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The Natural Laws of Good Manners: Hobbes, Glory, and Early Modern Civility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2018

Clifton Mark
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Abstract

According to Hobbes, glory causes conflict in two ways: by causing competition over comparative recognition, and by making men violently sensitive to insult. Interpreters have generally depicted the sensitivity to insult as a manifestation of the desire for comparative recognition. This reading raises two problems. First, the two ways in which Hobbes uses glory are inconsistent. Second, if the problem with glory is comparison, then the law of nature enjoining the acknowledgment of equality should lead to war rather than peace. This paper illuminates these obscurities by placing Hobbes in the context of the contemporary literature on honor and civility. These sources reveal two concepts of honor which correspond to the two ways in which Hobbes writes about glory. Hobbes draws heavily from these sources, but intentionally elides the two concepts of honor in order to undermine an ideology of honor that was used to justify disobedience and unlawful violence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , Summer 2018 , pp. 391 - 414
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2018 

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References

1 L 17.8, 108. Citations to Hobbes's works are abbreviated as follows: EL equals The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Human Nature and De Corpore Politico (1640), ed. Gaskin, J. C. A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; DC equals On the Citizen (1642/1647), ed. Tuck, Richard, trans. Silverthorne, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; L equals Leviathan (1651), ed. Curley, Edwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994)Google Scholar; B equals Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament (1668/1681), ed. Holmes, Stephen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and C equals The Correspondence, ed. Malcolm, Noel, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994)Google Scholar. Where possible, references are given by chapter and paragraph, with a page number following.

2 DC 2.12, 49.

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23 Della Casa, Galateo, 45. Cf. L 10.29, 52.

24 Cf. L 10.24, 52.

25 Cited in Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 59.

26 Cited in Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility, 224.

27 Cited in Peltonen, Duel in Early Modern England, 43, emphasis mine.

28 Romei, The Courtier's Academie, 105–6.

29 Skinner, “Social Control of Unsociability.”

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32 L 15.40, 100.

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35 L 13.7, 76.

36 L 13.14, 78.

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38 L 6.39, 31; L 10.2, 50. In Hobbes's early Elements of Law, glory is defined in explicitly comparative terms: “GLORY, or internal gloriation or triumph of the mind, is that passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our own power, above the power of him that contendeth with us.” Although Hobbes drops this part of the definition in Leviathan, there is plenty of evidence to conclude that he continued to see glory in comparative terms. Most prominent is the “ants and bees” argument in which he argues that men can “relish nothing but what is eminent.” For the continuing importance of comparison in Hobbes's later work, see Slomp, “Hobbes on Glory and Civil Strife.”

39 L 10.17, 51. Cf. E 9.1, 50 and DC 1.2, 23.

40 L.17.8, 108.

41 Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 18; Slomp, “Glory and Civil Strife,” 189.

42 L 13.7, 76.

43 Abizadeh, “Causes of War,” 300.

44 L 15.20, 96.

45 DC 1.5, 27; EL 16.11, 86.

46 L 15.20, 96.

47 L 10.19–36, 52–53.

48 DC 1.2, 25–26. See also L 10.30, 52. For laughter as insult in Hobbes, see Skinner, “Social Control of Unsociability,” and Skinner, Quentin, “Hobbes and the Classical Theory of Laughter,” in Visions of Politics, vol. 3, Hobbes and Civil Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 142–76Google Scholar.

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51 Cited in Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility, 71 and 79–80.

52 Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 12.

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54 Pettit, Made with Words, 101.

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56 Abizadeh, “Causes of War,” 309.

57 L 10.37–52; EL 8.5, 48–49.

58 L 15.21, 96.

59 L 27.20, 196.

60 DC 12.13, 148. One of the ways that the sovereign does this is through the distribution of titles of honor: L 18.15, 115.

61 EL 10.2; L 14.31, 87.

62 DC Pref. 20, 13.

63 C 28, 52.

64 L 14.3, 79.

65 L 15.40, 100.

66 L 13.5, 75–76; EL 14.4, 78; DC 1.5, 26.

67 L 15.21, 96.

68 Abizadeh, “Causes of War,” 303; Kidder, Joel, “Acknowledgements of Equals: Hobbes's Ninth Law of Nature,” Philosophical Quarterly 33 (1983): 133–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slomp, Gabriella, Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), chap. 2Google Scholar; and Cooper, Julie E., “Vainglory, Modesty, and Political Agency in the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes,” Review of Politics 72 (2010): 241–69Google Scholar.

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70 EL 17.1, 93. See also EL16.5, 89: “injury, which is the injustice of action, consisteth not in the inequality of things changed, or distributed, but in the inequality that men (contrary to nature and reason) assume unto themselves above their fellows.”

71 DC 3.15, 50.

72 L 26.17, 179; L 26.26, 183; DC 4.12,62; B 37; L 26.28, 184.

73 Pettit, Made with Words, 96.

74 L 15.20, 96.

75 L 15.21, 96.

76 L 13.5, 75. See also L 10.24, 52.

77 E 14.4, 78; DC 1.5, 27.

78 DC 1.2, 23.

79 Bejan, Mere Civility, 106.

80 L 21.8, 140.

81 B 23.

82 Bacon, The Charge, 10.

83 Ibid., 9.

84 Romei, The Courtier's Academie, 125. For Romei, glory is much closer to “perfect” or “acquired” honor, which I have been calling “comparative honor.” Between these, the only distinction is that glory appears to require some public monument or recognition, whereas honor, “without any other signe or reward, may be preserved in the memory with men, through infinit ages.”

85 Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 121.

86 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin Books, 1992)Google Scholar. Bagby, Laurie Johnson, Thomas Hobbes: Turning Point for Honor (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009)Google Scholar, argues that Hobbes's philosophy has moved us into a world of instrumental calculation at the expense of honor.

87 L 27.19, 196.

88 B 38.

89 L 10.49, 54.

90 Aubrey, John, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, Andrew (London: Clarendon, 1898), 373Google Scholar.

91 E 16.11. Cf. DC 3.12, 49; L 30.15, 226.

92 L 30.16, 227.

93 B 26.

94 L 15.40, 100.

95 L 15.1, 89.