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The Right of Nature in Leviathan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

D.J.C. Carmichael
D.J.C. Carmichael*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, CanadaT6G 2H4
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Extract

Hobbes’ account of these issues is conspicuously brief and puzzling. Indeed it has been criticized by some commentators as ‘confused.’ I hope to show, however, that it appears confused only because it has not been read with sufficient precision. Properly understood, Hobbes’ account is both exact and profound. It is also, in my view, far more interesting as a conception of natural right than the modern ‘confusions’ which have come to be read into it.

To show this, the text must be read as it is presented: on its own terms, analytically and exactly. In what follows, therefore, I shall focus upon Hobbes’ definitive account of the right of nature in chapter XIV of Leviathan, with only minimal reference to other passages and other works. I do not pretend that this is the only possible approach to Hobbes on this point; but it does show how his account may be read intelligibly, and with greater respect for the power and precision of his thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 257 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1988

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References

1 Passages in Leviathan are cited by chapter (in Roman numerals) and paragraph number (in Arabic). All quotations are taken from C. B. Macpherson’s edition (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1968).

2 These rights are discussed in parallel passages at XIV.8 and XV.22. The quoted expression is from the latter.

3 As Howard Warrender notes, this has been a standard criticism of Hobbes since Pufendorf, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1957) 20-1.

4 Plamenatz, John Man and Society (London: Longmans 1963)Google Scholar Vol. I, 139; Kavka, Gregory S. Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1986) 299Google Scholar; and Raphael, D.D. Hobbes: Morals and Politics (London: Allen and Unwin 1977) 51Google Scholar

5 Warrender remarks that those who have noted Hobbes’ use of ‘right’ as ‘the absence of obligation’ have ‘tended to condemn it as a weakness or confusion in Hobbes’ theory’ (The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 20). Other commentators who have expressly regarded this part of Hobbes’ theory as confused, inadequate or puzzling include: Hood, F.C. The Divine Politics of Hobbes: An Interpretation of Leviathan (Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1964) 86Google Scholar; Laird, John Hobbes (London: E. Benn 1934) 177Google Scholar; McNeilly, F.S. The Anatomy of Leviathan (Toronto: Macmillan 1968) 171Google Scholar; Pennock, J.R. ‘Hobbes’s Confusing ”Clarity”- The Case of ”Liberty,”’ in Brown, K.C. ed., Hobbes Studies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1965) 101Google Scholar; Peters, R.S. Hobbes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1956) 189Google Scholar; Raphael, D.D. ‘Obligation and Rights in Hobbes,’ Philosophy 37 (1962) 345-52Google Scholar; and Wernham, A. G. ‘Liberty and Obligation in Hobbes,’ in Brown, K.C. ed., Hobbes Studies 117Google Scholar.

6 Man and Society, Vol. I 144, 139

7 Raphael, ‘Obligation and Rights in Hobbes,’ 350

8 The expressions are from the discussion of liberty in XXI.5.

9 See Gauthier, D.P. The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1969) 66Google Scholar; Hood, 84-5; Mace, G. Locke, Hobbes and The Federalist Papers (Carbondale: S. Illinois University Press 1979) 52Google Scholar; McNeilly, 172, 193; Plamenatz, Man and Society Vol. I, 145; Plamenatz, ‘Mr. Warrender’s Hobbes,’ in Brown, K.C. ed., Hobbes Studies 85Google Scholar; Raphael, ‘Obligation and Rights in Hobbes,’ 350Google Scholar; Raphael, Hobbes: Morals and Politics, 51Google Scholar; Waldman, T. ‘Hobbes on The Generation of A Public Person,’ in Ross, R. Schneider, H.W. & Waldman, T. eds., Thomas Hobbes in His Time (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press 1974) 72Google Scholar; Watkins, J.W.N. ‘Liberty,’ in Cranston, M. & Peters, R.S. eds., Hobbes and Rousseau (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books 1972) 229Google Scholar; Watkins, J.W.N. Hobbes’s System of Ideas, 2nd ed. (London: Hutchinson 1973) 94Google Scholar. A variation is that right consists in the absence of the possibility of obligation. This was proposed by Warrender, 19-21, and it has been assumed by Reik, M. The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes (Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1977) 91Google Scholar.

10 Raphael makes a similar argument against Warrender but without appreciating its critical implications for his own account in ‘Obligation and Rights in Hobbes,’ 350.

11 Everyone would agree that the right of nature includes a right of judgment. But judgment is usually treated in terms which subordinate it to action, as discussed below. For exceptions, see Wernham, 128; Strauss, Leo Hobbes’ Political Philosophy, trans. Sinclair, E.M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1952) 23Google Scholar, 155f, and Strauss, ‘The Spirit of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy,’ in Brown, K.C. ed., Hobbes Studies, 16Google Scholar. A further exception might be Frank Coleman, Hobbes and America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1977) 80.

12 This suggests that right and power are co-extensive. See Plamenatz, Man and Society, vol. I, 139f; Green, t.H. Lectures on The Principles of Political Obligation, sec. 42Google Scholar in Nettleship, R.L. ed., Works of T.H. Green (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1911);Google Scholar and Lemos, R.M. Hobbes and Locke: Power and Consent (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 1978) 14Google Scholar.

13 It might be argued that prisoners have absolute liberty - not where they are effectively bound - but instead at the point where they might escape successfully. But precisely at that point they are no longer prisoners; to describe this as the ‘absolute’ liberty of the prisoner would be unintelligible.

14 An alternative reading of the passage is that any given impediment will hinder the individual in some respects, but not in others. If the path is blocked, one is not free to walk through the obstacle, but one remains free to walk around it. But it is not clear how so qualified a liberty could be described as ‘absolute’; nor how anyone could lay it down, as required by the second law.

15 Plamenatz, Man and Society vol. I, 139; and Raphael, ‘Obligation and Rights in Hobbes,’ 350

16 Warrender, 214-217; and Tuck, R. Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979) 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 This is true only of natural right. The idea of a (natural) right to act as one does not judge best would be incongruous.

18 Note that ‘judgment’ is expressly distinguished as a separate dimension of the right of nature in The Elements (Pt. 1, ch. 14, #8).

19 There is, however, no corresponding reference to judgment in the first half of the sentence.

20 I am grateful to William Mathie for discussion of this issue.

21 The first two paragraphs of chapter XIV define the right of nature; the corresponding paragraphs of chapter XIII establish its material basis.

22 See note 9.

23 Gauthier, 35

24 Warrender, 18-19

25 There is, of course, a question about whether the laws of nature are properly called ’1aws.’ But whatever they are called, they are quite properly and consistently said by Hobbes to ‘oblige.’ Note that ‘obligation’ is the logically prior basis on which ’1aw’ is defined (XXVI.2), and not the other way around.

26 This still allows each individual to believe that he is superior to others, and it allows anyone to be recognized as superior by others. It merely forbids anyone from claiming this superiority.

27 This phrase will indicate my indebtedness to Michael Oakeshott, although my reasons for this conclusion differ from his. See Hobbes on Civil Association (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1975).

28 This is the implication of Hobbes’ Theory, as I have construed it. Hobbes’ own views on this issue are more complex and circumspect in ways which cannot be dealt with adequately here.

29 A similar point has been stressed by Jean Hampton, although I do not entirely agree with the use she makes of it. See Hobbes and The Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986).

30 Earlier versions of this paper were read in part at the annual meetings of The Canadian Political Science Association in 1982 and at a seminar in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta in 1985. I am grateful to those present for their helpful criticisms and in addition to Ross Rudolph, Cary Nederman, Barbara Telford, Tom Pocklington and a referee of this journal.