Thomas HOBBES (1588-1679):

Historical context for Leviathan (1651): English Civil War (=Puritan Revolution), 1642-1649; execution of King Charles I in 1649; the "Fronde" (=a revolt of the French nobles and the bourgeois of Paris against the absolutist policies of the late Cardinal Richelieu and his successor Cardinal Mazarin, 1649-52, when Louis XIV was still a child); Cromwell's Protectorate; economic and social tensions in England in the early and mid seventeenth century.

Traditional conception of English society in 17^th century: "Divinely ordained cosmic order, linking the entire universe from inanimate matter to God himself, provided every individual with a natural place or degree" (Underdown). This was interpreted as a "chain of reciprocal authority and obedience [which] joined King to humblest labourer in a series of interlocking hierarchies; the hierarchy of the village or urban community, presided over by squire and parson, mayor and aldermen; the hierarchy of the country community, directed by the Lord Lieuternant and his deputies,, by high sheriff and JPs; the hierarchy of the community of the realm, surmounted by the King and lord." Tampering with this invited confusion and social disintegration.

Patriarchal family at heart of this conception of political order, with husbands ruling over wives, parent over children, patriarch over servants and members of household. All of this was placed in context of divine order and commandment to honor parents.

Orders of society (Thomas Smith): nobility, gentry, burgesses, yeoman, and "the fourth sort who do not rule."

Hobbes' context is the English Civil War (or Puritan Revolution) of 1642-1648. The background for the Civil War is King Charles I's attempt to rule as an absolute monarch. Charles I and his advisors were attempting to do in England what Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu were doing in France, create the political and administrative foundations for royal absolutism, and, in the process, break the independent power of the treat nobles and local elites. Charles I's attempt through Archbishop William Laud to impose religious uniformity within the Anglican Church was a non-violent version of Richelieu's attack upon the Huguenot strongholds, such as La Rochelle (as in the "Four Musketeers"). The point was to have a kingdom in which there would be one God, one king, one Church--all supporting political order and stability. The English Civil War was the response of the local gentry, many of them Puritans, represented by Parliament, to Charles I's attempts to increase the power of the monarchy and impose uniformity of religion.

It is interesting to note that while England was undergoing its own revolt of the local elites against the centralizing tendencies of the central government--the Puritan Revolution (1642-9)--France had a similar noble reaction, the so-called Fronde (1649-52)

The actual impact of the English Civil War, in historian David Underdown's words, was "one of misery and havoc, confirming the not very original conclusion that war, and particularly civil war, is hell". Hobbes, viewing the Civil War from Paris and then witnessing Paris and its environs engulfed in their own civil war, must have thought that the world was falling apart around him. For Hobbes the bottom line is that civil war is a state of anarchy, and that anarchy is the worst condition forhuman beings. Since, according to Hobbes, man is both rational and driven by appetites and fears (he emphasizes especiallyfear of death), man will take any measure he can to ensure his continued existence. This means that he will seek a state of peace with his fellow men, not out of fellow feeling or love, but for his own safety. However, the only way anyone can truly trust anyone else is if there is some power standing above both that can keep each man safe from his neighbor. This "living God" is Hobbes' sovereign, the "Leviathan."

Hobbes' biography is given in the intro to the Hobbes selection in Morgan. Know who Hobbes was and which side he supported in the English Civil War. (Note that Hobbes was the tutor to the exiled Charles I in Paris at the time that he was writing Leviathan.)

Intellectual influences on Hobbes:

A. Scientific revolution (especially Galileo, whom Hobbes met in 1636); geometry (he fell in love with Euclid's method of demonstration through deduction. There is a story told by a contemporary biographer that Hobbes, "being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open...He read the Proposition. 'By G--, sayd he .... This is impossible! So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. And so on, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of the truth. This made him in love with Geometry.") What Hobbes took from Euclid was a method that allowed one to demonstrate the truth of complex and clear propositions that everyone would agree were true. Hobbes aimed at certainty.

Euclid's influence is seen in Hobbes' careful use of definitions and first principles (e.g. the only thing that man can know in the physical world is matter and motion, which is known through sensory perceptions) from which he deduces propositions that he believed were demonstrably true.

Galileo's influence appears both in Hobbes' materialism and empiricism (emphasis on physical matter and knowing the world through experiencing it) and in the method that Hobbes used. Hobbes's debt to Galileo is apparent in the very first premise with which Hobbes begins his argument: 'That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely that nothing can change it self, is not so easily assented to.' (chap. 20. This is the so-called LAW OF INERTIA, a direct attack upon Aristotle's assumption that everything that moves must be moved by something else that is in motion. For Hobbes, life is nothing more than motion. Pain is defined as that which impedes a man's motion. Pleasure is that which facilitates it.

Since Hobbes aimed at arriving at self-evident truths, he needed a method that permitted him to posit basic propositions. Hence he adopted Galileo's 'resolutive-compositive method.' This had two parts. First, one begins by assuming that the observable thing is the compound effect of simple, unobserved factors. So one begins by positing what these simple, basic factors are. This is an exercise in imagination. Galileo used it to imagine simple motions that, when combined, could produce the complex motion that he was trying to understand (such as the trajectory of a cannonball). The compositive stage was to deduce from these simple factors the complex phenomenon that one wished to understand.

Since Hobbes planned to analyze the nature of human civil society (political science), he began by resolving political society into its simplest, most basic components--individual human beings--and then resolved those human beings into their most basic motions and forces, which, when compounded, would lead one to an explanation of the nature of human society. The State of Nature is thus an imaginative exercise for Hobbes, akin to Galileo's imagining motion in a vacuum (a state that did not exist in the nature that he knew, but which was essential to posit in order to understand the true nature of motion and force.)

B. Classical literature. Hobbes was a teacher (tutor for the noble Cavendish family) and an intellectual. He was a Classical scholar His intellectual influences included:

1. Thucydides, whose history of the Peloponnesian War he translated into English and his theory of power politics ("Melian Dialogue");

2. Plato (arguably the first two books of LEVIATHAN are a response to book two of Plato's REPUBLIC. Hobbes decided to present Glaucon's and Adeimantus' arguments as they SHOULD HAVE been presented.

3. The Sophists. Hobbes was the first 'modern' political philosopher to assume that man is an individual driven by the desire to possess things and survivie, and that human society is NOT natural, but merely a collection of individuals living together under agreed upon rules. Though Hobbes was strikingly original in this ideal in 1651, we can see the roots of this thought in the Sophists whom Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle attempted to refute.

C. Augustine's and Calvin's psychology of fallen man. Theologically, Hobbes was a Calvinist. Much of his theological arguments in book three of LEVIATHAN, which nobody ever reads, is rooted in Calvin's notion of the complete power and majesty of God. For Hobbes, there is a radical disjuncture between this world and heaven. What he is describing in the first two books of LEVIATHAN is what must be done--and will be done by rational men obeying natural law, i.e., the dictates of their reason--to obtain a measure of peace and tranquility in this life. Note: Hobbes' dismissal of true happiness in this life (chap. 6) comes straight out of Augustine:

[Hobbes' definition of happiness: "Continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desires, that is to say, continual prospering, is what men call FELICITY=HAPPINESS; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is NO SUCH THING AS PERPETUAL TRANQUILITY OF MIND, WHILE WE LIVE HERE; BECAUSE LIFE IS BUT MOTION, AND CAN NEVER BE WITHOUT DESIRE, NOR WITHOUT FEAR, NO MORE THAN WITHOUT SENSE."

He comments in chap 11:

"So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceases only in death." The reason is not simply that men are constantly seeking new pleasures, although that is part of it, but that men are constantly afraid that someone else will take away what he already has. In short, we are all in a perpetual state of competition with everyone else, everyone seeking power to satisfy their desires and to protect what they have. This the foundation of what Hobbes calls a war of every man against every man (ch. 13).

This is Augustine's fallen man.

Do NOT just learn about what Hobbes has to say about the state of nature and the nature of man: he only sets this forth in order to explain why the SOVEREIGN STATE=LEVIATHAN is essential for man's welfare and happiness (see especially chaps 17-18). Indeed, Hobbes will end up insisting that it is in a man's best interest to transfer all of his power to an absolute sovereign (who can be either one man or a group of men) who will NOT be answerable to him for any of its actions. He will also argue that it is in the best interest of an individual WHEN HE BELONGS TO A CIVIL SOCIETY RULED BY AN ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGN, to behave according to the rule, DO TO OTHERS WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO TO YOU. In short, Hobbes manages to base the Christian golden rule on SELF INTEREST!!!

The social contract that creates civil society (the LEVIATHAN) for Hobbes is a transfer of power by each individual to a sovereign. THE SOVEREIGN, HOWEVER, MAKES NO CONTRACT WITH HIS SUBJECTS. HE PROMISES THEM NOTHING. HE IS SIMPLY THE BENEFICIARY OF THEIR CONTRACT WITH ONE ANOTHER. This is most clearly expressed in CHAPTER 17-18, which you ought to read very carefully in conjunction with chapters 13-15.

Hobbes was accused in his own day of being an atheist. I do not think this to be true. (Half of Leviathan is devoted to consideration of religion, the half that nobody nowadays reads!) He was a professed Calvinist, even if a supporter of the king in the Civil War, and an ERASTIAN in his view of churches. (Erastus was a Protestant political thinker who believed that secular rulers could and should determine the structure and form that worship takes. Archbishop William Laud had been an Erastian.) Hobbes was also a maetrialist. Like Descartes, Hobbes separated matter and spirit completely. Spirit was for

Hobbes the subject of faith/belief, not of scientific investigation. Science, including the science of man, must deal strictly with material things--matter, forces, motion. In this Hobbes was a disciple of a fourteenth-century English theologian and philosopher William of Ockam (d. 1349).

I recommend that you read the Hill article on Hobbes linked to the syllabus. It is very good.

LOCKE (1632-1704)

Hobbes (1588-1678) wrote Leviathan in 1651 in reaction to the violence and anarchy produced by the English Civil War/Puritan Revolution (1642-1649), while Locke wrote in justification of the propertied elite's resistance to King James II's attacks upon their

'liberty' (as embodied by Parliament's authority). John Locke published his Second Treatise of Government in 1690, and it has long been thought to have been written in 1689 as an after the fact justification for the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (on which, read Spielvogel and look at the chronology that I handed out today in class). In fact, Locke appears to have written it before the Revolution. Nonetheless, it is accurate to say that it represents the mentality of the English elite who drove James II off the throne in 1688 and invited in his daughter Mary and her husband William (the leading prince of the Netherlands) to assume the throne.

In part the Glorious Revolution was a reaction against James II's Catholicism. But the main issues were 1) James II's attempt to rule absolutely by controlling elections to Parliament, and 2) his attempts to raise revenues without Parliamentary consent. (The latter was the same issue that brought down Charles I in 1642-9.) Locke's Second Treatise was written as a defense of property rights against the claims of the government. My take is that Locke began with the premise that property-rights are prior to the creation of government, and that governments cannot take private property without consent. To prove this, Locke had to create a particular sort of 'state of nature,' one much different from Hobbes'. He also had to posit a God-given 'law of nature' known to all men in the state of nature by reason that dictated rights to life, liberty and property. In doing so, he fell into a possible contradiction with his other major work of philosophy, the Essay concerning Human Understanding (also 1690), which argues that all ideas are the result of sensory perceptions (this is called empiricsm; it is also what Hobbes believed).

Locke's challenge is to create a state of nature that is good and desirable, with natural rights and human beings capable of and willing to recognize them, and yet to provide some reason why humans would wish to leave such an idyllic state of nature and form a civil society. Whether he really pulled this off or not is something that you should consider.

Where Hobbes and Locke agree is that the state is artificial, men in nature are individuals seeking to acquire goods, that the state is the result of a covenant among the governed (a social contract), and that the idea for that covenant is the result of human reason. Where they profoundly disagree is over the powers and purposes of and limitations upon government.

Remember, the importance of Locke is not so much for the power of his logic and the rigor of his thought (as it is for Hobbes), but for its historical influence. If you doubt that, just look at the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson ripped him off!

Special note: Locke argued that sovereignty derived from the people through a social contract, and that government had only a 'fiduciary' position (a position of trust). Government was devised IN ORDER to safeguard the natural rights of individuals to life, liberty and property. Because of this, Locke emphasized the right of the people as a political community to withdraw the powers from a tyrannical government. That government, by attacking the natural rights of the people, became a tyrant and lost its authority. It, not the people, was the 'rebel.'

What is crucial is not to mistake Locke for a 'democrat' or for a proponent of economic, social or political equality. It is easy to do. His doctrines of the rights of nature and the natural equality of men, based as on God's law and man's ability to comprehend it through reason, might lead one to believe that Locke's social contract establishes a 'democracy.' It doesn't. Locke in the Second Treatise was not a systematic, consistent thinker. He wanted to have it both ways so that he could defend the right to revolution and a social and economic hierarchy. (The true democrats of the 17th century were the Levellers and the Diggers, radical Protestants who preached a doctrine of economic equality based on the primitive communism of the New Testament and the 'democracy' of the Old Testament's age of the judges--'When Adam dug and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?' Cromwell and the leaders of the Puritan Revolution disapproved of these radicals, who threatened the very social order of England.) Locke outlines principles for property in the state of nature in ch. 5. The earth belongs to all men, since God created for man. But individuals can appropriate what is common to all by laboring upon the land (labor is the source of property and of value for Locke). But Locke set two limitations on how much we could appropriate (based on the right of all to life): 1) a man must leave as much and as good land for others to appropriate, since each man has a right to self preservation and the earth was given by God to all; 2) one cannot appropriate more than one can use before it spoils, since 'Nothing was made by God for man to spoil of destroy.' So, in nature, a man cannot gather so many fruits that he cannot each all of them. In sections 36-72 Locke then provides the mechanism whereby these two limitations can be transcended: the invention of money!! Money is introduced by tacit consent of all men. It represents one's past labor; money permits us to accumulate more than we can use at any one time, and this, for Locke, means that we can produce more things, which we can then sell. Commerce and industry are fostered by the introduction of money. The other limitation is transcended through wages. A man's labor is his own property; he can sell that property to another. Hence, labor itself is a commodity. The product of labor sold to another belongs to the individual paying the wages. As a result, the primitive equality of all men evolved into a hierarchy of wealth, which Locke accepts as natural and good. (For Locke, wage laborers ought not to be given a vote in civil society, since they are dependent upon their masters and hence will vote according to his will.) Thus the majority will, which Locke says have sovereign authority in a political society (sects 97-98)

Note also that since political society and government are established to protect and preserve man's natural rights, a government has not right to invade private property (sect 124. But governments are created, in part, to regulate property (sect. 3), which it has the right to do through law (which represents the will of the majority as expressed by the representative legislative body). Taxation is necessary for government to discharge its duty to promote the common good, but taxation is only permissible with the owner's consent, i.e. the consent of the majority (sect 138-9).

The relationship between the 'people' (=the civil society created by the social contract), legislative and executive is outlined in sects 143 and 149: the legislative power of necessity is supreme, and a legislature must represent the majority will. Study carefully ch. 19 "Of the Dissolution of Government". Note the distinction between political society, created by compact of the people, and government, created by the political society to protect natural rights and to promote the common good. Since the government is only entrusted with power, if government acts against its trust, it may be legitimately dissolved. The people are the judge to whether the government has become tyrannical. The right to revolution expressed here ought to be compared with Hobbes' contention that a revolution is NEVER 'just', since justice is defined as fulfilling contracts, and our basic contract is to lay down our individual rights to use our power and to transfer that power to the sovereign.