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Vainglory, Modesty, and Political Agency in the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Julie E. Cooper
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Abstract

Histories of political theory have framed the story of the emergence of sovereign states and sovereign selves as a story about secularization—specifically, a story that equates secularization with self-deification. Thomas Hobbes's investment in modesty and humility demonstrates the need for, and the possibility of, an alternative secularization narrative. Scholars have long insisted that “vainglory” is a key term for the interpretation of Leviathan. But Hobbes's task is not complete once he has discredited vainglory. Hobbes must also envision, and cultivate, contrary virtues—and modesty is one virtue that Hobbes would cultivate. An analysis of Hobbes's attempt to redefine and rehabilitate the virtues of modesty shows that Hobbes warns against the temptation to self-deification. In Leviathan, the political task is not to enthrone humans in sovereign invulnerability, but rather to achieve the right balance between bodily security and consciousness of finitude.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , Spring 2010 , pp. 241 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2010

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References

1 Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Sinclair, E. M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 55Google Scholar. See also Joshua Mitchell, Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 57.

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5 Leo Strauss is one of the few scholars who appreciate Hobbes's investment in modesty. See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 127, and Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 93, 97. While Strauss argues that Hobbes equates reason with modesty, he considers Hobbes's political project thoroughly immodest. See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 107: Hobbes inaugurates the modern quest for boundless progress, a quest made possible by the belief that man “can extend the limits of his power at will.” Although I am indebted to Strauss for highlighting Hobbes's investment in modesty, I differ on what that investment reveals about Hobbes's views on the possibility, and the desirability, of human mastery.

6 By my count, the words “modest” and “modesty” appear in Leviathan six times; the words “humble” and “humility” appear eight times; and “vainglory” and “vainglorious” appear nine times. Thus, if we judge solely by the numbers, Hobbes does not seem significantly more preoccupied with vainglory than he does with modesty and humility.

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10 Slomp, “Hobbes,” 193.

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13 Here, I echo Frost, Samantha, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 7, 12, 134–35, 172Google Scholar.

14 Hobbes's definition of glory shifts from Elements of Law to Leviathan. In Elements, Hobbes defines glory in 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” (E 50). By contrast, in Leviathan, individuals need not outdo peers in order to experience, and exult in, their power. (Slomp argues that, despite superficial differences, Hobbes's definition of glory remains constant.)

15 See Elements, 50.

16 See Walzer, Michael, “Good Aristocrats/Bad Aristocrats: Thomas Hobbes and Early Modern Political Culture,” in The Presence of the Past, ed. Bienvenu, R. T. and Feingold, M. (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 41–53Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought,” in Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, Keith C. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 185–236Google Scholar; and Oakeshott, Hobbes, 127–33.

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19 See Elements, 51.

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21 Wolin, Politics and Vision, 260.

22 See Leviathan, Ch. 13.

23 Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 19. See also Oakeshott, Hobbes, 92.

24 Strauss, Spinoza's Critique, 97.

25 Dietz, “Hobbes's Subject,” 102.

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27 See also Elements, 94.

28 One could object that I place inordinate emphasis on modesty, which is, after all, just one of the laws of nature. But in privileging modesty, I follow Hobbes, De Cive, 62, who contends that the ninth law “encompasses all the other laws within itself.”

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33 F. Alfonso Rodriguez, A Treatise of Modesty and Silence (1632).

34 See De Cive, 50 and Leviathan, Ch. 15.

35 See Elements, 78; De Cive, 50; Leviathan, Ch. 13; and McNeilly, Anatomy of Leviathan, 140.

36 Hobbes's definition of “humility” appears to shift from Elements to De Cive. In Elements, 51, humility signifies recognition of weakness (“The passion contrary to glory, proceeding from apprehension of our own infirmity, is called HUMILITY by those by whom it is approved; by the rest, DEJECTION and poorness; which conception may be well or ill grounded”), while in De Cive, humility signifies recognition of equality. Yet the association of humility with equality is present elsewhere in Elements, suggesting both that Hobbes's definition remains constant, and that the definition links recognition of weakness to affirmation of equality. See Elements, 100–101: the humble are “contented with equality.”

37 Law eight in De Cive is law nine in Leviathan.

38 Hobbes does not define “humility” in Leviathan. When Hobbes enumerates the laws of nature, in Chapter 15, he defines refusal to affirm equality as “pride,” but he neglects to offer a term that signifies acknowledgment of equality. Humility's absence could suggest that the disposition is incidental to Hobbes's political projects in Leviathan. However, humility does appear in the catalogue of the laws of nature in Chapter 31.

39 See Leviathan, Ch. 6.

40 See Hobbes, Thomas, Behemoth, or the Long Parliament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 25, 47, 51–52, 53Google Scholar. See also Kraynak, Robert P., “Hobbes's Behemoth and the Argument for Absolutism,” American Political Science Review 76, no. 4 (1982): 837–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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42 For Hobbes's critique of aristocratic culture, see Dietz, “Hobbes's Subject,” 107; Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 50, 55, 113, 114; and Baumgold, Deborah, Hobbes's Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 122, 124Google Scholar.

43 Augustine, , City of God, trans. Bettenson, Henry (New York: Penguin, 1984), 571Google Scholar.

44 Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (1673), Chap. IV, Part V, sections 83, 86.

45 Ibid., section 11.

46 Ibid., section 86.

47 See Allestree, Richard, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1664), 34Google Scholar and Baxter, Christian Directory, Chap. IV, Part V, sections 3, 5, 87.

48 Allestree, Whole Duty, 32.

49 See Gross, “Virtues of Passivity in the English Civil War,” in Secret History of Emotion, chap. 3.

50 See Hobbes, Behemoth, 47–53 and Collins, Jeffrey R., The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 85Google Scholar.

51 Baxter, Christian Directory, Chap. IV, Part V, section 7.

52 Ibid., section 20.

53 Bolton, Robert, Helpes to Humiliation (1630), 11–12Google Scholar.

54 Baxter, Christian Directory, Chap. IV, Part V, section 35.

55 To be clear, I focus on the stories Hobbes tells about the commonwealth's genesis—the rhetorical appeals Hobbes makes to get readers to think differently about obligation. I do not explore the question of how sovereign power is actually acquired in a given commonwealth. Admittedly, Hobbes's account of the commonwealth by acquisition could suggest that Hobbes makes two distinct appeals to readers, one of which undermines the argument that Hobbes values modesty. The individual who acquires sovereignty through violent conquest is presumably immodest—yet Hobbes justifies sovereignty by acquisition. But Hobbes's allowance for a commonwealth by acquisition does not constitute an endorsement of immodesty. While Hobbes retroactively justifies usurpation if the conquered consent to the conqueror's dominion, in the reply to the fool, Hobbes expressly condemns usurpation as an irrational, self-contradictory violation of the laws of nature (L, Ch. 15). Hobbes's commitment to stability yields competing imperatives. On the one hand, Hobbes would discredit, and discourage, glory-seeking rebellion. On the other hand, Hobbes concedes the legitimacy of a commonwealth by acquisition to remove any pretext for disobedience on the part of subjects (many of whom live in states founded upon violent conquest). But given Hobbes's reply to the fool, it is a stretch to say that he admires glory-seeking rebellion. Indeed, Hobbes goes out of his way to remind readers that the legitimacy of a sovereign by acquisition derives not from his feat of conquest, but from the fact that individuals “do authorize all the actions of that Man, or Assembly, that hath their lives and liberty in his power” (L, Ch. 20). Once authorized, the sovereign by acquisition has the same rights, and the same responsibilities, as the sovereign by institution—both are “obliged by the Law of Nature,” which enjoins modesty (L, Ch. 30). Similarly, as the language of authorization suggests, subjects of a sovereign by acquisition view themselves as owners and authors of the sovereign's actions—they adopt the same stance toward sovereign power as subjects in a commonwealth by institution, and cultivate the same political virtues.

56 Leviathan, Ch. 13 identifies “Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living” as another passion “that encline[s] men to Peace.” I focus on the peace-inclining potential of “Feare of Death” because, as I explain below, Hobbes betrays ambivalence regarding “commodious living.”

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58 The exceptions are Frost, Lessons, 161–65, and Keith Thomas, “Social Origins,” 231.

59 Wolin, Politics and Vision, 267, 273.

60 See Flathman, Richard, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics (Newberry Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993)Google Scholar.

61 This interpretation finds support in De Cive, 148.

62 See also Leviathan, Ch. 31: “a signe is not a signe to him that giveth it, but to him to whom it is made; that is, to the spectator.” See also Martel, Subverting the Leviathan, 34, 38, 55.

63 See Leviathan, Ch. 18.

64 See De Cive, 23.

65 Johnston, Rhetoric, 128–33.

66 Here, I follow Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 19.

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69 See also Leviathan, Chs. 29, 30, 45; De Cive, 138; De Homine, 66; and Hobbes's Thucydides, ed. Richard Schlatter (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 13.

70 For a warning that security can lull subjects into forgetting the sources of legislative authority, see Leviathan, Ch. 26.

71 See Tuck, “Utopianism,” 138.

72 Oakeshott, Hobbes, 163.

73 See also Behemoth, 39–40, 59, 144, 159–60.

74 See Wolin, Sheldon, Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1970), 23–24Google Scholar; and Mintz, Samuel, “Leviathan as Metaphor,” Hobbes Studies 2 (1989): 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Greenleaf, W. H., “A Note on Hobbes and the Book of Job,” Anales de la Catedra Francisco Suarez 14 (1974): 9–34Google Scholar. See also Coleman, Frank M., “Thomas Hobbes and the Hebraic Bible,” History of Political Thought 25, no. 4 (2004): 642–69Google Scholar; Gillespie, Theological Origins, 248; and Elshtain, Sovereignty, 39–40.

76 See Hull, Gordon, “‘Against this Empusa:’ Hobbes's Leviathan and the Book of Job,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2002): 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Hobbes reserves subjection in God's kingdom by nature for theists. Strictly speaking, atheists are God's enemies, rather than God's subjects, although atheists are still subject to God's power (as are inanimate objects). See Leviathan, Ch. 31: “Whether men will or not, they must be subject alwayes to the Divine Power. By denying the Existence, or Providence of God, men may shake off their Ease, but not their Yoke.”

78 Job 42:6. For a contrary view, which sees Hobbes as appealing to human pride and exploiting the temptation to Prometheanism, see Jacobson, Norman, Pride and Solace: The Functions and Limits of Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 53Google Scholar; Shulman, George, “Hobbes, Puritans, and Promethean Politics,” Political Theory 16, no. 3 (1988): 426–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shulman, , “Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes,” Political Theory 17, no. 3 (1989): 392–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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82 See Elshtain, Sovereignty, 160, 170, 204. For debates about the secularization narrative, see Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, trans. Schwab, George (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985Google Scholar); Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Wallace, Robert M. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Toulmin, Stephen, Cosmopolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Gillespie, Theological Origins.

83 Here I differ from Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 28.