Hobbes's Claim Research Articles

The Vicar and the Sovereign: Monarchism in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield

This essay reevaluates the narrative failings of Oliver Goldsmith's only novel, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), through its idiosyncratic defense of monarchism. I argue that the text's grim scene of abandonment—flagged in the very meaning of "vicar" as substitute or stand-in—returns us to the collapse of commonwealth in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) and its signature world without a sovereign. Through a comparative textual analysis that also draws on contemporary and Enlightenment political theories, I argue that the rupture of civil society envisioned by the two writers takes place not between subjects and their ruler but among subjects themselves—a crucial distinction under-recognized in recent theorizations of sovereign power. A century after Leviathan, Goldsmith re-engages Hobbes's claims that "[t]o make Covenant with God, is impossible" and exposes how a broken social compact, especially between the rich and the poor, creates systemic injustice: mass incarceration, bloated legal institutions, and a culture of avarice. In pairing the eighteenth-century writer with the early-modern philosopher, I draw out their shared concerns over the tenuousness of social relations in a competitive market society and the inescapability of human corruption in any form of the state. This essay's return to Hobbes contributes to an ongoing reevaluation of sentimental literature's dubious constructions of sympathy emergent from the English civil war. It also explores the persistence of allegory in novelistic characterization.

The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650) by Francis Oakley

Reviewed by: The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650)by Francis Oakley David Wootton The Watershed of Modern Politics: Law, Virtue, Kingship, and Consent (1300-1650). By Francis Oakley. [ The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages, Vol. 3.] (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2005. Pp. xviii, 415. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-300-19443-2.) This is the third volume of a trilogy entitled "The Emergence of Western Political Thought in the Latin Middle Ages." Oakley, who began publishing very nearly sixty years ago, has long been one of the most distinguished historians of ecclesiological and political thought in the long period, from Augustine to the English Civil War, covered by this series. This present book stands alongside Brian Tierney's Religion, Law, and the Growth of Constitutional Thought(1982) in demonstrating the growth of modern constitutionalism, and even democratic radicalism, out of the conciliarist theories of the Councils of Constance and Basel. As a general account of political thought in this three-hundred-year period the book is notable for its hostility to the arguments of Hans Baron and John Pocock and to all those who have joined them in stressing republicanism as the source of modern liberty. Quentin Skinner (with whose methodology Oakley has expressed forceful disagreement) plays a puzzling role here. Volume 2 of his Foundations of Modern Political Thought(1978) is rightly praised for grasping the importance of conciliarism, and Skinner's reading of Machiavelli as a republican is generally followed; but no work by Skinner after 1988 is cited, which means that Oakley fails to come to grips with works such as Liberty Before Liberalism(1997), which offer an alternative to the Baron/Pocock account of the central importance of republican theorizing. This omission is surely deliberate, and it is refreshing to read a book which takes a long view of the historiography, discussing histories of conciliarism from John N. Figgis to Constantin Fasolt, or even, indeed, from Melchior Goldast von Haiminsfeld to George Garnett. The bibliography is long and judicious, though my own essay on the origins of Civil War radicalism (1990) might have been of use in helping Oakley tackle the puzzling transition from the constitutionalism of a George Buchanan to the radical individualism of the Levellers. The book has two main themes. The first is relatively conventional (thanks in large part to Oakley's own previous work): modern constitutionalism is an outgrowth of conciliarism. The second emerges clearly (for this reader at least) only in the last few pages, and I found it puzzling and challenging. No reader familiar with Oakley's work will be surprised that he is a conciliarist; but it is crucial to this book that he is also (it seems) an Augustinian—hence his remarkably sympathetic account [End Page 559]of Martin Luther. Oakley's argument is that the creation of sacral kingship in the early Middle Ages and the development of a papacy claiming both sacramental and jurisdictional authority were contrary to the fundamental principle, theorized in Augustine's account of the two cities, that Christ's kingdom is not of this world. Christianity thus, when properly understood, became a force for secularization, and we owe not only modern constitutionalism but also the full separation of Church and State to the working out of the conciliarist tradition. It is thus Oakley's contention that secularization (as he understands the term) is not contrary to, but inseparable from, sound ecclesiology. He repeatedly quotes Thomas Hobbes's claim that the new wine of Christianity had been poured into the empty bottles of Gentilism: Conciliarism, the Reformation, and the Puritan sects slowly wrenched apart the religious from the secular, decanting Christianity from its worldly container. This is a Catholic history which is more sympathetic to Hobbes than to Robert Bellarmine. Oakley is thus that most interesting of historians: one whose spiritual and intellectual commitments shape their understanding of the past, but do so in a way which is idiosyncratic, original, and thought-provoking. This is a fine book. David Wootton University of York Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press

Sovereignty against Autonomy

Dreamy Platonists and pantheistic youths at the mastheads of nineteenth-century whalers might be surprised to find a description of their oceanic reveries in the pages of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651). Yet in the second chapter, “Of Imagination,” Hobbes introduces a metaphor for the movements of a mind at sea very similar to one Herman Melville proposes in chapter 35 of Moby-Dick (1851): “And as wee see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rowling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion, which is made in the internall parts of a man, then, when he Sees, Dreams, &c” (Hobbes 88). Before the appearance of the “great LEVIATHAN” or “SOVERAIGNE” in chapter 17, Hobbes develops an exhaustive account of human sensation, cognition, and action, describing a liquid mind that is activated and agitated by the material world. In this way, Hobbes suggests, thoughts are the waves the world makes as it rolls through the material mind. The Hobbesian imagination is no self-animating or autonomous faculty, and Hobbes claims no sovereignty for the singular mind or person. Instead, Hobbes theorizes an emphatically material, dependent, and secondary mind, along with a personhood that is artificial and a sovereignty that can only be generated collectively. !!...!!

Hobbes's Leviathan: A tale of two bodies

This article focuses on Hobbes's use of metaphor, particularly the larger structural metaphor of the artificial man in Leviathan. Hobbes claims to draw his political animal according to the figurative outlines of the natural one, despite the significant differences between these two bodies. In Part I we see the scientifically-minded Hobbes reject the old dualistic imagery of body and soul, act and will; but in Part II the politically-minded Hobbes appeals to exactly these dualistic distinctions in order to lend his radical vision of the state the numinous appeal of the medieval and Tudor formulations. An understanding of Hobbes's rhetorical strategy, and what I call his strategic use of dualism, can show how the recent linguistic turn in Hobbes studies can in fact re-open the much older debate on the overall unity of his philosophical system.

Reason and Desire After the Fall of Man: A Rereading of Hobbes’s Two Postulates of Human Nature

Hobbes claimed to have discovered two most certain (certissima) postulates of human nature: first, the postulate cupiditatis naturalis, whereby man demands private use of common things and second, the postulate rationis naturalis, which teaches man to avoid violent death or “fly contra-natural dissolution” as the greatest natural evil. From these two postulates, Hobbes claims to demonstrate “by most evident connection” his moral and civil doctrines. But the character of Hobbes’s two postulates and their role in grounding his political philosophy has been a flashpoint of contention. This is not surprising given what is at stake: our reading of these postulates will implicate our understanding of Hobbes’s most celebrated moral and political doctrines. In what follows, I take up Leo Strauss’s influential analysis of the Hobbes’s two postulates and identify some problems for Strauss’s interpretation. I then sketch a rereading of the two postulates in light of the Christian Aristotelian or Thomistic tradition of thought. I argue that Hobbes’s human nature teaching is not as radically novel as has often been thought.1

Happiness in a Mechanistic Universe: Thomas Hobbes on the Nature and Attainability of Happiness

AbstractThe article revisits the originality of Hobbes's concept of happiness on the basis of Hobbes's two accounts found respectively in Thomas White's De Mundo Examined and Leviathan. It is argued that Hobbes's claim that happiness consists in the unhindered advance from one acquired good to another ought to be understood against the background of Hobbes's theory of sensation and the imagination, on the one hand, and Hobbes's doctrine of conatus, on the other. It is further claimed that the account of happiness in White's De Mundo differs from that in Leviathan. In the former work, happiness is defined not as the mere progression from one good to another but as the joy/mental pleasure derived from the awareness of one's unhindered advance. The traditional claim that Hobbes is an ethical subjectivist is examined in connection with Hobbes's view of the subjectivity of happiness and the rejection of the summum bonum. Lastly, Hobbes's distinction between worldly and everlasting happiness is discussed.

O direito à vida nos elementos da lei natural e política de Hobbes

Este artigo visa examinar os limites da liberdade de ação do homem, isto é, de seu direito natural, levando-se em consideração a finalidade última desse direito nos Elementos da lei natural e política de Hobbes. Essa finalidade seria a auto-preservação do homem. Entretanto, para que esse direito seja efetivamente respeitado, Hobbes alega ser necessário a constituição de um poder soberano. Não basta assim uma simples convenção entre os homens para garantir a paz. Ou seja, se faz necessário a existência de uma ordem política regida por um poder soberano absoluto para que a preservação da vida tenha efeito jurídico. Hobbes entende que somente o estado civil é o único capaz de estabelecer as condições efetivas para que esse objetivo seja atingido.

Hobbes's Liberty and Skinner's Discontent

This article questions the plausibility of the interpretation of Hobbes's liberty that Quentin Skinner articulates in Hobbes and Republican Liberty. It argues that Skinner's book fails to prove two of the three claims it must uphold: the ‘textual accuracy claim’ and his ‘methodological claim’. This article maintains that understanding Hobbes's use of liberty in Leviathan according to his definition of ‘corporall liberty’, as Skinner does, ignores many of Hobbes's claims that invoke liberty outside the beginning of chapter 21, resulting in a one-dimensional reading of Hobbes.

THE ANGLICAN ATTACK ON HOBBES IN PARIS, 1651

ABSTRACTAbout the circumstances surrounding Hobbes's dismissal from Charles's court and his subsequent departure from Paris at the end of 1651 we know little. While recent scholarship has clarified the broad outline of events, fresh evidence allows us to add some detail, showing that Leviathan was attacked in a sermon delivered by Richard Steward in the Anglican chapel of Sir Richard Browne, thus confirming Hobbes's claim for the involvement of the Anglican establishment in engineering his dismissal from court and giving us a slightly clearer sense of the source and character of the move against him.

Hobbes's Politically Subversive Messianism

Hobbes's Politically Subversive Messianism Samantha Frost (bio) James Martel . Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat. New York NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. 248 pages. $34.50 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-231-13984-7. In Subverting the Leviathan, James Martel offers an intriguing and multi-layered reading of Hobbes that seeks to wrest his work both from the misperception that he is an advocate of a brutally absolutist form of politics and from recent efforts to recast his work as foundational text for liberalism. Martel proposes to do this by considering Hobbes's theories and use of rhetoric as well as the eschatology he elaborates in the second half of Leviathan. Indeed, it is at the points where Hobbes's claims about rhetoric and his account of messianic religious history converge that Martel discovers a set of subversive—and what he calls radically democratic—insights that throw into question the arguments about sovereignty and sovereign power laid out in the first half of Leviathan. At one level, Martel's work functions as an invitation to consider anew the centrality of reading and rhetoric to Hobbes's arguments. In fact, he raises the fascinating question of how we are to engage a political text in which the use of rhetoric is explicitly acknowledged both as a facet of politics and as a tool of political theory itself. Martel's argument here is that the act of self-reflexivity on the part of the writer promotes self-reflexivity on the part of reader. In highlighting the activity of reading in this way, Hobbes exposes the work of rhetoric, or, more precisely, the rhetorical work that we do when we produce and negotiate meaning. So, to be aware of rhetoric is to be aware of the collective activity of producing and agreeing upon meaning. Rhetoric, then, is political; it reveals to us our involvement in the meaning-making activities through which we constitute our political world. Extending this insight about rhetoric to consider Hobbes's nominalism, Martel argues that in making explicit the emptiness of the sign and our use of signs to figure our thoughts and will, Hobbes exposes the dependence of sovereign authority upon our "reading" of it, that is, upon our thoughts and representations of it. The sovereignty of the sovereign is not "in" the sovereign as a kind of ontological or empirical substance nor is it "real" in the sense of being a product of a substantial transference of right. Rather, sovereignty is an effect produced in and through our collective relationship to it and we make it effective in organizing our actions insofar as collectively we acquiesce to its directives. According to Martel, to highlight this rhetorical dimension of Hobbes's argument is to underscore the importance of Hobbes's claim that the power of the sovereign rests upon the opinion of the people—which is to say that it is fragile thing indeed. However, to focus solely on the political work of rhetoric in this way is to miss what Martel suggests is one of the main points of Leviathan, which is to elaborate how we might conceive of sovereignty in this time between Moses's rule over the ancient Israelites and Jesus's rule over earth upon his promised and anticipated return. Indeed, Martel's reading is a rejoinder—and perhaps a reproach—to those among us who treat the third and fourth parts of Leviathan as a mere supplement that draws on often-strained interpretations of Scripture to repeat and reaffirm what is accordingly construed as the "main argument" about the social contract in parts one and two. According to Martel, to ignore the eschatology in the second half of Leviathan is entirely to miss the point of both the rhetorical and political claims Hobbes makes. Martel argues that, according to Hobbes, "we live in a time between God's overt ruling of the world (as 'king' of ancient Israel with Moses as Lieutenant) and God's rule over an eternal kingdom after the second coming of Christ" (102). Together, these two moments are the basis both for re-evaluating contemporary claims to political authority and for constituting a political community...

Hobbes's Voluntarist Theory of Morals

AbstractTwo interpretations of Hobbes's theory of morals dominate the subject: the Egoistic Reading (ER) and the Naturalist Reading (NR). According to ER, all of Hobbes's moral concepts are self-interested at their core. According to NR, Hobbes's Laws of Nature set down genuine moral obligations/virtues both inside of the state of nature and out. This article rejects both of these interpretations in favor of a Voluntarist Reading (VR). On this reading, morality is an artifact of human endeavor, specifically covenanting. Unlike both ER and NR, VR takes seriously Hobbes's claim that there is “no obligation on any man which ariseth not from some act of his own”.

Defending the Hobbesian Right of Self-Defense

A well-known part of Hobbes's political theory is his discussion of the inalienability of the right of self-defense. In this article, I present and defend a reinterpretation of Hobbes's account of self-defense. I begin by showing the weaknesses of the standard interpretation of this account: It rests on an implausible thesis about the evil of death; it renders Hobbes's applications of the right of self-defense inexplicable; and it conflicts with Hobbes's claim that there are cases in which the right of self-defense can be given up. I argue that we should understand Hobbes's claim to be that the right of self-defense is inalienable only in the social contract, and I offer a new interpretation of how his argument on this point might go.

Kant against Hobbes: Reasoning and Rhetoric

AbstractThis paper aims to offer an analysis of `Against Hobbes', the title of the second section of Kant's essay On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory but is of no Use in Practice. The paper suggests that we should take the title `Against Hobbes' seriously and that Kant meant to target Hobbes as the standard-bearer of the old regime and in particular Hobbes's claim that the Head of state cannot act unjustly against his citizens. It is argued that Kant's interpretation of Hobbes conforms to what can be regarded as the majority view in Hobbesian scholarship and that Kant poses a serious challenge to Hobbes, in so far as he removes the very foundations from Hobbes's argument on justice, namely, a specific notion of natural law. Finally the paper highlights Kant's lack of interest in engaging with possible Hobbesian counter-arguments.

Warmongers, Martyrs, and Madmen versus the Hobbesian Laws of Nature

Hobbes claims all persons agree on the value of the laws of nature and the peace to which they are means. He also sees the laws of nature as the ‘conclusions’ of right reason. But Hobbes argues that right reason in nature is particularized; each agent may decide which reasons govern her conduct. If Hobbes is then to cast the laws of nature as conclusions of right reason, he must either explain why the extent to which right reason in nature is particularized is not such as to impede convergence on the laws of nature, or he must explain why any divergence is irrelevant to the justification of the laws of nature.

Wild Ranging: Prudence and Philosophy's Imitation of God in the Works of Thomas Hobbes

'Hobbes and the Imitation of God' ( Inquiry , 44, 223-6) is Eric Brandon's criticism of my article, 'Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God' ( Inquiry , 42, 149-76). Brandon's criticisms are rooted in a misunderstanding of what is argued. Observations made concerning Hobbes's claims about prudence - a form of thinking Hobbes distinguishes from philosophic practice - are erroneously described by Brandon as a part of arguments concerning Hobbes's claims about philosophy. Brandon's own account reaffirms a conventional interpretation by claiming that Hobbes envisioned philosophers discovering order, an interpretation challenged in the original argument. Hobbes privileged the creation of order over attempts to discover the order of the world, and this is reflected in his affinity for geometry over physics.

Douglas M. Jesseph. Squaring the Circle: The War Between Hobbes and Wallis. (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1999. Pp. xiv, 419. $80.00. ISBN 0-226-39899-4.

In 1655, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes claimed he had solved the centuries-old problem of squaring of the circle (constructing a square equal in area to a given circle). With a scathing rebuttal to Hobbes's claims, the mathematician John Wallis began one of the longest and most intense intellectual disputes of all time. This book presents an account of the controversy, from the core mathematics to the broader philosophical, political and religious issues at stake. Hobbes believed that by recasting geometry in a materialist mold, he could solve any geometric problem and thereby demonstrate the power of his materialist metaphysics. Wallis, a prominent Presbyterian divine as well as an eminent mathematician, refuted Hobbes's geometry as a means of discrediting his philosophy, which Wallis saw as a dangerous mix of atheism and pernicious political theory. Hobbes and Wallis's battle of the books illuminates the intimate relationship between science and crucial 17th-century debates over the limits of sovereign power and the existence of God.

Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God

Hobbes promises to teach philosophers how to imitate God. With this bold claim as its basis, the paper questions the widely accepted view that Hobbes authored an early instance of a modern social science. It focuses on the constraints that Hobbes imposes on the language of philosophical practitioners. He restricts its truth-claims to the closed circle of language; he does not philosophize to describe, model, predict, or mirror empirical reality. He nevertheless makes claims for a useful science, one that can construct a stable commonwealth. The restrictive claims concerning truth and Hobbes's claim to a practical philosophy are reconciled through an investigation of his distinction between 'a posteriori' and 'a priori' sciences. Hobbes teaches philosophers to imitate God as a creator : as a 're-creator' of divinely produced effects (a posteriori), or (like an architect) by manipulating matter to create things we design ourselves (a priori). The science of politics is a priori. It dictates the motions (of men) so as to create a well-ordered commonwealth, an artificial man, a creation made in our own image.

Samuel Pufendorf: Obligation as the Basis of the State

Samuel Pufendorf: Obligation as the Basis of the State MICHAEL NUTKIEWICZ HOBBES'S AND SPINOZA'S well-articulated philosophic and scientific worldviews permeated their concept of natural law and its relationship to the state; their political theories provided formidable challenges to theorists of natural law. Hobbes and Spinoza injected a mechanistic natural philosophy into their political thought, introducing a vocabulary unlike that found in the political theories of the Middle Ages or of the Renaissance. Classical and medieval political thought was shaped by an anthropomorphic vision of the state. The metaphors used by classical thinkers, unlike the mechanistic metaphors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were heuristic and idealized. The image of the state as a biological body permeated medieval and Renaissance political theory. To some extent seventeenth -century thinkers retained this powerful metaphor. The frontispiece of Hobbes's Leviathan pictorially depicts the commonwealth as a man; nevertheless , early modern political theorists do not employ an anthropomorphic language to describe the state. The new mechanical science, which serves as the background for political theorists, suggested an alternative meaning for the idea of a body: a body is not a biological entity but an artifical mechanism, an artifact. This novel view of the state was facilitated by the growing interest in scientific method as exemplified by Descartes and Galileo. The most profound insight that early modern political thinkers took from natural science was the assumption that knowledge entails the ability to reconstruct (either actually or theoretically) the object of enquiry. This methodological principle of natural science was carried into early modern political theory, offering new analogies to political thinkers. Just as the laws of inertia, for example, [15] t6 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY are "discovered" in a hypothetical vacuum, men are studied in an imaginary state of nature. The subject matter of the political philosopher becomes the ontology of the state: the political thinker's task is to explain rather than to describe the mechanism of the state. The emphasis on reconstructing political society and the attempt to discover the mechanism by which men generate or "make" their institutions turned the state into an artifact, a product of man's labor. The political theory of Hobbes (and Spinoza) is the first attempt to wed the new natural science to political theory. Abraham Cowley's mocking tribute serves Hobbes well: "Thou great Columbus of the Golden Lands of New Philosophies."' Hobbes's attempt to conjoin the new science to political theory, with its implication that the state is an artifact, must be viewed as the decisive force in the development of early modern political theory. The notion that the state is an artifact is pervasive in early modern political theory. ~ Most troublesome to the political theorists, however, was Hobbes's claim that the state evolved out of mechanical principles, s They could accept Hobbes's general (and implicit) conclusion but rejected his mechanical account of the state's formation. In the figure of Samuel Pufendorf (163~-94), born in the same year as Spinoza, we have a decidedly nonmechanistic political philosophy, For Hobbes and Spinoza, mechanistic principles provided scientific, self-evident laws for the construction of a rational political theory. Pufendorf, by contrast , finds these self-evident principles neither in the mechanistic theory of nature nor in traditional divine theories of law but, as we shall see, in the working legal system itself. Pufendorf agrees with Hobbes regarding the "inclinations of human character" and, like Hobbes, argues that "it is discipline, not nature," that ' "Mr. Cowley's Verses in Praiseof Mr. Hobbes, Oppo'd" (London, 168o), p. 7Spinoza , like Hobbes, formulates his principles of political science from his natural science . But his use of science is more than metaphorical, and it is not merely methodological. For Spinoza, the physical body and the political body amount to the same thing: one needs only the laws of nature to understand both their mechanisms. The axioms and lemmata between propositions 13 and 14 in part ~ of Spinoza's Ethics (where he discusses the physics of the body) and the Political Treatise must be read together: Spinoza involves the observer's own body and compels him to view it as a balance of motion and rest. The...