Before we get into the books youâve chosen, could you just say a little bit about who Thomas Hobbes was?
Thomas Hobbes was a 17th century English philosopher. He is credited with creating English language philosophy, because up until that point in Europe, the predominant tradition was to write philosophy in Latin. Itâs in this period that people start writing in the vernacular, and Hobbes is the one who writes philosophy in English in a way that is systematic and has a huge subsequent impact. He sets the tone for the way philosophy develops later in Englishâlargely thanks to his masterpiece, the Leviathan.
The Leviathan is written in English in very powerful, forceful prose. Actually, thereâs a theory about that, that he used to write it when he was out for a walk and write little notes on bits of paper that he joined together. He had a walking stick with a special compartment where he could put notes. Some of the lines are very thought through in terms of the rhythmsâthatâs obviously true of the famous one, â⌠and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.â
Yes, thatâs probably his most famous line.
But he did write in Latin as well, didnât he? He wrote De Cive.
Yes, Leviathan is actually the third statement of his political philosophy. The first time he wrote down his political philosophy is the Elements of Lawâcompleted in 1640. He didnât publish it at the time, but it was circulated in manuscript form amongst peers and various aristocrats, members of parliament, and so on. And then, two years later, he rewrote and published his philosophy in Latin for a wider, European audience. That was his De Cive that you mentioned. Later on, in 1646, he put out a second edition of De Cive with further annotations and a new preface. Then, finally, in Leviathan, he came back to restating his political philosophy in English. So we have three iterations. Some people would argue fourâbecause he then went on later to translate Leviathan into Latin. Itâs not just a straightforward translationâthere are alterations and amendments, and so on.
Whatâs interesting about this is that you can see the way that Hobbesâs thought develops over time: what remains constant, and what changes. Thatâs really interesting, because the time from 1640 to 1651, between Elements of Law and Leviathan, is a tumultuous period in English history. Thereâs a lot going on politically. There are the two civil wars in England, and Hobbes is very much implicated in the political debates of the time. And it seems that some of these various controversies and political events prompted some rethinking, alterations, and amendments to his theory.
Presumably, it wasnât a safe pursuit to be a political philosopher in those days. Was it quite a dangerous occupation?
Yes, particularly for Hobbes, because in 1640, with the Elements of Law, he establishes very firmly his royalist credentials. This is a time of great constitutional crisis in England, where you have the royalist party defending the rights of kings, of Charles I, versus parliamentary forces who are fighting for the rights of Parliament in relation to the king. Charles I had ruled without calling Parliament for many yearsâitâs called 11 years of personal rule, or 11 years of tyranny, depending on what side youâre on of this debate. When, in 1640, he was forced to call Parliament for the first time after all these years, it led to an explosion of demands on the part of Parliament. That parliament lasted a short timeâitâs called the Short Parliamentâand then, later that year, Parliament was reconvened by the king. That led to a tremendous amount of revolutionary fervour, and Hobbes actually feared for his life, because it looked like the parliamentary groups were going after the staunchest partisans of the king, and Hobbes was very much a defender of the absolute right of kings.
So, he fled to France. He went to Paris where he spent the next decade. He wasnât in England during the civil wars, though he was following events very closely. But yes, he fled precisely because he was afraid of the implications of his political views at that time.
So, to some degree, he was orthodox in his politics by stressing the need for a powerful sovereign. But wasnât he deeply unorthodox in his religious views, considered by some people to be an atheist because he thought that God was a material being?
Yes, he had very controversial religious views, both theological and ecclesiastical. But really, where the rubber hits the road is in Leviathan, because he comes out with, for the time, some really crazy theological views. His ecclesiastical views are also extremely important.
Thereâs controversy about how to interpret Hobbesâs theological views. Some people read Hobbes as an unorthodox kind of theist. Others read him as a closet atheistâand his adversaries certainly accused him of being an atheist. Within Hobbes scholarship, thereâs a lot of disagreement about this. But whatever his views were, the theology that he expounds in Leviathan is very unorthodox. It looks like he is claiming, as you say, that God has a corporeal presence. Even thatâs not clear, though, because Hobbes often tells us that his theological language is designed simply to praiseâthat itâs not a matter of philosophical truth claims, but rather a way of speaking in praise of God. Any of these claims that heâs making about Godâs nature, well, he says, in fact, we donât know anything about Godâs nature. So we have to reconcile, if you like, the hermeneutical or interpretive principles that he lays out for how to understand theological language, with the things that he says about God.
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One way to see what he does in Leviathanâthis is how I understand himâis that God is, in fact, a creation of human beings, the same way that the state is. Itâs an artificial person that human beings create. God exists, but as an artificial entity, as an artificial person in some way. Thatâs quite a radical interpretation of Christian theology, and in particular the Trinity, that he gives us in Leviathan. And in the Latin Leviathan, he is forced to backtrack and repudiate this. He takes it back.
One of the difficulties of interpreting Hobbes is that he has a doctrine that the philosopher must not contradict the official doctrines that are put forth by the sovereign. And so insofar as there is a sovereign, who is a Christian, who proclaims that all of his subjects must proclaim belief in God, Hobbes is going to do that. So whatâs interesting about Leviathan is that he writes it in a period where he doesnât necessarily think that he is bound by a particular sovereign and the sovereignâs viewsâprecisely because there is tumult and controversy, and in the aftermath of the civil wars itâs not quite clear who necessarily is the sovereign, or at least itâs not clear what the theological views that the sovereign has imposed on England are. So he has a much freer hand in the English Leviathan to tell us what he really thinks.
Can I just give a caricature of what I think the elements of Hobbesâs political philosophy are, and you correct me on this when I get it wrong. What I take them to be is that he begins by thinking of human beings as basically selfish, motivated by self-interest. He explains everything in terms of individuals wanting to get what they want for themselves. And what they probably most want is securityâabove everything else. So, in an imaginary state of nature, itâs going to be a war of everybody against each other, when thereâs no superior authority on Earth. To survive people get together and form a pact of some kind. Otherwise theyâd lead very short, horrible lives, because even the strongest can be killed when he or she is asleep. And so itâs in their selfish interest to try and collaborate. The best thing to do, according to Hobbes, is to put a strong sovereign force overseeing and guaranteeing any promises that you make by punishing people who transgress, and that then translates to the state, thatâs the best way to live. Because otherwise, thereâs always the risk of discord and the state completely collapsing back into the state of nature, with everybody tearing each other apart. Is that fair enough?
Yes. That is one way to read Hobbes. And, in fact, thatâs one way that Hobbes has often been read. As you say, that corresponds very much to popular image of what Hobbes stands for, in the history of political thought. Iâm not sure that the starting points are exactly right, though.
Maybe you could just say a little bit more about that?
Letâs focus on Leviathan, which is my first book choice (in the Oxford Clarendon edition edited by Noel Malcolm). One way to read Hobbes, as you say, is to say that human beings are naturally selfish, and that resources are scarce. Above all, what they want is their own survival or self-preservation. Then, in a state of nature without a sovereign to hold them in check, whatâs going to happen is theyâre going to compete over these scarce resources and they will fight with each other. Then you need a sovereign to give them a law that will keep them away from each otherâs throats. And thatâs why a state of nature is necessarily a state of war.
The difficulty with that way of interpreting things is a couple of things. Thereâs actually not any evidence that Hobbes thought that scarcity of material resources is a universal feature of the state of nature. So, while there may be local scarcityâŚ
I didnât mention scarcity.
Right, but itâs a premise thatâs required for that argument. You might be selfish, but if thereâs abundance, thereâs no reason to fight anybody, because fighting is dangerous. So, the only reason why you would fight somebody, if youâre selfish in that way, is because you want something, and they want the same thing, and you canât both have it because thereâs scarcity.
I donât agree with that. You might fight them for a potato, because itâs easier than digging it up yourself.
Ah, okay, well, that might be the case. But the problem is that this reading usually presupposes that youâre scared for your own life, because what really matters to you is self-preservation. Fighting others carries a great deal of risk to your own life, so it wouldnât necessarily to be the most reasonable thing for you to do.
Hobbes also doesnât necessarily think that people are universally selfish, in the sense that all they care about is their own good and not othersâ. It is true that Hobbes thinks that whatever it is that we do, we do because we desire to do it, and we desire to do things, because we think that theyâre good for ourselves. The thing is, that doesnât tell us what the content of our desires is. Hobbes thinks that the content of peopleâs desires varies tremendously depending on their constitution, on their education. So, one thing that might happen is that you might desire other peopleâs good. It might be that what you desire, for example, is the glory of your kin, or a collective. Thatâs also possible in Hobbesâs psychology.
âOne way to read Hobbes, is to say that human beings are naturally selfishâ
What really matters about Hobbesâs account of human natureâand this is one of the things that Richard Tuckâs book emphasizes, which weâll talk about in a minuteâis that itâs not so much a conflict between selfish individuals, competing over these resourcesâthough thatâs also a part of Hobbesâs argument. The real emphasis is on the fact that people end up fighting because they disagree with each other. Itâs ideological disagreement that does a lot of the work. In particular, the problem is peopleâs ethical evaluationsâwhich are driven by their desires, and what gives them pleasure. People are inclined to call those things good that they desire, and that they think gives them pleasure in this way, which they then see as pleasant, because thatâs how we use evaluative terms. Psychologically, thatâs what we end up doing: we end up disagreeing about what to praise and what to blame and that leads us to have these evaluative disagreements. And Hobbes thinks, above all, that human beings are rather prickly. When somebody disagrees with you, youâre inclined to interpret them as implying that youâre an idiot.
Thereâs a great line somewhere in Leviathan about how disputes arising from a look or a comment that puts you down, and then thereâs a fight. Thatâs pub mentality.
Exactly. What Hobbes is thinking about is ideological disagreement here, where you have disagreement, and you take other peopleâs disagreement with you as a sign of their contempt for you. What he is really concerned about is religious and political disagreement. Religious disagreement is very dangerous, because not only is the person saying that youâre an idiot when they worship God in a different way than you do. Theyâre saying youâre so much of an idiot that youâve put your entire salvation at stakeâlike youâre really getting it wrong. That is very insulting for a Hobbesian person, in the way that he characterizes their psychological makeup. And the reason why is because fundamental to human beingsâ psychological makeup are pleasure and pain. Weâre driven, in a way, by this dynamic of pleasure and pain.
âHobbes identifies three different psychological grounds for why it is that the state of nature is a state of war; he calls these competition, diffidence, and gloryâ
There are two kinds of pleasure for Hobbes, a sensory pleasure or pleasure of satisfaction, which arises when your desires are satisfied: youâre drinking the glass and it titillates your throat, that satisfies your desire, and thereâs a pleasure in that. But really what matters are pleasures of the mind, where, for example, you anticipate the future satisfaction of your desires. That anticipatory pleasure is pleasure of the mind. You only fully enjoy these when you have a kind of hope that you will be able to satisfy your desires in the future, and you imagine, âoh, yes, I can see that in the future, I will satisfy this.â That requires you to think of yourself as powerfulâyou have the power to satisfy your desires. This contemplation of your power to satisfy desires gives you a pleasure which Hobbes calls âgloryâ. And so when people donât honour you, or they insult you, or they just have contempt for you, they donât recognize you as being as powerful and as good as you yourself think that you are, youâre insulted, and that is an affront to your glory, which is a fundamental element of Hobbesian psychology. And when that happens, thatâs painful, and you get angry and desire revenge.
So thereâs a kind of Hobbesian, psychological mechanism that is really important for understanding why it is that he thinks that the state of nature, given the way that human beings are by nature, is a state of war. Largely itâs driven by these concerns about the potential for evaluative ethical disagreement, which plays out above all in religious and political disagreements.
So itâs a theory about human nature, about psychology, really, that is driving this?
Yes, itâs central to Hobbesâs account. There are other elements, there are structural elements as well. In Leviathan he identifies three different psychological grounds for why it is that the state of nature is a state of war, and he calls these competition, diffidence, and glory. Iâve been giving you the details of the glory argument.
The competition argument is that when there is a desire for the same object, people will come to blows. And the question is, why would they come to blows if, for example, there isnât scarcity, or if you could go and get the thing somewhere else. Part of it is because if you defer to the other person, youâve acknowledged that youâre not very powerful. And thatâs an affront to your own glory. So the glory argument does some work in the competition argument.
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The diffidence argument is that if you have people who donât know what othersâ motives are, and theyâre afraid for their own life, and they donât know whether youâre a friend or a foe, or just neutral, then a rational strategy may be just pre-emptively to strike in order to subdue the people that you encounter. We just donât know what other people are up to and so we pre-emptively strike out. And everybodyâs in the same position. I know that youâre going to pre-emptively strike if you get the chance; and you know that I will, and I know that you know that I will; and so on. This leads to a kind of structural exacerbation of whatever other forces are leading people to fight.
Itâs rational for me to kill you before you kill me. Itâs a form of pre-emptive self-defence. Just to be clear: âdiffidenceâ here means that you canât trust other people, basically?
Exactly. Diffidence is this insecurity that you have.
Weâve been talking about Leviathan. Youâre recommending a particular editionâthatâs quite a hefty tome.
Yes, itâs a landmark in Hobbes scholarship. Itâs edited by Noel Malcolm, with an incredible level of scholarship. Itâs in three volumes and very elaborate. The first volume is the introduction by Noel Malcolm. Noel Malcolm is one of the great Hobbes scholars of our time, and it sets Leviathan in context. It gives you a sense of when it was written, how it was written, and so on. Then the other two volumes are the text of the English Leviathan, face to face with Hobbesâs Latin translation of Leviathan. So you get both texts, and he has this tremendous editorial apparatus that allows you to compare the similarities and differences between the two of them. Itâs an incredible service to the scholarly community.
Is it running commentary on the differences between the two?
He doesnât give you so much commentary, just editorial apparatus. For example, he will translate the passages in Leviathan that are different from the English one, so that if someone doesnât read Latin, they can see what those are. He highlights where theyâre different from each other in a way that is not obtrusive, so if you donât care about the Latin, you can just read the English and go forward. Heâs checked all the various different manuscripts and the published editions of Leviathan to check for variants and so on. There are also guides to key words whose 17th century meaning would be different from 21st century English. Itâs a tremendous achievement.
That does sound very impressive, but if a reader canât stretch to that, and wants a more student-type volume, is there a particular edition of Leviathan that youâd recommend?
There are several. It depends on what you want. There are editions that preserve the 17th century spelling and punctuation. That makes it more difficult for the student to read, but there are times when the original punctuation is relevant for the meaning of whatâs happening, it helps you to understand. If thatâs what you want, thereâs a great edition by Richard Tuck for students that he edited as part of the Cambridge History of Political Thought series. Thereâs also an edition with modernized spelling that was done by Edwin Curley with Hackett. Thatâs also a very good edition. And thereâs another edition thatâs recently come out by David Johnston, with Norton, which also has lightly modernized the spellings to make it easier for a contemporary reader. Those three editions are all very, very good.
If you were recommending somebody read Leviathan for the first time, would you say âstart at the beginning and read throughâ?
It depends what your interests are. Itâs such a long book. If someone is interested in international politics, often theyâll just read chapter 13, which is where he gives you his theory of war. If theyâre interested in his political philosophy often what people do is they read Books I and II, and leave Books III and IV asideâthatâs where he deals with religion at length. But if youâre interested in his religious, theological and ecclesiastical thoughtâwhich is not irrelevant for his political thought and, in fact, thereâs a great deal of interest in Hobbesâs religious thought in contemporary scholarshipâthen books III and IV are indispensable. Even if you want to skip Books III and IV, often people will read I and II plus the Review and Conclusion. So thatâs one way to do it. Itâs a rich text, so it depends on what your purposes are.
To me, itâs fascinating because itâs got these passing insights as well as an overall thrust of an argument. There are comments and asides that just seem to be very perceptive or sometimes weird, that stick with me as a reader, as well as a sense of Hobbesâs framework. Heâs a very intelligent man, thinking about what human beings are, and how they live together.
Absolutely. We continue to read Hobbesâs Leviathan because it very powerfully articulates a particular worldview. Itâs an incredible philosophical system that he articulates, that continues to have power in our thinking today. Itâs one of the articulations of a theory of sovereignty, for example, that continues to be the key ideology of our interstate global system. There are these systematic philosophical elements that make him a philosopher.
But heâs also engaged in the politics of his time and making very particular observations about his own time, his own society, his own culture.
There are all of these things that are going on in this text, which is partly why itâs such a rich text. Itâs the combination of somebody who is a systematic philosopher, an astute observer of history and society, and who is writing at a time in history that is full of tumult and great transformations. Itâs an exciting time and he is an exciting thinker. Thatâs quite a combination.
The other four books that youâve chosen are largely about the political Hobbes. Shall we move on to your next choice, Richard Tuckâs book on Hobbes, which youâve already mentioned. Richard Tuck was a Cambridge historian and is now a professor at Harvard.
I chose this book because itâs a wonderful introduction to all the different facets of Hobbesâs life and writings and context. Itâs very short. Itâs very readable. If you donât know Hobbes, itâs a great way to get a first taste. The first part is dedicated to biographical details and is particularly of relevance for understanding the intellectual context heâs operating in. The second part deals with the various branches of his philosophy, his science, his ethics, his politics. The third part of the book is also interesting. He gives you an overview of the scholarship on Hobbesâall the different ways that Hobbes has been interpreted.
Richard Tuckâs book I believe was originally published in OUPâs Past Masters series, and then became Very Short Introductions. Theyâre targeted at a general audience and give a general overview. Typically theyâre about a single philosopher, Quentin Skinner did one about Machiavelli. Richard Tuck is somebody who is a serious contributor to thought about Hobbes. Itâs the tip of an iceberg of scholarship, probably, that youâre seeing there.
Absolutely. This book is not just an introduction to Hobbes, Tuck is also making his own particular argument about our understanding of Hobbes. And what is relevant is precisely what we were talking about earlier. Tuck emphasizes and shows that the reduction of Hobbesâs account of war to self-interested individuals clashing with each other over their material interests and so on, misses out on, in a way, the heart of Hobbesâs concerns for politics. The way that Tuck characterizes Hobbesâs ethics sets up a problem that his politics is supposed to solve.
The problem with ethics is that there is no universal basis for agreement about morals, except for self-preservation. And because there is no universal basis for agreement, people are going to disagree. On the basis of that disagreement, they will get into conflict with each other. So thereâs ideological conflict. The only way out of this is by reference to this potential agreement over self-preservation. If my self-preservation is served by the same thing that serves your self-preservation, then we can come to an agreement. Thatâs peace. This political solution, the way Tuck sees it, is that you set up a sovereign that can secure peace for us, because what we do is we agree to let the sovereign resolve these controversies for us.
âWe continue to read Leviathan because it very powerfully articulates a worldview that continues to have power in our thinking todayâ
Itâs precisely because thereâs no objective standard by which to resolve, for example, theological controversiesâitâs not entirely clear in Hobbes whether there is no standard or whether we just donât have access to it. Regardless, we canât know with any certainty what the right answer to these theological and evaluative questions are. So, the best thing that we should do, is just say, âYou know what? Weâll just let someone else arbitrarily decide for us. Let them decide, and weâll live in peace.â That will serve the one thing that we all know we want, which is to preserve ourselves. Thatâs the picture that it gives us. Itâs an interesting way of thinking about Hobbes that, I think, captures a lot of whatâs going on.
But it just strikes me that the description of the state of nature is a conflict over scarce resources. What youâre describing is a more sophisticated world of ideological commitments. From reading Hobbes Iâve got an image of these semi-savage people wandering around sleeping in trees, scared of getting killed. Thatâs the building block in his story. Sure, when he translates that back into his own contemporary society, it might manifest as conflicts about ideology or religion. Thatâs not heavily foregrounded in what I remember of those chapters about the state of nature, though.
For Hobbes, the state of nature is not a pre-social state. All the state of nature means for Hobbes, is that there is no effective sovereign. Youâre outside of political society, youâre not outside of society, in the sense of there being social relations, and so on.
There could be no collaboration and no agriculture, and no architectureâŚ
Itâs very difficult to have those kinds of industry in the way that heâs describing it. Why? Because youâre in a state of war. His paradigmatic example of a state of nature is civil war. Itâs not necessarily pre-political: it can be post-political. What he is really worried about is not how we get from the state of nature into political society. What heâs really concerned with is how we stay out of the state of nature when weâre in political society. Heâs worried about the collapse of the Commonwealth. For him the most relevant instance of a state of nature is civil war, where there are all these effects of socialization and so on. Heâs not Rousseau, heâs not theorizing about the pure state of nature prior to any social relations. Thatâs not what he has in mind.
Letâs move on to your next book choice, which is Quentin Skinnerâs Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes.
I selected this book because not only is Quentin Skinner one of the foremost historians of political thought living todayâand in particular of Renaissance political thoughtâbut he is also one of the foremost Hobbes scholars. Itâs a wonderful book because it exemplifies something that Quentin Skinner is very well known for what is sometimes called the Cambridge School and sometimes the âSkinnerianâ method. Itâs a methodology of thinking about how to read texts in the history of political thought that seeks to place them in their historical context.
So what Skinner, methodologically, has been arguing for many decades is that in order to fully understand a philosophical text from a different era, we have to be able to understand the nature of the language that that person is using in context. The way that you understand the meanings and the way that they use language in that time is by looking both to the way that people use language in their linguistic community and also the way that people read that text in that particular time. So you look both at the source materialâwhat are the materials that the author is reading and so onâand also how the texts are received. And this provides you, according to Skinnerian methodology, with valuable insight into the nature of the philosophy and what the claims actually mean, in context.
This book is exemplary in this way because itâs focused partly on Hobbesâs evolution from the Elements of Law and De Cive to Leviathan. And itâs focused, in particular, on Hobbesâs view about the relationship of rhetoric to science and philosophy. The first half of the book is not really about Hobbes, itâs about his context. Skinner looks at how people in 17th century England are trained. How did they think about the nature of language and rhetoric? How was Hobbes trained? And he says that Hobbes was trained as a humanist. And so how did humanists in that period think about rhetoric? He goes through their reading of the classics, such as Cicero and Quintilian. He also goes through 17th century English theorists of rhetoric, to see how these humanists thought about the proper use of language. Following from this Ciceronian tradition, the key theme is that, for these humanists, science or wisdom, without eloquence, is impotent. What you need to do is to marry these two together, so that you have science on the one side, and on the other the eloquence that is given by training in rhetoric, to become a good orator to be able to convey wisdom to others. And this is part of the humanist ideal of a good citizen. For them, the good citizen is a citizen who is active in political life, and who is able, through the use of eloquence, to contribute to the deliberations of the political community. So, in a way, a good citizen is an orator.
âRhetoricâ is often used by philosophers today in a disparaging way. If itâs mere rhetoric, itâs the use of language to persuade without necessarily having good arguments.
Thatâs exactly the view that Hobbes takes, in Skinnerâs argument. In his attack on his humanist past in Elements of Law and De Cive he argues that he is not going to deploy any of the techniques of rhetoric. And rhetoric here, by the way, isnât just the way that we use language to persuade people. Itâs an articulated theory with different techniques, from Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian. There are all these different classical texts that 17th century humanists are using to articulate how it is that you know whatâs the proper art of rhetoric. What Hobbes does in the Elements of Law and in De Cive, at least in the first edition, is to eschew all of that, to say, âIâm not going to do any of this.â Why? Because Iâm engaged in science and reason and, contrary to what the humanists think, reason is capable of compelling belief on its own.
Thereâs a great story of Hobbes, the first time he opens up the book of Euclidâs geometry, heâs astonished that it starts out with some axioms that he sees are self-evident, and then, as he reads along, heâs able to see how conclusions that initially did not seem obvious at all are deduced from those initial premises. He describes himself as being in awe of this, that this is a real revelation to him about the capacity of reason. And thatâs what he is invested in, in the Elements of Law and in De Cive. Â He wants to say, âWell, look, I donât need any of the classical techniques.â One of the techniques of the classical rhetoricians is that you start out your text with an attemptâ itâs called ethosâto establish the probity of your own character. âIâm a trustworthy individual and, therefore, you should take this as authoritative in some way, because you can trust me.â In the introductions to these texts, Hobbes doesnât do any of that. He says, âIâm just going to leave the arguments to be what produces belief in my readers.â Itâs an attack on that humanist tradition. Itâs precisely what you were saying: this great suspicion of the role of rhetoric as a source of deception.
âRhetoric is dangerous politically, because it can lead to sedition; eloquent speakers can persuade others to engage in rebellion. Hobbes is very suspicious about thatâ
But for Hobbes, itâs also political, because as I said, for the humanists rhetoric had to do with being an active citizen, you are contributing to deliberationâwhereas Hobbes is not interested in an active citizenry. De Cive is âThe Citizenâ in Latin, but he is explicit that by citizen, he just means subject, the subject of the sovereign. You let the sovereign decide what the right thing is, and you follow, you obey.
So thereâs a twofold attack on rhetoric. Rhetoric is dangerous politically, because it can lead to sedition; eloquent speakers can persuade others to engage in rebellion, and so on. Hobbes is very suspicious about that, at least in these texts.
Skinner lays this all out in the second half of the book, showing Hobbesâs attack on each of the various techniques that the classical theorists of rhetoric had espoused as effective for the art of rhetoric. And he shows how he attacks these. And then he argues that Hobbes changes his mind in Leviathan. He argues that Hobbes comes to believe that science must use the powers of eloquence, the powers of rhetoric, because even though he still believes that itâs dangerous, he does think that science needs help in order to be effective politically, and to have a wider readership. Heâs now writing again in English; his masterpiece is not in Latin like De Cive was. And he comes to believe thatâat least this is Skinnerâs argumentâthese two go together. What then Skinner does, is he documents not just Hobbesâs theoretical defence of the techniques of rhetoric, when they are appropriately used, but he also documents the way that he uses them in Leviathan.
That is part of the reason why Leviathan is such a literary and not just a philosophical masterpiece. Hobbes is using all of these techniques, which he has mastered, because he was educated in them. He knows this stuff, even though he had attacked it earlier in his career. He knows how to do it, and he does it. Part of it is through the use of humour and scorn and making fun and various other techniques that he uses in order to get his point across. Metaphors and similes and so on are all over the place in Leviathanâeven the name of the text itself.
And something we havenât mentioned is the frontispiece.
Yes, itâs also visual. It has a picture of a realm that is overlooked by a hugeâwhat looks like, if you look at it from a distanceâgiant man. But if you look at it more closely, the man is not a natural man, but an artificial man, whose body is made up of what looks to be all of the various subjects of the realm over whom he rules. He has in his two hands the sword and the sceptre, the signs of authority. Itâs a view of Leviathan. And whatâs interesting about this frontispiece is that it is an attempt to show the way that the individuals who make up the commonwealth have themselves brought into creation the sovereign that rules over them. Thereâs a visual representation of Hobbesâs political philosophy, which is thatâbecause heâs a social contract theoristâthe way you set up a commonwealth or a political society is that all of the individuals contract with each other.
The logical way of showing that picture for most people would have been to have this big, giant, one person, and then all the citizens scattered across the countryside in their houses. The genius is to make them into the person and to present that as a visual metaphor.
Yes, absolutely, because what heâs trying to show you is that you are the ones who have authorized and brought this Leviathan into being. Thatâs part of his political philosophy, because what he wants to say is that youâve authorized the Leviathan, youâve authorized the sovereign to represent all of you. And, therefore, you own what it is that the sovereign does. You canât disown it. Itâs your action, in a way, because the sovereign is your representative.
One of the great things about Skinnerâs book is that, because he has given you a rundown of all the various different rhetorical techniques, and all of their Latin names, reading Hobbes through his eyes becomes like going through a forest with a botanist. When I go through a forest, all I see is just tree, tree, tree, tree. But a botanist doesnât see trees, a botanist sees the particular plant that it is, because the botanist has all of the conceptual apparatus and all the names in their mental space. Skinner is like the botanist who has the entire conceptual apparatus in the book laid out for you, and then goes through systematically showing you that when Hobbes uses this sentence, here is the technique thatâs being used. We donât know this because weâre no longer trained in classical rhetoric. But Hobbes was, and thatâs how his readers would have seen what he is doing. So thatâs a very interesting feature, I think, of this book.
Also, as with the first book that you mentioned, the scholarly edition of Leviathan, an amazing amount of scholarship was required to get to the level to be able to show that. Itâs phenomenal.
Absolutely. Yes.
Letâs move on to Jeffrey Collins who wrote this book, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, which I donât know at all.
This is a book that is, again, written by a historian. It focuses on Hobbesâs religious views, and in particular his ecclesiastical views.
Youâve used that word a few times. Can you just spell out the difference between a religious and an ecclesiastical view?
Ecclesiology has to do with church government. âEcclesiasticalâ just means the authority structures within a religious community. So you can distinguish that from theology, which is what kind of doctrine you believe in about the nature of God and so on. Ecclesiology is what kind of doctrine do you believe in about who has authority over whom within a religious community.
Do bishops trump vicars?
Exactly. This is what the controversy was in England during the civil wars, these kinds of ecclesiastical controversies. In fact, this is part of the two overarching claims that Collins makes in his book. First of all, he sets Leviathan within not just the intellectual context, the way that Skinner had done, but also within the larger social and political context as well. Itâs really a tremendous magisterial example of historical scholarship that heâs engaged in.
His first of two overarching claims concerns the significance of Leviathan as a restatement of Hobbesâs political philosophy. Hobbes has already written it twice, so why does he do it again? And the significance for Collins is that what Hobbes does in Leviathan is he comes out as an extreme Erastian. Erastianism here refers to the view that the stateâthe secular political authorityâ should have absolute authority over religion. Religion has to be wholly subordinate to the temporal powers. So he comes out as an extreme Erastian who alsoâand this is a central piece of his argumentâcomes out in favour of Independency. Independency here refers to an ecclesiastical view, which is also sometimes called Congregationalism.
In context, in England at the time, there were three different rival ecclesiastical views. Thereâs the traditional Anglican view which is EpiscopalâEpiscopal here refers to the authority of bishops. Itâs a hierarchical church structure that the traditional Church of England is defending, with bishops on top and regular people at the bottom.
This is challenged by the Presbyterians, who are Calvinists, largely. They are a tremendous force in Scotland and think that authority ultimately comes from the bottom up, not from the top down, but that there is still an articulated hierarchical structure. You have an authority structure in this Presbyterian mode: thereâs a national church.
Finally, you have the Independents or the Congregationalists, who think that there is no hierarchical structure, just various different congregations who have their own independence and determine how theyâre going to worship with the people that theyâve decided to join. Thereâs a kind of freedom of religion thatâs supposed to be involved in the Independent view, a freedom from hierarchical authority structure. And Collinsâs argument is that Hobbes, in Leviathan, comes out as both an extreme Erastian but also endorses Independency, which is what was being defended by the Cromwellian revolutionaries. In a sense, what heâs arguing is that Hobbes, with the publishing of Leviathan, comes out in favour of Cromwell and the regicides. He abandons his royalist allegianceâthatâs why itâs called The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbesâand he throws in his lot with the Cromwellians. And, interestingly, Hobbes, with the publication of Leviathan, returns to England to live in the interregnum under Cromwell.
The second overarching claim Collins makes is about the nature of the English revolution. He argues that the English revolution is not so much driven by theological concerns, which is the traditional viewâthat itâs driven by Calvinist anti-Arminian views (thereâs no freedom of will and so on). Instead, he argues, itâs driven by ecclesiastical concerns about the authority structure of the church. He sees the English revolution as a defence of the Elizabethan church settlement that had been challenged by Archbishop Laud, under Charles I. Archbishop Laud had been defending the divine rights of Episcopacy. Heâd been arguing that bishops derive their authority directly from God, and not from the king. And Charles I had been acquiescing to this.
âOne way to read Leviathan is to see it as implying that whoever is in power at the time, and is capable of maintaining the peace, is who you owe your allegiance toâ
In a way, what the Erastians like Hobbes are saying, is that no, the sovereign is the sovereign and whatever authority the church has comes from the sovereign. It doesnât come directly from God; itâs not an independent basis of authority. And so Collinsâs argument is that thatâs what the English revolution was aboutâreasserting the Elizabethan church settlement according to which the church is subordinate to the crown. That was what was being shaken by Laud under Charles I. Thatâs his explanation for why it is that Hobbes is driven towards the Cromwellian revolution: itâs because of the Cromwelliansâ Erastianism, their view that the church ought to be subordinate to the state. Thatâs the crux of his argument.
Itâs a really interesting argument because, in many ways, itâs counterintuitive. Why would someone like Hobbesâwho thinks that disagreement is the source of war with religious pluralism and diversityâbe in favour of Independency and Congregationalism, when it looks like the Independents are in favour of freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and so on? Why would you come out in favour of Independency if what you want is to eliminate public disagreement about religion? Why wouldnât you be in favour of a hierarchical national church like the Anglican church so that you can control disagreement? And Collinsâs answer is that itâs because in this period the challenge to undivided sovereignty comes from the corporate power of the church itself, and that Hobbes saw Independency as a way to break up the corporate power of the church. Itâs an attempt to weaken the church, because it is now challenging the state and the sovereign through Archbishop Laud. Independency is a way to break up the church. Itâs not because of any kind of freedom of religion or anything like that.
Thatâs quite a complex argument. Hobbes strikes me as somebody you could describe as almost cynical about how people behave. Couldnât he just, as a matter of self-preservation, come up with a theory that is compatible with whoeverâs in power and tweak it that way? He clearly wants to surviveâ he wants to survive as an intellectual. And he sees ways of spinning it that would allow him to do that.
Absolutely. One way to read what Leviathan is basically about is to see it as implying that whoever is in power at the time, and is capable of maintaining the peace and protecting everybody, is who you owe your allegiance to. So if it looks like itâs Cromwell, then the implication of Hobbesâs political philosophy, even in the Elements of Law, even in De Cive, is that you ought to give your allegiance to whoever holds power. In fact, he never was a royalist in the âI will always defend the kingâ sense. He was a royalist of the kind who says, âWell, we have a monarchy and so I will defend the king. But oh, now that we donât, maybe the implications are different.â Thereâs certainly that in Hobbes. But what Collins argues is that itâs not just that the Cromwellians are in power, but that Hobbes also sees something attractive about what theyâre doing, which is why he goes back to England.
It reminds me a bit of the way in which Machiavelli wrote both The Prince, but also the Discourses on Livy. You have apparently conflicting political philosophies written, not that far apart in time, by the same person. Itâs survival. You might say.
Yes, for pragmatic reasons. I do think that there is a fundamental coherence to Machiavelliâs two texts as well, though.
Presumably you think that with Hobbesâs too.
He does evolve in his ecclesiastical views between the Elements of Law, De Cive and Leviathan. Earlier on, his primary worry, at the religious level, was that if individuals start interpreting the Bible on their own, and on their own authority, then all hell will break loose and so what we need is a nice, hierarchical church structure where people defer to the authority of the bishops and so on. At least in Elements of Law, he is in favour of an Episcopal structure. In Leviathan, there is a passage in chapter 47âwhich is what a lot of Collinsâs argument hinges onâ where Hobbes says, âWell, you know, perhaps, maybe now, Independency is best.â Itâs like, âWhat just happened? How, why did Hobbes end up here?â Collins is trying to give you an explanation, basically.
Thatâs really interesting. The last book youâve chosen is an older book, a very influential one, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition by Jean Hampton.
Yes, itâs very influential and itâs a very different kind of book. Whereas the other books that weâve looked at were written by historians of political thought and, in Collinsâs case, by a historian, this one is written by a philosopher. Its aim is not to put Hobbes in historical context, but rather, if you like, to reconstruct the power of Hobbesian philosophy, and in particular Hobbesian political philosophy. Thatâs really what the strength of this book is. And itâs a very influential attempt to reconstruct Hobbesian political philosophy. Not only does she try to give us a sense of the philosophical structure of his thought, she also tries to give us a sense of the implications for the nature of social contract theory in general. So thereâs really a twofold agenda here.
Sheâs thinking through the building blocks of the state as she saw it in Hobbes and really taking Hobbes not as a historical figure but as a more or less timeless theorist about the nature of the state.
Absolutely. And one of the things that she does is that she deploys the techniques of game theory for understanding the logical structure of Hobbesâs account of the state. Game theory is something that some readers might be familiar with. A classic example is the prisonerâs dilemma, where there are these two prisoners. Theyâve both committed a crime together, but the police donât have evidence for the major crime, they only have evidence for a minor crime. And so they offer a deal to each of them. Theyâre separated, they canât communicate with each other, and the police say, âLook, if neither of you confesses, each of you get will get one year in prison on the minor charge. If you confess, and the other one doesnât, youâll go free and the other one will get three years. And if you both confess, then you each get two years.â So it would be better for both of them if neither of them confesses, because then theyâll each get one year rather than if both of them confess because theyâll each get two years. So, collectively, the rational thing to do would be not to confess. But it turns out that from the individualâs own perspective, whatâs rational for me to do is that regardless of what the other person does, itâs better for me to confess, because if the other person does confess, then itâs better for me to confess, because then, in that case, Iâll get two years rather than three. And if the other person doesnât confess, itâs still better for me to confess, because Iâll get zero rather than one. So, what ends up happening in a prisonerâs dilemma with each of you acting strategically in a rational way, you end up doing something that is worse for all of you. So thatâs the prisonerâs dilemma, the classic example of the use of game theory to understand the structure of the kind of payoffs and strategies that we have.
What Hampton does is argue, âLook, if the state of nature were a prisonerâs dilemmaâand some people have thought that Hobbesâs state of nature is a prisonerâs dilemmaâyouâd never be able to get out of it. Itâs not a prisonerâs dilemma. Rather, what it is is a coordination problem.â Even from our individual perspective, in thinking about what other people will do, we have shared interests. The difficulty is that we have to try and figure out how to coordinate on the same cooperative strategy.
For example, imagine you and I wanted to go to a restaurant, and we canât communicate with each other. There are two restaurants. I really want to go to the Thai restaurant, and you want to go to the Japanese restaurant. I know that, and you know that, and I know that you know, and so on. We canât communicate, we know that weâre going to meet at a certain time. What do we do? Well, I want to go to the Thai restaurant. So maybe Iâll go to the Thai restaurant, and youâll go to the Japanese. But the thing is that, regardless of which restaurant we go to, overall what we want is to have dinner together. So yes, I would prefer to go to the Thai restaurant, but I would prefer to go to the Japanese restaurant with you than to the Thai restaurant by myself. And so that is a kind of mixed game in which we both have a conflict, but we also have some shared interest, which is that we do something together and we coordinate. So we need to come to an agreement, because without an agreement, weâre both worse off. But if we come to an agreement, we can both coordinate on something.
âI would rather live in a political society with you as a sovereign than to live in the state of nature, which to Hobbes is a state of warâ
Thatâs how she thinks of the state of nature. She thinks that in the state of nature, our overriding interest is to end up at the same restaurant, which is to say we end up in a political society together. Thatâs our overarching interest, to have a sovereign over us. But now we have this conflict about who the sovereign should be. Of course, I would like to be the sovereign and youâd like to be the sovereign. But I would rather live in a political society with you as a sovereign than to live in the state of nature, which is a state of war, because the state of nature is so bad for Hobbes. So thereâs a kind of coordination problem that she thinks is solved through an agreement that we can come to about just picking someone as the sovereign. She thinks that by voting, going through iterative voting, we can do this. When weâve all collected together, weâll vote and then weâll see. No one person is going to get all the votes, but some people will get more. And so we gradually whittle it down. Thatâs I think, how she thinks of it. We gradually coordinate and in the end we have a sovereign.
Then, finally, the question is, âOkay, now weâve picked the sovereign, why are we going to obey?â And she thinks that we will obey in a limited way. We will obey all of the commands of the sovereign to punish other people. I wonât obey the command of the sovereign to punish me, because I wouldnât agree to that. Thatâs not rational for me, because punishment basically means capital punishment, Iâd be dead. That wasnât why I entered into political society. But Iâll obey everything else. Thatâs true of everybody. And that maintains order. So thereâs a kind of coordination: she sees this as a strategic interaction, and the kind of coordination problem that is solved through coming to an agreement about who will be sovereign.
Whatâs interesting about this is that she derives a philosophical conclusion, which is that she thinks that Hobbes wants to argue in favour of absolute sovereignty but canât. And, in fact, at the end of the day, he doesnât. He wants to argue in favour of absolute sovereigntyâwhere absolute sovereignty is that Iâm the sovereign and everybody defers to my judgment about everything and Iâm not accountable to anybody else about my judgment about how to organize society. But Hobbes grants an exception, because we enter into political society for a reason, which is that we want to maintain our self-preservation, to leave the state of nature. But that means that in entering political society, we will always reserve the freedom to disobey the sovereign when the sovereign is no longer protecting my self-preservation. Thatâs the exception that Hobbes grants. What Hampton says is, âWell, Â if Hobbes is granting that, what that means is that the individual actually does not give up the right to judge the commands of the sovereign: the individual continues to exercise judgment about whether or not the sovereignâs commands, overall, are conducive to the protection of my self-preservation.â And insofar as we do that, and each individual maintains this kind of judgment, that means that there is a threshold after which I would rebel and retain the freedom to do that.
On my own?
On your own. But Hamptonâs argument is that, given the strategic structure of Leviathan, if enough people are in that situation, and we know that others are in that situation, then we will band together and conduct revolution without having done wrong. This is not the conclusion that Hobbes wants to draw. Hobbes does not want to draw that.
Is she saying that this follows logically from the structure of the argument? Heâs derived a conclusion which he doesnât want to follow from his argument.
Thatâs exactly what sheâs doing. Sheâs mounting a critique of Hobbes from within by saying that if you look at the logical structure of his theory, he canât get the absolutism that he wants. And the argument that she makes is the reason why he canât get it is because thatâs baked into the nature of social contract theory. The nature of social contract theory is such that, according to the social contract theorists, we enter into political society for a particular reason. And that reason for which we enter into political society we will always continue to hold as the basis for our allegiance to that political society. Therefore, we will continue to judge on that basis, our allegiance, and if that reason is no longer being served, then we will turn against, and have the right to turn against, that society. Thatâs Hamptonâs argument about the nature of social contract theory. She claims to be able to find it in the hard case, which is Hobbes, who wants to defend an absolutist theory.
Is it a refutation of Hobbes?
I think she sees it as the failure of Hobbesâs political philosophy, yes. She does think that there are tensions within Hobbesâ theory. She thinks that the elements of this âconditionalâ sovereignty story, are also there in Hobbes, but that they sit in tension with, in contradiction with, the other elements of Hobbesâs account. So even though the main account is absolutist, she claims to find strands of this other one. She thinks that you have to find those other strands, because itâs a social contract theory, so itâs going to be there. Thatâs her main claim about Hobbes: that the absolutism fails, but that the other aspect of a social contract theory does not fail. And part of the reason why she thinks that the conditional story doesnât fail is because she thinks that actually it doesnât depend on a contract at all. Because, notice, the story that she gave was purely in terms of strategic interaction. Itâs not because of the moral force of my promise to obey the sovereign that I obey. Itâs because of the strategic rationality of obeying that allows me to remain in the Commonwealth.
Over and over again.
Exactly. So, sheâs basically making two main contributions here. First of all, saying, âthis is the logical structure of Hobbesâs theory, and it fails to produce absolutism.â Secondly, that logical structure ends up not being a contract theory in the literal sense of the term. Really what it is about is a convention, itâs an agreement. Itâs a conventional agreement that we come to in order to coordinate our actions to end up at the same restaurant. Thatâs the story that sheâs giving.
Thank you. That was very clear. Now, just to end, youâve written a prizewinning book about Hobbes. Where do you stand in all this? Because youâve described two quite different approaches, it seems to me: contextualized readings through immersion in the writing and thought of the period, Â and then Hamptonâs much more structural and anachronistic approach. Where does your work sit?
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Iâve written in both styles, but I would say that my book leans much more towards the philosophical than the historical. But itâs less ahistorical than Hamptonâs, in the sense that Iâve also tried to ground it in my historical understanding of what is going on in Hobbesâs time. But thatâs not what the focus of the book is.
The focus of the book is on Hobbesâs ethics. There is a historical story that it tells, which is that I think that Hobbes stands at a watershed in the history of ethics. Hobbes is a key figure in a movement from the classical eudaimonistic theories of ethics that were inherited from the Greeks, from Aristotle, and so on, according to which the reason for action that we have, the reason why we ought to do things, is ultimately grounded in our own good. Why should you be virtuous? Why should you be just? Why should you be temperate? Why should you be all these things? For the classical Greek theorists, the reason is because these are contributing elements to your happiness, your flourishing, your eudaemonia, as they would call it, which is often translated as âwell-beingâ. In Hobbes, we find the eudaemonist, prudential side for sure, which is articulated in the laws of nature, because the laws of nature tell you what you ought to do in order to serve your own good. But he also has this other side, which is emerging in the 17th centuryâand I think that Hobbes is a watershed figure in this storyâwhich is a new kind of obligation that is not ultimately about reasons of the good for me (what serves my felicity, as they would have said at that point in time), but rather about reasons of the right, which are reasons that I have, that I owe to others, and that others have standing to hold me accountable to.
Hobbes is an emergent figure of this notion of obligationâgrounded, not in my own good, but in my capacity to be able to contract with others, through these interpersonal relationships that I have with others. This idea of a contractual obligation is quite different than what obligation used to mean, for example, for Aquinas. In classical natural law theory, an obligation just is a thing that I ought to do because itâs conducive to my felicity. But if I do something that is stupid, and not conducive to my own well-being, it would be very odd for you to feel resentful towards me or to punish me, because I donât owe it to you (unless we have some kind of relationship where youâre dependent on my well-being in some way). Normally, Iâm not accountable to other people for my reasons of the good. But with reasons of the right, if Iâve promised something to you, Iâve signed a contract with you, I now owe it to you, and when I violate the contract, you have standing, for example, to sue me in a court of law. You can hold me accountable to my contractual obligation to you. The story Iâm telling is that Hobbes has both of these conceptions of obligation. Thatâs why itâs called Hobbes and The Two Faces of Ethics. On the one side, prudentia or prudence, and on the other side iustitia or justice.
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