First Aid on Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is England's greatest political philosopher and his masterpiece is Leviathan (1651). His father was a semi-literate parson who had fistfights with parishioners in the churchyard and subsequently deserted his family. On Good Friday (April 5) 1588, Hobbes was born prematurely--"a little worm" as he remarked--when his mother was alarmed by reports of the Spanish Armada. In fact, the Armada did not leave Spain until May; it did not reach the English coastline until July when storms and the English navy scattered it. In his Latin verse autobiography (1672) Hobbes recorded the significance of the event:

For the rumour went everywhere through our towns that the last day for our nation was coming by fleet. At that point my mother was filled with such fear that she bore twins, me together with fear.

Indeed 1588 had been predicted as the end of the world by Philip Melanchthon, Luther's friend and fellow Protestant theologian, who decrypted the date from Daniel and Revelation.

Hobbes is definitely a "dangerous" philosopher and his political ideas were denounced from both ends of the political spectrum. The years 1640-49 marked a period of political turmoil in England, culminating in the execution of Charles I (January 30^th 1649). Puritans and parliamentarians--most notably Oliver Cromwell--held sway until 1660 when Charles II was restored to the throne. Hobbes was a royalist who in 1640 left for exile in France; there he tutored the future king in mathematics. Royalists denounced his ideas as a justification of "might makes right," and Hobbes indeed returned to England in February 1652, making his peace with Cromwell's status quo. Parliamentarians criticized what struck them as an argument for the king's absolute power. Everyone attacked Hobbes for his "atheism," but scholars have since defended him as a good (if somewhat unorthodox) Anglican; in 1647 he received the sacrament on what he assumed was his deathbed. Hobbes cozied up to the returning royalists in 1660 and was known to rowdy young courtiers as 'the Bear" whom they could bait. Hobbes always feared that his ideas would provoke physical persecution from the ecclesiastical authorities.

Leviathan, argues A. P. Martinich, Hobbes's most recent biographer,deserves to be called "A Bible for Modern Man" because no other work of his or any of his contemporaries presents such a forceful, eloquent, and comprehensive statement of the doctrine that expresses the spirit of modern thought. It adumbrates a physics, physiology, psychology, morality, politics, and critical theology. (Hobbes: A Biography [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999] p. 225)

If, however, one deconstructs the notion of the modern (or the postmodern), one knows that there are points of departure quite different from Hobbes's, notably St. Augustine's in his Confessions. Political scientists like Quentin Skinner who admire (but disagree with) Hobbes recognize that Leviathan is a paragon of internal coherence. So caveat emptor. One doesn't have to buy it. And the success of America as a polity (which has derived some of its contractual theory from Leviathan via Locke) proves that Hobbes has been superseded, in many important respects. Yet current conflicts in the Balkans and elsewhere continue to endow Hobbes's ideas with a depressing vitality.

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"Fear and I came into the world together," runs another translation of the salient sentence in Hobbes's Latin autobiography. Fear plays a crucial role in Hobbes's political philosophy. In a state of nature--where government fails and war prevails--"every man is Enemy to every man" and, Hobbes laments, there is no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (XIII, p. 186; my boldface)

Even at the best of times, when government and peace prevail, Hobbes declared that

I put for a generall inclination of mankind, a perpetuall and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. (XI, p. 161)

This is grim stuff! But from Hobbes's contractual theory of government there finally emerged the Declaration of Independence ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness") and the American Constitution.

According to Hobbes, people would rather sacrifice their anarchic autonomy than live in a state of continual fear and warfare. Instead they enter into a covenant or contract:

as if every man should say to every man, I authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner. This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence. (XVII, p 227)

Hobbes was so terrified of anarchy--which he witnessed, albeit from afar, in England's Civil War of the 1640s--that he did not factor in a mechanism for the peaceful change of governments.

The crowned "Leviathan" is shown in the illustrated title-page to the work, a Godzilla-like figure composed of tiny men who have given up their anarchic impulses for the common good (see Penguin ed., p 71 for the complete page). The Latin verse comes from the Vulgate Book of Job, 41:24: "There is no power on earth which can be compared to him." ("Leviathan" is mentioned five times in the Bible and signifies a monster, probably a crocodile but possibly a whale: see particularly Job 42, passim: "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook . . . Canst thou put a hook in his nose?" vv. 1,3. Hobbes clearly believed that he had pulled off the feat!) In the title page of Leviathan, Leviathan's sword stretches up into the heavens, his bishop's crozier disappears into the landscape. Hobbes believed that the government should control religion because churchmen--whether Catholics who acknowledged papal supremacy or holy rollers who were convinced of their own divine inspiration--threatened to usurp and overturn secular authority. (Recall that Hobbes was an Anglican, albeit one who became known as "the Great Atheist of Malmesbury," the town in which he grew up.) In the small engravings that flank the full title of Leviathan we see, on the left, military scenes that suggest the horrors of civil war. On the right, there are ecclesiastical (and academic) scenes that parallel the dangers of those to the left. The face of Leviathan in Hobbes's title-page is that of the author himself--as a young man!

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Hobbes approaches the social contract from what he deemed to be its first principles: individual psychology. Like Descartes, Hobbes believed in mathematical reasoning--although he preferred geometry to algebra--but he did not neglect empirical observation; he frequently compares men to "brutes" or "beasts" (and makes some critical distinctions) instead of dismissing the latter as machines because of their lack of a soul or a cogito. Both philosophers contemptuously dismissed the "ipse dixit" with which they associated medieval philosophy but each was notoriously haughty about his own system-building. (Descartes was a Rationalist, most commentators agree, but the extent of Hobbes's rationalism is disputed.) Descartes wrote extremely lucid French, but was not notable for his wit. Hobbes, by contrast, has a wonderfully dry and sardonic style which amply repays careful reading (and re-reading). His Leviathan is a masterpiece of English prose as well as of political philosophy.

Rather than start, like Descartes, with his own cogito ("I am thinking, therefore I am"), Hobbes outlines in his "Introduction" the "similitude" of what all people share, particularly their passions:

whosoever looketh into himself, and considereth what he doth, when he doth thinke, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c. and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. (p. 82; my boldface)

Hobbes takes his point of departure in the first chapter from sense impressions not from disembodied thought. His critics doubted that there was any "ghost" (or spirit) in his machine.

Note, however, that "The Introduction" opens with a comparison of the state to an "Artificial Animal"--with a machinery of springs, strings, and wheels like an automaton-- that is constructed by men (who contain the same paraphernalia). In my opinion, Hobbes is here having some fun with the "Metaphors, and Tropes of Speech" which he argues elsewhere "can never be true grounds of any ratiocination" (pp. 109-110). Descartes and Hobbes had tangled in Paris and met only once after much sniping. Hobbes thought Descartes had done little more than rehash ancient skepticism and dismissed some of his theorizing about air particles as "scarcely that of a sane man." I conclude that Hobbes is playing games both with Descartes and with the bombastic imagery used in so many "Introductions" of his period.

In "Chap. I: Of Sense," Hobbes begins with the impact of the external world, via the five senses, upon the individual's psychology. In this tabula rasa there appears to be no room for the immortal or immaterial ideas, for innate ideas, for a "hard drive" wired for language etc. The body works like a machine in which an external object "presseth the organ proper to each Sense" and sets an internal mechanism ("strings and other membranes") in motion. Like Descartes, Hobbes envisaged a world of "matter in motion" but did not find a special place for the mind or soul:

All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object which causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything else, but divers motions; (for motion produceth nothing but motion). (p. 86)

Mental phenomena are thus created by the external world, as Hobbes argues in "Chap II: Of Imagination":

IMAGINATION therefore is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men, and many other living Creatures, as well sleeping as waking. (p. 88)

Hobbes's mechanistic theory of the imagination was subsequently challenged by the poets and philosophers of the Romantic Era. What we should note here are: (i) his comparison of men to other animals and (ii) his concern with non-conscious (or deranged) states of mentation--to both of which we shall return.

Sense becomes "fading, old, and past" with the impact and depredations of time:

So that Imagination and Memory are but one thing, which for divers considerations hath divers names. Much memory, or memory of many things, is called Experience. . . The Imagination that is raysed in man (or any other creature indued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signes, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beast. For a dogge by custome will understand the call, or the rating of his Master; and so will many other Beasts. That Understanding which is peculiar to man, is the Understanding not onely his will but his conceptions and thoughts by the sequell and contexture of the names of things into Affirmations, Negations, and other formes of Speech. (pp. 89, 93-4)

Like all philosophers and most of his contemporaries, Hobbes is obsessed with the diversity of names (and its entrapments). Experience, though valuable, proves inadequate as the foundation upon which to build a philosophy. Speech and complex semiotics are what set us apart from the animal world; Jonathan Swift develops these ideas imaginatively in A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels.

In Chapter II Hobbes seems to offer digressions about dreams and religion. In fact, his remarks comprise part of a broader argument that gradually takes full and noxious form.

In "Chap. III: Of the Consequence or Trayne of Imaginations." Hobbes demonstrates (or purports to) how decaying imagination is mobilized into sequential thought (again mere motion, for "All Fancies are Motions within us, reliques of those made in the Sense"). In trying to determine causes, "the Trayn of regulated Thoughts . . . is common to Man and Beast." Man is generally better at determining effects: "Which kind of thoughts is called Foresight, and Prudence, or Providence; and sometimes Wisdome." Yet not only does prudence lack the mathematical certainty demanded by political science but

it is not Prudence that distinguisheth man from beast. There be beasts, that at a year old observe more, and pursue that which is for their good, more prudently, than a child can do at ten. (p. 98)

In "Chap IV: Of Speech," Hobbes introduces what does separate us from brutes and beasts: language. By comparison with the invention of printing (or, by extension, the Web), "the invention of Letters" (i.e. writing) was critical:

without which, there had been amongst men, neither Common-wealth [i.e. the Leviathan], nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves [cf. homo hominis lupus]. (p. 100)

Anthropologists and ethologists would today dispute Hobbes's claims about writing and animal behaviour, but Hobbes's discriminations constitute important moves in his unfolding argument.

Hobbes makes many provocative remarks about language and "names." He argues, for example, that words are arbitrary signs and that there never was, even in Eden--nor ever can be-- an ideal language in which there is some intrinsic connection between words and things or the signifier and the signified (Descartes, by contrast, dreamed of a universal language):

For words are wise mens counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the mony of fooles, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas [Aquinas], or any other Doctor [i.e. theologian or professor] whatsoever, if but a man. (p. 106)

Here Hobbes takes another potshot at university learning and reveals an unexpectedly democratic bent. "All men by nature reason alike . . . they that have no Science," Hobbes observes in his next chapter, "are in a better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence" than are most philosophers (p. 115-6). "He was wont to say," noted John Aubrey, his friend and first biographer,

that he had rather have the advice, or take Physique from an experienced old Woman, that had been at many sick people's Bed-sides, then from the learnedst but unexperienced Physician. (O. L . Dick, ed., Aubrey's Brief Lives [London: Penguin, 1962, p. 234).

In Chapter IV, Hobbes flourishes many other red rags. "Truth," for example, is merely a linguistic construct: "For True and False are attributes of Speech, not of Things."

Without speech or writing, we cannot have "Reason, and Science" to which Hobbes turns in Chapter V. Hobbes sees most reason as "nothing but Reckoning (that is, Adding and Subtracting) of the Consequences of generall names agreed upon." All too often, false conclusions can be inferred. But from the uncertainties of this reason we can move towards science (which involves assenting to Hobbes's "scientific" proof of the Leviathan and its necessity). Note how carefully Hobbes recapitulates terminology that he has already introduced and defined.

Reason is not as Sense, and Memory, borne with us; nor gotten by Experience onely; as Prudence is; but attayned by Industry; first in apt imposing of Names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly Method in proceeding from the Elements, which are Names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly Method [a Cartesian term!] in proceeding from the Elements, which are Names, to Assertions made by Connexion of one of them to another; and so to Syllogismes, which are the Connexions of one Assertion to another till we come to a knowledge of all the Consequences of names appertaining to the subject in hand; and that is it, men call SCIENCE. And whereas Sense and Memory are but knowledge of Fact, which is a thing past, and irrevocable; Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependance of one fact upon another [at best, an infallible knowledge of cause and effect]. . . The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end. . .The signes of Science, are some, certain and infallible; some uncertain. Certain, when he that pretendeth the Science of any thing, can teach the same; that is to say demonstrate the truth thereof perspicuously to another: Uncertain, when onely some particular events answer to his pretence . . . Signes of prudence are all uncertain; because to oserve by experience, and remember all circumstances that may alter the successe, is impossible. (p. 115-7).

Hobbes may have a good deal to teach us inductively, but he prefers the deductive method.  Hobbes took geometry as his model of science. Modern biographers agree that an incident recorded by John Aubrey is probably accurate:

He was 40 yeares old before he looked on Geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a Gentleman's Library [dangling participle!], Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas 47 El libri I. He read the Proposition. By G--, sayd he (he would now and then sweare an emphaticall Oath by way of emphasis) this is impossible! So he reads the Demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a Proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps [and so on] that at the last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with Geometry.

I have heard Mr Hobbes say that he was wont to draw lines on his thigh, and on the sheetes, abed, and also multiply and divide.

He would often complain that Algebra (though of great use) was too much admire, and so followed after that it made men not consider so much the nature and power of Lines, which was a great hinderance [sic] to the Groweth of Geometrie; for that though algebra did rarely well and quickly, and easily in right lines, yet 'twould not bite in solid (I thinke) Geometry. Quod N. B.

Aubrey's Brief Lives, p. 230

Those who admire Hobbes's Leviathan perceive in it the demonstrative method that Hobbes discerned in Euclid.

In Chapter VI Hobbes explores the human passions as "voluntary motions" (which he distinguishes from involuntary motions such as the bodily functions). Voluntary motions are all motivated by "APPETITE, or DESIRE" for what we want or by an "AVERSION" to what we do not want. "Life it selfe," he concludes, "is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense" (p. 130). Ethics and aesthetics (and their traditional vocabularies of good and evil, the true and the beautiful) are adroitly reduced to more (and mere) issues of matter in motion. Hope and fear (and our "deliberation" about them) prove to be our basic impulses (with want of power a subtext). In this we resemble animals:

This alternate Succession of Appetites, Aversions, Hopes and Fears, is no lesse in other living Creatures than in Man; and therefore Beasts also Deliberate . . . And Beasts that have Deliberation, must necessarily also have Will. The Definition of the Will, given commonly by the Schooles, that it is a Rationall Appetite, is not good [because an oxymoron]. For if it were there could be no Voluntary Act against Reason. (p. 127)

Again Hobbes snipes at medieval philosophy and its exponents, the Schoolmen, who were still active in seventeenth century universities.

Hobbes has interesting remarks on laughter, weeping, and swearing (he himself was foul-mouthed). His remarks on "curiosity"--"a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continuall and indefatigable generation of Knowledge exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnall Pleasure"-- reveal much about Hobbes:

Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not onely by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom the appetite of food and other pleasures of Sense, by praedominance, take away the care of knowing causes . . . (p. 124)

Hobbes enjoys deconstructing and reconstructing the differences between man and animal which preoccupied so many of those philosophers he unceremoniously dismisses.

In "Chap VII: Of the Ends, or Resolutions of Discourse," Hobbes argues that "of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End" (p. 130). Note again the important criteria of "desire" and "end." Hobbes distinguishes between JUDGEMENT and DOUBT, SCIENCE and OPINION. He also raises problems of BELEEFE and FAITH which have strong religious overtones. He does not focus on science but highlights his claim that religious belief--"so also it is also with all other history"--"is drawn from authority of men onely" (133-4).

In "Chap. VIII: Of the Vertues commonly called Intellectual; and their contrary Defects," Hobbes defines WIT ("Celerity of Imagining . . . steddy direction to some end") and its antithesis "DULNESSE, Stupidity" ("slownesse of motion"). Note again his criteria of motion (pp. 134-5). He discriminates between natural and acquired wit. In the next three paragraphs, I summarize his remarks on natural wit.

Hobbes proceeds to differentiate "a Good Wit" or "a Good Fancy" ("Distinguishing, and Discerning, and Judging") which can involve "new and apt metaphors" from fancy that runs amok:

But without Steddinesse, and Direction to some End, a great Fancy is one kind of Madnesse; such as they have, that entring into any discourse, are snatched from their purpose, by everything that comes into their thought, into so many, and so long digressions, and Parentheses, that they utterly lose themselves (p. 136).

I plead guilty. Note that Jonathan Swift's Tale of a Tub is governed by such a Hobbesian principle of (dis)organization. As so often, Hobbes displays his interest in extreme states of consciousness (or "decaying sense") under which rubric he also groups religious enthusiasm.

Hobbes then informs us how FANCY and JUDGEMENT should be set to work in poems, histories, orations, courtroom presentations, and political debate. There is no "Thoughtcrime" (as George Orwell dubbed it in his novel 1984) for our "secret thoughts" should incur no "shame, or blame." Doctors can talk and write dirty because that is their job; elsewhere we should observe decorum. Hobbes warns us against self-indulgent word-play.

Under the rubric of "natural wit" Hobbes includes Prudence, Memory, and Craft, the first two of which he has already defined. Craft is "Crooked Wisdome." "As for acquired Wit, (I mean acquired by method and instruction,) there is none but Reason; which is grounded on the right use of Speech; and produceth the Sciences," Hobbes declares (138). For his definitions of reason and science, he refers us back to chapters V and VI. Note, again, the care with which Hobbes constructs his argument with his own terminology.

Difference in wit proceeds from bodily, social, and educational differences. Men share their senses but not their bodies or their educations, hence their differences in wit proceed from their different passions. Hobbes then asserts:

The Passions that most of all cause the differences of Wit, are principally, the more or lesse Desire of Power, of Riches, of Knowledge, and of Honour. All of which may be reduced to the first, that is Desire of Power. For Riches, Knowledge, and Honour are but severall sorts of Power (p. 139).

So we return, yet again, to power. We use our thoughts to hunt for "things Desired." We have no choice: "For as to have no Desire, is to be Dead." Some people have weak desires (losers!); others have strong ones that they cannot control. The latter are mad, whether because of "the evill constitution of the organs of the Body" or injury.

Hobbes highlights two forms of madness, pride (which leads to rage, revenge, and an "Excessive opinion of a mans owne selfe, for divine inspiration, for wisdome, learning") and melancholy (a fondness for graveyards, for superstition). Hobbes says that the categories of madness are "legion."

Rage can enflame a mob and bring down governments. In "the Seditious roaring of a troubled Nation," Hobbes clearly hears the drama of England's Civil Wars of the 1640s. When dismissing inspiration, Hobbes has in mind the puritan preachers who railed against the government of Charles I. Were they merely guided by their passions or were they "demoniacs"? In his learned commentary on ancient pneumatology, Hobbes considers both classical and biblical examples. His remarks upon the New Testament remain provocative:

But why then does our Saviour proceed in the curing of them, as if they were possest; and not as if they were mad? To which I can give no other kind of answer, but that which is given to those that urge the Scripture in like manner against the opinion of the motion of the Earth. The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdome of God; and to prepare their mindes to become his obedient subjects; leaving the world, and the philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men for exercising of their naturall Reason., Whether the Earths, or Suns motion make the day, and night; or whether the Exorbitant actions of men, proceed from Passion, or from the Divell, (so we worship him not) it is all one, as to our obedience and subjection to God Almighty; which is the thing for which the Scripture was written. As for that our Saviour speaketh to the disease, as to a person; it is the usuall phrase of all that cure by words onely, as Christ did, (and Inchanters pretend to, whether they speak to a Divel or not.) For is not Christ also said (Math. 8.26) to have rebuked the winds? Is not he said also (Luk. 4.39) to rebuke a fever? Yet this not argue the Fever is a Divel. (p. 145)

Swift, an Anglican parson, read Hobbes with religious care, and turned his remarks into scatological farce in A Tale of a Tub (for which work he assumed the digressive style of a madman.

Hobbes concludes the chapter with another of his sallies against "insignificant speech" under which rubric he emphasizes the medieval schoolmen's "questions of abstruse Philosophy" ("as the Trinity; the nature of Christ; Transubstantiation; Free-will &c") all still vigorously debated in seventeenth century Europe. Of the great Jesuit theologian Suarez Hobbes observes:

When men write whole volumes of such stuffe, are they not Mad, or intend to make others so? And particularly in the question of Transubstantiation . . . For by Spirits, they mean always Things, that being incorporeall, are neverthelesse moveable from one place to another. So that this kind of Absurdity, may rightly be numbered amongst the many sorts of Madnesse (p. 147).

Is Hobbes mocking the doctrines themselves or the philosophical intricacies they encouraged?

According to the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England, published in the first Book of Common Prayer (1549)--and ratified in the Articles of Religion as established by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (1801)--transubstantiation "cannot be proved by Holy Writ; is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions" (Article XXVIII. Of the Lord's Supper). In recent years, a measure of agreement between Catholic and Protestant understandings has been reached by means of the theory of "consubstantiation." But Hobbes also seems to snipe at the first of the Thirty Nine Articles--"Of Faith in the Holy Trinity," which is underwritten both by the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds--and the tenth: "Of Free-Will." Some scholars have suggested that Hobbes's understanding of Anglicanism was pervaded by the heresy of Socinianism (named after the early seventeenth century Italian heresiarchs Laelio and Fausto Sozzini who were, quite properly at the time, executed for their free-thinking), that is by a belief in the divinity only of God the Father and not of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. If so, this is a belief that he seems to have shared with his close contemporaries John Locke and Isaac Newton (as well as with such Americans as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the Unitarians--and probably with some Quakers).

Hobbes again supports the good sense of Jo Six-Pack which is derided by university professors and theologians: "The common sort of men seldome speak Insignficantly, and are therefore, by those other Egregious Persons, accounted Idiots" (p. 146).

In "Chap. IX Of the Severall Subjects of Knowledge," Hobbes again differentiates between "Knowledge of Fact" (dependent upon sense and memory and the testimony of witnesses) and "Knowledge of the Consequence of one Affirmation to another" (i.e. science). His table of the sciences (p. 149) can be found, in one form or another, in most philosophical texts of the era. Yet Hobbes's inclusion of "Astrology"--alongside engineering, architecture, navigation and alongside optics, music, ethics, poetry--suggests an ironic spirit playing over the branches of knowledge! Check it out.

In "Chap. X. Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthiness," Hobbes discerns power as the governing component in all those qualities for which we seek to be known. All these qualities are conducive to visibility within the COMMONWEALTH (Hobbes's Leviathan). Some of them may seem to reflect moral qualities. Think again. "Honour consisteth onely in the opinion of Power" (p. 156). Hobbes considers hereditary titles (derived, in his opinion, from the example of Germany) as valuable to the survival of Leviathan.

In "Chap. XI. Of the Difference of Manners," Hobbes eschews etiquette ("Small Moralls") and focuses instead our "Living together in Peace, and Unity." He begins by dismissing the fantasies of older philosophers that we can find an ethical or civic equilibrium outside the Leviathan which he has yet to describe:

the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis Ultimus (utmost Ayme,) nor Summum Bonum (greatest Good), as it is spoken of in the Books of the Old Morall Philosophers (p. 160).

Instead we are all men (or women) continually on the move (Hobbes doesn't allow for women, as you may have noticed, in his political philosophy). We are driven, whether in a state of nature (yet to be disclosed) or not:

So that in the first place, I put it for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death (p. 161).

I have already quoted this grim passage on p. 2 of First Aid on Hobbes, and it does indeed seem to be integral to his philosophy. Yet Hobbes acknowledges "Desire of Fame after Death" (p. 162). As I write this (Jan 31, 2000), Saul Bellow, the American Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, has just fathered a son at the age of 84.

If we don't achieve immortality through writing or painting or film-making, or through our children (poor saps), or through psychotic acts (soon forgotten), in what can we place our hopes for being celebrities other than in the immortality of the soul and/or the resurrection of the body? The desire for fame, or for any legacy that represents a triumph over death, can take sundry forms which Hobbes includes in "pleasure in the imagination" (p. 162). Hence Saul Bellow's? Yet recall that imagination "is nothing but decaying sense" (II, 88). Hobbes' philosophy can be described, however uncomfortably, as one of ineluctable death. Ouch! Hobbes, of course, took pleasure in the CURIOSITY that had issued in Leviathan. And here we all are, reading that bloody book (or trying to), even though the author is long gone. This is true of most courses in literature and philosophy. Those scribbling guys (and a few scribbling gals) inevitably croaked, but they've got us still sniffing around their remains. Pfuii. Put a call in for Scully and Mulder?

In Chapter XI, Hobbes ranges widely from our feelings of gratitude to a superior who treats us well and feelings of enmity to an equal who treats us well (162-3) to heresy (165). "Feare of things invisible" (my boldface) inclines us to religion and to dismissing those who believe otherwise as subject to "superstition" (168). Up to this point, Hobbes has offered many passing comments upon religion, but he will devote his next chapter to the subject.

Careful readers will recall that Hobbes has already attributed religion to "Feare of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publiquely allowed." By contrast, superstition comprises tales "not [publicly] allowed." "When the power is truly such as we imagine," we have "TRUE RELIGION" (124). Hobbes's definitions, elsewhere, of "imagination" and of "truth" will give us pause for thought. Hobbes offers a functional program for religion that is based not upon revealed truth but upon governmental utility.

"The Gods were at first created by humane Feare," Hobbes asserts in "Chap. XII: Of Religion" (170). Unlike beasts, who merely enjoy "their quotidian Food, Ease, and Lusts; as having little foresight of the time to come," foresighted man "hath his heart all the day long, gnawed on by feare of death, poverty, or other calamity; and has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety , but in sleep" (168).

In surveying the manifestation of this fear in religion, Hobbes considers "incorporeall spirits" (an oxymoron), the magic words of "Charming and Conjuring" ('insomuch as [witches] believe they have the power to turn a stone into bread, bread into a man, or any thing into any thing"), oaths (used, unlike contracts, with divine sanction), pagan religions (often dependent upon "enthusiasm" which is no better than "the insignificant Speeches of Mad-men"), political craft:

And therefore the first Founders, and Legislators of Commonwealths amongst [the pagans], whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience, and peace, have in all places taken care [to claim their authority from the gods] (pp. 171, 172, 173-6, 177).

Hobbes believes that religious impulses are deep-seated in man and that there will therefore be "new religions," but that these impulses will always be manipulated by clever prophets and politicians:

and Mahomet, to set up his new Religion, pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost, in forme of a Dove (p. 177).

Hobbes also analyzes prophecy, miracles, and the Church of Rome, which was abolished in England as elsewhere, in part because of its Aristotelian philosophy ("contradictions and absurdities"). Hobbes devotes the last two books of Leviathan to developing the principles "Of a Christian Common-Wealth" and to exposing the nonsense "Of the Kingdome of Darknesse." His comments on the former did not convince his critics of his theological good-faith, Anglican or otherwise.

*******

I shall continue this close reading of Leviathan and round up some of the topics to which Hobbes returns continually: the folly of a university education (as an undergraduate at Oxford, Hobbes trapped birds and hung out in bookstores); nonsense; dreams and madness; and religion. You might want to make a collection of Hobbes's own reliance upon metaphors ("words are wise mens counters") and of his brisk apothegms (e.g. "Thought is quick," p. 95).

In "Chap. XIII. Of the Naturall Conditions of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity and their Misery," Hobbes again emphasizes (with an unexpected democratic thrust) that "NATURE hath made men so equall"

For Prudence, is but Experience; which equall time, equally bestowes on all men in those things they equally apply themselves unto (183).

This represents a recapitulation, as does Hobbes's caveat about "that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science, which very few have, and but in few things" (183). He continues that "From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends" (184). Notice, again, those critical words hope and ends.

Unfortunately, "there is no power to over-awe them all" which results in quarreling and fighting (184). The state of nature is the state of war "which consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto" ( 186) and this betokens a situation in which there are

no Arts; no Letters, no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short (186).

I quoted, at greater length, this passage at the outset of my First Aid and Hobbes's vision of anarchic hell should be read in detail. Hobbes is not politically correct about "primitive cultures":

For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord of dependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in the brutish manner (187).

In Hobbes's defence it may be said that he is speaking theoretically rather than descriptively and that he can imagine such a fate for civilised societies (e.g. mid-seventeenth century England). Notice the comparison with the animal world.

For Hobbes, there is no natural law as that is understood by Catholic (and other) theologians. Morality is, quite literally, a social construct:

To this warre of every man against every man, this is also consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law; where there no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in warre the two Cardinall vertues. Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body, nor Mind . . . They are Qualities, that relate to men in Society, not in Solitude. It is consequent also to the same Condition, that there is no Propriety [i.e. Property], no Dominion; no Mine and Thine distinct; but onely that to be every mans that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it (188).

Survivalists in America continue to stockpile arms and food for such a state of nature or war. The War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague challenges the notion that war relieves men (and some women) of their humanity or morality. "It followeth, in such a condition, that every man has a Right to every thing; even to anothers body" which might be described as Hobbes' grim vision of rape and murder in the Balkans, East Timor, or Burundi (190). In Hobbes's account, one can also see glimmerings of modern theories of property, in Europe but particularly in America.

In "Chap XIV. Of the first and second Naturall Lawes and of Contracts," Hobbes maintains that we must eschew "the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life" (189). This is our "RIGHT OF NATURE" but it embodies "a condition of Warre of every one against every one" whereas Hobbes argues that we need a LAW. Rights can be "renounced" or "transferred" and--in a legal tour de force about pacts, promises, and covenants--Hobbes argues that we need "the mutuall transferring of Right, which men call CONTRACT" (192). Men need to cede their rights to "a common Power set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compell performance" (196). There are some natural rights that men retain such as "the security of a mans person" (an adumbration of the Fifth Amendment may be discerned on p. 192). Note that Hobbes does not invoke the supernatural force of oaths ("To make Covenant with God, is impossible" because for those that vow "it is not the Vow, but the Law that binds them" [197]). An oath, Hobbes later underscores, relies upon "the feare of that Invisible Power" and he suggests that it is an "Heathen Forme":

For a Covenant, if lawfull, binds in the sight of God, without the Oath, as much as with it: if unlawfull, bindeth not at all; although it be confirmed with an Oath (p. 201).

Thus does Hobbes end his chapter, shockingly for his contemporaries. In the midst of the chapter, however, Hobbes changes tack abruptly--from heaven to the animal world, from God to dogs!

Animal rights activists would surely cavil about his remarks:

To make Covenant with bruit Beasts, is impossible; because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of Right; nor can translate any Right to another; and without mutuall acceptation, there is no Covenant (197).

But might this be construed as the injustice of using animals for our own purposes? They cannot consent.

Hobbes is meticulously paving the way for the introduction of his Leviathan (XVII, 227) as outlined above in First Aid (p. 2).