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Hobbes and Hobbism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Sterling P. Lamprecht
Sterling P. Lamprecht
Affiliation:
Amherst College
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Extract

Fearful of a committee appointed by the House of Commons to investigate the current tendencies towards atheism and profaneness, Hobbes in 1666 burned some of his private papers. The Great Plague and the Great Fire of London had just occurred. While many Englishmen were prone to blame the fire on those whom they considered the “treacherous Catholics,” they tended to regard the plague as obviously an act of God. The House of Commons shared this widespread attitude and, desirous of ridding the country of the causes of the divine displeasure, named several persons whose wickedness might be the occasion of the display of God's wrath against the English people. The House included Hobbes in the list and specifically mentioned his Leviathan. Moreover, some bishops of the Church of England, at about the same time, suggested that it might be well to burn Hobbes as a heretic. Nothing came of the parliamentary investigation; indeed, the investigation seems not to have been begun. And no fires were lighted except that in which Hobbes saw fit, as has been said, to burn some of his private papers.

It is interesting to conjecture, however, what the name of Hobbes would mean in the history of ideas if his works had happened all to perish in 1666 and we, then, had to judge him through the literature which his works provoked. The word provoked may here be used advisedly. For an amazing number of hostile writings against Hobbes were printed during his life-time and immediately after his death.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 1940 , pp. 31 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1940

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References

1 Aubrey, , Brief Lives (Oxford, 1898), I, p. 339.Google Scholar

2 P. 112.

3 Pp. xxv and xxvi.

4 These eight writings, arranged according to dates of publication, are:

Scot, Philip, A Treatise of the Schism of England. Wherein Particularly Mr. Hales and Mr. Hobbs are Modestly Accosted. 1650.Google Scholar

Fawne, Luke, A Beacon Set on Fire. 1652.Google Scholar

Pierce, Thomas, Autokatakrisis, or, Self-Condemnation, Exemplified … with Occasional Reflexions on … Master Hobbs. 1658.Google Scholar

Coke, Roger, Justice Vindicated from the False Forms Put upon it, by Thomas White Gent., Mr. Thomas Hobbs, and Hugo Grotius. 1660.Google Scholar

Lucy, William, Observations, Censures and Confutations of Notorious Errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan, and Other his Books. 1663.Google Scholar

SirHale, Matthew, Reflections by the Lrd. Chiefe Justice Hale on Mr. Hobbes his Dialogue of the Lawe. 1675.Google Scholar

Sherlock, William, Their Present Majesties Government Proved to be Thoroughly Settled, and That We May Submit to it, Without Asserting the Principles of Mr. Hobbs. 1691.Google Scholar

Lowde, Ja., A Discourse Concerning the Nature of Man … With an Examination of Some of Mr. Hobbs's Opinions Relating Thereunto. 1694.Google Scholar

5 One should not forget, however, that Hobbes had many friends and warm admirers in England during his lifetime. The editor of the 1750 edition of Hobbes's writings mentioned ten persons who held high opinions of Hobbes. And Hobbes's patrons, the Earls of Devonshire, inscribed on the marble slab over his grave the words: “Vir probus et fama eruditionis domi forique bene cognitus.”

6 Leviathan, pp. 697–698. (References are given to the pages of that volume of the Molesworth edition of The English Works in which the particular writing occurs. This Molesworth edition remains the one most generally accessible for Hobbes's writings as a whole.)

7 Idem., p. 691. Cf. also Behemoth, p. 167, where the clergy of the land are put first in a list of “seducers of various sorts.”

8 Leviathan, pp. 540–541.

9 Idem., p. 713.

10 Idem., p. 98. Cf. also the statement that religion consists of “fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed” and differs from superstition only in that the latter is “not allowed.” Idem., p. 45.

11 I find my estimate of the importance of the De cive expressed in ProfessorTaylor's, A. E. recent article on Hobbes in the journal Philosophy for October, 1938 (Vol. 13, pp. 406–424).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I cannot agree with most of what Professor Taylor says in analysis of Hobbes, as the conclusion of my paper will reveal to those who have read his article.

12 The argument of Leo Strauss in his The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, pp. 8–29, seems to me conclusive on this point. Yet the point remains one, and probably must remain one, on which even the most competent critics will differ. For example, Professor George H. Sabine, in his A History of Political Theory, takes the opposite view to that of Strauss and that here maintained. Professor Sabine believes that the evidence Hobbes adduced for his political theory “was in no sense empirical” (p. 458), but was rather “the first whole-hearted attempt to treat political philosophy as part of a mechanistic body of scientific knowledge” (p. 460).

13 I have found only one copy of this edition (Paris, 1642) in the libraries I have been able to consult. Unfortunately, the frontispiece was so altered in the 1647 editions of De cive that its significance is utterly lost. The 1647 editions were printed by the Elzevir Press in Amsterdam while Hobbes was in Paris and thus lacked the benefit of his supervision. I know of no author in the whole range of political thought whose works contained frontispieces that so beautifully reveal the nature of the theme of the work in which they appear. This is true of the first edition of the De cive, the Leviathan, and the translation of Thucydides. It was not true, of course, of the Human Nature and the De corpore politico, which were put out without his knowledge or approval. That the 1647 and later editions of the De cive have trivial and meaningless frontispieces is highly unfortunate, because these are the only editions that are generally available and known today. The page of the 1647 and subsequent editions is so much smaller than that of the 1642 edition that the frontispiece could hardly have been reproduced in its rich detail; but I suspect that Hobbes, had he been on hand when the printing was being done, would at least have conserved some of the symbolic meaning he cleverly indicated in the 1642 frontispiece.

14 Critics have sometimes maintained against Hobbes that he failed to appreciate how generally men, even savage men, normally act within the framework of accepted custom or “ancient law.” Certainly Hobbes omits from his discussions any considerable attention to this important point. Yet the criticism seems unjustifiable. For Hobbes's problem was not to weigh the degree of social efficacy which reason, custom, education, and prudent self-interest might respectively have in the history of political developments. His problem was to carry social analysis to its last and final stages, and to inquire what technique of control was possible when reason was frustrated, custom broken down, education corrupt, and self-interest imprudent. That is, he was inquiring concerning what means might be found to reinforce reason, to set up new and better customs, to frame educational policy, to restrain excessive self-interest. He lived in a world which could not be successfully controlled by these important but relatively secondary means, and sought a more primary solution than these secondary means afforded.

15 Perhaps one exception might be made to the general statement in the text above. The growing hatred of Hobbes for the Roman Catholic Church in particular and all clerical forces in general led him, especially in the second half of the Leviathan, to long diatribes that are not strictly germane to his central theme. But even here there is no inconsistency between the central theme and the diatribes.

16 De cive, “Preface to the Reader,” pp. xxiii–xxiv. (Quotations from the De cive are given from Hobbes's own translation of the work into English under the title Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society.)

17 Cf. Leviathan, Chap. 13, or De cive, Chap. 1. The most famous and most quoted passage in Hobbes is probably that in Chap. 13 of the Leviathan, p. 113, which concludes with the magnificent phrase that the life of man in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Unfortunately, critics have usually quoted this eloquent passage before pausing to analyze the purport of the chapter, and have thus perverted the meaning of the passage by taking it out of its legitimate context.

18 The annihilating attack on Hobbes's “egoism” and selfish view of man was carried through with great thoroughness by the eighteenth-century British moral ists, notably Bishop Butler. This entire line of criticism, constructively effective as it may be, was far from just to Hobbes's intent and is probably a major reason for the persistence of the notion that Hobbes gave a wholly egoistic picture of man.

19 This analogy I owe to the brilliant characterization of Hobbes by ProfessorWoodbridge, F. J. E. in his Hobbes: Selections (New York, 1930), pp. xx–xxi.Google Scholar

20 Cf. for example the passage in De cive, p. xvi: “But this, that men are evil by nature, follows not from this principle.”

21 De cive, p. 11.

22 De corpore politico, p. 86.

23 Ibid., p. 207.

24 A dialogue of the common laws, p. 29.

25 Leviathan, p. 131.

26 Critics often accuse Hobbes of failing to distinguish between government and society, or between state and society. The same type of reply may well be made in behalf of Hobbes at this point that we made in connection with the point dealt with in footnote 14. The distinction between state and society is not relevant to Hobbes's problem. Hobbes was not writing a textbook that had to give proportionate amounts of space to all the twentieth-century problems of a systematic treatment of political science. For his problem of finding the means to avoid anarchy and to create sovereign control and hence social order, a society without a government was indistinguishable from a chaos of war. The introduction of the distinction between state and society would thus have obscured Hobbes's major point, and the critics who bring this charge against Hobbes might hesitate a bit if they took full account of the predominantly social character of morality in Hobbes's thinking.

27 Pp. 45–46.

28 De corpore politico, p. 106.

29 De cive, p. 49.

30 Ibid., p. 85.

31 De cive, p. 151.

32 Ibid., p. 77.

33 Ibid., p. xiii.

34 Leviathan, p. 163.

35 De cive, Chap. 13.

36 Ibid., p. 101.

37 De corpore politico, p. 215.

38 Ibid., p. 213.

39 Cf. De corpore politico, pp. 213–219; De cive, pp. 167–173.

40 Ibid., p. 205. Cf. De cive, pp. 78 ff.

41 Leviathan, p. 195.

42 Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, p. 289.

43 Confusion over this contention of Hobbes is doubtless due today to the fact that people often identify a sovereign with a monarch, even with an absolute monarch. That Hobbes favored absolute monarchy leads them to identify his theory of sovereignty with his defense of monarchy. Hobbes, of course, recognized that the sovereign may be one man, several men, or all men. What he had to say about sovereignty is quite independent of his preference for monarchy.

44 Recent political issues in our own country involve this principle so clearly that it is difficult to avoid comment, even in an historical essay. (1) The trend of judicial decisions prior to 1938 created a realm within which no governmental authority, state or federal, was competent to act. Social life was thus threatened with chaos. And the issue had to be solved, either by reconstitution of judicial authority or voluntary reform within the judiciary. Had the latter alternative not been forth-coming, the former alternative would have become a major issue of the ensuing decade. (2) The bill of rights remains evidence that sovereignty in this country lies, not with officials of government, but with the people. A sovereignty that is hemmed in with restrictions is not a sovereignty. Dialectical difficulties would make any such contention absurd. And dialectics is simply the rigid necessities which political realism must face. To incorporate certain definitions of rights in a bill of rights would violate Hobbes's theory of sovereignty only provided that the written instrument to which the bill of rights was attached contained no technique whereby sovereign power might add or subtract, change or maintain, develop or refuse to develop, the provisions of this bill of rights. Appeal to the bill of rights as beyond sovereign power is dialectically contradictory and politically fantastic; appeal to the bill of rights as the continued will of the sovereign is legitimate, but inevitably an experimental hazard of faith.

45 Leviathan, p. 359.

46 Ibid., p. 360.

47 Hobbes could, in discussing the problem of the relation of individual conscience and civil rule, go so far as to say: “There can therefore be no contradiction between the laws of God, and the laws of a Christian commonwealth” (ibid., p. 601). But even then he had to grant that there may be a contradiction between what a person took to be the laws of God and the laws of a commonwealth that was not Christian. And in such a case he went so far as to say that no man is even then enitled to resist his prince, but has no remedy except to “go to Christ by martyrdom” (De cive, p. 316).

48 Dialogue of the Common Laws, p. 122.

49 On this point I find myself unable to accept the analysis which Professor Sabine gives of Hobbes's philosophy. Professor Sabine states with great precision that “the laws of nature really meant for Hobbes a set of rules according to which an ideally reasonable being would pursue his own advantage, if he were perfectly conscious of all the circumstances in which he was acting and was quite unswayed by momentary impulse and prejudice.” But then he immediately adds that Hobbes “assumes that in the large men really do act in this way.” Cf. A History of Political Theory, p. 461. The striking thing about Hobbes, it seems to me, is rather that, after elaborating what the laws of nature require, he assumes that men would not ordinarily act according to those laws and have to be coerced contrary to their inclinations. The motive power in men, Hobbes supposed, was, not the laws of nature or of reason, but “a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and rest less desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death” (Leviathan, pp. 85–86). Professor Sabine seems to withdraw from the position I criticize when, on pp. 464–467 of his book, he speaks of reason and desire as two opposed principles of human nature, and adds (p. 468) that, according to Hobbes, reason “is too weak to offset the avarice of men in the mass.”

50 Leviathan, p. 706.

51 Ibid., p. 194.

52 Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, p. 194.

53 The Statesman, 294 a.

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