Transcript Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes
Biography and ideas
The Life and Times of Thomas
Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes was born on April 5, 1588 near Malmesbury
in Wiltshire, England.
He graduated from Oxford at age 19.
Hobbes was a tutor to the son of the Earl of Devonshire .
He translated Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War
in 1629.
Hobbes visited Galileo and adopted the methods of the new
physics as the path to knowledge.
He published a three part work of philosophy including a
materialistic metaphysics, De Corpore (1655); a materialistic
account of man, De Homine (1658) and a work on the rights
and duties of citizens, De Cive (1642).
English Civil War erupted in 1642 – Hobbes fled to Paris.
Hobbes tutored Charles I son, Charles II. King Charles I was
imprisoned in 1646.
The Life and Times of Thomas
Hobbes - Continued
In 1649, Charles I is executed after after an unsuccessful
attempt to regain power.
In 1651, Charles II is defeated by Oliver Cromwell. Hobbes
presented Charles II with a copy of Leviathan, or Matter,
Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and
Civil. Hobbes was forced to flee to England since those
around Charles believed Hobbes’ work supported Cromwell.
In 1660, the English monarchy was restored. Hobbes
regained his student’s favor.
In 1666, House of Commons introduced bill against atheism
and blasphemy, singling out Hobbes’ Leviathan.
Hobbes was forbidden to publish his history of the English
Civil War, Behemoth (1670).
Hobbes died of a stroke in 1679 at the age of 92.
Four years later, Oxford condemned and burnt De Cive and
Leviathan.
Hobbes – The First Political
Scientist
Hobbes viewed himself as the first political philosopher.
His predecessors errors fomented sedition, anarchy, and civil
war.
– The distinction between virtue and vice that was apart from sovereign
authority encouraged individuals to judge privately and act outside of
the constraints of the civil law.
– This private judgment leads to tyrannicide and the chaos of the state of
nature.
– Similarly badly constructed metaphysical systems encouraged people to
fear divine punishments more than the punishments of civil authorities.
Hobbes grounds his political science in natural law and his the
father of natural right.
First political philosopher to ground his political thought in
natural philosophy.
Those seeking to govern a whole nation must understand
human passion. They must know themselves.
Hobbesian Nominalism and the
Mechanical Psychology of Man
Man’s mind operates on mechanical principles.
Sense experience is a product of matter and motion and
reaction to this data is rooted in individual subjective
preferences.
Hobbes materialism is translated into his exploration of mental
discourse.
Passions govern man according to Hobbes.
Speech is a human artifice (Hobbes) as opposed to a natural
endowment (Aristotle)
Hobbes science seeks the right definition of names
(nominalism). Speech is the source of science.
– Names signify particular bodies.
– Names abstract
– Names refer to the sensible qualities of a material object caused by a
particular motion
– Names given to names.
Hobbes speaks of passions with geometric exactness.
From Leviathan
NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the
world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this
also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing
life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some
principle part within, why may we not say that all automata
(engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as
doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but
a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints,
but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as
was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further imitating
that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by
art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a
COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is
but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength
than natural, for whose protection and defense it was
intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as
giving life and motion to the whole body…
Of Speech, From Leviathan,
Chapter 4
By this it appears how necessary it is for nay man that
aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions
of former authors; and either to correct them, where
they are negligently set down, or to make them
himself. For the errors of definitions multiply
themselves, according as the reckoning proceeds,
and lead men into absurdities, which at last they
see, but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from
the beginning; in which lies the foundation of their
errors… Nor is it possible without letters for any
man to become either excellently wise or (unless his
memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of
organs) excellently foolish.
The Motions of Man and the State
of Nature - 1
The beginning of motions in the human body is called
endeavor.
When endeavor moves towards its cause, it is called
appetite or desire.
When endeavor moves away from its cause, it is
called aversion.
Deliberation is a weighing of appetites and aversions.
Deliberative hedonism explains the order of the
universe in terms of a calculus of pleasure and pain.
Felicity emerges from fulfilling desire and requires
constant motion.
The motion of mankind is “a perpetual and restless
desire for power after power, that ceases only in
death.”
The Motions of Man and the State
of Nature - 2
This condition makes Hobbes conclude, “Man is a wolf to
his fellow human beings” and this leads the state of
nature to be a state of war.
Humans are equal because of even the weakest has
sufficient strength to kill the strongest.
Humans can also contract with others to secure their
rights.
Quarrels emerge among men because of competition,
diffidence, and glory.
The state of nature prohibits civilization.
Hobbes natural philosophy is used as a basis of his
political philosophy: It is not all together clear that politics
is not natural, but Hobbes is attempting to do away with
Aristotle’s doctrine of essences to eliminate the private
moral judgment that seems to be the source of war.
Of the Interior Beginning of Voluntary Motions, Commonly
Called The Passions; and the Speeches by Which They
Are Expressed, from Leviathan, Chapter 6
Pleasure therefore, or delight, is the appearance or sense of
good; and molestation or displeasure, the appearance or
sense of evil. And consequently all appetite, desire, and love
is accompanied with some delight more or less; and all hatred
and aversion with more or less displeasure and offence…
When in the mind of man appetites and aversions, hopes and
fears, concerning one and the same thing, arise alternately;
and diverse good and evil consequences of the doing or
omitting the thing propounded come successively into our
thoughts; so that sometimes we have an appetite to it,
sometimes an aversion from it; sometimes hope to be able to
do it, sometimes despair, or fear to attempt it; the whole sum
of desires, aversions, hopes and fears, continued till the thing
be either done, or thought impossible, is tat we call
DELIBERATION.
Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As
Concerning Their Felicity and Misery, From
Leviathan
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war,
where every man is enemy to every man, the same
consequent to the time wherein men live without other
security than what their own strength and their own
invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition
there is no place for industry, because fruit thereof is
uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no
navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be
imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as
require much force; no knowledge of the face of the
earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no
society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and
danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Natural Right, The Laws of Nature,
and the Political
The original condition of man in the state of nature is a state
of war of all against all.
There is nothing unjust if self-preservation is the highest end.
Natural right is founded on the desire for self-preservation.
Fear of death and desire for commodious living lead to the
willingness to transfer right to an absolute sovereign.
The sovereign determines justice through law (legal
positivism) and rules by fear and force.
The salvation of humanity depends not upon divine
providence or the grace of God, but upon human industry and
labor.
Contract or covenants without fear of non-performance are
invalid.
Passion must be subdued by an absolute sovereign to bring
peace and security.
Absolute Sovereignty, Liberty and
the Rights of Subjects
Government is for self-preservation and peaceable life.
Hobbes determines the content of natural law by reference to
passions as opposed to reason and does not believe it is
effective without an external visible force to enforce it.
Absolute government is the solution to this problem since only
under absolute government are peace and commodious living
possible.
A covenant or contract is entered into by citizens to exchange
their judgment for the sovereigns and they cannot contradict
the sovereign without contradicting themselves.
The sovereign is the combines the legislative, executive and
judicial authority.
Absolute Sovereignty, Liberty and
the Rights of Subjects - 2
Religion is subordinated to the sovereign.
The sovereign has authority over the distribution of
property.
Commerce should remain free enough to channel
human felicity toward peace.
Liberty exists where motion is not constrained and the
sovereign is silent.
Right to self-preservation is inalienable.
Hobbes’ calculus focuses on pleasure and pain and
rejects a higher standard to evaluate the sovereign
from. Aristotle good regimes and bad regimes are all
turned into regimes that secure survival and peace
and are therefore good. What is evil is merely
individual disgruntlement.
Of the First and Second Natural Laws, and of
Contracts, From Leviathan, Chapter 15
Now the science of virtue and vice is moral philosophy; and therefore the true
doctrine of the laws of nature is the true moral philosophy. But the writers of
moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices; yet
not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be
praised as the means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living, place
them in a mediocrity of passions: as if not the cause, but the degree of
daring, made fortitude; or not the cause, but the quantity of a gift, made
liberality.
These dictates of reason men used to call by the name laws, but improperly: for
they are but conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth to the
conservation and defense of themselves; whereas law, properly, is the word
of him that by right hath command over others. But yet if we consider the
same theorems as delivered in the word of God that by right commandeth
all things, then are they properly called laws.
Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a
Commonwealth, From Leviathan, Chapter 17-18
The final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally
love liberty, and dominion over others) in the
introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in
which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the
foresight of their own preservation, and of a more
contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting
themselves out from the miserable condition of war
which is necessarily consequent, as hath been
shown, to the natural passions of men when there is
no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them
by fear of punishment to the performance of their
covenants, and observation of those laws of nature
set down in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters.
Concluding Thoughts
Natural right culminates in a doctrine of absolute
sovereignty.
If the sovereign is too weak or oppressive, civil war
will be the outcome.
The rules governing the creation of a commonwealth
are like the rules governing arithmetic and geometry
not tennis where practice and experience matter.
The sovereign’s judgment may be necessary in the
complex world of politics, but that judgment should
be augmented by the science of politics.
What are the limits of Hobbes’ political science?
Passion? Justice?
On the Liberty of Subjects, From
Leviathan, Chapter 21
As for other liberties, they depend on the silence of the
law. In cases where the sovereign has prescribed no
rule, there the subject hath the liberty to do, or forbear,
according to his own discretion. And therefore such
liberty is in some places more, and in some less; and
in some times more, in other times less, according as
they that have the sovereignty shall think most
convenient. As for example, there was a time when in
England a man might enter his own land, and
dispossess such as wrongly possessed it, by force.
But in after times that liberty of forcible entry was
taken away by a statute made by the king in
Parliament. And in some places of the world men
have the liberty of many wives: in other places, such
liberty is not allowed.