Thomas Hobbes

1
Thomas Hobbes

• Sean D. Sutton

2
The Life and Times of Thomas Hobbes

• Thomas Hobbes was born on April 5, 1588 near
  Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England.
• He graduated from Oxford at age 19.
• Hobbes was a tutor to the son of the Earl of
  Devonshire .
• He translated Thucydides History of the
  Peloponnesian War in 1629.
• Hobbes visited Galileo and adopted the methods of
  the new physics as the path to knowledge.
• He published a three part work of philosophy
  including a materialistic metaphysics, De Corpore
  (1655) a materialistic account of man, De Homine
  (1658) and a work on the rights and duties of
  citizens, De Cive (1642).
• English Civil War erupted in 1642 Hobbes fled
  to Paris.
• Hobbes tutored Charles I son, Charles II. King
  Charles I was imprisoned in 1646.

3
The Life and Times of Thomas Hobbes - Continued

• In 1649, Charles I is executed after after an
  unsuccessful attempt to regain power.
• In 1651, Charles II is defeated by Oliver
  Cromwell. Hobbes presented Charles II with a copy
  of Leviathan, or Matter, Form, and Power of a
  Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Hobbes
  was forced to flee to England since those around
  Charles believed Hobbes work supported Cromwell.
• In 1660, the English monarchy was restored.
  Hobbes regained his students favor.
• In 1666, House of Commons introduced bill against
  atheism and blasphemy, singling out Hobbes
  Leviathan.
• Hobbes was forbidden to publish his history of
  the English Civil War, Behemoth (1670).
• Hobbes died of a stroke in 1679 at the age of 92.
• Four years later, Oxford condemned and burnt De
  Cive and Leviathan.

4
Hobbes The First Political Scientist

• Hobbes viewed himself as the first political
  philosopher.
• His predecessors errors fomented sedition,
  anarchy, and civil war.
• The distinction between virtue and vice that was
  apart from sovereign authority encouraged
  individuals to judge privately and act outside of
  the constraints of the civil law.
• This private judgment leads to tyrannicide and
  the chaos of the state of nature.
• Similarly badly constructed metaphysical systems
  encouraged people to fear divine punishments more
  than the punishments of civil authorities.
• Hobbes grounds his political science in natural
  law and his the father of natural right.
• First political philosopher to ground his
  political thought in natural philosophy.
• Those seeking to govern a whole nation must
  understand human passion. They must know
  themselves.

5
Hobbesian Nominalism and the Mechanical
Psychology of Man

• Mans mind operates on mechanical principles.
• Sense experience is a product of matter and
  motion and reaction to this data is rooted in
  individual subjective preferences.
• Hobbes materialism is translated into his
  exploration of mental discourse.
• Passions govern man according to Hobbes.
• Speech is a human artifice (Hobbes) as opposed to
  a natural endowment (Aristotle)
• Hobbes science seeks the right definition of
  names (nominalism). Speech is the source of
  science.
• Names signify particular bodies.
• Names abstract
• Names refer to the sensible qualities of a
  material object caused by a particular motion
• Names given to names.
• Hobbes speaks of passions with geometric
  exactness.

6
From Leviathan

• NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs
  the world) is by the art of man, as in many other
  things, so in this also imitated, that it can
  make an artificial animal. For seeing life is
  but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is
  in some principle part within, why may we not say
  that all automata (engines that move themselves
  by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an
  artificial life? For what is the heart, but a
  spring and the nerves, but so many strings and
  the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to
  the whole body, such as was intended by the
  Artificer? Art goes yet further imitating that
  rational and most excellent work of Nature, man.
  For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called
  a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS),
  which is but an artificial man, though of greater
  stature and strength than natural, for whose
  protection and defense it was intended and in
  which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as
  giving life and motion to the whole body

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Questions for Reflection

• Does Hobbess materialistic account of sense
  experience reduce all sense perception to a
  matter of touch?

8
Of Speech, From Leviathan, Chapter 4

• By this it appears how necessary it is for nay
  man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the
  definitions of former authors and either to
  correct them, where they are negligently set
  down, or to make them himself. For the errors of
  definitions multiply themselves, according as the
  reckoning proceeds, and lead men into
  absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot
  avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning
  in which lies the foundation of their errors
  Nor is it possible without letters for any man to
  become either excellently wise or (unless his
  memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of
  organs) excellently foolish.

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The Motions of Man and the State of Nature

• The beginning of motions in the human body is
  called endeavor.
• When endeavor moves towards its cause, it is
  called appetite or desire.
• When endeavor moves away from its cause, it is
  called aversion.
• Deliberation is a weighing of appetites and
  aversions.
• Deliberative hedonism explains the order of the
  universe in terms of a calculus of pleasure and
  pain.
• Felicity emerges from fulfilling desire and
  requires constant motion.
• The motion of mankind is a perpetual and
  restless desire for power after power, that
  ceases only in death.

10
The Motions of Man and the State of Nature -
Continued

• This condition makes Hobbes conclude, Man is a
  wolf to his fellow human beings and this leads
  the state of nature to be a state of war.
• Humans are equal because of even the weakest has
  sufficient strength to kill the strongest.
• Humans can also contract with others to secure
  their rights.
• Quarrels emerge among men because of competition,
  diffidence, and glory.
• The state of nature prohibits civilization.
• Hobbes natural philosophy is used as a basis of
  his political philosophy It is not all together
  clear that politics is not natural, but Hobbes is
  attempting to do away with Aristotles doctrine
  of essences to eliminate the private moral
  judgment that seems to be the source of war.

11
Of the Interior Beginning of Voluntary Motions,
Commonly Called The Passions and the Speeches by
Which They Are Expressed, from Leviathan, Chapter
6

• Pleasure therefore, or delight, is the appearance
  or sense of good and molestation or displeasure,
  the appearance or sense of evil. And
  consequently all appetite, desire, and love is
  accompanied with some delight more or less and
  all hatred and aversion with more or less
  displeasure and offence
• When in the mind of man appetites and aversions,
  hopes and fears, concerning one and the same
  thing, arise alternately and diverse good and
  evil consequences of the doing or omitting the
  thing propounded come successively into our
  thoughts so that sometimes we have an appetite
  to it, sometimes an aversion from it sometimes
  hope to be able to do it, sometimes despair, or
  fear to attempt it the whole sum of desires,
  aversions, hopes and fears, continued till the
  thing be either done, or thought impossible, is
  tat we call DELIBERATION.

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Questions for Reflection

• John Locke distinguishes between the state of
  nature and a state of war. Yet he depicts the
  state of nature as inconvenient and something
  from which man must escape. Does Locke in the end
  agree with Hobbes depiction of the state of
  nature as a war of all against all?

13
Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning
Their Felicity and Misery, From Leviathan

• Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of
  war, where every man is enemy to every man, the
  same consequent to the time wherein men live
  without other security than what their own
  strength and their own invention shall furnish
  them withal. In such condition there is no place
  for industry, because fruit thereof is uncertain
  and consequently no culture of the earth no
  navigation, nor use of the commodities that may
  be imported by sea no commodious building no
  instruments of moving and removing such things as
  require much force no knowledge of the face of
  the earth no account of time no arts no
  letters no society and which is worst of all,
  continual fear, and danger of violent death and
  the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
  and short.

14
Questions for Reflection

• What if the state of nature did not exist
  historically? Would this undermine Hobbes
  political teaching?

15
Natural Right, The Laws of Nature, and the
Political

• The original condition of man in the state of
  nature is a state of war of all against all.
• There is nothing unjust if self-preservation is
  the highest end.
• Natural right is founded on the desire for
  self-preservation.
• Fear of death and desire for commodious living
  lead to the willingness to transfer right to an
  absolute sovereign.
• The sovereign determines justice through law
  (legal positivism) and rules by fear and force.
• The salvation of humanity depends not upon divine
  providence or the grace of God, but upon human
  industry and labor.
• Contract or covenants without fear of
  non-performance are invalid.
• Passion must be subdued by an absolute sovereign
  to bring peace and security.

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Questions for Reflection

• Is Hobbes account of natural right the beginning
  of our notion of entitlement?

17
Questions for Reflection

• Do Hobbes and Aquinas agree about the content and
  character of natural law?

18
Questions for Reflection

• Is Hobbes correct that civil peace depends on an
  agreement on the political terms and principles
  that govern a people? Abraham Lincolns Speech at
  the Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland, April 18,
  1864, shows that the American Civil War can be
  understood as the consequence of a disagreement
  concerning the terms equality and liberty. Do
  Lincoln and Hobbes agree on the meaning of
  equality and liberty and their implications for
  government?

19
Questions for Reflection

• Does Hobbes make the same argument regarding the
  rule of law that Machiavelli does when he says
  good laws depend on good arms?

20
Absolute Sovereignty, Liberty and the Rights of
Subjects

• Government is for self-preservation and peaceable
  life. Hobbes determines the content of natural
  law by reference to passions as opposed to reason
  and does not believe it is effective without an
  external visible force to enforce it.
• Absolute government is the solution to this
  problem since only under absolute government are
  peace and commodious living possible.
• A covenant or contract is entered into by
  citizens to exchange their judgment for the
  sovereigns and they cannot contradict the
  sovereign without contradicting themselves.
• The sovereign is the combines the legislative,
  executive and judicial authority.

21
Absolute Sovereignty, Liberty and the Rights of
Subjects - Continued

• Religion is subordinated to the sovereign.
• The sovereign has authority over the distribution
  of property.
• Commerce should remain free enough to channel
  human felicity toward peace.
• Liberty exists where motion is not constrained
  and the sovereign is silent.
• Right to self-preservation is inalienable.
• Hobbes calculus focuses on pleasure and pain and
  rejects a higher standard to evaluate the
  sovereign from. Aristotle good regimes and bad
  regimes are all turned into regimes that secure
  survival and peace and are therefore good. What
  is evil is merely individual disgruntlement.

22
Of the First and Second Natural Laws, and of
Contracts, From Leviathan, Chapter 15

• Now the science of virtue and vice is moral
  philosophy and therefore the true doctrine of
  the laws of nature is the true moral philosophy.
  But the writers of moral philosophy, though they
  acknowledge the same virtues and vices yet not
  seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that
  they come to be praised as the means of
  peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living,
  place them in a mediocrity of passions as if not
  the cause, but the degree of daring, made
  fortitude or not the cause, but the quantity of
  a gift, made liberality.
• These dictates of reason men used to call by the
  name laws, but improperly for they are but
  conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth
  to the conservation and defense of themselves
  whereas law, properly, is the word of him that by
  right hath command over others. But yet if we
  consider the same theorems as delivered in the
  word of God that by right commandeth all things,
  then are they properly called laws.

23
Questions for Reflection

• Do Aristotle and Thomas Hobbes agree that the
  political authority must be architectonic and
  authoritative? Do they agree on the essential
  nature of politics?

24
Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a
Commonwealth, From Leviathan, Chapter 17-18

• The final cause, end, or design of men (who
  naturally love liberty, and dominion over others)
  in the introduction of that restraint upon
  themselves, in which we see them live in
  Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own
  preservation, and of a more contented life
  thereby that is to say, of getting themselves
  out from the miserable condition of war which is
  necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to
  the natural passions of men when there is no
  visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them
  by fear of punishment to the performance of their
  covenants, and observation of those laws of
  nature set down in the fourteenth and fifteenth
  chapters.

25
Questions For Reflection

• Can the commonwealth grounded in Hobbesian
  principles establish any obligations on behalf of
  its citizens? Does Hobbes understanding of
  natural rights imply civic duty?

26
Concluding Thoughts

• Natural right culminates in a doctrine of
  absolute sovereignty.
• If the sovereign is too weak or oppressive, civil
  war will be the outcome.
• The rules governing the creation of a
  commonwealth are like the rules governing
  arithmetic and geometry not tennis where practice
  and experience matter.
• The sovereigns judgment may be necessary in the
  complex world of politics, but that judgment
  should be augmented by the science of politics.
• What are the limits of Hobbes political science?
  Passion? Justice?

27
Questions for Reflection

• What prevents Hobbes absolute sovereign from
  abusing absolute power? Is the fear of violent
  death to be relied upon? Does this not suggest
  that implicit in Hobbes teaching there is a
  right to revolution? Could the nature of
  political life point beyond itself to universal
  standards by which citizens can judge the laws,
  policies, and conduct of their governments?

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On the Liberty of Subjects, From Leviathan,
Chapter 21

• As for other liberties, they depend on the
  silence of the law. In cases where the sovereign
  has prescribed no rule, there the subject hath
  the liberty to do, or forbear, according to his
  own discretion. And therefore such liberty is in
  some places more, and in some less and in some
  times more, in other times less, according as
  they that have the sovereignty shall think most
  convenient. As for example, there was a time
  when in England a man might enter his own land,
  and dispossess such as wrongly possessed it, by
  force. But in after times that liberty of
  forcible entry was taken away by a statute made
  by the king in Parliament. And in some places of
  the world men have the liberty of many wives in
  other places, such liberty is not allowed.

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Hobbes and the Modern Liberal State

• Federalist Number 10 argues that contention over
  property is the cause of faction.
• The Federal Constitution of 1787 has been
  interpreted as to limit the sovereigns right to
  govern property rights embracing a Lockean
  understanding of the state.
• Kelo v. London (2004) allowed local governments
  to seize property through eminent domain for
  economic development projects.
• Would Hobbes agree that power to regulate the
  distribution of property resides with the state?
  Would Sovereign recognize that there may exist
  limits to the regulation of property?

30
Hobbes and International Relations

• Hobbes believes that survival is the most
  important things for states in a state of nature.
• There are no limits on what can be done in a
  state of nature to advance this end.
• How does Hobbes position compare to St. Thomas
  Aquinas position?
• Would Hobbes agree with President Bushs
  reasoning about how a war on terror must be
  waged?
• Publius in Federalist number 8 argues that even
  the love of liberty can destroy civil and
  political rights. How would Hobbes respond to
  this argument?