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Thomas Hobbes's Materialism, Language, and the Possibility of Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2008

Nicholas Dungey
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Abstract

Thomas Hobbes sought a reconstruction of philosophy, ethics, and politics that would end, once and for all, the bitter disputes that led to the English Civil War. This reconstruction begins with the first principles of matter and motion and extends to a unique account of consent and political obligation. Hobbes intended to produce a unified philosophical system linking his materialist account of human nature to his moral and political theory. However, his materialism gives rise to a set of perceptions, imagination, and desires that contribute to the chaos of the state of nature. The sort of person that emerges from Hobbes's materialist anthropology is unlikely to be able to make the necessary agreements about common meaning and language that constitute the ground of the social contract. Therefore, Hobbes's materialism frustrates the very purpose for which it is conceived.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , Spring 2008 , pp. 190 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2008

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References

1 Thomas Hobbes, “De Cive,” in Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1978), 91.

2 In addition to the creation of commonwealth by institution, Hobbes also states that commonwealths can be formed by acquisition. Hobbes calls sovereign power created by acquisition Dominion. Dominion is acquired either through generation, as when a father holds power over his children, or by conquest. “The right of dominion by generation is that which the parent hath over his children” (Lev., xx, 4). Dominion by conquest Hobbes calls despotical power and is acquired when “the vanquished, to avoid the present stroke of death, covententh either in express words, or by other sufficient signs of the will, that so long as his life and the liberty of his body is allowed him, the victor shall have the use thereof” (Lev., xx, 10). The difference between commonwealth by institution, where individuals enter into covenant because of mutual fear of each other, and Dominion, lies in the fact that the covenant in both forms of Dominion is made directly between the individuals consenting and the “man or assembly that hath their lives and liberty in his power.” What is unique about Hobbes's account of commonwealth by acquisition is his claim that the sovereign power is legitimate because it is based on some form of consent. Paternal dominion derives “from the child's consent, either express or by other sufficient arguments declared” (Lev., xx, 4). The same claim also holds for despotical power. “It is not  …  the victory that giveth the right of dominion over the vanquished, but his own covenant. Nor is he obliged because he is conquered … but because he cometh in, and submitteth to the victor” (Lev., xx, 11).

There are at least three issues tied up in Hobbes's account of commonwealth by acquisition. First, there is the empirical observation that throughout time parents have exercised power over their children and that nations have conquered and subjected others. Second, there is the historical question of whether children or subjected people thought of themselves as consenting to their subjection. And third, there is the question of whether or not Hobbes's account of materialism and language is coherent enough to provide the sort of common language necessary for his understanding of covenant to succeed. The first two issues are not the focus of this essay. My concern here is with the role and possibility of consent in Hobbes's materialistic account of human nature. If Hobbes had simply claimed that commonwealth by acquisition was legitimate by virtue of the force of the parents or conqueror, this claim would constitute an objection to my thesis that Hobbes's materialism frustrates his account of consent. But Hobbes clearly asserts that it is the consent of the child or the vanquished that makes commonwealth by acquisition legitimate. In addition, what makes it difficult to untangle these issues is the way Hobbes purposefully blends empirical and historical observations with his new philosophical claims. For example, it is uncontested that, empirically speaking, parents exercise power over their children and that sovereignty has been gained by force. It is less certain, historically speaking, that those who have been subjected thought about their subjection as a form of consent. Hobbes's claim that they understood their consent to create a covenant of subjection is purely theoretical. For my purposes here, the important issue is not the empirical observation, nor is it the historical question (even though from a purely historical perspective it would be interesting to know whether or not a conquered people really thought of their subjection as a form of consent). Rather, the question of Hobbes's account of materialism, language, and their ability to generate the conditions necessary for covenant as Hobbes understands it. If it is the case that his materialism and theory of language most likely undermine the ability to establish a stable and common language upon which to enact a covenant, then this also contaminates his account of commonwealth by acquisition.

It is curious that Hobbes concludes the chapter on “commonwealth by acquisition” with the following remarks: “The skill of making and maintaining commonwealths consisteth in certain rules, as doth arithmetic and geometry, not (as tennis-play) on practice only; which rules, neither poor men have the leisure, or men that have had the leisure have hitherto had the curiosity or the method to find out” (Lev., xx, 19). Hobbes ends the chapter on “commonwealth by acquisition” with a return to a consideration of the scientific rules and methods necessary for the making and maintaining of commonwealths. Surely Hobbes does not intend the reader to believe that he expects children and the conquered to know these rules and methods, thereby gaining a better understanding of their subjection. At the very least, Hobbes's decision to end this chapter with these remarks demonstrates that his principal concern is his desire to articulate a comprehensive philosophical system in which his materialist account of perception, thought, and language will lead to and illuminate the rules for making and maintaining commonwealths. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). (Hereafter cited as Lev.).

3 David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), xv.

4 G. C. Robertson, Hobbes (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1886).

5 A. E. Taylor, “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes,” in Hobbes Studies, ed. Keith Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).

6 Howard Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957).

7 John Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (Aldershot: Gower Publishing, 1989).

8 Thomas A. Spragens, The Politics of Motion (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973).

9 A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

10 Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. 1, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839). (Hereafter cited as De Corp.).

11 Richard Peters, Hobbes (London: Pelican Books, 1956), 76.

12 Samuel Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 23.

13 Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889). (Hereafter cited as EL).

14 J. G. A. Pocock offers one possible solution to this tension. Pocock argues that Hobbes distinguishes between two types of knowledge—philosophical and historical. Philosophical knowledge consists of assertions that are amenable to rational and scientific demonstration (158). Historical knowledge, especially the religious doctrine that makes up books 3 and 4 of Leviathan, is conveyed through divine prophecy and revelation (159). Pocock argues that Hobbes intends both forms of knowledge to play a role in the commonwealth. Hobbes “states quite plainly,” Pocock argues, “that human existence, knowledge, morality and politics must be thought of as going on in two distinct but simultaneous contexts: the one of nature, known to us through philosophic reasoning on the consequences of our affirmations, the other of divine activity, known to us through prophecy, the revealed and transmitted words of God” (159). On Pocock's reading of Hobbes, the tension I identify between Hobbes's material metaphysics and his nominalism is not a tension at all, but rather a result of failing to recognize the role divine prophecy and revelation play in Hobbes's thought. According to Pocock, a historical philosophy describes our natural condition and identifies the mechanism by which we institute a commonwealth, and the sovereign, in turn, recognizes the existence of God. “The inhabitants of the a-historical world of reason must enter the historical world of faith” (166). Pocock's reading rests on the belief that religious doctrine serves a real and important role in Hobbes's thought. However, if Hobbes is ironic about his use of religious doctrine, especially in Leviathan, this limits Pocock's reading as a solution to the tensions that emerge in Hobbes's thought. In addition, Pocock's suggestion that both forms of knowledge exist simultaneously with each other does not mitigate my claim that the difficulties associated with Hobbes's materialism, hence his philosophic knowledge, are so great that they render the establishment of common perspectives, language, and the institution of a commonwealth very unlikely. I will take up both of these issues in greater detail in section 6 of this essay. J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language, Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971).

15 Peters, Hobbes, 103.

16 Thomas Hobbes, “De Homine,” in Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1978).

17 Tom Sorell, Hobbes (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 91.

18 Richard Flathman, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993), 18.

19 Sorell, Hobbes, 84.

20 Flathman, Thomas Hobbes, 20.

21 In several passages in Leviathan, Hobbes makes glancing reference to the role teaching, habit, and convention play in the establishment of language, shared meaning, and the transfer of meaning from one generation to another (see Lev., iii, 11; iv, 13; v, 18; viii, 13; xliii, 6–9).

22 Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan, 39.

23 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 1.

24 Ibid., 45.

25 Ibid., 88 and 100.

26 Ibid., 5.

27 Ibid., 5. As it turns out, Martinich is more concerned to support his primary thesis than he is to support his secondary thesis. Early in the book Martinich claims that “Hobbes's determinism, which is often thought to indicate, or even entail, atheism, is not merely a part of his mechanistic materialism; it is logically tied to Calvin's doctrines of predestination and belief in the omnipotence of God” (3). After this very bold claim, Martinich says virtually nothing about Hobbes's materialistic account of sensation, perception, thought, and action or about how Hobbes used these themes to buttress religion against the challenge of the “new science.”

28 Ibid., 8.

29 Johnston argues that Leviathan is an “intensely political book” not just because it concerns politics but also because it is organized by a series of rhetorical strategies designed to seduce and persuade its readers (Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan, xvii, and 66–76). “Hobbes,” Johnston claims, “was a political writer (not just a writer about politics)” and the “Leviathan was a work of political speech.” David Johnston, Review of The Two Gods of Leviathan, by A.P. Martinich. American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): 772.

30 Strauss writes, “many present-day scholars who write on subjects of this kind do not seem to have a sufficient notion of the degree of circumspection or of accommodation to the accepted views that was required, in former ages, of ‘deviationists’ who desired to survive or die in peace” (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953], 199). Curley echoes this sentiment. “On my account Leviathan is intended to be an ambiguous work, to be read by different people in different ways, as all displays of irony are apt to be” (Edwin Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or, How to Read Hobbes' Theological-Political Treatise,” www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/hobbes: 67. See also Edwin Curley, “Calvin and Hobbes, or, Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34; 2 (1996): 263.

31 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 62.

32 Ibid.

33 Hobbes's decision to place the observation that curiosity leads to a belief in God in the context and passage that he does might also be a good example of a crafty rhetorical device that Clarendon attributes to Hobbes. Clarendon writes, “it is some part of his Art, to introduce, upon the sudden, instances and remarques, which are the more grateful [i.e., agreeable], and make the more impression on his Reader, by the unexpectedness of meeting them where somewhat else is talk'd of” (Quoted in Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly,’” 19). In ten of the thirteen chapters that precede this passage, Hobbes has articulated a brief, complete material account of human sense, perception, imagination and action. Perhaps Hobbes places the observation where he does to shelter himself from persecution by giving the appearance that he is a good Christian.

34 Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly,’” 21.

35 Hobbes's interest in matter and motion develops as early as 1630. Hobbes's first sketch of his material philosophy comes in his “Short Tract on First Principles.” This piece was first published by Ferdinand Tönnies as an appendix to his translation of Hobbes's The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic. While there is some controversy over the authorship of the “Tract,” most Hobbes scholars (for example A.P. Martinich, Hobbes: A Biography [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 102; Perez Zagorin, “Hobbes's Early Philosophical Development,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54, no. 3 [1993]: 505–7; and Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas, 14–22 attribute it to Hobbes and suggest it was written between 1630 and 1636. One notable exception to this view comes from Richard Tuck, “Hobbes and Descartes,” in Perspectives on Hobbes, ed. G.A.J. Rogers and Alan Ryan [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988], 16–18). The “Tract” is important because it provides a “first sketch of Hobbes's theory … of the natural world, [and] of man's situation in it … [suggesting that Hobbes was a] mechanical philosopher long before his political doctrine[s] were fixed” (Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas, 22). The central thrust of the “Tract” is Hobbes's combination of a materialist philosophy with Galileo's theory of inertia. The main ideas of the “Tract” are (1) motion is “the universal cause of phenomena;” (2) “all change is due to direct or indirect contact between bodies;” and (3) the subjectivity of sensible qualities” (Zagorin, “Hobbes's Early Philosophical Development,” 511).

36 I do not want to give the impression that Hobbes's claims about motion are free of difficulty. As I discussed in Section 2 of this essay, Hobbes is not always consistent in his account of what we can, and cannot, know about motion.

37 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 136.

38 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 76. After claiming that “much more of Hobbes's text can be interpreted literally than most scholars recognize” (43), it is ironic that Martinich turns to an interpretation of Hobbes that imports terms and theoretical constructions that are foreign to the text.

39 Ibid., 76.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Strauss, Natural Right and History, 184.

44 See also Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly,’” 61–66.

45 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 100.

46 Strauss writes, “the fundamental moral fact is not a duty but a right; all duties are derivative from the fundamental and inalienable right to self-preservation” (Strauss, Natural Right and History, 181).

47 Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1952), 24.

48 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 136.