hobbes i

Hobbes’s Secular Moralism and the

Role of His Social Contract

§1. Introduction

Why do I begin a course in political philosophy with Hobbes?1 It isn’t that Hobbes began the social contract doctrine, of course. That goes back to the classical Greeks, and then in the sixteenth century there was a marvelous development of it by the later Scholastics, by Suarez, de Vittoria, Molina, and others. By Hobbes’s time it is a quite highly developed doctrine. My reason is that in my own view and that of many others, Hobbes’s Leviathan is the greatest single work of political thought in the English language. By saying that, I don’t mean that it comes the closest to being true, or that it is the most reasonable. Rather, I mean that taking everything together—in- cluding its style and its language, its scope and its acuteness and interesting vividness of observation, its intricate structure of analysis and principles, and its presentation of what I think is a dreaded way of thinking about society which almost might be true and which is quite a frightening possibil- ity—adding all those together, the Leviathan makes, to me, a very overwhelming impression. Taken as a whole, it can have a very overwhelming and dramatic effect on our thought and feeling. There are other writers one might prize more. In a way, I tend to value J. S. Mill’s work more highly than Hobbes’s, but then there is no single work of Mill’s that can be compared to the Leviathan. There isn’t anything he did that begins to have this overall effect. Locke’s Second Treatise may be more reasonable, more sensible, in some ways, and one might think closer to being accurate, or true. But again, it lacks the scope and power of presentation of a political conception on the order of Hobbes. And while there are other impressive writ-

1. [Transcription of February 11, 1983 lecture, with additions from John Rawls’s handwritten lecture notes of 1979 and 1983. —Ed.]

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ers, like Kant and Marx, they did not write in English. In the English language this is, I think, the most impressive single work. Therefore it would be a shame to have a class on political philosophy and not try to read it.

A second reason for opening with a study of Hobbes’s work is that it is useful to think of modern moral and political philosophy as beginning with Hobbes, and with the reaction to Hobbes. Hobbes wrote the Leviathan during a period of great political upheaval. He published it in 1651, during the period of transition between the English Civil War (1642–48), which defeated Charles I, and the restoration of the monarchy with the crowning of Charles II in 1660. Hobbes’s work called forth a strong intellectual reaction. Hobbes was regarded by his critics to be the chief representative of modern infidelity to Christian beliefs. That was a Christian age, and Christian orthodoxy saw their opposition to Hobbes along a number of very important and sharp lines (see Figure 1).

For example, orthodoxy would, of course, hold a theistic view, while they regarded Hobbes as atheistic. Orthodoxy holds a dualist view, making a distinction between soul and body, whereas they regarded Hobbes as a materialist. Orthodoxy also believed in freedom of the will, freedom of the soul and mind, but they regarded Hobbes as a determinist who would reduce the will to a sequence of appetites or some sort of cultural change. Orthodoxy also held a corporative conception of human society (it would not be correct to call it “organic”). They regarded society as intrinsically an aspect of human nature, whereas they regarded Hobbes as having an individualist conception of society. He is still regarded as having a rather radically individualistic view. Orthodoxy also held to a view of eternal and

Figure 1.

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Hobbes’s Secular Moralism and the Role of His Social Contract

immutable morality. That is to say there were certain moral principles based on God’s reason that were possible for us, in virtue of our reason, to grasp and to understand, and there was but one interpretation of these principles. Moral principles were like the axioms of geometry in that they could be grasped by reason alone. Hobbes, on the other hand, was seen as relativistic and subjectivistic, totally the opposite view. To make a final point, orthodoxy regarded persons as capable of benevolence and being concerned with others’ good, and also as capable of acting from moral principles of eternal and immutable morality for their own sake; whereas Hobbes, as they thought, presumed persons to be psychological egoists and concerned only with their own interests.

I don’t think that this picture of Hobbes, this interpretation of his view, is particularly accurate, but I mention it because it was what people in Hobbes’s time, even a number of sophisticated people, took Hobbes to be saying. It explains why he was so severely attacked and even dreaded. It was a matter of personal affront in some circles if someone took you to be a Hobbist. That was an accusation against which many felt they had to defend themselves, much as people felt around 1950 in this country that they had to defend themselves from being thought to be a communist. Locke thought that Newton took him for a Hobbist, and this was something that they had to straighten out before they could be friends. It was a very serious matter to have others regard you in this light.

What one will find is that immediately after Hobbes there are two lines of reaction against him. One is the orthodox reaction by Christian moral philosophers, those who belonged or were sympathetic to the church. Perhaps the most important among them were Cudworth, Clarke, and Butler. They attacked what they took to be Hobbes’s leading views, e.g.:

1.his presumed psychological and ethical egoism;

2.his relativism and subjectivism and denial of free will;

3.and what they took to be the result of his doctrine: the idea that political authority is made legitimate by superior power or else by agreements made when confronted by such power.

They also rejected the idea that political authority could rest on anything like a social contract at all.

The other line of reaction was the utilitarian line: Hume, Bentham, Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and on down. They did not disagree with

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Hobbes for orthodox reasons, and they on the whole, with the exception of Hutcheson, took a secular standpoint. The utilitarians wanted to attack Hobbes’s egoism. They wanted to argue that the principle of utility is an objective moral principle, and in that way attack Hobbes’s presumed subjectivism or relativism. And they also argued for the principle of utility as a principle that could decide between and justify and explain the grounds of political authority. One of the ways in which Hobbes was interpreted was that he based political obligation and political authority on superior power. Again, I am not saying that any of these things are what Hobbes actually said, but that they are what he was widely regarded as saying.

So Hobbes was attacked then from all sides—by the orthodox and the non-orthodox—and because the Leviathan is such a tremendous work, it initiated a kind of reaction: his system of thought was something in regard to which one had to decide where one stood. Given these circumstances, it is useful to think of Hobbes and the reaction to Hobbes as the beginning of modern British political and moral philosophy.

§2. Hobbes’s Secular Moralism

In order to have time to discuss some of the essential points in this work, I shall focus on what I shall call “Hobbes’s Secular Moral System.” I am going to omit certain things, and I will explain why I am going to do so. The first thing I am going to ignore are Hobbes’s theological assumptions. Hobbes often talks as though he were a Christian believer, and I don’t question or deny that in some sense he was, although as you read the work you will understand why there are some who did deny that. At any rate they wondered how he could say the things he did and yet believe, in any orthodox sense. So I am going to leave these orthodox theological assumptions aside and assume that there is within the book a secular political and moral system. This secular political and moral system is fully intelligible as regards its structure of ideas and the content of its principles when these theological assumptions are left aside. In other words, we do not need to take these assumptions into account in order to understand what the secular system is. Indeed, it is precisely because, or in part because, we can leave these assumptions aside that his doctrine was an offense to orthodoxy of his time. In orthodox thought, religion ought to play some essential part in under-

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standing the political and moral system of ideas. If it does not, then that itself is a troublesome matter.

Religion, the orthodox thought, played no essential role in Hobbes’s view. I believe, then, that all the notions that Hobbes uses, for example the notion of natural right, of natural law, the state of nature, and so forth, can all be defined and explicated apart from any theological background. And the same is also the case in regard to the content of the moral system, where by the content I mean what its principles actually say. This means that the content of the laws of nature, which right reason bids us to follow, and also the content of the moral virtues, such as the virtues of justice, honor, and the like, can all be explained without resorting to theological assumptions and can all be understood within the secular system.

Hobbes thinks of a law of nature as “a Precept, or general Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same” (Leviathan, p. 64 in the original 1651 edition).2 These precepts, when generally followed, are the means of achieving peace and concord, and are necessary for the “conservation” and defense of “men in multitudes” (Leviathan, Ch. 15, p. 78). The laws of nature can all be understood without mentioning theological assumptions. This does not mean, however, that we cannot add certain theological assumptions to Hobbes’s secular scheme; and when such assumptions are added they may lead us to describe parts of this secular system in a different way. For example, Hobbes says that in the secular system (my term) the laws of nature are properly speaking “dictates of reason,” conclusions or “theorems” concerning what is necessary for our conservation and for the peace of society. They are properly called “laws” only when we think of them as the commands of God who has by right legitimate authority over us (Leviathan, Ch. 15, p. 80). But the crucial point is this: thinking of these dictates of reason as the Laws of God in no way changes their content—what they direct us to do; they still say exactly the same thing to us

2. Page references are to the first edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan, the Lionshead (or “Head”) edition of 1651 [these are included within the text of the Penguin edition edited by C. B. MacPherson, which was used by Rawls in his course]. Pagination from the Head edition is included in the margins of all principal modern editions of Leviathan. “The principal modern editions (those of A. R. Waller in 1904, the Oxford University Press in 1909, Michael Oakeshott in 1946, and C. B. MacPherson in 1968) all based themselves, correctly, on the Head edition,” as did Molesworth in his 1839 edition. Richard Tuck, p. xviii from his edition of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

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about what we ought to do as they said before. Nor does it change the content of the virtues. Nor does thinking of them as God’s laws change the way in which we are bound to follow them. We are already bound by right reason to follow them (at least in foro interno) and justice and covenanting is a natural virtue.3 As God’s laws, the dictates of reason simply acquire a peculiarly forceful sanction (cf. Leviathan, Ch. 31, pp. 187f ). In other words there is another forceful and compelling reason, the threat of God’s punishment, for why they ought to be followed. But the sanction does not affect the content and the notions involved.

The background theological system would change the content and formal structure of Hobbes’s secular scheme only if what is necessary for our salvation from a religious standpoint is different from and would conflict in some way with the dictates of reason about what is necessary for the peace and concord of society. If the theological view were that you had to do certain things that would conflict with the precepts of the laws of nature, or the dictates of reason, in order to be saved, then you would have a conflict. But Hobbes does not I think believe this. He would say that any religious view that is incompatible with the dictates of reason, regarded as theorems for what is necessary for the conservation of men in groups, is a superstition and irrational. In Chapter 12 (pp. 54–57) he discusses religion, and here he notes how the first founders and legislators of the commonwealth among the ancients took pains to make it publicly believed that what is necessary for the peace and unity of society is also pleasing to the gods, and that the same things were displeasing to the gods that were forbidden by the laws. It is clear that Hobbes approves of this policy and thinks that this is what they ought to have done.

Later in Chapter 15 Hobbes gives an answer to the so-called fool who believes that there is no justice (Leviathan, pp. 72f ). He has the fool say, among a number of other things, that the secure and perpetual felicity of heaven may be gained by not keeping covenants (for instance, with heretics). (It was a common practice at the time to say that we are not obligated to keep our covenants with heretics, that they are an exception.) Hobbes replies that this idea is frivolous. He says that there is no imaginable way to attain salvation except by honoring our covenants (Leviathan, p. 73). Then he goes on to reject the views of those who think that covenants with here-

3. “The Laws of Nature oblige in foro interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place: but in foro externo; that is, to the putting them in act, not always.” Leviathan, p. 79.

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tics and others are not binding, and who think that the dictates of reason, that is the laws of nature, may be overridden for religious ends (Leviathan, pp. 73–74). For Hobbes, then, such a breach of covenant would not be justified. Thus the quest for our salvation does not in any way, in his view, change the content of the Laws of Nature regarded as the dictates of reason. Theological assumptions may enforce this secular system by adding God’s sanctions to the dictates of reason, and they may enable us to describe it in a somewhat different fashion so that the dictates of reason are called “laws,” but they do not alter the fundamental structure of concepts and the content of its principles, or what they require of us. In sum, it is on those grounds that I propose that we can put aside the theological assumptions.

Another aspect of Hobbes’s view that I am going to put aside is his socalled materialism. I don’t believe that this had any significant influence on the content of what I am calling his secular system. Hobbes’s psychology derived mainly from common sense observation, and from his reading of the classics, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plato. His political thought, that is, his conception of human nature, was probably formed there. It doesn’t show any signs of actually having been thought out and derived on the basis of mechanical principles of materialism, the so-called method of science. Although occasionally it is mentioned, it did not actually affect his account of human nature and the passions, and the like, that motivate it.4

We may allow that Hobbes’s materialism, and the idea of there being a mechanical principle that explains causation, gave him greater confidence in the social contract idea as an analytic method. He may have felt that the two went together. For example: in the De Cive, which is an earlier, less full, less elaborate work than the Leviathan, presenting much the same view, he starts with a discussion of “the very matter of civil government,” and then proceeds to discuss its generation and form and the first beginnings of justice, and then he adds the phrase that “everything is best understood from its constitutive causes.”5 In order then to understand civil society, that is, the

4.Thus, what Robertson said long ago seems largely right: “The whole of his political doctrine . . . has little appearance of having been thought out from the fundamental principles of his philosophy . . . it doubtless had its main lines fixed when he was still a mere observer of men and manners, and not yet a mechanical philosopher.” George Croom Robertson, Hobbes (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1886), p. 57.

5.Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, ed. Sterling P. Lamprecht (New York: Appleton-Century- Crofts, 1949), pp. 10–11. Hobbes says that he starts from the “very matter of civil government” and proceeds to “its generation and form, and the first beginning of justice; for everything is best understood by its constitutive causes.”

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