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Text and Context: Skinner, Hobbes and Theistic Natural Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephen A. State
Stephen A. State
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Extract

If a revolution has taken place recently in the history of political thought, the name of Quentin Skinner must figure prominently in the vanguard. His work has been concerned with redefining the boundaries between philosophy and history; to put the matter briefly he makes a plea for ‘less philosophy and more history’. With regard to Thomas Hobbes his work involves two distinct – but related – projects: to revise our view of Hobbes's impact and influence on his age; and to clarify the interpretation of Hobbes's written work. Characteristically, the first project is presented as a guide to the second. History becomes the handmaiden of philosophy.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 27 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 On the concept of ‘revolution’ in this context, see Pocock, J., Politics, language and time: essays on political thought and history (New York, 1973). p. 3Google Scholar.

2 Skinner, Q., ‘Hobbes's Leviathan’, Historical Journal, VII, 2 (1976), 333Google Scholar.

3 Skinner, Q., ‘The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation’, in Cranston, and Peters, , Hobbes and Rousseau (New York, 1972), p. 141Google Scholar. Skinner does not explain what is involved in the distinction between ‘deontological’ and ‘rationalist-utilitarian’ but it seems clear that he takes them to be mutually exclusive.

4 Ibid. pp. 116–17 (emphasis added).

5 Ibid. p. 137.

6 Tuck, R., Natural rights theories: their origin and development, (Cambridge, 1979), p. 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Skinner, ‘Context’, p. 131.

8 Ibid. p. 131.

9 Ascham, Anthony, A discourse: wherein it is examined what is particularly lawful during the confusions and revolutions of governments (London 1648), prefaceGoogle Scholar.

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11 Ibid. p. 8.

12 Ibid. p. 9.

13 Ibid. p. 15.

14 Ibid. p. 15.

15 Ibid. p. 9.

16 Ibid. p. 66.

17 Skinner, ‘Context’, p. 131.

18 Ascham, Discourse, p. 98.

19 Skinner, ‘Context’, p. 131.

20 Ascham, Discourse, p. 23.

21 Ibid. p. 24.

22 Ibid. p. 25.

23 Ibid. p. 95.

24 Ibid. p. 88.

25 Ibid. p. 108. This would seem to allow much greater scope for resisting sovereign authority than in the case of Hobbes.

26 Ibid. p. 109.

27 Ibid. p. 110. Ascham's providentialism is contradictory. We should obey all governments that come to power because power indicates divine favour. At the same time the exercise of power may be lawfully shaken off if it is ‘against nature and our consents’.

28 Ibid. p. 111.

29 Ibid. p. 119.

30 Ibid. p. 121.

31 Ibid. p. 121.

32 Ibid. p. 121; see Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (New York, 1962), pp. 507–8Google Scholar for explicit rejection of jus zealotarum.

33 Tuck, , Natural rights, pp. 121–3Google Scholar.

34 Nedham, Marchamont, The case of the commonwealth of England (London, 1650)Google Scholar.

35 Ibid. preface.

36 Ibid. preface.

37 Ibid. p. 5.

38 Ibid. p. 5.

39 Ibid. p. 16–17.

40 Ibid. p. 18.

41 Ibid. p. 5.

42 Skinner, , ‘Context’, p. 135Google Scholar.

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47 A possible exception is Wren's, MatthewMonarchy asserted of 1659Google Scholar. But even if we take Wren to be the only true Hobbist with the correct line on Hobbes – we are then faced with the problem of the other so-called Hobbists. If ‘history’ gives us conflicting evidence with regard to interpretation – we must in the end rely on our own interpretation.

48 Osborne, Francis, A persuasive to a mutual compliance (Oxford, 1652 [1651 ?]) p. 10Google Scholar.

49 Ibid. title page.

50 Ibid. p. 6.

51 Ibid. dedication.

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53 Ibid. p. 6.

54 Ibid. p. 6.

55 Warren, Albertus, The royalist reformed (London, 1650), p. 26Google Scholar.

56 Ibid. p. 27.

57 Ibid. p. 28.

58 Hawke, Michael, The grounds of the laws of England (London, 1657), dedicationGoogle Scholar.

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60 Ibid. p. 8.

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62 Ibid. pp. 10–2.

63 Hawke, Michael, The right of dominion (London, 1655), p. 22Google Scholar.

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67 Ibid. pp. 26–7.

68 White, Thomas, The grounds of obedience and government (no place of publication given, 165[9]), p. 44Google Scholar.

69 Ibid. p. 43.

70 Ibid. p. 159.

71 Ibid. p. 159.

72 Ibid. p. 161.

73 Hall, John, Of obedience and government (London, 1654), prefaceGoogle Scholar.

74 Ibid. p. 3.

75 Ibid. p. 415.

76 Ibid. p. 415.

77 Heydon, John, The idea of the law (London, 1660), p. 124Google Scholar.

78 Ibid. p. 125.

79 Ibid. p. 125.

80 Philodemius, Euctatus, The original and end of civil power (London, 1649), p. 15Google Scholar. Packer, J. W. (The transformation of Anglicanism, Manchester, 1969, p. 178)Google Scholar suggests that Philodemius is the pseudonym for Anthony Ascham although, despite a search for which I am grateful, he has been unable to locate the evidence for this suggestion; nor have I.

81 Ibid. pp. 7–8.

82 Skinner, , ‘Context’, p. 138Google Scholar.

83 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 82Google Scholar.

84 Selden, , Table talk, p. 41Google Scholar.

85 Although the Tew writers didn't publish until the 1640s and so could have been influenced by Hobbes, Selden's published work predates that of Hobbes. Strictly speaking, the discussion of influence remains – as in most cases – speculative; we don't know much of what Hobbes was thinking prior to 1628. People can be influential without ever publishing at all.

86 Tuck, Natural rights, ch. 5.

87 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 120Google Scholar.

88 H., Warrender, The political theory of Hobbes: his theory of obligation, (Oxford, 1957), pp. 93–5Google Scholar.

89 Tuck is misleading to suggest that Warrender found the basis of natural law in God's will; this is but one of the possibilities Warrender entertains as the ultimate ground of obligation. See Warrender, , The political theory of Hobbes, p. 11 and ch. 13Google Scholar.

90 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 131Google Scholar.

91 Ibid. p. 131.

92 Ibid. p. 131.

93 Ibid. p. 126.

94 I think Tuck is wrong to suggest that Hobbes's natural laws ‘depend for their recognition’ on historically acquired experience of natural punishment. Hobbes's treatment of natural punishi ments is particularly puzzling because he elsewhere asserts that experience concludes nothing with I any certainty. But experience cannot transform a ‘consequence’ into a ‘punishment’. Unless men I ‘believe there is a God that…propounded rewards and punishments’ (Leviathan, p. 262) there can be no natural law. It is faith and not experience that transforms a consequence into a punishment.

95 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 127Google Scholar. It's not clear how the ‘overall structure’ of Hobbes's argument r or its possible coincidence with Selden's is affected by Tuck's isolation of an apparently separate theory of obligation in Hobbes based upon the principle of non-contradiction (Tuck, pp. 127–8). This latter view was first put forward by A. E. Taylor (‘The ethical doctrine of Hobbes’ in Brown, K. C, Hobbes studies (Oxford, 1965) pp. 37–8Google Scholar), who saw in Hobbes an anticipation for Kant. But the case is not convincing. Hobbes may note that breaking a promise or covenant entails a contradiction but he does not explicitly say that the obligation to keep promises arises because of the contradiction that would be entailed in breaking them. (See de Cive, 1, 16, 2 and Leviathan, p. 105). Hobbes distinguishes two kinds of obligation: (1) that which arises artificially among men when a right has been transferred, and (2) a natural obligation that arises between God and man because of God's omnipotence. There are no natural obligations among men because they are approximately equal in power. If we ask – what is an obligation? – Hobbes would give us what in his view is the proper definition – the definition about which men would agree. If we ask – why should we comply with our obligation? – we invite the tautology that obligations are obligatory. In another sense, however, the practice of abiding by obligations is rational (in situations of security) since it accords with the ‘reason of [one's] preservation’ (Leviathan p. 115). Only a fool could expect to break faith and get away with it. The policy of acting in accord with reason (understood as conducing to preservation) and therefore abiding by artificial obligations which arise when rights are transferred is itself a natural obligation which is granted ‘to those…whose power is irresistible’ (Leviathan, p. 263). That which reason suggests is believed to be that which an omnipotent God commands.

96 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 127Google Scholar.

97 Ibid. p. 100.

98 Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 509Google Scholar.

99 Ibid. p. 509.

100 Ibid. p. 481.

101 Hobbes, . The English works of Thomas Hobbes, ed., Molesworth, (London, 1889), 1Google Scholar. (Emphasis in original.)

102 E. W. IV, XIII.

103 Hobbes, , de Cive, E. W. II, viGoogle Scholar.

104 Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 124Google Scholar.

105 Ibid. p. 262. The brevity of this account conceals several problems. In what sense does omnipotence generate an obligation? Is there a distinction to be drawn between being obliged to God's laws of nature and fearing the consequences that follow from disobeying them? What is entailed in an obligation in foro interno? What does Hobbes mean by ‘being tied to an obligation?’ What follows from Hobbes's suggestion that in civil society natural laws become coextensive with civil laws? Unfortunately, these and other matters cannot be dealt with here.

106 Dowling, R. E., review of Warrender's The political philosophy of Hobbes, Australasian Journal of Politics, 1958, p. 226Google Scholar.

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108 Gierke, O. von, Natural law and the theory of society (Cambridge, 1934), p. 97Google Scholar.

109 Oakeshott, M.Rationalism in politics (London, 1962), p. 283Google Scholar.

110 Hobbes is not a wolf in sheep's clothing although he may be a wolf in wolf's clothing. By announcing his departures from earlier theorists and proclaiming his novelties of method and argument he can hardly be said to be engaged in concealment. His treatment of the role of God is discussed below.

111 McNeilly, F. S., The anatomy of Leviathan (London, 1968), p. 22Google Scholar.

112 Watkins, J. W. N., Hobbes's system of ideas (London, 1965), p.p. 98–9Google Scholar.

113 Hooker, R., Works, ed., Keble, , rev. Church and Paget, 7th edition (Oxford, 1889), 1, 334Google Scholar.

114 Ibid. 1, 227; see also 1, 223.

115 See Lagarde, G., Recherches sur l'esprit politique de la réforme (Paris, 1926), p. 25Google Scholar.

116 Suarez, F., Selections for three works, in Classics of International Law, Oxford 1927), vol. 20, p. 197Google Scholar.

117 Perhaps because of this famous passage scholars disagree about Grotius's position in the history of political thought. D'Entrèves, sees him as the beginning of ‘rationalist’ hence secular modern natural law (Natural law, 2nd edition (London, 1970), p. 55)Google Scholar. Pollock, (postscript to SirMaine, H., Ancient law, (London 1930), p. 120)Google Scholar and Rommen, (The natural law, trans. Hanley, T. (St. Louis, 1949), p. 70)Google Scholar emphasize links to earlier Scholastic thought as does Chroust, A. H. (‘Hugo Grotius and the Scholastic natural law tradition’, The New Scholasticism, XVII, 1943, p. 125)Google Scholar. The latter explains this passage as a rationalist rebuke of voluntarism and nominalism while Rommen (p. 72) sees Grotius as an exponent of voluntarism.

118 This issue is perceptively treated in Largarde, , Recherches, p. 25Google Scholar. See also McNeill, J. T., ‘Natural law in the teaching of the reformers’, The Journal of Religion, XXVI (1946), 177–8Google Scholar; Allen, J. W., ‘The political conceptions of Luther’, in Tudor Studies, ed., Seton-Watson, (London, 1924), p. 101Google Scholar.

119 Lagarde, , Recherches, p. 25Google Scholar.

120 Peters, R., Hobbes, 2nd edition (Harmondsworth, 1967) p. 245Google Scholar.

121 Filmer, R., Observations concerning the original of government (London, 1651), p. 3Google Scholar. (emphasis added).

122 Chroust, , ‘Hugo Grotius’, p. 114Google Scholar.

123 d'Entrèves, , Natural law, p. 77Google Scholar.

124 No case is made here to establish links between Suarez and Hobbes. Hobbes had, of course, read at least some of Suarez's work and described it as ‘amongst the many sorts of madness’. England generally was also familiar with him since James I publicly burnt his treatise Defensio Fidei in front of St Paul's church in London. See Scott's, J. B. introduction to Suarez, , Selections, in Classics, XX, 20aGoogle Scholar.

125 Suarez, , Selections, pp. 178–9Google Scholar.

126 Ibid. p. 183.

127 Ibid. p. 183.

128 Ibid. p. 186 (emphasis added). One is uncertain as to how literally the metaphor of internal inscription should be taken.

129 Plamenatz, J., Man and society (London, 1964), 1, 123Google Scholar.

130 Suarez, , Selections, p. 188Google Scholar.

131 Ibid. p. 199.

132 Ibid. p. 188.

133 Ibid. p. 190. Note the similarity with Grotius's position some three centuries later.

134 Locke, Second treatise, ch. 2, par. 5: ‘if I cannot but wish to receive good…how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, being of one and the same nature?…from which relation of equality…what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no man is ignorant.’

135 Munz, P., The place of Hooker in the history of thought (London, 1962), p. 46Google Scholar.

136 Gierke, , Political theories of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1927), p. 80–90Google Scholar; Natural law, p. 40; see also Rommen, , The natural law, p. 75Google Scholar.

137 Some commentators have seen in this an Italian connexion but Letwin, S. R. pointedly and, I think, correctly notes that ‘Hobbes did not need Padua to teach him this commonplace’ – ‘Hobbes and Christianity’, Daedalus, winter, 1976, p. 10Google Scholar.

138 Compare, for example, Hobbes, , E. W. I, p. 81Google Scholar: the synthetical procedure consists ‘of the order of speech which begins from primary or most universal propositions, which are manifest of themselves, and proceeds by a perpetual composition of propositions into syllogisms, till at last the learner understand the truth of the conclusion sought after’ with Aquinas, , Selected political writings, ed., d' Entrèves, (Oxford, 1948), p. 123Google Scholar: ‘reason proceeds from general principles (which are manifest and indemonstrable) to matters of detail’. Note what appears to be the philosophically realist assumptions of both.

139 Aristotle, , Politics, Bk. 1, ch. I, 1252aGoogle Scholar.

140 Hobbes, , E.W. VII, 3–4Google Scholar; 184.

141 Hobbes, , E.W. I, 81Google Scholar; see also E.W. I, 84.

142 Hobbes, , E.W. VII, 460Google Scholar.

143 Consider the following passage from Hobbes's objection to Descartes: ‘reason gives us no conclusion about the nature of things, but only about the terms that designate them, whether, indeed or not there is a convention (arbitrarily made about their meanings) according to which we join these names together.’ in Descartes, , Meditations, in The philosophical works, ed., Haldane, and Ross, (Cambridge, 1911), II, 62Google Scholar.

144 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 35Google Scholar.

145 Aquinas, , Selected political writings, p. 123Google Scholar.

146 Rational action teleologically appropriate is sometimes referred to as the doctrine of naturalis inclinatio. See Armstrong, R. A., Primary and secondary precepts in Thomistic natural law teaching (The Hague, 1966), pp. 41–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Maritain, J., The range of reason (London, 1953), pp. 26–9Google Scholar.

147 See Leviathan, p. 40: ‘…the names of virtues and vices…can never by true ground of any ratiocination’.

148 Aquinas, , Selected political writings, p. 125Google Scholar.

149 Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 115Google Scholar.

150 Ibid. p. 124.

151 Ibid. p. 124.

152 This is the point of Rommen's, The natural law.