Philosophical Connections: Hobbes

Hobbes was born near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, the son of an 'ignorant' vicar, but was brought up by a rich uncle. He was educated at the local grammar school and then at Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, where he became critical of the prevailing Aristotelianism. An appointment as tutor to the Cavendish family in 1608 enabled him to spend time on the Continent; and his meetings there with such famous figures as Galileo and Descartes were important for his intellectual development, as was his friendship with Francis Bacon. Further posts in England followed, but in 1640 he was back in France for a much longer period, as his political views were proving unpopular with the Long Parliament. While there he was for a time tutor to the future Charles II of England and Scotland. The publication in 1651 of his famous Leviathan brought him into conflict with both the Catholic clergy and the English Court in Exile for his supposed anti-royalism, so he returned once more to England, though here too he was frequently attacked by all Christian denominations for his Erastianism, that is, the subordination of church to state, and his alleged atheism. He later acquired great renown as a translator of Latin and Greek classics.

[Sources: Page references to Leviathan are those of the original edition of 1651.]

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND LOGIC

[1] [Leviathan, ch. 4] Language for Hobbes has two functions: (1) to help the individual remember his thoughts in so far as they are 'transferred' into words (words used in this way as 'marks' are called names); (2) to enable us to communicate our thoughts to others by combining words into speech (words are then acting as signs). His account of names is not altogether clear, but he seems to have made the following distinctions. Considered in isolation a name is concrete and may denote a body, an accident (quality), or indeed another name, which may be (a) a proper name ('Peter', 'this man'); (b) a universal name (for example, 'man' — referring variously to any members of the class of men; or (c) a logical name (such as 'universal' or 'species'). His position is thoroughly nominalist. The meaning of names consists in their denotation. Logical names are names of 'second intention', whereas proper names and universal names are of 'first intention' [a]. Hobbes makes it clear that universals are only common names; they do not refer to essences, Platonic Ideas, forms, or the like. Nothing universal corresponds in Nature to, say, 'humanity' or 'redness'. There are only individual things, which may have similar features [b]. Further, when we combine names with other names (to form speech), as in, for example, 'man is a living creature', we look for causes of concrete names or causes of corresponding conceptions. This gives rise to abstract names (for example, 'corporeity', 'motion'), which we attribute to 'accidents', that is, qualities, or powers in the things we conceive. Names thus used are, however, not signs of things themselves. It is on the basis of his nominalist theory of language that he can establish definitions — the "settling of significations of... words" [Lev. 4], and which, he says, are propositions whose predicates "resolve the subject", when they may; or "exemplify it", when they may not [Concerning Body VI, sec. 14]. They are not to be taken as giving the 'essences' of things [ibid. I, 5, 7] [c]. Hobbes also discusses the misuse of words, which he says leads to error [Lev. 4, sec. 15] [d]. This can happen if we use, say, the word 'red' and assume there is an actual entity called redness in things. Likewise we are mistaken to suppose there is an actual existing man when we say man is a living creature. Hence:

It follows from Hobbes' account of signs and definition that necessary truth, and indeed logic and reasoning in general, is a matter of convention [e].

METHODOLOGY

[2] In his early writings [for example, Concerning Body] Hobbes says there are two principal branches of philosophy — natural and civil. The first is concerned with natural bodies, that is, made by Nature, while the latter deals with 'commonwealths', which are the political bodies made by the wills and agreements of men. Bodies can bring about effects by virtue of their motions; and Hobbes considers these to be "the one universal cause". We can have no knowledge of causes except by reference to motions [a]. It is to discover causes thus understood and produce explanations that he proposes two methods: (1) composition (or synthesis) — the mind starts with general principles or definitions and tries to derive possible effects. Such a procedure is deductive. (2) resolution (analysis). This method is inductive: the mind starts from particulars and moves to statements of universal first principles. Hobbes clearly supposed that these two methods are complementary. Thus we start with 'appearances' (sense-experiences) and memories of them and formulate general hypotheses which in turn may be tested by means of their observable effects. Hobbes intended to apply this methodology not only to 'inanimate' Nature (as in mechanics, physics) but also to man and society (psychology, ethics, and political philosophy) [see On the Citizen, Preface] [b]. However, by the time he wrote Leviathan there is little trace of a rigid geometrical deductivism, and his moral philosophy is firmly grounded in principles which he regarded as sufficiently known by experience. But he remained critical of over-reliance on experimental procedures to establish scientific truth unless attention be made to the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions implicit in the context in which the results are interpreted [c]. As he wrote: "experience concludeth nothing universally" [Elements of Law I, 4, 10].

[3] Hobbes's philosophy of nature includes 'first philosophy' (which is concerned with bodies having quantity and motion), mathematics, physics, psychology, and even ethics (in so far as man is natural body). Material bodies are assumed to possess accidents [see Elements of Law I, 2, 10], in the sense that we appeal to them to account for the production in us of conceptions or thoughts. Some accidents Hobbes supposes to be common to all bodies and to exist intrinsically in them, for example, extension, magnitude, figure or shape. These perish when the body perishes. Other accidents, however, such as colour, hardness, smell, can perish without the body disintegrating. Hobbes is here in effect making a distinction between 'secondary' and 'primary' qualities [a]. Thus a hard body can become soft. It is clear that for him accidents as capacities do not actually exist in bodies in the way they appear to us (as 'phantasms', that is, images) in our consciousness — or at least if they did we could not know this. He thinks they arise as a result of the motions within the organism, which are in turn reactions to local motions of other bodies. Space and time may be understood as imaginary or real according as to whether they are accidents of the mind or of the body. As the former they are subjective images: but to these there is an objective ground in so far as 'real' space is identifiable with extension and 'real' time with succession of motions.

[4] Hobbes's descriptions of accidents provides him with the basis for his account of causation [See Concerning Body II, 6-10]. The "entire cause" of an effect consists of an efficient cause and a material cause. The former is the total collection of accidents in the agent which are needed to produce a given effect, whereas the material cause is the sum of accidents in the 'patient' or receiver of the effect. Hobbes also calls the efficient cause active power when it is referred to the future rather than to an actual effect; and in the same way material cause is called passive power. He further rejects the notions of formal and final cause; both, he says, can be reduced to efficient causes [ibid. II, 10, 7] [a]. The form or 'essence' of a thing can only be the cause of knowledge of that thing. Final causality relates to man's deliberation about ends and therefore must refer to the way efficient causality operates. His account of causation thus seems to be deterministic and mechanistic: effects follow from their causes necessarily and instantaneously. Cause and effect are both physically and logically inseparable — involving as they do transfer of motion by one body to another [a]. We cannot therefore conceive of an effect if any one of its 'entire' cause is absent. Hobbes says also that we do not always know in a particular case what the antecedent cause of an effect actually is.

PSYCHOLOGY

[5] [Concerning Body II, 8; IV, 25; Leviathan, ch. 6.] Hobbes extends his materialist philosophy uncompromisingly to psychology. He tries to account for man's mental life and behaviour entirely in terms of motions of extended bodies [a]. If it is legitimate to speak at all of a 'soul' or 'spirit', it must be understood as being a 'subtle' or 'fluid' body. He distinguishes two kinds of motions (found in animals as well as man): (1) vital motions, for example, the circulation of blood, respiration, digestion — processes which happen by themselves, without any conscious control or deliberation; (2) 'voluntary' or 'animal' motions. For these latter to occur we need first to receive external motions from the accidents in other bodies. These bring about internal motions manifested in imagination: we have images of motions such as speaking or moving a leg. These in turn produce the "small beginnings of motion within the body", which Hobbes calls endeavour (conatus), and which eventually appear in our bodily actions [b]. Other images are of colours, sounds, smells, and the like, which constitute our perception; and we also have dream images. If endeavour is directed towards its cause, it is called appetite or desire; but if away from the cause, aversion. If the relevant motions are experienced in the brain they are conceptions or thoughts (which Hobbes seems also to identify with images); but if continued on to the heart they are said to be passions such as love or joy (desires), or hate and grief (aversions). Hobbes rejects any notion of a 'will' as such; what we call will or volition, he says, is but the last appetite or aversion in the whole chain of our passions, which leads to action. This suggests a deterministic account of the causal processes constituting human choice and action. To have liberty for Hobbes is to be free of external restraint on our motions [c].

KNOWLEDGE

[6] [See, for example, Concerning Body I, 1; Leviathan, ch. 9.] "...the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another", Hobbes says [Leviathan, ch. 1]. Now, given that accidents such as colour, taste, and so on belong to the perceiver, what of the spatially extended bodies which supposedly really exist in the external world? How can we know that they exist? It is possible that only oneself exists, perhaps possessing a language of one's own but a language the relationship of which to reality we can know nothing about? Perhaps there is only the thinker, understood as but a sequence of inner 'phantasms'. While agreeing with Descartes' 'cogito' argument, he tries to avoid the solipsistic position by appealing to the evidence of change [see notes to Elements of Philosophy I; Concerning Body I; cf. Objections to Descartes' Meditations.] Because our thoughts are continually changing we must attribute them to external causes, as nothing can move itself; and such moving bodies must be extended in real space [a]. To explain our knowledge Hobbes distinguishes [Leviathan, ch. 9] between knowledge of facts ('effects') and knowledge of consequences. The former is grounded ultimately in 'appearances', that is, sense-impressions, and our memory images of them (called 'absolute'). Knowledge of consequences, which he regards as scientific of philosophical knowledge, is knowledge of facts and of the way in which they have been generated, namely through a causal process [b]. This is to be understood in terms of a deductive procedure. Knowledge of consequences is thus hypothetical or conditional, in so far as the conclusion depends on the premisses — which for Hobbes are ideally the general principles or 'definitions' of his synthetic method. It follows also that we can have no philosophical knowledge of any 'spiritual' God or even of history in so far as the latter appeals to memory experiences and not 'ratiocination' [Concerning Body I, 1, 8ff.]. Where he does talk about God it is always as a 'corporeal spirit' [c]. He stresses that philosophical knowledge is essentially practical in that it should lead to man's material well-being and social security. "The end of knowledge is power [d]... and the scope of all speculation is the performance of some action or thing to be done" [Concerning Body I, 1, 6].

ETHICS/ POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

[7] "The true moral philosophy" for Hobbes is the 'science' of good and evil, that is, the study of the (human) laws of nature. 'Good' and 'evil' are defined by individuals in terms of their own passions: "whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calls good: and the object of his hate, aversion, evil". [Lev., ch. 6, p. 24; cf. On the Citizen III, 31.] It follows that there is no objective good and evil [a], each man's 'voluntary' motions being different. The notion of an individual considered as prior to or separate from society is, however, for Hobbes and abstraction and not a historical fact; and his ethics is therefore best understood in the context of his political philosophy.

Individual humans, being material bodies and driven essentially by their appetites and aversions, must inevitably come into conflict if they are in what Hobbes calls the natural state — a hypothetical concept [b]. He identifies three causes of dispute: competition, 'diffidence' (mistrust), and glory or the desire for personal fame [Lev., ch. 13]. They also disagree about what is good or bad. They live, Hobbes says, in a constant fear of death. Though they may not always be actually fighting they remain in a state of readiness for war. Man's life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" [Lev., ch. 13, p. 62]. However, though motivated by their passions, men are also rational. And Hobbes says [Lev., ch. 14, p. 64] that reason reveals to us a general rule which contains (1) "the first and fundamental law of nature" — that man ought to seek his (own) peace and follow it; (2) the natural right to self-preservation, which tells us that — to the extent we cannot obtain peace — we should use all the means we can to defend ourselves. And we cannot renounce this right if we are to be consistent with ourselves as a rational human beings. Hobbes stresses that right consists in liberty (in his special sense), while law imposes obligations. From the first law he claims to derive eighteen more [see chs 14 and 15]. The second [pp. 64-5] states that in his pursuit of peace a man should be willing to renounce his right to self-defence provided others renounce theirs, that is, give up their liberty to hinder him [c]. This gives rise to a social contract, or, if one of the contractors is left to perform his part at a later date, a covenant [pp. 66ff.] The third law is then that men should perform the covenants they have made. Now to ensure that covenants are fulfilled individuals agree to transfer their rights to one person or an assembly of persons. Hobbes calls this 'artefact' the Sovereign or Commonwealth — the "Great Leviathan or mortal god, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence" [Lev. ch. 17, p. 87]. He stresses that covenants are made between individuals and not with the Sovereign whose subjects they will be. This is because the centralizing of authority will prevent a division of power, and because power can be enforceable by the sword (and comes into being with the covenant itself). The commonwealth may be a monarchy (which Hobbes favours), a democracy, or an aristocracy [d], depending on its effectiveness in preserving peace. The commonwealth thus described has been established by what Hobbes calls 'institution', that is, through agreement. But he also allows for a commonwealth by 'acquisition' — through force. But the rights of the Sovereign [Lev., 18] are the same in both. He has absolute inalienable power (he cannot give it away), though he can delegate others (individuals or a parliament) to act on his behalf. The Sovereign determines what is right or wrong (and thereby what is 'just' and 'unjust') and lays down the civil laws [e] required to preserve the peace and guarantee to all "commodious living". Hobbes accepts that the Sovereign must be obeyed in all things relevant — even if this involves curtailment of freedom of opinon and expression; for it is law that protects the individual against violence from others, removes restraints. But this guarantees natural liberty in so far as this consists on the absence of external hindrances to motion [f]. The killing of enemies of the state, however, is justified if the action is performed so as to preserve the commonwealth. Where self-protection is not the issue in any given matter, the individual may legitimately refuse to obey the Sovereign's command (though he may still be punished for disobedience). There are also a number of areas of human life with which the Sovereign does not interfere, such as where one decides to live, what to eat, and so on. As each subject is the author of the Sovereign's actions (by virtue of his empowerment through the social contract), the Sovereign himself cannot be punished or put to death; for he always acts in their name, and in effect one subject would be punishing another. another. Although the Sovereign has been given absolute power, the right of the individual to self-preservation remains paramount; and Hobbes says [Lev., ch. 21] that should a Sovereign fail to guarantee liberty and afford protection to those who have placed him in authority they would have the right to depose him and seek another [g]. Even the prisoner sentenced to death has the right to resist. As for the Sovereign's relationship to the Church, Hobbes had said in his On the Citizen that responsibility for interpreting the scriptures should be accorded to the latter, and that any interpretation the Sovereign might attempt should be effected through the clergy. However, in the Leviathan [ch. 42] he changed his position and argued that interpretation should be the exclusive prerogative of the Sovereign, and indeed that the Church should be subordinate to the Sovereign's decrees [h].

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Hobbes is known primarily for his outstanding work in political philosophy. However, his contribution to other areas of philosophy should not be underestimated — not least because of his rejection of rationalist metaphysics, scholasticism and all theological assumptions.

(1) His discussion of the misuse of language is important and influential.. But his linguistic nominalism (which can be seen as anticipating twentieth century structuralism) is open to objections. Not all words 'name' things; and some of Hobbes's distinctions are not as clear as one would wish. Furthermore, to the extent that privacy is implicit in what seems to be his view that thought is separable from and prior to language, it is arguable that the way to a public world of shared meaning is blocked. Similarly, given that definitions are of names which apply to 'cogitations', there is a problem concerning the application of science to the external world: although Hobbes does presuppose the existence of bodies, his assumptions would seem to require him to be committed to scepticism in this respect.

(2) His mechanistic-materialistic account of nature, including human psychology. While it might be claimed that a merit of his theory is that it dispenses with any notion of an abstract 'will' there is a problem in that it is difficult to accommodate the idea of free choice within this framework. Moreover, his limited view of freedom, which he defines as the absence of external restraint, can be regarded as a narrow basis on which to base an account of human action sufficient to underpin his social and ethical philosophy. His rejection of voluntarism also sits uneasily with his statement in the Leviathan that men ought to seek peace, the 'will' for him being but the last appetite or aversion in the causal chain leading to action.

(3) Hobbes appeals to a universal deductive-inductive methodology, but arguably this is not fully worked out. For example, he starts with definitions grounded in sense-experience and deduces effects, but he seems to underestimate the role of experiment. Moreover, despite his intention to apply the method universally, it is not strictly adhered to in his socio-political philosophy, in that he does not attempt a rigorous deduction of first principles of political 'science' from 'motions' as causes but starts from a consideration of the hypothetical 'state of nature' and its consequences. His failure to do so, however, can well be seen as a point in his favour.

(4) The central ideas of his social and political philosophy, especially the social contract and the Absolute Sovereign are of great importance. But here too there are difficulties. Firstly it is unclear whether Hobbes's 'ought' is to be understood ethically (in which case the Humean objection to any move from fact to value can be raised), or whether he is making the point that it would be contrary to reason for human beings not to seek to preserve themselves and therefore peace. Further he does not provide an adequate account of how individuals in the chaos of the natural state might establish the contract in the first place. His view of man can also be regarded as unduly negative and limited. It is certainly a matter for debate whether egoism and hedonism are the only or even the primary motivating forces underlying human behaviour. Many sociobiologists today argue that human altruism and feelings of sympathy for others are grounded in human 'nature' and that sociability is a natural condition. As for the Sovereign, the view that Hobbes's conception is of a totalitarian dictator is probably exaggerated, not least because Hobbes allows that his powers may be delegated to other individuals or committees and that he must therefore rely on their cooperation. Moreover, the Sovereign too is human; and one can suppose it would be in his own best interests to rule justly so as to ensure the safety and commodious living of his subjects. Hobbes makes it clear that should he fail to do so then it would be right for the people to depose him. The problem here of course is how they are to determine that he is in fact failing in his responsibilities. Who is to judge? By what criteria? The practicality of removing him may also not have been fully considered by Hobbes — for all his experience of the Civil War.

READING

Hobbes: De Cive (1642) (On the Citizen); Leviathan (1651); De Homine (1657) (On Man); De Corpore (1665) (Concerning Body). For On the Citizen and On Man see B. Gert (ed.) (there is also a Penguin edition of On Man); and of many editions of Leviathan that of C. B. Macpherson is one of the most useful.

Studies:

Introductory

R. Tuck, Hobbes.

R. Peters, Hobbes.

More advanced

G. Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory.

T. Sorell, Hobbes.

J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas.

Collections of essays

M. Cranston and R. Peters (eds), Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays.

T. Sorell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes.

CONNECTIONS

Hobbes

Note: Hobbes's general rejection of Aristotelian scholasticism; also the influence on him of Galileo [1564-1632] (methodology; primary and secondary qualities), and Grotius [1583-1645] (ethical and political thought), through whose The Laws of War and Peace many views of the Stoics were also mediated.

Philosophical Connections

Compiled by Anthony Harrison-Barbet

HOBBES