this reading, applicable in the state of nature. For it seems that any action performed with right is done justly (EL 16.2, 5; DCv 3.5).

Another solution not considered by Byron is that Hobbes does not call natural law violations ‘unjust’ – at least not in the later works. In the 1647 De Cive, Hobbes explains what his infamous doctrine of a right to everything amounts to:

This must be understood as meaning that nothing that one does in a purely natural state is a wrong against anyone, at least against any man. Not that it is impossible in such a state to sin against God or to violate the Natural Laws. For injustice against men presupposes Human Laws, and there are none in the natural state. (DCv: 1.10n; also DPS: 36)

This passage suggests that, whatever view we may take on the possibility of natural law violations beyond the state, such conduct constitutes no injustice towards humans. The Latin Leviathan makes a stronger claim yet, insisting that transgressing natural law should be called ‘iniquitous’, rather than ‘unjust’: “For Iniquitous is called what is done contrary to the Law of Nature, Unjust what is done contrary to the Civil Law. Yet, nothing was Just or Unjust before the Common-wealth was constituted” (LL 18.6; also DPS 31). These passages – ignored by Byron – allow for a straightforward explanation for the state-dependency of justice and injustice. An explanation, moreover, that neither hinges on the sense in which the laws of nature “oblige all Mankind” (Lev. 30.30), nor on postulating two conceptually distinct states of nature (for which there is no textual evidence).

Here, I will refrain from outlining my rival interpretation for why justice and injustice are inapplicable outside the Hobbesian commonwealth, published elsewhere. Instead, I will raise two further worries about Byron’s short and impressive book, informed by the above-mentioned methodological infelicities. The laws of nature, Byron maintains, are properly laws only qua divine commands, to those who have subjected themselves to God. This interpretation hinges heavily on Lev. 15.41:

These dictates of Reason, men use to call by the name of Lawes, but improperly… yet if we consider the same Theoremes, as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all things; then are they properly called Lawes.

Byron overlooks the parallel passage in De Cive, which spells out what the relevant word of God is:

properly speaking, the natural laws are not laws, in so far as they proceed from nature. But in so far as the same laws have been legislated by God in the holy scriptures… they are very properly called by the name of laws (DCv 3.33)

If natural law is law by dint of having been prescribed in Scripture, then Byron has a serious problem. For in Leviathan, Hobbes insists that biblical canons are rendered obligatory by the sovereign’s authority (except for those to whom God has spoken personally) (Lev. 33.24). Paradoxically, the divine injunctions found in Scripture are civil laws in Leviathan. This suggests that, until the sovereign ‘obliges men to obey them’, the laws of nature are but theorems of reason (Lev. 26.8).

In response, Byron must argue that the Bible’s moral doctrine is law without the civil sovereign’s validation. In support, he could appeal to Leviathan’s discussion of the triple ‘word of God’ (Lev. 31.3). “God declareth his Lawes” by revelation, by faith, and ‘by the Dictates of Naturall Reason’ (Lev. 31.3). Here, ‘the question is not of obedience to God, but of when, and what God hath said’ (Lev. 33.1). Supernatural revelation is rare, while faith is nothing else than belief in men. It thus seems that in the natural condition, God’s laws are primarily promulgated by reason. And we indeed read that biblical doctrines which ‘differ not from the Laws of Nature… are the Law of God, and carry their Authority with them, legible to all men that have the use of natural reason’ (Lev. 33.22). However, Hobbes may well have been talking here about the laws of nature qua theorems of reason: the content of natural law can be rationally determined. Byron must show that natural law has obligatory force prior to the sovereign’s Scriptural legislation. How to know that the natural dictates of reason are simultaneously divine legislations? And how to know that these and only these conclusions of reason are divine laws – and not, for instance, whatever right reason reveals is the best course of action in war? (‘Force, and Fraud’ – Lev. 13.13). The worry here is that to inhabit the secondary state of nature, governed by obligatory natural laws, one has to be a true prophet, in personal communication with God. If, as Byron argues, mere belief in God gives natural law the force of law (pp. 89-92), then this appears to render law and obligation purely subjective: to be obligated by natural law is to see yourself as being obligated to God to obey it. After all, God has directly spoken and legislated to very few of us, if any.

In conclusion, a word on Byron’s thesis that being a good subject requires ‘desiring what the law prescribes and eschewing what the law prohibits’ (p. 7). ‘Insofar as my personal value schema fails to conform to that prescribed by the sovereign, my judgments of good and evil are wrong’ (p. 79). This interpretive claim strikes me as unwarrantedly strong. Byron righty points out that within the commonwealth, the civil law is the sole authoritative measure of actions (Lev. 46.11). Having promised to simply obey the sovereign, it is unjust for citizens to disobey the law for conscience’s sake (Lev. 29.7). Furthermore, Byron duly stresses that the very design or intention to break the law is sinful (p. 77). Pace Byron, it does not follow that we ought to conform our value schema to that of the sovereign. What follows is that it is impermissible to act or plan to act contrary to the civil law. We can accept this without holding that the civil law offers normative guidance for private conscience.

Indeed, we have good reason to reject the notion of ‘value conforming desire’. The sovereign’s interpretation of the laws of nature is certainly authoritative and binding for citizens. Yet authority does not imply truth: “For the interpretation, though it be made by just authority, must not therefore always be true” (EW 4, 340). Hobbes is quite aware that civil laws are often immoral (e.g. EL 21.3; DCv 7.14; Lev. 21.7, 22.15, 24.7; DPS 31). Why think that citizens should internalize the values immoral civil laws express? Doing so would bring conflict closer. Consider, furthermore, the biblical figure Naaman the Syrian (Lev. 42.11). Naaman was ordered by his lawful sovereign to publicly deny his Christian faith. Hobbes argues that he could have safely obeyed this order, since ‘that action is not his, but his Soveraigns’. The third law of nature did indeed require Naaman to obey. Yet Hobbes nowhere claims that to be a good subject, Naaman should adopt his sovereign’s heretical value schema. All he needs to do is obey. In Hobbes’s view, I contend, citizens may think and value whatever they want, provided they take the civil law as their rule of actions. Hobbes is more liberal, in this respect, than Byron suggests (pp. 9, 114-15).

 

REFERENCES

Gauthier, David. 1969. The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Olsthoorn, Johan. 2015. ‘Why justice and injustice have no place outside the Hobbesian State’, European Journal of Political Theory 14, no. 1: 19–36.

New book: Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy

Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy, edited by Shane D. Courtland (Routledge, 2018).

About this book: Most philosophers and political scientists readily admit that Thomas Hobbes is a significant figure in the history of political thought. His theory was, arguably, one of the first to provide a justification for political legitimacy from the perspective of each individual subject. Many excellent books and articles have examined the justification and structure of Hobbes’ commonwealth, ethical system, and interpretation of Christianity. What is troubling is that the Hobbesian project has been largely missing in the applied ethics and public policy literature. We often find applications of Kantian deontology, Bentham’s or Mill’s utilitarianism, Rawls’s contractualism, the ethics of care, and various iterations of virtue ethics. Hobbesian accounts are routinely ignored and often derided. This is unfortunate because Hobbes’s project offers a unique perspective. To ignore it, when such a perspective would be fruitful to apply to another set of theoretical questions, is a problem in need of a remedy. This volume seeks to eliminate (or, at the very least, partially fill) this gap in the literature.

Online Colloquium (3) – Baumgold on Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth

This online colloquium has been established to discuss the recent work of Michael Byron (Kent State) Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth. We began first with an introduction to the text by Professor Byron and a response by Michael Krom (St Vincent State). This is now followed by a response by Deborah Baumgold (University of Oregon). Look for responses by Johan Olsthoorn (KU Leuven) next week, and finally a last reply by Professor Byron. Many thanks to Palgrave for supporting this colloquium.

Response by Deborah Baumgold

Byron tells us at the outset that the basis of this interpretation is a ‘seldom-remarked passage’ in Leviathan on rulers’ duty: ‘[subjects] are to be taught that, not only the unjust facts, but the designs and intentions to do them . . . are injustice, which consisteth in the pravity of the will as well as the irregularity of the act’ (pp. x, 2). ‘The goal of this essay is modest’, he continues, ‘and its focus tight: the objective is to draw on a range of interpretative resources in order to resolve a set of textual issues, especially concerning Hobbes’s idea of a good subject’ (p. 10). The textual issues concern moral, political and religious obligation and are drawn from the secondary philosophical literature, principally from Sharon Lloyd’s and Al Martinich’s works and, to lesser extent, from arguments by Bernard Gert, Jean Hampton, Gregory Kafka and Perez Zagorin. By virtue of the secondary context, there are alternative ways of viewing and assessing Byron’s interpretation: as a reading of Hobbes’s texts or as a contribution to an interpretive stream within current moral philosophy.

Both in intention and impact, the work seems better read as the latter than the former. In lieu of focusing on textual discussions of servitude, subjection and slavery, the titular theme is a constructed distinction between mere submission and subjection done well.

The activity of subjection is distinct from the act of submission . . . submission is the last act a person performs in a state of nature, whereas subjection is an ongoing activity in a commonwealth. My act of submission constitutes me as a subject and the sovereign as my sovereign. . . . But the daily business of fulfilling that promise and continuing to obey the sovereign is much more than submission. Subjection is a distinct activity the successful performance of which includes the adoption of the VCD (p. 83).

‘VCD’ is shorthand for ‘value conforming desire’: political subjection centrally consists, in Byron’s view, in adoption of the sovereign’s ‘value schema’, especially as this is codified in civil law. Thus one might characterize the overall interpretation as conjoining the concept of justice as a virtue (the possession of a ‘just man’) with Leviathan’s emphasis on the sovereign’s duty of political education.  Good subjects are those who have been well-educated in and have adopted the sovereign’s outlook and values.

Having developed a different line of interpretation of subjection, one based more explicitly on the textual servant/slave contrast, I am understandably skeptical about the textual authenticity of the interpretation. However, I find much of interest in the arguments themselves, especially as these concern religion. Byron asserts that the submission/subjection distinction applies to human’s relationship to God as well as to political subjection. There is, he says, but one difference between the relationships: towards God, submission is accomplished simply by belief. By virtue of irresistible power, God possesses the right to govern, no contract is required (§4.3.3).

But, I suggest, there is actually a further difference, which is a problematic point in Byron’s interpretation but also points to an intriguing extension of Leviathan’s emphasis on political education. The difference is that the sovereign’s value schema can be a certainty (presuming a rational sovereign) but God’s cannot be. Recognizing the problem, Byron has to take the further step of specifying content. He equates Hobbes’s undoubted theism with Christian belief: ‘Crucial to this argument is a proper understanding of God: a providential God in an orthodox Christian conception is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good. So when I believe in that God, I thereby accept that God has irresistible power and therefore dominion over the world’ (p. 91). With basic content thus specified, Byron follows Hobbes in deducing subjects’ obligation to adopt their sovereign’s brand of Christianity.

While the argument seems to sidestep the pressing issues of religious knowledge and pluralism that greatly concerned Hobbes and his contemporaries, Byron’s discussion of the role of an authoritative value schema suggests a possible extension of Leviathan’s discussion of political education. Only in that final version of the theory did Hobbes emphasize political education, identifying it as a major duty of the sovereign and laying out key points in which subjects should be instructed (chapter 30, ¶3-13). By extension, might one expect religious education to have a similarly enhanced role in the work? So, pace the contrast drawn above between textual and analytic readings, Byron’s reading generates a question about the text: Does Part III of Leviathan’s evidence a trajectory of developing concern with what subjects should be taught as contrasted, say, to theological argumentation and ecclesiology? An intriguing hint in this direction, at least in the negative, can be found in comparison with the organization of the parallel Part III in De Cive. There, he employed a substantive template, dividing the Part into successive chapters on divine government by nature, the old covenant, and the new covenant. The straightforward arrangement is abandoned in Leviathan, where casual perusal indicates Hobbes was intent on pressing a Scriptural definition of God’s value schema (aka the ‘word of God’). So perhaps he was more orthodox a Christian as regards religious education—what subjects should be taught—than in his theological views? Instead of equating theism with a (Christian) authoritative value schema, Byron could follow his own lead and consider whether religious education might be a subject in its own right, separate from and even at odds with theology, in Leviathan.

Online Colloquium (2) Krom on Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth

This online colloquium has been established to discuss the recent work of Michael Byron (Kent State) Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth. We began last week with an introduction to the text by Professor Byron himself. This is now followed by a response by Michael Krom (St Vincent State). In subsequent weeks we will feature responses by Deborah Baumgold (University of Oregon) and Johan Olsthoorn (KU Leuven), and finally a last reply by Professor Byron. Many thanks to Palgrave for supporting this colloquium.

Response from Michael Krom

In Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth, Michael Byron presents a tight, focused argument that Hobbes has 1) a voluntarist conception of moral obligation in what Byron calls the ‘secondary state of nature’; and 2) the view that good subjects must conform their desires to those of the sovereign. Given the nature of this forum and the fact that Byron has opened it with a succinct summary of the book, I will not review the main points of his argument. Instead, I will 1) raise some questions concerning his interpretation; and 2) open up discussion on the implications of his interpretation for contemporary theory.

First, regarding his interpretation, Byron says throughout the book that he is talking about Hobbes’s Christian commitments (see, e.g., 3, 17, 91) and yet he tells us very little about the Christian Commonwealth. His arguments are focused almost entirely on natural religion. To some extent, this might not affect Byron’s interpretation, but it would be helpful for him to show how his theory would address this. For example, Hobbes tells us that those in the natural kingdom obey because of the rewards God will give them for doing so (Lev. 31.2), and yet he also takes up the orthodox Christian view that God will punish with damnation all who do not believe in Christ (Lev. 43.3). Why would the good pagan in the state of nature, or the sovereign who is not a Christian, be obligated to obey a God who will punish both the obedient and disobedient pagan? Perhaps Hobbes means rewards in this life, and the good pagan would know nothing of his future doom? And, these good subjects who conform their desires to those of the sovereign, are they good pagans or good Christians, or both? The passage that Byron cites regarding obeying ‘sincerely from the heart’ (Lev. 30.13) suggests that the good subjects Hobbes has in mind are not just good pagans, but good Christians: Hobbes explicitly structures his discussion of the obligations of sovereigns and subjects around the ten commandments as summarized by Jesus as love of God and neighbor.

I am reminded of a puzzle that A.E. Taylor found in Hobbes’s works: whereas in Elements of Law Hobbes claimed that only those in the prophetic kingdom know the theorems to be laws, in De Cive he says those in the natural kingdom know this as well. Why did Hobbes change or develop his views? And, why did he develop his theory without explaining ‘how . . . [he] supposes persons unacquainted with the Scriptures to have discovered that the natural law is a command of God’ (Taylor, 420). All of this is important because it touches upon a broad range of interpretive issues, and a host of scholarly works, regarding the sincerity of Hobbes’s Christianity; the extent to which he may be ‘de-fanging’ Christianity for his political purposes; the extent to which the natural/prophetic distinction should be taken as central to his work or just part of the rhetorical context; etc. It would have been helpful for Byron to follow Hobbes’s own distinction between natural and prophetic religion so as to clarify his thesis, especially given that he takes the sincerity quote from Lev. 30.13 to be central to his own argument.

Second, regarding the implications of his work for contemporary theory, scholars generally agree that Hobbes is the, or at least a, founder of the modern social contract tradition. To the extent that we still understand politics in terms of contracts between peoples and/or their rulers or representatives, Hobbes is thus an important figure in our own political tradition. Yet, to the extent that one can separate the social contract tradition from modern liberalism, there is considerable disagreement over whether Hobbes can be included in the liberal canon. To some extent this reflects what the scholars themselves think about the modern liberal project: whereas John Rawls seems to have thought it was important to call Hobbes a social contract, but not a liberal, theorist, critics of liberalism such as Leo Strauss and C.B. Macpherson (at least in liberalism’s ‘possessive individualism’ form) perhaps delight in showing how illiberal liberalism’s founder is. Given Hobbes’s program for centralized government; his rejection of Church/State separation; and his rejection of robust civil liberty, it is no wonder that theorists today would want to distance themselves from him. According to liberalism’s critics, if one can show, for example, that Rawls’s liberalism has its roots in Hobbesian authoritarianism, one seems to unmask the veil of ignorance as a contemporary way to justify the divinization of political authority.

Michael Byron hints at this issue when, both in the Introduction and in the concluding chapter’s discussion of ‘harmless liberty,’ he points out that the version of Hobbes he gives us is, in his own words, ‘less liberal . . . than some interpreters may like’ (9). What might Byron mean by this? That some would like Hobbes to be liberal? And, why does he not indicate that he himself does not like how illiberal Hobbes turns out to be? Is he indicating his agreement with Hobbes’s voluntarist conception of obligation and the need for citizens to conform their desires to the government’s value schema? Does he, while recognizing that Hobbes unfortunately seems ‘illiberal,’ intend to defend a liberalism that leaves us with nothing but ‘harmless liberty?’ Perhaps instead he is simply telling those who think of Hobbes as a liberal that they are wrong, and I am just reading too much into this. Yet it is a curious expression, and I wonder what Byron himself thinks about all this: Does Hobbes have something to offer us today? What contribution can Byron’s Hobbes make to contemporary political conversations?

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Byron should have taken up these bigger questions, for that is not his purpose. It is hard enough to get Hobbes right, let alone tell us what Hobbes has to say to us today. I simply offer this as a springboard for conversation regarding what Byron’s interpretation of Hobbes might have to say for current discourse. If we could bring Hobbes into current discussions about the necessity of God for morality, or of religion for politics, or of the Rawlsian version of liberalism, what would he have to say to us? Byron’s book gave me much to think about on such issues, and I would like to hear why he thinks the Hobbes of submission and subjection might be important for us today.

Bibliography

Baier, Annette C., ‘Commodious Living’, Synthese 72. 2 (1987): 157-185.

Barnouw, Jeffrey, ‘Persuasion in Hobbes’s Leviathan’, Hobbes Studies 1 (1988): 3-25.

Button, Mark E., Contract, Culture, and Citizenship: Transformative Liberalism from Hobbes to

Rawls (College Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008).

Cooke, Paul D., Hobbes and Christianity: Reassessing the Bible in Leviathan (Lanham, Md.:

Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

Herzog, Don, Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent Theory (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1989).

Hood, F.C., The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).

Johnston, David, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural

Transformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).

Lund, William, ‘Neither Behemoth nor Leviathan; Explaining Hobbes’s Illiberal Politics,’

Filozofski Vestnik 24:2 (2003): 59-83.

Macpherson, C.B. Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1989).

Pasquino, Pasquale, ‘Hobbes, Religion, and Rational Choice: Hobbes’s two Leviathans and the

Fool,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001): 406-19.

Sreedhar, Susanne, Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan (New York: Cambridge UP,

2010).

Taylor, A.E., ‘The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes,’ Philosophy 13 (1938): 406-424.

Warrender, Howard, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1957).

Westmoreland, Robert, ‘The Hobbesian Roots of Contemporary Liberalism,’ Faith and

Philosophy 8 (1991): 505-23.

 

New article: Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Mankind in Hobbes’ Leviathan

Ursula Renz, ‘Self-Knowledge and Knowledge of Mankind in Hobbes’ Leviathan’, European Journal of Philosophy, published online: 8 August 2017 (DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12227).

Abstract: In the introduction to the Leviathan, Hobbes famously defends the anthropological point of departure of his theory of the state by invoking the Delphic injunction ‘Know thyself!’ of which he presents a peculiar reading thereafter. In this paper, I present a reading of the anthropology of the Leviathan that takes this move seriously. In appealing to Delphic injunction, Hobbes wanted to prompt a particular way of reading his anthropology for which it is crucial that the reader relate the presented anthropological views to his self-conception. The anthropology of the Leviathan is thus a kind of manual for a certain kind of self-reflection by which the reader’s self-knowledge is to be improved. Furthermore, I will argue that Hobbes’ interpretation of the Delphic injunction illuminates several theoretical issues relevant to the epistemology of that kind of ‘self-knowledge’ that was demanded by the Delphic injunction. While Hobbes does not solve all the epistemological problems related with the ideal appealed to by this inscription, he does provide some interesting insights into some general requirements that any epistemological account of Socratic self-knowledge has to meet.

Online Colloquium (1) Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth

This online colloquium has been established to discuss the recent work of Michael Byron (Kent State) Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth. We begin with an introduction to the text by Professor Byron himself. This will be followed by weekly responses by Michael Krom (St Vincent State), Deborah Baumgold (University of Oregon) and Johan Olsthoorn (KU Leuven), and finally a last reply by Professor Byron. Many thanks to Palgrave for supporting this colloquium.

Introduction

Note: the following essay is adapted from the Introduction of the book and aims to offer an overview of the argument. It is published here with permission of the copyright holder. Many thanks to Joanne Paul and the European Hobbes Society for the opportunity to discuss my work. –M.B.

And to do all this sincerely from the heart Lastly, [subjects] are to be taught that, not only the unjust facts, but the designs and intentions to do them (though by accident hindered) are injustice, which consisteth in the pravity of the will as well as the irregularity of the act. And this is the intention of the tenth commandment, and the sum of the second table, which is reduced all to this one commandment of mutual charity: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, as the sum of the first table is reduced to the love of God, whom they had then newly received as their king (Leviathan, chapter xxx).

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes famously characterizes the state of nature as a predicament in which life is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ The only means of escape from that dire condition is to found a commonwealth, with its notorious sovereign. Hobbes invests the sovereign with virtually absolute power over the poor subjects of the commonwealth, and that vast and unlimited sovereign has drawn the reader’s eye for 350 years.

Yet Hobbes has a great deal to say about subjects in a commonwealth as well, and he articulates a normative conception of a good subject. For some, subjects are a foil for the sovereign: potentially rebellious, foolish, and criminal, subjects are best cowed and crushed under the sovereign’s oppressive hand. And this for their own good: only through such domination can people live together in peace. This essay, in contrast, begins from a seldom-remarked upon passage where Hobbes invites sovereigns to cultivate their subjects’ devotion. The people of a commonwealth should be taught to obey the law from love, not fear, though Hobbes generally encourages multiple and overlapping sources of motivation. Of course, every community has its problem children: the dupes who will do whatever anyone says, the criminals who take advantage, the zealots who stray from true religion. Hobbes is more aware than most of the problem elements, and he has his views of how to deal with them. But what does he think about the good citizens of the commonwealth? What of those who are content to obey the law and contribute their talents to the common good?

In the book, I develop a novel interpretation of the role of submission in Leviathan, and introduce the concept of subjection to explain the expectations Hobbes has for good subjects. The argument begins in the state of nature with a puzzle: in chapter 13, where he introduces the idea of a state of nature, Hobbes says that the concept of justice lacks application there. A state of nature exhibits neither justice nor injustice. Then, in the following chapter on the laws of nature, Hobbes explains the sense in which violating those laws in a state of nature constitutes injustice. In order to explain away the appearance of contradiction, I rehabilitate A. P. Martinich’s distinction between primary and secondary states of nature.

Martinich (1992) addresses the same puzzle by postulating two distinct conceptual moments in Hobbes’s composition of the state of nature. The primary state of nature, as he conceives it, is one without God; so, following Hobbes’s formula, there is in such a state no common power, so no law, and thus neither justice nor injustice. The secondary state of nature, in contrast, includes God, and it thus exhibits a common power and the laws of nature. The secondary state of nature therefore enables the application of concepts of justice and injustice based on obedience to or violation of law, which seems to be the relevant sense in chapter 14 of Leviathan. So what at first seems to be a contradiction in Hobbes’s text is in fact an application of his “compositive method,” moving from the relatively abstract primary state of nature without God, to the secondary state of nature with God, and ultimately to the commonwealth with the civil sovereign later in the book.

The problem with this approach is twofold. First, the primary state of nature seems to offend against the Christian priority of God over man: a conceptual moment without God? God is a necessary being, which seems to entail the impossibility of the primary state of nature so defined. Second, Martinich, as well as S. A. Lloyd (2009) for rather different reasons, regards the obligations imposed by the laws of nature as necessary, in the sense of applying to every person at all times. Doing so defeats the purpose of hypothesizing a primary state of nature: if the laws of nature impose obligations necessarily, then they impose obligations in the primary state of nature also, and in that case the concepts of justice and injustice seem to gain purchase there after all, thus undermining its point.

The solution is to redefine a primary state of nature. First, in order not to offend against Hobbes’s Christian commitments, God must exist in any state in which people exist. God must be conceptually, temporally, and in every way prior to people. Second, the laws of nature must not impose obligations necessarily. These views are possible given two claims. First, we must distinguish God’s existence from his sovereignty. Mere existence cannot entail that God is everyone’s sovereign, or there would be a common power, and so law and justice in a primary state of nature. Second, we must adopt a voluntarist conception of obligation. The obligations imposed by the laws of nature are undertaken only voluntarily, when one submits to God and makes him one’s sovereign. The primary state of nature must be a state without legal obligations of any kind, civil or natural, and conceiving of it thus explains how Hobbes can characterize it as a state in which the concepts of justice and injustice have no application. The secondary state of nature, in contrast, includes God’s subjects who have undertaken obligations under the laws of nature; their situation permits the application of the notions of justice and injustice. Rehabilitating the primary/secondary distinction allows us to explain away the apparent contradiction without stepping on any other Hobbesian commitment.

Next, I develop a normative analysis of the laws of nature, partly to understand better what Hobbes means to accomplish in distinguishing what he calls the ‘rational theorems’ from the ‘proper laws.’ One and the same set of precepts is both a set of rational theorems, derivable by reason and epistemically accessible to anyone, and a set of proper laws, which brings them under Hobbes’s generic definition of law and so treats them as commands issued to subjects who are obligated to obey those commands. Hobbes treats the precepts of the laws of nature differently, depending on their normative context, referring to them as rational theorems or proper laws as that context dictates. I locate my analysis within the general school of interpretation developed and articulated by Lloyd (2009), which she calls a definitional derivation. She shows that the function of the laws of nature is to promote the common good, rather than self-preservation or self-interest narrowly construed. I do not rehearse her arguments for these views, which I regard as conclusive. Instead, I seek to supplement and clarify the approach she develops on this point, and specifically to distinguish the normative role of the rational theorems from that of the proper laws.

Following Lloyd, I accept Hobbes’s claim that he intends the rational theorems to follow deductively from definitions, a priori propositions, and what Lloyd (2009: 212) calls ‘indubitable introspectables.’ Their function as laws of nature is to promote peace, but — moving beyond Lloyd here — in order to fit into Hobbes’s derivation the relation between following the precepts and peace must be conceptual, not causal. The normative form of the rational precepts is conditional and constitutes what Hobbes calls “counsel” rather than “command.” As the rational theorems are derivable a priori as the only path to peace, and because the desire for peace is a constitutive condition of practical rationality, their normative scope is universal for everyone who possesses reason. The normativity of counsel, as I call it, is rational justification with universal scope. Everyone has reason to seek peace.

The analysis yields different results when applied to the same precepts considered as proper laws. In virtue of the conceptual connection between following the precepts of the laws of nature and peaceable living, the function of the proper laws is the same as that of the rational theorems, namely to promote peace. Their form, however, is categorical rather than conditional, and they are ‘command’ rather than ‘counsel.’ Moreover, the proper laws are commands addressed to those who are obligated to obey. Again, presupposing voluntarism about obligation, not everyone is obligated to obey the laws of nature. The normative scope of the proper laws is thus generally smaller than that of the rational theorems. The normativity of law, as I call it, is obligation, and only God’s subjects are obligated by the laws of nature.

The fact that not everyone is obligated by the proper laws carves conceptual space for the primary state of nature as I conceive it. The primary state of nature is a situation without any legal obligations, including obligations under the laws of nature. In such a state, the rational theorems are still normative for all: the normativity of counsel is universal, but not obligatory. Only the proper laws, not the rational theorems, obligate, and in the primary state of nature nobody is God’s subject. Consequently, nobody has obligations under the proper laws, and Hobbes is able to claim without contradiction that the concept of justice does not apply. What remains to be defended is the commitment to a voluntarist account of legal obligation.

The defense of voluntarism considers three accounts of legal obligation. According to what Lloyd (2009) calls desire-based derivations of the laws of nature, such as that developed by Hampton (1986), the laws of nature comprise a set of hypothetical imperatives, the following of which is prudent because the imperatives embody true causal conditionals about how to promote self-preservation and (narrow) self-interest. On this view, the laws of nature are not in fact obligatory in any ordinary sense: following them is prudent in virtue of their causal efficacy, but that status does not constitute obligation. Although I follow Lloyd in rejecting this kind of derivation of the laws of nature generally, Hampton’s account manages to capture an important feature of the laws of nature inasmuch as she links the universal normativity of the precepts to their status as rational theorems. She is also correct to conclude that the rational theorems as such are not obligatory.

Martinich (1992) offers what Lloyd (2009) calls a duty-based derivation of the laws of nature, according to which the laws are universally obligating because of God’s irresistible power. In rejecting the connection between God’s power and obligation, I call attention to the distinction Hobbes draws between what he calls dominion, or the right to rule, and obligation. Hobbes consistently connects God’s irresistible power with dominion; but having the right to rule does not entail that God’s commands are obligatory for all, nor did Hobbes think so. Martinich’s view represents an advance over Hampton’s because it links the normativity of law to God’s will; but the account still falls short of being adequate because it generates necessary obligations and universal normative scope for the proper laws.

The third account of obligation under the laws of nature I consider is Lloyd’s own. She argues that the duties imposed by the laws of nature are Rawlsian natural duties, and so are normative for all. As we have seen, making the obligations imposed by the laws of nature universal for all generates a contradiction in Hobbes’s claims about justice in the state of nature. So although we have every reason to follow Lloyd’s definitional derivation of the laws of nature, we should not follow her in thinking that the duties imposed by the proper laws are Rawlsian natural duties.

The only suitable account of the obligations imposed by the laws of nature is voluntarist, according to which we have obligations under those laws only if we voluntarily undertake them. On this view, only the subjects of what Hobbes calls the kingdom of God by nature are obligated by the laws of nature. Indeed, Hobbes explicitly distinguishes such subjects from atheists and deists, whom he labels ‘God’s enemies.’ When we conceive of the normative scope of the proper laws as in practice narrower than that of the rational theorems, we can make better sense of the primary state of nature and solve the puzzle about justice in the state of nature. Commitment to voluntarism about obligation raises questions about submission, though: how exactly do we undertake obligations under law generally, and under the laws of nature in particular?

Next, I explore the ideas of submission and subjection. For Hobbes submission is the last act one performs in the state of nature. By transferring my right to govern myself to someone else, I constitute myself as a subject of a commonwealth and make the other my sovereign. Submission creates the obligation to obey that is the precondition of any command imposing legal obligations. Submission thus constitutes the normative basis of legal obligation, consistent with the voluntarist account defended earlier.

Once we are subjects of a commonwealth, the question turns from obligation to compliance. Assuming we are obligated to obey the law, why do so? Many attempts to address Hobbes’s ‘compliance problem’ turn on the motive of fear, including fear of punishment. But Hobbes himself thinks love is also available to explain compliance: good subjects, he thinks, obey the law because they want to do so, and all subjects, he says, should ‘do all this sincerely from the heart.’ In order to flesh out this notion of a good subject, I propose the idea of subjection: good subjects of a commonwealth subject themselves to their sovereign.

Hobbes defines crime as violation of the law by omission or commission. He defines sin more broadly  as criminal action or intent, and he thinks intent to violate can weaken a commonwealth even if it does not yield action. Although he does not follow Calvin in treating fleeting desires as sinful, he does think that dispositional desires for prohibited goods are a problem for the commonwealth. The sovereign builds into the civil law a partial value schema that represents what Hobbes calls the ‘public conscience,’ and when subjects cultivate and harbor desires that fail to conform to the public conscience they thereby express contempt for the sovereign that weakens the commonwealth. Indeed, Hobbes regards subjects’ attempt to preserve private conscience where the law has prescribed goods for the commonwealth as a seditious usurpation.

He is therefore committed to a conception that I call the value conforming desire (VCD). This higher-order desire aims at conforming one’s lower-order desires to the partial value schema prescribed in the law. Subjects are obligated to want what the sovereign prescribes in the law, and they must cultivate the VCD and promote its satisfaction in order to do so. Good subjects satisfy the VCD by monitoring their value schemata for conflicts with the judgments of good embedded in the law and expressed as the public conscience. This process is subjection: good subjects successfully subject themselves to the sovereign and cultivate the prescribed partial value schema, desiring what the law prescribes and eschewing what the law prohibits. Though he does not use this terminology, the cultivation and satisfaction of the VCD is what Hobbes has in mind when he requires subjects to ‘do all this sincerely from the heart.’ This notion of subjection is general and applies in both the civil commonwealth and God’s natural kingdom. Subjection operationalizes sincerity.

The idea of subjection facilitates the interpretation of some traditionally perplexing passages in Leviathan. One example is the claim that people in the state of nature must desire peace, as Hobbes says, in foro interno. This claim can be puzzling if we think that the purpose of the laws of nature is to promote something other than peace, but even assuming that their point is peace, why does Hobbes care about the contents of our desires, even or especially when we are not required to follow the law in foro externo? If the account of subjection is right, then it follows that subjects’ desires must generally conform to the values embedded in the law. In that case, this specific requirement emerges as simply a special case of a more general requirement for subjects to conform their values to the prescribed schema.

Another notorious passage concerns the Foole. I have little to add to the able treatment in Lloyd (2009), except that she does not explain Hobbes’s claim that the Foole who denies justice and the Foole from Psalms who denies God are the ‘selfsame Foole.’ This result falls naturally out of my interpretation. The Foole who denies justice locates himself in the primary state of nature, as only there does the concept of justice lack application. Only atheists inhabit the primary state of nature. Thus, the unjust Foole is identical to the atheistic Foole.

A third issue concerns submission to God. On my account, this topic is important because we acquire obligations under the proper laws only after submitting to God. Submission to another human being is quite clear in Hobbes: he explains it as a transfer of right – the right of self-governance – and power. That cannot be the account of submission to God, who already has infinite power and so dominion, or the right to rule, over all. I argue that theistic belief alone is sufficient for submission to God, and that this account accommodates voluntarism about obligation and the idea of subjection in God’s kingdom by nature.

I close the essay with a discussion of several issues pertaining to sovereigns. The main puzzle of the chapter concerns what Hobbes intends to do by claiming that the sovereign and the commonwealth are a “real unity,” which I take to be or imply identity. A thorny issue about sovereigns is authorization. Hobbes states that subjects authorize the sovereign’s actions, which seems to make the sovereign their agent or deputy. On the other hand, Hobbes also gives the sovereign nearly unlimited authority to command the subjects of a commonwealth, which seems to make the sovereign their superior. Hobbes’s claims on this topic have led Martinich (1992), among others, to conclude that he contradicts himself. A correct understanding of the right transferred in submission can clarify why he does not do so.

My reading of Leviathan offers a markedly less liberal Hobbes than some interpreters might like. Lloyd (2009), for instance, treats Hobbes as a proto-Kantian who prefigures Scanlon. But Hobbes places potent constraints on good subjects, and he allows little place for freedom of conscience, as we would call it, in the ideal commonwealth. Good subjects not only obey the law, they do so sincerely from the heart. That commitment demands not only conformity of action, but of motivation as well. Still, Hobbes imposes constraints on the extent of this sovereign power to dictate subjects’ values. One of these is the sovereign’s obligation to obey the laws of nature. The sovereign acquires this obligation under the proper laws just as anyone else does. We must understand the sovereign as an artificial person who believes in a providential God, and that theistic belief constitutes submission to God and creates obligations under the proper laws. Those obligations, including the duty to promote the safety and welfare of the commonwealth, constrain the sovereign. Moreover, sovereigns are obligated to subject themselves to God and thus to adopt the value schema embedded in the proper laws. This obligation imposes further constraints, as sovereigns ought to be motivated in ways that promote the common good.

Furthermore, the value schema embedded in the law is after all only partial, and allows subjects what Hobbes calls ‘harmless liberty.’ A good law must be strictly necessary for the realization of the end of law as such, namely peace. Dictating subjects’ every action is not required: Hobbes remarks that on this ground subjects are properly to be left the liberty to choose a career, wardrobe, diet, and so forth, all under the heading of ‘harmless liberty.’ He imposes a kind of feasibility constraint that justifies this allowance to some extent when he says that sovereigns simply cannot control everything their subjects might do. The obligation of sovereigns to obey the proper laws amounts to a success constraint as well, as a commonwealth that systematically fails to realize peace and prosperity for its subjects will dissolve. A failed sovereign is no sovereign at all, and such a commonwealth devolves to a state of nature, returning the right of self-governance to the former subjects.

The goal of this essay is modest and its focus tight: the objective is to draw on a range of interpretative resources in order to resolve a set of textual issues, especially concerning Hobbes’s idea of a good subject. I help myself to such resources without much defense – especially Lloyd’s rejection of what she calls the ‘standard interpretation’ of Hobbes – and do so without apology, in order to remain focused on the question at hand. I recognize that stronger assumptions weaken the argument; yet to the extent that I can offer superior interpretations and solve some textual issues based on those assumptions, the explanatory power of the result reinforces the assumptions. Leviathan is an enormous and rich book, and it is tempting to try to say something about everything. This temptation explains why so many books about Hobbes are big. Mine is a small book about Hobbes. Like Hobbes’s, my argument begins in the state of nature.

References

Hampton, J. (1986). Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge.

Lloyd, S. A. (2009). Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature. Cambridge.

Martinich, A. P. (1992). The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics. Cambridge.

Free download: new monograph critically evaluating the ‘Hobbesian hypothesis’

Hobbes’s theory of political obligation is premised on the assumption that it is rational for everyone to lay down their rights of self-government and leave that horrid state of nature, characterized by a ceaseless war of all against all. Whether we ought to accept Hobbes’s argument depends, in part, on whether life outside of the state is in fact as nasty, brutish, and short as Hobbes proclaimed. Are we all better off within the state? Many past and present political philosophers have uncritically followed Hobbes in assuming that life outside the state is indeed unbearable.

In Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press 2017), the political philosopher Karl Widerquist and the anthropologist Grant S. McCall team up to assess the veracity of ‘the Hobbesian hypothesis’. Drawing extensively on recent studies of the general levels of violence and welfare in stateless societies, the two conclude that the Hobbesian hypothesis — their phrase for the claim that everyone is better offer in state society than they could reasonably expect to be in any stateless society — is ‘probably false’. Small stateless societies effectively control violence in several ways, including, as Rousseau intimated, by splitting up and moving away. According to Widerquist and McCall, the quality of life of the severely deprived – homeless people, slum-dwellers – is worse today than that of hunter-gatherers living in ‘a state of nature’. Standard social contract theories cannot, therefore, explain why the severely deprived have duties of political obligation.
Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy has been made available for free download through an open access project. To legally obtain the e-book, follow this link here.

Leviathan, Edited by Christopher Brooke

Brooke, Christopher (2017): Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. Edited with a new introduction by Christopher Brooke. London: Penguin Classics.

‘The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’

Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes’ case for a ‘common-wealth’ under a powerful sovereign – or ‘Leviathan’ – to enforce security and the rule of law, shocked his contemporaries, and his book was publicly burnt for sedition the moment it was published. But his penetrating work of political philosophy – now fully revised and with a new introduction for this edition – opened up questions about the nature of statecraft and society that influenced governments across the world.

Article: Hobbes’s Argument for the Naturalness and Necessity of Colonization

James, D. (2017): Hobbes’s Argument for the Naturalness and Necessity of Colonization, in: History of Political Thought, Volume 38, Number 3, 2017, pp. 439-461(23)

The author about his article: Towards the end of the second part of Leviathan, there is a short passage in which Hobbes describes a process of colonization and the reasons behind it. I explain this passage in terms of Hobbes’s definition of freedom as the absence of external impediments tomotion and the role that he assigns to the passions in explaining human behaviour. On this basis, I argue that Hobbes implies that colonization is both natural and necessary. The willingness of some individuals to risk their lives in an attempt to free themselves from colonial power and Hobbes’s account of the sovereign’s role in the process of colonization will be shown, however, to indicate the possibility of an alternative conception of freedom and an alternative explanation of human behaviour, thereby introducing an element of contingency. Colonization turns out in this way not to be as natural and necessary as Hobbes makes it seem.