Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:38:02.539Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hobbes's Confusing “Clarity”—The Case of “Liberty”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

J. Roland Pennock
J. Roland Pennock*
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Leviathan has been described as “original, persuasive, solid, coherent.” General commentaries on Hobbes usually single out his logic for special praise; more detailed critiques generally unearth a mass of confusions and inconsistencies. Confusions and inconsistencies there certainly are; more, I believe, than one would expect to find in the work of a man of such undeniable logical powers. Speculation upon the psychological explanation of this fact is intriguing, but no part of the purpose of the present article. It is part of my purpose, however, to contend that Hobbes's passion for clarity and certainty may have played a part in leading him to adopt perverse definitions, to which even he did not consistently adhere and which constituted a major source of confusion. Conversely, I disagree with those who say his analytical system is sound and only his empirical assumptions about human nature are open to serious criticism.

More specifically, one may profitably inquire whether there is some central concept that serves as a focal point for many of these difficulties. For example, it is often suggested, with merit, that Hobbes's perversion, or inversion, of the traditional meaning of “jus naturale” plays such a role. Without making any exclusive claim or denying the insights that may be gained by concentrating attention upon other focal points, my hypothesis is that understanding of Hobbes may be deepened by an examination of his use of the word “liberty.” I shall deal first with his definitions of the term, and then in turn with his applications of it to natural right and natural law, to sovereignty by acquisition, and finally to the social contract. I shall argue that his method, as illustrated by his definitions, leads him occasionally into confusion or inconsistency, and more frequently tends to confuse the reader and so to enable Hobbes to make an unsound conclusion appear sound, by means of specious reasoning. In particular, I shall contend that Hobbes's treatment of liberty (1) leads him into self-contradiction regarding the extent of natural liberty, (2) enables him to argue persuasively but speciously in support of the obligation to obey a sovereign who has attained his position by violence, and (3) prevents him from developing an acceptable theory of political obligation.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1960 , pp. 428 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1960

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Plamenatz, John, “Hobbes's ‘Leviathan’,” The Manchester Guardian Weekly, Vol. 64, 04 19, 1951.Google Scholar

2 Note Plamenatz's, own conclusion, in “Mr. Warrender's Hobbes,” Political Studies, Vol. 5 (10 1957), pp. 295–308, at 307CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that Hobbes “is much more ambiguous and illogical than at first reading he appears to be.” It may be remarked at this point that there is a degree of parallelism between certain of Howard Warrender's arguments concerning Hobbes's theory of obligation and my arguments concerning his use of the concept of liberty. See his The Political Philosophy of Hobbes—His Theory of Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). However, I am not concerned to take sides in the controversy over Warrender's thesis and my argument does not depend upon it. Both Warrender and his critics (see below, note 38) admit that Hobbes says things that are in consistent with their interpretations of his meaning. I would be inclined to argue that he is so inconsistent that it is impossible to construct a single, coherent argument and defend the proposition that it represents the real Hobbes.

3 In his very enlightening book, Hobbes (Penguin Books, 1956), Richard Peters declares that “It was the possibility of attaining certainty which so attracted Hobbes whose deep-seated feeling of insecurity was aggravated by the objective facts of the political situation.” (p. 49)

4 “The only way to know,” said Hobbes, , “is by definition.” SirMolesworth, William (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (London: John Bohn, 1841), Vol. II, p. 305 Google Scholar (henceforth to be cited E.W., II, 305). The importance of definition is not to be gainsaid; but Hobbes's eagerness for certain knowledge in areas where something less than this is all that can be expected led him astray.

5 For instance, Gough, J. W. writes, “Hobbes's political theory is explained by his general theory of human nature….” The Social Contract (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 105.Google Scholar Hobbes sought to develop a theory of political obligation, and in doing so he relied on much more that is open to challenge than his theory of human nature.

6 Leviathan, edited with an Introduction by Oakeshott, Michael (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), pp. 84 and 136–137.Google Scholar (This edition will henceforth be cited “Lev.”) The second formulation comes from the chapter on “the liberty of subjects,” but it appears in that portion of the chapter in which Hobbes is still discussing liberty in general. He writes: “Liberty, or freedom, signifieth, properly, the absence of opposition; by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion. …” (Lev., 136). And again: “according to this proper, and generally received meaning of the word, a Freeman, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.” Lev., 137.

7 Mortimer J. Adler has recently pointed out that the prevalence of this concept of freedom in England is in sharp contrast to Continental European ideas. See his “Freedom: a Study of the Development of the Concept in the English and American Traditions of Philosophy,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 11 (1958), 380–410, at 395.

8 Lev., 136.

9 “Covenants entered into by fear, in the condition of mere nature are obligatory.” Lev., 91. According to normal usage such covenants are coerced, creating no obligation, and leaving us free to disregard them. According to Hobbes, such covenants (in a state of nature) are freely made, they are obligatory, and hence they limit our liberty.

At one point Hobbes flatly contradicts his general contention that liberty is consistent with fear—interestingly enough, in his discussion of the obligation to obey God. He speaks of this obligation as a limitation upon liberty and says it comes from “hope or fear, according to which the weaker, despairing of his own power to resist, cannot but yield to the stronger.” E.W., II, 209.

10 Lev., 137–138. Hobbes could not accept a doctrine of “internal” restraints. Restraints upon what? he would ask. Upon will, presumably. But will, he held, is merely “the last appetite in deliberating” (Lev., 38); it is not a “faculty.” If any “internal” source controls behavior, it does not limit or restrain the will, it is the will.

It is worth noting in passing an instance of the difficulty Hobbes had in holding to his own definition. Deliberation, he says, is so called (apparently assuming a false etymology) “because it is putting an end to the liberty we had of doing, or omitting, according to our own appetite 01 aversion.” Ibid., 37. Here he appears to have forgotten about “external impediments.”

11 Ibid., 138.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 141.

14 Ibid., 139. This is consistent with his reasoning that liberty is freedom from chains and that the commands of the sovereign (civil laws) are “artificial chains” and, as such, limit the liberty of the subject just as actual chains limit the liberty of the natural man.

15 Lev., 91–92.

16 Ibid., 138.

17 Ibid., 139.

18 Ibid., 141; and see ibid., 84.

19 Ibid., 142.

20 Above, p. 430. It may be argued that, for Hobbes, all obligations are laws, either civil laws or laws of God, and that therefore the liberty of the subject is simply absence of law or, better, what is not prohibited by law. I agree that Hobbes assimilates civil laws and other obligations, as they affect liberty. The point is, however, that he does so, in the present context, by referring to their common origin in consent.

21 Since Hobbes is discussing whether there is an obligation to obey the law, he clearly does not refer to legal obligations. Whether what he refers to corresponds to the usual understanding of “moral obligations” is open to question and need not be decided here. Warrender would answer the question affirmatively, with qualifications (op. cit., p. 10). Oakeshott believes he finds in Hobbes, besides “physical obligation,” “rational obligation,” “moral obligation,” and “political obligation.” Lev., lix–lxi.

22 Whether Hobbes'e failure to mention obligations along with “external impediments” as limitations on liberty in his discussion of liberty in the state of nature signifies that he believed there were no obligations in that state, or only that obligations in such a situation were so few and weak that they could be disregarded for all practical purposes is a question that need not concern us here. The first explanation accords with the conventional interpretation of Hobbes; the second with the view set forth by Warrender, op. cit. Hobbes's statement, cited above, that men are subject to no obligations except those that arise from their own acts tends to support the conventional interpretation. Lev. 141.

23 Ibid., 139.

24 It will be noticed that the discussion above is based entirely upon the Leviathan. Hobbes scarcely mentions the subject of liberty in Dc Cive (except to use it as the title of the section dealing with the state of nature and natural rights) and does so only briefly in The Elements of Law. What he does say in the latter work is consistent with the treatment in Leviathan. Liberty of the subject in a commonwealth is nothing more than equality of opportunity for preferments, “for in all other senses, liberty is the state of him that is not subject.” E.W., IV, 158.

25 Lev., 84.

26 E. W., VI, 30. Although it is true that the distinction between jus and lex was generally disregarded or minimized, and Hobbes declares that Coke uses the terms interchangeably, it is inter esting to note that Suarez, in one of the most careful of seventeenth century treatments of the subject, discusses two meanings of jus, one synonymous with lex and the other opposed to it. The latter, he declares, is “a certain moral power which every man has, either over his own property or with respect to that which is due him.” Moreover, it is ‘natural’ when it is granted by or originates in nature.” “A Treatise on Laws and God the Lawgiver,” in Scott, James Brown (ed.), Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suarez, S.J. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944), Vol. 2, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

27 Lev., 84. This argument is paralleled in De Cive, E.W., II, 8–10 and in The Elements of Law, E.W., IV, 83.

28 E.W., IV, 83.

29 Note also the sentence in De Cive reading “For although any man might say of every thing, this is mine, yet could he not enjoy it, by reason of his neighbor, who having equal right, and equal power (italics added), would pretend the same thing to be his.” E.W., II, 11. Here Hobbes clearly does not consider “right” and “power” to be the same thing. Finally, one may refer again to the passage in which Hobbes upholds the obligation to pay ransom in a state of nature, although clearly the erstwhile captive has the power to disregard his promise. Lev., 91.

30 Lev., 84.

31 E.W., II, 8–9; and see E.W., IV, 83.

32 C.W., II, 10.

33 E.W., II, 11.

34 E.W., II, 75; also 26.

35 See Lev., 64; also 81 and 84.

36 It is true that Hobbes appears to be trying to identify what is right with what is reasonable. How he obtains radical conclusions from this traditional position appears, however, when we inquire why it is always reasonable and right to seek what is good for oneself. Hobbes's answer is that one does so necessarily (“by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves downward”), and that it cannot be unreasonable for one to do what he cannot help but do, and that therefore it must be right. E.W., II, 8–9.

37 Of course this was not Hobbes's meaning; but it is my contention that it is the logical conclusion of his line of argument. His intention, on the other hand, was clearly to deduce and lay down certain standards of right conduct. Whether these standards, these “laws of nature,” were more than prudential rules, more than theorems about what man's interest is and about how he would behave if he reasoned accurately, is not my present concern. It is clear, however, that whatever their nature, Hobbes believed they applied, in certain instances, in the state of nature. Under certain circumstances, this was true, for example, of the third law of nature, “that men perform their covenants.” Thus, a covenant to pay ransom, though made in the state of nature, would be binding. Lev., 91. The same is true of the social compact itself.

The case for believing that Hobbes's laws of nature and other obligations had more than a prudential foundation has been argued persuasively by Taylor, A. E., “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes,” Philosophy, Vol. 13 (1938), pp. 406–424 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; by Sterling Lamprecht in his Introduction to Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive or The Citizen (New York, 1949), xv–xxx)Google Scholar; and most fully by Howard Warrender, op cit. Recently the Taylor thesis has been subjected to powerful attack by Brown, Stuart M. Jr., “Hobbes: the Taylor Thesis,” Philosophical Review, Vol. 68 (07, 1959), pp. 303–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Thomas Nagel, “Hobbes's Concept of Obligation,” loc. cit. (Jan., 1959), pp. 68–83. Without choosing sides in this controversy, it is enough for present purposes to note two or three points. First, the whole concept of transferring rights, upon which Hobbes based the contract, would be impossible unless this may be done by accepting obligations, which in turn cannot be done in a state of nature unless, in that state, there is an obligation to keep one's promises. That is to say, if we accept the “prudential” theory of the laws of nature, then the contract drops out as a logically significant element in Hobbes's theory—a point that has often been made. Moreover, whether or not Hobbes meant more than the prudential argument, he clearly seeks to give the impression that he meant and proved more—e.g., that the contract played a very important role in his theory. Accordingly, we are justified in taking seriously parts of his argument that seem to go beyond the prudential.

Stuart Brown, Jr. (loc. cit., 313) contends that it is absurd to argue that grounding obligation on covenants implies a prior principle regarding the validity of covenants, because the very notion of covenants implies obligation to perform. But surely it must imply an obligation independent of, and prior to the covenants; hence this leaves unanswered the question of how it is possible to have covenants in a situation (state of nature) in which no obligations exist. Later he declares “Hobbes never doubts the general validity of covenants and thus never requires any guarantee of their obligatory character.” Loc. cit., 319, note 41. The fact that Hobbes assumes the validity of covenants and their obligatory character appears, however, to support rather than to negate the proposition that he believes his third law of nature is applicable in a state of nature.

38 E.W., IV, 252–254.

39 Lev., 104. Warrender, confining his analysis mainly to contractual obligations, argues that such obligations normally do not hold in the state of nature because of the absence of the “validating condition” of security. Yet much of the force of his main argument derives from instances such as the promise to pay ransom after being freed, where Hobbes does hold that there is obligation in the state of nature. See Lev., 91 and Warrender, op. cit., ch. 5.

40 The argument stressed at this point (Lev., 130) is that the vanquished subject is just as free as those who institute sovereignty by compact among themselves, for they too are motivated by fear—in that case, fear of each other. But if this is so, then the argument set forth below against his sovereignty by acquisition is equally applicable to his sovereignty by institution.

41 John Plamenatz has argued that the line is properly drawn as between motives toward which one has a positive or neutral reaction and those by which one dislikes to be moved. See his Consent, Freedom, and Political Obligation (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), ch. 5. Courts of law regularly draw such distinctions in deciding, e. g., when a contract may be disregarded, as made under duress, and when a will should be set aside as drawn under improper influence.

42 E.W., II, 185, note. Also the passage concerning a promise to pay ransom in a state of nature, Lev., 91.

43 Note how Hobbes adopts the curious position of admitting, indeed proclaiming, that fear of death after the covenant absolves one of any obligation not to resist the threatening person, yet fear of death before the covenant is an acceptable motive for the formation of a valid covenant. The contradiction is complete. Hobbes holds that a contract not to defend one's life is void because one could not make such a contract, “for man by nature chooseth the lesser evil, which is danger of death in resisting.” Lev., 91–92. At the same time he holds that a man who makes a covenant to save his life is bound, because he was “free” to do otherwise; although of course he could not help acting as he did! Ibid.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.