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How to Read Hobbes? A Reply to Matthew Kramer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2015
Extract
I want to say something about Hobbes by way of a response to Matthew Kramer in his article, “The Missing Terms of the Hobbesian Social Contract”. Briefly, Kramer argues that Hobbes’ idea of the social contract is incoherent in that the linguistic and experiential conditions and capacities which could give rise to such a contract are such that an effective contract would already have to be in place. This reductio ad absurdum of Hobbes’ argument has some illuminating consequences: one is that this apparently fatal attack on the coherence of the Hobbesian contract should disturb us enough to reconsider the way in which we read Hobbes and other Social Contract theorists, rather than simply accepting the ad hominem force of Kramer’s interpretation of Hobbes.
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- Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1995
References
1. Kramer, M. “The Missing Terms of the Hobbesian Social Contract” (1994) 7 Can. J. L. and Juris. 297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. The concept of a reductio argument or even a simple contradiction may appear incongruously orthodox given what we know about Matthew Kramer’s complex Derridaean influences in his earlier writings. But he does say that he uses the words “paradox”, “antinomy”, “aporia” and “double bind” interchangeably. The attempted deconstruction of texts (e.g., Hobbes’ Leviathan) entails, as Kramer says, “demonstrations of incoherence”. The only test for incoherence, as opposed to mere question-begging circularity or tautology, is the evidence of contradiction. Thus neo-structuralist or deconstructive approaches to the critical reading of texts share the fundamental interest in the principles of consistency as does orthodox logical analysis. I prefer, then, to use reductio ad absurdum as the correct label for the type of argument employed by Kramer’s piece in that it suggests that Hobbes both “presupposes and precludes the linguistic webbing that any social contract requires.” See Kramer, M. Legal Theory, Political Theory and Deconstruction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991) at 7.Google Scholar
3. By ‘ideal-type’, and bearing in mind the ambiguity of interpretations of Weber’s use of the term, I mean nothing more nor less than an instrumentally-rational model of means-ends action, given a particular end in view. The problem, for social contract theory and Weberian sociology, is that the ends of civil society are not given. For a detailed discussion of value-neutrality in ideal-typical concept formation, see S. Toddington, Rationality, Social Action and Moral Judgment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) at ch. 2.
4. But notably Hobbesian, Lockean and Rousseauian versions.
5. Supra note 1.
6. Hobbes, T., McPherson, C.B. ed., Leviathan (London: Penguin Books, 1985) at 105.Google Scholar
7. Ibid, at 106.
8. This would entail a relativism so total that it would reflexively undermine itself—a strategy which, it seems, is not permissible for Hobbes.
9. Habermas explores the presuppositions of disagreement to great effect in his theory of argumentation which forms the basis of his critique of bureaucraticrationality. See Habermas, J. The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon, 1984) esp. at 26–30.Google Scholar In short, the idea is that for A and B to disagree about a proposition p presupposes that A understands B; Arecognises the incompatibility of B’s view with his own; that A recognises the impossibility of both party’s views being simultaneously true; that this entails that truth cannot be a product of belief and that, thus, truth must be redeemed by some method from somewhere external to belief—i.e., the natural world or, in normative moral disputes, the repository of values in the ‘Lifeworld’.
10. It is of no consequence to my argument whether this deep structure is innate in the Chomskyan sense or is merely a logical result of the analysis of the presuppositions of discourse. Either way they are competences which must be held to be prior toconvention and definition.
11. Supra note 7.
12. We should not, in my view, be pessimistic about this unavoidable element of ethical judgment. Various forms of positivism and non-cognitivism, and of course, post-modernism, have urged us to reject the possibility of synthesizing rationally defensible criteria in this regard; but it occurs to me that a conception of the individual personality and its relationship to social institutions as found in the work of Erich Fromm and more recently, Ralf Dahrendorf, allied tothe powerful dialectical arguments for basic, subtractive and additive rights as presented by Alan Gewirth and Deryck Beyleveld, would, if presented in the schematic model which I have outlined above, amount to an extremely impressive formulation of a social contract theory. See e.g., Fromm, E. The Sane Society (New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1955);Google Scholar Dahrendorf, R. Law and Order (London: Stevens and Sons, 1985);Google Scholar Gewirth, A. Reason and Morality (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1978);Google Scholar Beyleveld, D. The Dialectical Necessity of Morality (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).Google Scholar