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Power
Power
Power
A. DON SORENSEN
Indiana University
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280
when habits of common living were confused and men searched for,
and even fought over, first principles.It was an age of regicide and of
the theocratic rule of Oliver Cromwell. The Anglican Church, separated from Rome but not reformed,was confrontedwith the dissenting
Puritans and rebelling Scottish Presbyterianson the religious front.
The clash over basic principles of science and religion was being extended by such persons (to mention a few) as Galileo, Kepler,Harvey,
Descartes, Gassendi, Mersenne, and even Copernicus, though not in
body. Hobbes noted in the last paragraphof the Leviathan1that his decision to write the book was "occasionedby the disordersof the present
time."
Inspiredby the new science of his time, Hobbes wanted to lay bare
with scientific rigor and clarity the very "heart," "nerves," and
"joints"2of the body politic and to show how its parts must be interconnectedif civil orderis to be restored.He brought his ideas together
in a theory of "real"power which forms the basic structureof his general theory of politics as he presented it in the Leviathan. With the
qualified exception of some recent theorists, his theory of power is
probably the most sophisticatedand explicit one of its kind in the history of political philosophy. He anticipatedby several hundred years
a numberof the main ideas found in currentviews on the subject.
Yet despite the fundamental position "real" power occupies in
Hobbes's political philosophy, Hobbes's scholars have almost wholly
neglected or overlooked it. They have concerned themselves instead
with other narrowerfeatures of his work, such as the legal and moral
aspects of absolute authority,political obligation, and possessive individualism.3 In the pages that follow, therefore, Hobbes's theory of
power-the central framework for his philosophy of civil order-will
be analyzed and described.As a consequenceof this analysis, the logical foundationsof his politicalphilosophy as they appearin the Leviathan will be reconsideredand reinterpreted,as will a number of the
main distinguishingfeatures of that great work. Needless to say, a full
1 Leviathan,Michael Oakeshott edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1957).
2
Ibid., Hobbes's "Introduction."
3 See, for example, C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive
Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (London: Oxford University Press, 1962);
Richard Peters, Hobbes (Penguin Books, 1956); Leslie Stephen, Hobbes
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904); Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (London: The Clarenden Press, 1936); Howard Warrender,
The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1957); and
J. W. H. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965).
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A. DON SORENSEN
accountof his ideas cannot be given, nor can justice be done to many of
his insights, in a short article. Only the bare outlines of his political
theory can be examined.
I
Hobbes was preoccupiedintellectuallywith problemsof naturalphilosophy when he turnedhis thoughts to the disordersof his time. He put
aside these reflectionsto write the Leviathan,and in the last paragraph
of that work he announcedhis intentions to "returnto my interrupted
speculation of bodies natural."These speculations were later finished
and published under the title Elements of Philosophy.4I mention this
because Hobbes was greatly influencedin formulatinghis political philosophy, as it appears in the Leviathan,by his speculationsin natural
philosophy. Indeed, the logical structureof his theory of political society is based on his theory of causation,which is consideredin detail in
the Elements.If one is thoroughlyto understandHobbes's politicaltheory, therefore,his view of causationmust be understood.
Under the influenceof a mechanicalmetaphysics,Hobbes was a diehard determinist.He thought of the world as composedof bodies, much
as the physicist conceives it, which move and rest accordingto laws of
causation. Bodies in motion, he thought, constitute the one universal
fact. The universe is bodies in motion; it is a continuousprocess of one
system of motion evolving into another, a process of continual change.
The setting of a body into motion, or any change in its movement
whatsoever, is caused, in Hobbes's words, by some other "body contiguous and moved."5Politicalsociety, too, starts, stops and changes in
accordancewith the mechanicsof causation.
Behindevery event, then, occurs an "entirecause"-the aggregateof
all the conditions necessary for its production. This essentially is
Hobbes's view. But of particularsignificancefor his theory of political
power, as we shall see, is the crucialdistinction he makes between two
"partialcauses," the "efficientcause" and the "materialcause," which
together form the total cause.6Suppose two bodies come into contactone of them, active in producing motion, called "the agent" and the
other, undergoingthe action of the first, called "the patient." Now according to Hobbes, the resulting "effect" of this occurrence-the mo4"Elements of Philosophy," in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes,
edited by Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1939), 8 Vols., Vol.
I. Unless otherwise stated, all italics are those of Hobbes.
Ibid., Ch. 9.
'
Ibid., p. 122.
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281
282
Ibid., p. 122.
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A. DON SORENSEN
though their descriptive contents are different. And second, that the
structureof the latter theory is logically derived from that of the former. In different words, the theory of causation in his philosophy
properis isomorphicwith his theory of politicalpower in the Leviathan
and the structureof the latter is a specific applicationof the structure
of the former. It is as though the concepts in his theory of causation
were replaced by the descriptive concepts referring to the political
world without changing the form of the theory. Implied in all I have
said is the fact that Hobbes's theory of motion and causation is logically more fundamental than his theory of political power. It has
greater scope and range and thereforebroaderapplicabilitythan to the
political arena.10
But how in concreteterms does Hobbes connect the two theories?In
the Elementshe does it simply by equatingcausationand power by way
of definition, so that all he wrote about causation applies with equal
relevance to power. The only differencebetween the two concepts appears in the reference made to time-"cause respects the past, power
the future time."11That is, cause refers to effects that have alreadyoccurred,power to effects that can or will be producedin the future. Except for this difference, then, "the efficient cause" and "the material
cause" mean the same thing as "the power of the agent" and "the
power of the patient."Hobbes explains further:
Wherefore the power of the agent and patient together, which
may be called entire or plenary power, is the same thing with entire cause; for they both consist in the sum or aggregateof all the
accidents, as well in the agent as in the patient, which are requisite for the productionof the effect.12
Thus "real" power, as causation, is strictly relational. It is not a
propertyof either the agent or the patient alone. Both must be, insists
Hobbes, "joined together"for the anticipatedeffect to take place. It is
interesting to note, however, that as clear as Hobbes is about the rela10For a modem analysis of this form of logical connection between two
theories, see the paper written by a philosopher, May Brodbeck, entitled
"Models, Meaning, and Theories," in Symposium on Sociological Theory,
edited by Llewellyn Gross (Illinois: Row, Peterson, and Company, 1959).
See Hobbes's De Cive, Sterling P. Lamprechtedition (New York: Appleton-
12,
his theory of causation in analyzing political phenomena about a decade before the Leviathan was published.
n Elements, Ch. io.
3 Ibid., p. 128.
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283
284
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A. DON SORENSEN
those from the Elements between those from the Leviathan,the relationship between them becomes clear: the power of a man (an agent) is
his present means (the aggregateof accidentsin him) to obtain (requisite for the production of) some future apparent good (some future
effect). As can be easily seen, the definitionof power in the Leviathan
is a specificderivationof the more generaldefinitionof the power of an
agent (the efficientcause) found in Hobbes's philosophy proper.
After providing a universal definition of human power, Hobbes
makes a simple distinctionbetween the naturaland instrumentalmeans
or resourcesof power a man may command.
Natural power is the eminence of the faculties of body, or mind:
as extraordinarystrength, form, prudence,arts, eloquence,liberality, nobility. Instrumentalare those powers, which acquiredby
these, or by fortune, are means and instrumentsto acquiremore:
as riches, reputation, friends, and the secret working of God,
which men call good luck.18
But the "presentmeans" of a man-his faculties of body or mind; his
riches or reputation-do not by themselves constitutepower as Hobbes
defines it. Hobbes said himself in the Elementsthat an agent is but a
partial cause. Those over whom power is exercised also are a partial
cause-the material cause. Somehow the natural and instrumental
means of human agents and certain characteristicsof human patients
must be joined together to make up an entire cause or to constitute real
power. Only then will the anticipatedeffects be brought about, the future goods be obtained.
But in what way does a man, or several men, act as a materialcause
in relations of power? Consider honor as one of several forms of
power.19To say that a man has honor, reasons Hobbes, means that he
is positively valued by others. It means that others have placed upon
him, to use Hobbes's term, a high "price.""And as in other things, so
in men, not the seller, but the buyer determinesthe price."20In different words, certainof a man's achievementsor abilities are transformed
by acts of evaluationon the part of others from mere characteristicsof
a person into attributesof honor and thereforeof power.
The implicationsare clear.The value of a man's prudence,eloquence,
riches or any other naturalor instrumentalresourcedepends on, to use
Hobbes's words, "the need and judgmentof another,"they are no more
18Ibid.
Ibid., p. 46.
20Ibid., pp. 56-57
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285
286
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A. DON SORENSEN
Leviathan,pp. 64-5.
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287
288
29
Ibid., p. 5.
30
Elements,
31
p. 129.
Leviathan, Ch. 13.
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A. DON SORENSEN
34
Ibid., Ch. 4.
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289
290
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A. DON SORENSEN
least of all, the adoption of any current religious views to endow the
rulersof his time with badly needed authority.Ratherhe formulatedas
clearly as he could certain"rulesof reason"40based on the naked scientific truth about man, rules of reason which, if taught and believed,
would as a matter of fact help bind men together in peace and unity.
These laws of nature, as he also named them, followed (he thought)
from a clear apprehensionof the nature of man, his disruptivepropensities when living together with other men, and the causal conditions
that must obtain for civil orderto occur.
Hobbes set down in the Leviathana ratherlong list of natural laws
or rules of reason-nineteen basic ones in all from which many more
particularones could be derived. All cannot be consideredhere, but of
particularimportancefor his theory of common power are those making up the doctrine of the social contract.41According to this doctrine,
men should act "as if" they had conferredall their power and strength,
all their individual rights to govern themselves, upon one man or assembly of men, reducingthereby all their wills to one will. The sovereign, on whom these rights and powers are bestowed, should be construed as having in a moral-legal sense "absolute authority." The
subjects should think of him "as if" all their "strengthand means" are
embodied in him so that he can do whatever he thinks necessary for
their peace and security.42
Legally and morally, the social contractis the central doctrinein the
structureof law and governmentin Hobbes's great Leviathan.Fromit
flow the "rightof doing any act," or "authority,"43in the complexprocesses of ruling, from the making of general laws for the whole commonwealth to the distributionof local justice.
But, as Hobbes saw it, the doctrineof the contractmust be more than
legally or morally sound: it must be psychologicallygroundedas well.
He was not simply engaging in legal or moral philosophy for its own
sake when he spelled out the contract theory and other doctrines. He
was concernedwith the very psychological underpinningsof political
society itself. A viable public authority,he thought, is the most crucial
form of power for holding civil society together in a state of peace. He
also thought that it becomes a form of real or plenarypower as it comes
to life in the hearts and minds of the subjects.The legal meaningof the
compactmust be translatedinto psychologicalmeaningto provide common "imaginations"and "understandings"(connected to official "ele40Ibid.,
a
Ibid.,
Aa
Ibid.,
48Ibid.,
Chs. 14-15.
pp. 112, 136, 138-9, and Ch. 14.
pp. 112, 136, and Ch. 18.
pp. 105-106.
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291
292
HOBBES'S
THEORY
OF POWER
AND
ORDER
Ibid., pp. 8-9, 13, 24, 31. Note also Chs. 5 and 8. Compare with Ch. 29
47
Ibid., pp. 116-117.
8 Ch.
30 and p. 158.
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A. DON SORENSEN
analysis so far shows, is between real power as cause and effect and
contractualpower or authority as a formal doctrine of right and duty.
Thus formal authority is defined as the "right of doing any act,"
whereas real power refers to the "aggregateof accidentsnecessary for
the productionof a future effect."Authority rests upon the doctrineof
the social contractwhich each generationof subjects will be diligently
taught, but power results from the "accidents"of the sovereign (the
efficientcause) and the "accidents"of the subjects (the materialcause)
being "joined together." Whether authority is limited or absolute depends on the nature of the conditions stipulated in the contract, and
Hobbes thought that it ought to be construedas absolute.The existence,
scope, and limits of real power, however, depend on means and motives
being effectively enmeshed and on the degree to which "defects"
weaken or dissolve those relationships. But of equal importance and
interest is the way Hobbes's notions of right and cause fit together: the
doctrines of authority become causal elements in the mechanics of
common power as they are "imprinted"49on the subjects' minds by
means of political education.
IV
Thus a viable public authority, securely anchoredin true doctrinesbelieved sincerely by the subjects, is in Hobbes's mind the most crucial
relation of common power. Unless the rulers and the ruled as efficient
and materialcauses of political order are joined together in this fundamental way, men will quickly degenerateinto a state of nature,leaving
behind the many benefits of civilized life.
But sharedbeliefs by themselves will not bind men together in peace
and security. Hobbes wrote with emphatic clarity that the "bonds of
words are too weak to bridle men's ambition, avarice, anger and other
passions without the fear of some coercive power."50Even when men
are effectively taught the true doctrines and believe them sincerely
from the heart, the preservationof civil orderrequiresthe use or threat
of "legal punishment"to secure the commonwealthagainst disruptive
tendencies which may cause men to go contrary to what they have
been taught and sincerely believe is right. Furthermore,Hobbes insisted that a sovereign'scoercivepower insures a sense of mutualtrust,
without which men are not obligated to keep promises and trusts, for
"he that performeth first, has no assurance the other will perform
9 Ibid., p. 221.
O Ibid., pp. 89-90, 94, 109.
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293
294
237.
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A. DON SORENSEN
6 Ibid., p. 220.
" Ibid., p. 192.
Ibid., Ch. 29.
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295
296
thought fit together. The discussion has been brief and minimal.Many
important details of his view of political power and civil order were
barely touched upon or omitted altogether in order to keep the paper
within reasonablelimits. Only in a much longer work could the full implications of his theory of causation and power for his political theory
be satisfactorilyanalyzed.In presentingHobbes's views here, one main
purpose was to concentrateon importantbut neglected aspects of his
political thought, particularlyon the causal dimensions of his ideas on
language and opinion, civil education and indoctrination,and rules of
reason and sovereign authority.Hobbes was especially concernedwith
formulating in considerabledetail the legal and moral elements of a
sound political philosophy, for in the last analysis, he thought, these
are the kinds of elements in terms of which men direct their thoughts,
reason and communicate politically. These elements, diligently and
truly taught, form the fundamentalcausal connections, illuminatedby
a psychological theory of man's inner motions, in the mechanics of
civil order.
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T H O M A S HOBBES A N D T H E
CONSTITUENT POWER OF THE
PEOPLE
MURRAY FORSYTH
Leicester University
Abstruct. The paper examines Hobbess doctrine of representation and argues that implicit in
this doctrine is the modern notion of the people as the constituent power of the state.
Attention is focused on the progressive evolution of Hobbess ideas about the multitude, the
people, and the constitution of political unity, and on the connection between his doctrine of
political representation and his concept of personality. The paper ends by assessing the
compatibility of Hobbess concept of the people as constituent power and his concept of the
commonwealth by acquisition.
T H Edoctrine of the people as the constituent power of the body politic is one
that is peculiarly associated with the American and French Revolutions. While
in America the idea developed unclearly, gradually, and sporadically during
the period from the Declaration of Independence to the making of the
Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, in France it was outlined with some
precision at the very start of the revolutionary upheaval. The Abbe Sieyes could
thus claim, with understandable pride, that the discovery of the division
between the constituent power and the constituted powers was due to the
French.2 Since the revolutionary period the idea of the people as constituent
power has gradually become a reality throughout most of the Western world.
Both in the wording of modern constitutions, and in the modes in which they
are drafted and ratified, as well as in the provisions for their amendment, it is
almost inevitably acknowledged that the people as a collectivity of individuals
is the subject of the constitution, that all public powers emanate from them,
and that there is a distinction to be drawn between the people acting in their
constituent capacity and the people acting in and through the constituted
structure of government. In this paper I wish to argue that Hobbes, in
developing his theory of representation, and his theory of the commonwealth
R. R. Palmer, The Age qf the Democraric Revolution (Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1969), p. 216. Palmer summarizes the process of development on p. 224. The formula, We the
peuplc ordain and establish, expressing the developed theory of the people as constituent power,
was used for the first time in the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, whence it passed into the
preamble of the United States constitution of 1787 and the new Pennsylvania constitution of 1790,
after which it became common in the constitutions of the new states, and in new constitutions of
the old states.
Lafayette protested against Sieyess claim, invoking the American precedent. P. Bastid, Sieyes
et sa Pen& (Paris, Hachette, 1970), p. 391.
Political Studies, Vol. XXIX. No. 2 (191 203)
I92
by institution, worked his way through to the kernel of the idea of the people
as the constituent power of the body politic, and that herein lies the main
historical significance of his theory of representation and constitution.
Hobbess theory of representation has not of course been ignored in recent
years. Hanna Pitkin, in particular, has examined it on two occasions3 with
both thoroughness and insight. Pitkin, however, seems curiously uncertain
about the significance of the theory to which she devotes her attention. In her
first study she suggests that an examination of Hobbess concept of representation is largely a prophylactic enterprise. Hobbess analysis is both temptingly plausible and peculiarly wrong. In discovering why it is plausible and
yet wrong we may ourselves be freed from the same temptation and thus
protected against making the same error.4 In her second study she is more
reluctant to call Hobbess analysis wrong, but remains extremely tentative in
her judgement of its merits. She calls his concept partial, formal, and empty of
substance, and yet she also maintains that his definition is not just wrong,
not obviously wrong.6 It is perhaps in a sense both right and not right.
Hobbes, she concludes, developed too narrow a perspective on representation
by approaching it from only one angle, by taking into account only one kind
of representation.
Without entering into a full discussion of Pitkins analysis, it may be
suggested that her equivocation can in part be attributed to her own method
which, as she explains, is based largely on ordinary language philosophy.8
She is concerned with exploring representation by way of all the usages of the
term, and finds that not only does Hobbes not consider all the usages, but that
his own usage is not normal or ordinary. Hobbes thus becomes in her hands a
kind of unskilled linguistic analyst. Indeed at one point she goes further,
calling his theory of representation a verbal game which ignores actual
political problem^'.^ Hobbes is thus not only chided for doing language
philosophy badly, but for playing verbal games instead of tackling real
problems.
What is missing here is a direct confrontation with the central problem to
which Hobbes was addressing himself. Hobbes was primarily concerned not
with political questions in general, nor with representation in general, nor with
conforming to the ordinary usage of words. He was concerned first and
foremost with defining the essence of a commonwealth or state. Words were
tools to be used with the utmost care in carrying out this task, but they were
not themselves the primary matter to be investigated. As he said himself, the
use of words was to register to ourselves, and make manifest to others the
thoughts and conceptions of our minds.1 Hobbes used the word represen-
MURRAY FORSYTH
I93
Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society (hereafter cited by its original
Latin title De Cive), English Works, ed. Molesworth (London, J . Bohn, 183945), Vol. 11, p. 98.
I r ! The Elemenis of Law Natural and Politic. ed. F. Tonnies (second ed., Introd. M. M.
Goldsmith, London. Cass, 1969). p. 124.
1 3 De Cive, p . 158.
I 94
MURRAY FORSYTH
195
196
name; every man giving their common representer, authority from himself in particular; and owning all the actions the representer doth, in case they give him
authority without stint: otherwise, when they limit him in what and how far he shall
represent them, none of them owneth more than they gave him commission to act.
The compressed sentences here are not easy to interpret. It is clear however
that the process of creating unity out of multiplicity has two sides to it. First,
there is the establishment of one person as a common representer for the
multitude, and secondly, there is the authorization of the acts and words of the
common representer. These may be called the two moments of Hobbess
concept of representation in Leviathan. They are logically connected : before
someones acts and words can be authorized that someone must be in
existence.
These two moments of representation correspond to the two moments
implicit in Hobbess concept of a person, which also comes to fruition in
L e ~ i a t h a n . ~From his earliest published philosophical writings onwards
Hobbes had been strongly hostile to the scholastic and Cartesian-rationalist
metaphysics of the soul or ego, which had sought to define it as an immaterial
substance, separate from mans practical activity in the world, with qualities
that explained this activity. Hobbes was particularly concerned to argue that
the will was not an abstract faculty behind human action but action (or nonaction) in itself.4 For all his objections to the scholastic and Cartesianrationalist approach, however, Hobbes did not deny that practical activity in
the world necessarily presupposed a single something that acted, a subject
distinct though not separate from its actions. His position is perhaps most
clearly expressed in his third objection to Descartess Meditations on First
Philosophy:
I myself [he wrote] who am conscious [cogito],am distinct from my consciousness; and
my consciousness is distinct, though not separated, from me, just a s . . . a leap is from
one who leaps. If M. Descartes means that the one who understands is identical with his
understanding, we shall fall back into the scholastic way of talking; the understanding
understands, the sight sees, the will wills; and by a perfectly fair analogy a walk (or at
any rate the power of walking) walks. All these expressions are obscure and
improper. . . 2 s
MURRAY FORSYTH
197
Hobbess concept of a person was nothing other than the external manifestations (actions and words) of a single ego or source of actions. Hobbes thus
defined a person as an actor in two senses: as a single subject or source of
actions, and as a presenter of actions and words to others, like a stage actor.
An ego or soul whose external acts were considered its own was for Hobbes a
natural person, and an ego or soul whose external acts were considered as
anothers was an artificial person. The external acts of an artificial person were
sometimes owned or authorized by the other people concerned, and sometimes
not.=
It can be seen that the multitude became a unity, according to Hobbess
account in chapter sixteen of Leviathan, through being represented as a person
in both the basic senses that have been outlined. To become a person in the
sense of an ego or single subject of actions it had to be represented by an ego
or single subject of actions. In Hobbess words: For it is the unity of the
representer, not the unity of the represented, that maketh the person one. And
it is the representer that beareth the person, and but one person: and unity,
cannot otherwise be understood in multitude.
The most significant thing about these words is that it is not the acts and
words of the multitude that are being made present by the representer, nor the
multiple egos or souls of the individuals who compose it, but the multitudes
own oneness. The singleness of the representing person here manifests nothing
other than the singleness or ego of the multitude. By the same token a latent or
non-present oneness or ego, something that becomes present or manifest in
the singleness of the representer, is necessarily acknowledged or conceded to
exist in the multitude.28
To establish one person to make present the unity of the multitude is only
one side of the process by which a multitude transforms itself, however. The
acts of the common representer must be authorized. What is authorization in
this context? It is the owning of the acts of the common representer by each
individual, either completely or with limitations. It relates to the scope of the
representatives actions, not to their rootedness in one source. When a
common ego has been established and its acts have been authorized, the
multitude has become a unity.
It may seem that to speak of an ego or personality latent in the multitude is
to smuggle an illicit common essence into Hobbess particularist or atomistic
world. This, however, is to overlook the ambivalence that pervades Hobbess
actual account of the multitude in the state of nature. To be sure he repeatedly
stresses its atomistic and anarchic character, but he simultaneously gives many
indications that the individuals who compose it are engaged in reciprocal
arrangements with one another in accordance with the laws of nature, and
possess some sort of identity vis-h-vis a common enemy.19 Hobbess doctrine
Leviathan. pp. 1 0 5 4 . See also the discussion in the texts referred to in the previous footnote.
H. Pitkin interestingly gives a precise definition of representation in the sense outlined here
when she writes that it means the making present of something which is nevertheless not literally
present (The Concept of Representafion, p. 144). She does not however relate this definition to
Hobbess use of the term.
L P 1 have examined the ambivalent nature of Hobbess state of nature more fully in Thomas
Hobbes and the External Relations of States, British Journal of International Studies, 5 ( 1 9 7 9 ~
196-209.
L7
198
T H O M A S HOBBES A N D T H E C O N S T I T U E N T P O W E R
MURRAY FORSYTH
199
The crux of this definition, and indeed of Hobbes's whole discussion of the
constituted commonwealth, is that he sees the agreement at the root of the
body politic as not only a simultaneous authorization of the actions of one
person by each individual for certain purposes, but as an agreement enabling
all to designate or appoint a single person to put into effect the identical goals
they all have. The underlying covenant is thus no ordinary one: it allows a
single constitutive will to act, and thereby transforms the contractors from
mere contractors into members of a constituent body. I t is a contract to go
beyond contract.
This affirmation by Hobbes of the self-transformatory nature of the contract
is a recognition too that at the root of the constituted commonwealth stands
not merely a multitude of individuals, but a multitude determined to give the
unity latent in its multiplicity a distinct, appropriate, instituted shape and
form. At the root of the constituted commonwealth there stands, in a word,
the 'people'. The people are the constituent power of the body politic, it is they
who 'make present' their unity in constituting a sovereign.
If the people in Leviathan are more than a mere multitude, they are by the
same token less than a constituted commonwealth. There is no account in
Leviathan of a sequence from an original democratic commonwealth to an
aristocratic or monarchic one, as there was in the Elemenrs and De Cive.
Hobbes simply stressed the need for an original covenant-tacit or open-to
abide by the decision of the major part regarding the declaration of the
sovereign, and argued that there could be but three forms of sovereign:
J3
Lrviulhun. p. I13
200
T H O M A S H O B B E S A N D T H E C O N S T I T U E N T POWER
35
MURRAY FORSYTH
20 1
developed at the time of the French Revolution may help to make Hobbess
logic on this point clearer. The Abbe Sieyes, who was arguably the greatest
theorist of the pouvoir constituant, described the process of founding the body
politic as follows:
A political association is the work of the unanimous will of the associates.
Its public establishment is the result of the majority will of the associates. Unanimity
being a very difficult thing to achieve in the smallest of communities, it is clear that it
becomes impossible in a society of several million individuals. The social union has its
ends; it is necessary therefore to use such means as are possible to achieve them; it is
necessary therefore to be satisfied with the majority. But it is worth observing that even
then there is a kind of mediate unanimity, for those who have unanimously willed to
unite to enjoy the advantages of society, have unanimously willed all the means
necessary to procure these advantages. The choice of the means alone is delivered over
to the majority, and all those who have their wish to express, agree in advance to abide
constantly by this majority. Hence two respects in which the majority rightly substitutes
itself for the right of unanimity. The general will is thus formed by the will of the
majority.
All public powers without distinction are an emanation of the general will, all come
from the People, that is to say, the Nation. These two terms ought to be synonymous.38
202
T H O M A S H O B B E S A N D T H E C O N S T I T U E N T POWER
40
MURRAY FORSYTH
203
designated by the people as constituent power in order to give their will for
peace, society, and protection against others, reality and effectiveness. If he
merely said with Louis XIV, LEtat cest mi!-the
whole body politic is
encompassed in one-there was no future for the commonwealth. If however
he said with Frederick the Great that the prince is the first servant of the state
then there was a future for it. Princedom plus service: that was the essence of
Hobbess concept of political representation. Its weakness was precisely that it
rested on the insight or enlightenment of particular sovereigns for its fulfilment,
their ability to perceive, like Hobbes, where the true source and legitimacy of
their power lay.
As the opening paragraph of this study indicated, it was not until the latter
part of the eighteenth century that the idea of the people as the constituent
power descended from the realm of guiding ideas and became a political
reality. Hobbes, while he was one of the very earliest, was not of course the
only person to conceive the idea before the reality.42 Nor, of course, had he the
same conception of the form of government as the bulk of the protagonists of
the people as constituent power in the later period. On this issue he remained
all too imprisoned in the ancient classical categorization of government which
focused solely on whether power was wielded by one, few, or many natural
persons.43 This crude material classification was destined to fade away once
the underlying representative character of all natural persons who hold public
power became more fully understood. On the basic issue of the nature of
constitution-making by the people, however, Hobbes not only was remarkably
prescient, but in some respects more clear-sighted than many of those who
struggled later on behalf of the peoples power without understanding the
modalities of its realization.
4 2 The Levellers had an embryonic conception of the people as the constituent power, and
Locke developed a sophisticated notion of it in his Second Treatke of Governrnenr (Ch. VIlI
especially). J. H. Franklin, in his study John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1978), draws particular attention to the pioneering work of George
Lawson in this context.
4 3 It is this above all that has led modern writers, such as A. E. Taylor-following
Pufendorfs
earlier example-to argue that there is a bargain to which the sovereign is a party in the
constitution of civil society. (The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes. in Hobbes Studies, ed. K . C.
Brown, Oxford. Blackwell, 1963.) For how can the people transmit sovereignty to a natural person
without some form of acceptance, and hence some form of contract o r covenant? Howard
Warrender follows a slightly different path in arguing that although there is no covenant between
subjects and sovereign in Hobbess constituted commonwealth, there ought to have been. The
commonwealth by constitution should, he thinks, have been placed on the same basis as the
commonwealth by acquisition. (The Political Philosophy o j Hobbes. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
1957, p. 138.) M. T. Dalgarno goes a step further and attempts to indicate the precise kind of
cotsenant that links subjects and sovereign in Hobbess commonwealth by institution. (Analysing
Hobbess Contract, Proceedings of the Aristorelian Sociery. 76 (1976). 209-26.) For all the
ingenuity of their arguments, these writers seem to me to ignore the logical strength and the
historical significance of Hobbess explicit contention that the appointment of a government by a
people cannot take the form of a contract or covenant. Hobbess fault-if I may express it in this
way-was not that he questioned the equation of constituting a government with a contract, but
that he did not stress enough the fact that what was constituted was not one or many natural
persons, but offices or institutions manned by natural persons.
Polity
Polity
Number 44
VolumeXXIII,
XXIII, Number
Summer 1991
Summer 1991
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James H. Read
509
tical conditions under which one tries to obtain apparent goods in the
state of nature.
Hobbes writes in Chapter 13 of the Leviathan:
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End,
(which is principally their owne conservation, and sometimes their
delectation only), endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another.8
Clearly if power is the means to some good, then in cases where that
good is such that one can only enjoy it at another's expense, the power of
one comes at the expense of the power of another. But for what reasons
does it happen that different men desire the same thing that they cannot
both enjoy? They might after all desire different things; or they might
desire the same thing in such a way that both can enjoy it. We need to
look more specifically at the causes of quarrel. Later in the same chapter
Hobbes gives a more concrete description of the causes of conflict:
So that in the nature of man, we find three principall causes of
quarrell. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory.
The first maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety;
and the third, for Reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves Masters of other mens persons, wives, children, and cattell;
the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile,
a different opinion, and any other signe of undervalue, either direct
in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends,
their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.9
Clearly all of these causes of quarrel can and do combine with one
another in complex ways. But let us examine them separately, since the
reasons why each is a cause of quarrel are different in each case.
We shall begin with Glory, as it is the strongest example of irreconcilable conflict. In the Elements of Law, Hobbes defines Glory as "that
passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our
own power, above the power of him that contendeth with us."10 Defined
in this way, the desire for glory is a motive perfectly tailored to the
description of power as the excess of the power of one over that of
another. One man's glory is another's lack of glory: it cannot be otherwise. Thus if glory were the only good for which human beings strive, or
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always the most importantgood, then the power of one would always
come at the expenseof the power of another.Even the formationof a
peaceful state, though it might protect men from violent death, would
merelycondemnmost men to a miserableexistence, frustratedin their
desireto attain what they want most.
But though Hobbes clearlyconsidersthe desirefor glory to be an importantmotive, he deniesthat it is the principalmotive. He claimsthat
the aim of men who endeavorto destroyothers"is principallytheirowne
conservation";he adds that "delectation,"underwhich categoryglory
would presumablyfall, is sometimesa motive. Hobbesdoes not provide
any psychologicalanalysisof the motive itself, nor does he make clear
exactlyhow stronga motive glory is relativeto motivesother than selfpreservation.In any event, it would be difficultin the state of natureto
disentangleglory from gain or safety as a motive for quarrel.In civil
society, on the other hand, supposingthat one's safety and welfareare
reasonablysecure,glory emergesas a separateand disruptivemotive;it
may even tempt someoneto rebel againsta sovereign,Hobbes is clearly
worriedabout this motive. When he describesself-preservationas the
strongesthumanmotive, he is not merelydescribingbut also prescribing:
human beings should be persuadedto care less about glory and more
about peace and self-preservation.
To seek "Gain" or "Safety" is quite different from seeking glory,
since in the lattercase one's gain is by definitionanother'sloss, whilein
the firsttwo casesthe matteris morecomplex.Onemay sometimesenjoy
wealthpreciselybecauseothers lack what you have-luxury goods, for
instance-but this is dependenton the personand the situation;thereare
many other benefitsof materialwealththat do not dependon invidious
comparisons.Nor does the pursuitof wealth always come at another's
expense, for one can acquirewealth in any numberof different ways.
Some ways of acquiring wealth come directly at another's expense;
othersdo not. Hobbes recognizesthe possibilityof commongain in the
economicsphere;one of the problemswiththe stateof natureis precisely
that suchpotentialcommoninterestscannotbe realized:"In suchcondition, thereis no placefor Industry;becausethe fruitthereofis uncertain;
and consequentlyno Cultureof the Earth;no Navigation,nor use of the
commoditiesthat may be importedby Sea . .."
With "Safety" there is even less reason why one's gain should entail
another'sloss. One can pursuesafety either throughpeace or war; but
unlessone enjoys war for its own sake, one turnsto war reluctantlyand
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James H. Read
511
as a second-best solution, because in the long run war makes safety more
difficult for everyone. This is a case in which gain for one side is gain for
the other-assuming that peace and safety are the real aims of both sides.
Hobbes admits that there are some men who truly enjoy war and conquest, but for the most part he describes the motives responsible for the
"general inclination" to seek "power after power" as primarily defensive: power is necessary simply to secure what one has, including one's
life. But if most human beings do in fact seek safety and peace, why is it
so difficult to secure? In part it is because of the few who do enjoy war,
but mostly because of the absence of trust. If neither side can be sure that
the other will honor his agreement to "lay down his arms," then war will
continue to subsist even among those who genuinely desire peace.
Hobbes's Fundamental Law of Nature perfectly reflects this problem:
"That every man, ought to endeavor Peace, as farre as he has hope of
obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all
helps, and advantages of Warre."'2 Peace cannot be obtained without
Covenant, and Covenants are extremely fragile in the state of Nature.
Let us recall at this point the two passages quoted at the beginning of
the essay-the "present means" definition and the claim that power for
one means lack of power for another. Our discussion so far has made
clear that nothing in Hobbes's account of basic human aims requires a
zero-sum understanding of power.13
II. Power as Cause
Nothing yet has been said about the means used to secure another's
cooperation-about power as control, power as the instrumental use of
other human beings. Even in cases where the aim of one is compatible
with the aim of another, the power of one might come at another's expense for reasons connected with the methods used to realize the aim.
Since many if not most aims depend on the actions or inactions of others,
we must ask how one will cause another to act in the appropriate way. If
the methods someone uses to cause me to serve his ends prevent me from
realizing my ends, then his gain of power is my loss, even if our aims are
compatible in the abstract. We might both, for example, desire leisure, a
good which, unlike glory, does not logically depend on the deprivation of
another; but his gain is indeed my loss if his method of securing leisure is
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is,
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to conferre all their power and strengthupon one Man, or upon one
Assemblyof men, that may reduceall theirWills, by pluralityof voices,
unto one Will."24The power describedhere is qualitativelydifferent
from the types of power found in the state of nature. The method by
which power is created-the conferralof all power and strengthupon
one man or assemblyof men-distinguishes sovereignpower not only
from the powerof an individual,but also fromthe powerof any faction,
no matterhow large.Factionscan existin the stateof nature;sovereignty
cannot. The following passage illustrates the difference between
sovereignpower and factional power:
The Greatestof humanePowers,is that whichis compoundedof
the Powers of most men, united by consent, in one person,
Naturall,or Civill, that has the use of all their Powers depending
on his will; such as is the Power of a Common-wealth:Or depending on the wills of eachparticular;suchas is the Powerof a faction,
or of diversefactions leagued.25
The Power of a commonwealth,whereall wills becomeone, is quite different from that of a faction, where the wills remain particular.One
might suppose that the differencebetweenthe power of a faction and
that of the Sovereignis one of degree, that the Sovereignis simplythe
"biggestfish in the pond," i.e., the most powerfulfactionin the society.
But Hobbes specificallyrejectssuch an interpretation:
... thereis little groundfor the opinionof them, that say of SoveraignKings,thoughthey be singulismajores,of greaterPowerthan
everyone of theirSubjects,yet they be Universisminores,of lesser
powerthan them all together.For if by all together,they meannot
the collectivebody as one person,then all together,and everyone,
signifie the same; and the speechis absurd.But if by all together,
they understandthem as one Person (whichpersonthe Soveraign
bears,) then the power of all together, is the same with the
Soveraign'spower;and so again the speechis absurd.26
Hobbes shows in this passagethat the Sovereignliterallydisposesof all
the powersof all subjects.The one exception,of course,is that each subject retainsthe right of individualself-preservation.
From the perspectiveof natural power, this is impossible:no king,
howeverpowerful, howeverlarge his army, howeverloyal his subjects,
24. Ibid., Ch. 17, p. 227.
25. Ibid., Ch. 10, p. 150.
26. Ibid., Ch. 18, p. 237.
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ever has complete control over the actions and possessions of his subjects. Muscles and brains, for instance, are forms of power, yet the
Sovereign does not strip the subjects of their muscles and brains. Nor
does he strip them of "instrumental powers" such as wealth and reputation: "The riches, power and honour of a Monarch arise only from the
riches, strength, and reputation of his Subjects."27 In what sense, then, is
the Sovereign all-powerful?
The all-powerful sovereign is all-powerful only by definition. It is
agreed that he is omnipotent; this is the condition under which power is
granted to him in the first place. It is in the common interest of all to put
an end to the "war of all against all," and according to Hobbes, the only
way to do so is to grant absolute power to someone. Since the power
itself is an invented one, those who design it can endow it with whatever
characteristics they consider necessary or useful to its operation.
Sovereign omnipotence is one of these definitionally-created characteristics; unidirectionality and transitivity, as described in the preceding section, are likewise invented for the purpose. The whole system works
because the subjects themselves accept its symbols and duties. The power
exercised over the subjects originates from the subjects themselves, from
their agreement that there shall be an absolute power. There is nothing
comparable to this for power in the state of nature.28
One could regard sovereign power as a sort of "banking" of natural
powers of individuals: subjects transfer their natural powers over to a
sovereign, who possesses those powers insofar as he reserves the right to
use them in whatever way he considers necessary. But just as in banking
the same money is counted twice-once as a deposit, once again as a
bank loan-so too in this case power is counted twice: the "riches,
strength, and reputation" of the subjects count once as their own, and
once again as instruments under the direction of an all-powerful
sovereign. There are of course flaws in the bank analogy: Hobbes's sub-
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jects may not freely withdrawthe deposit once made. (Thereis a "substantialpenalty," not merelyfor "early withdrawal"but for any withdrawalat all.) Powermay be susceptibleof universalgain on the natural
level, when countedas belongingto subjects,and yet be zero-sumwhen
regardedas a transferof powerover to the sovereign,whosegain is their
loss. The powerthey transferis differentin naturefrom the powerthey
keep.29
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James H. Read
523
of power and that of Lukes concerns the role of common interest. One
might readily equate the internalized fiction of absolute, causal
sovereign power with the false consciousness described by Lukes. In
both cases a unidirectional relation of power and subjection depends on
the subjects believing that their own interests are best served by supporting the ruling authority; neither Hobbes nor Lukes believes that violence
alone is sufficient to establish a ruling power. The type of power characteristic of sovereign command is, as noted earlier, highly artificial; it
requires the active cooperation of those subject to it. But for Hobbes the
subjects' belief that their own interests are best served by the existence of
a sovereign power is an authentic belief; without that belief, sovereign
power could never have been created in the first place. A subject might
later conclude, contrary to Hobbes, that the belief in the necessity of an
absolutely powerful Sovereign was a mistaken one-it could be that the
cure turns out worse than the disease, or that some less harsh cure could
be developed for the same disease-but at any rate the belief originates
with the subjects themselves.
For Lukes, this belief in common interest under bourgeois authority is
a deception, deliberately manufactured for the subjects by the ruling
class itself. But then Lukes has no way of explaining how this structure
of causal power could have come into existence in the first place. The
(false) belief that the authority structure serves one's real interests, on
which the operation of that structure depends, could only have been
created by some previously existing absolute power capable of molding
the passive minds of subjects like clay. Where could this power come
from? The effect would have to become the cause. Lukes does not address this problem.
I return now to the original question: is Hobbes's conception of power
zero-sum, where one's gain necessarily entails an equal loss for another?
The answer is: yes and no-no for natural power, yes for artificial
power. When power is regarded as the capacity to realize some interest-some "apparent good"-it is not the case that one's gain necessarily entails another's loss; everyone, or almost everyone, gains by the
establishment of civil society. Furthermore, that act, at least initially, is
their exercise of power, not something they passively receive. But
Hobbes combines this with a concept of power-as-control in which one's
gain is another's loss.
Therefore, one cannot unambiguously conclude that individuals
become more powerful by subjecting themselves to the authority of
Hobbes's Sovereign, even if he promotes their common interests. The
reason is that it is questionable whether a mutual increase of power can
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the question of power is central to the study of politics. Thomas Hobbes has
been hailed as the author of the greatest political philosophy written in the English
language,1 and indeed as the philosopher of power par excellence.2 Nonetheless, I
argue that conceptualizing political power is a problem for Hobbes. He starts with
a commonsense view that understands the power of individuals as their natural
faculties, and that then envisages these powers being compounded together by
covenant to form the power of a commonwealth. However, I argue that between
his early and late texts,3 Hobbes finds it necessary to modify his account, in three
respects. First, individual power is reconceived as a socially constituted capacity, potentially unrelated to natural faculties; second, human powers are now
understood constantly to form combinations, even without covenant; and third,
a distinction emerges between the causal capacity (potentia) and the authority
(potestas/imperium) of the sovereign, where these had previously been conflated.4
Hobbes wrote his works during a period of political ferment; there will surely
be an illuminating contextual story that can be told to explain his changed view of
political power. However, rather than reconstituting this external historical causality, my argument focuses on the internal conceptual difficulties of the earlier view,
and how they are overcome in the later one. The threefold change in the concept
of political power reflects a changed diagnosis of the problem of politics. It is not
enough to defend a doctrine of the authorized power of the sovereign; such a
[61]
62
1
In this first part of the paper, I reconstruct Hobbess view of power in his early
political works The Elements of Law (EL) and De Cive (DC ), establishing three points
in particular. First, individual human power is conceived as faculties; second, the
only politically salient way in which these powers are combined is via a formal
covenant; and third, the power of the sovereign is the result of such a covenant.
1.1
In his early texts,9 Hobbes frequently uses the term power interchangeably with
faculties.10 A human individuals power is the faculties of body and mind . . . that
is to say, of the body, nutritive, generative, and motive; and of the mind, knowledge
(EL I.8.4).11 This is not implausible: in common usage power means something
like the capacity to do things, and faculties are nothing but the specific capacities
belonging to me by which I can do things. However, Hobbes very promptly moves
on to make a broader use of the term power, extending it to encompass what I
call secondary powers:
5
In an influential paper, Hoekstra explores the sense in which the possession of potentia gives
rise to potestas/imperium; he does not explore the reverse problem, of how potentia adequate to potestas
might be achieved (The De Facto Turn in Hobbess Political Philosophy, 3335).
6
Such neglect is not unique to Hobbess early texts. It is also is evident in contemporary constitutionalism, in the tendency to grasp the power of a particular branch of government or of a church
as that power that it is attributed to it legally, via explicit constitutional provision, to the neglect of the
question of its effective power. The disparity between these terms is particularly stark when the USA
and the UK are juxtaposed: the fact of the establishment of a church in the UK and the explicit antiestablishment principle in the US constitution do not go very far in illuminating the actual ascendency
of religion in politics in the two countries.
7
I use juridical in a general sense to mean concerned with power as authority, not in a more
specific sense to mean concerned with law, positive or otherwise.
8
The dominant interpretation of Hobbess texts understands his doctrine of sovereign power
entirely as a doctrine of authorized power. For instance, Baumgold, Hobbess Political Theory; Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition; Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the
Politics of Cultural Transformation; Martinich, Hobbes; Oakeshott, Introduction; Oakeshott, Hobbes on
Civil Association; Sorell, Hobbes; Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and its Genesis; Tuck,
Hobbes; Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, His Theory of Obligation; and Watkins, Hobbess System
of Ideas: A Study in the Political Significance of Philosophical Theories.
9
For this argument, I focus primarily on The Elements of Law. De cive offers only a compressed
overview of a science of man, deferring full treatment to De homine (Hobbes, On Man; Latin text in
Hobbes and Molesworth, Thom Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera, vol. 2). However, by my periodization, De
homine is a later text (post-Leviathan), and consequently not relevant for establishing Hobbess early view.
10
EL I.1.4; EL I.14.1.
11
De cive states that human nature consists in these faculties (DC, Chapter i, Section 1).
63
[S]uch farther powers, as by them [the faculties of body and mind] are acquired
(viz.) riches, place of authority, friendship or favour, and good fortune; which last is
really nothing else but the favour of God Almighty. (EL I.8.4)
This extension also remains plausible: many things that I do are done not directly
with my natural faculties, but through the mediation of these secondary powers.
If I have friends or riches, then it will be easier for me to bring about whatever I
want to achieve. But are secondary powers powers in the proper sense?12 I claim
to the contrary, Hobbess analysis of power always privileges natural faculties,
conceiving power as the causal potentiality proper and internal to an individual.
Even if Hobbes recognizes secondary powers to be crucially important in human
life, they are powers only in a derivative sense, as the conduits for or indicators of
faculties.13 I demonstrate this claim by considering Hobbess accounts of equality,
honor, and glory.
If secondary powers are powers in the proper sense, then they must factor into
the assessment of an individuals power. However, to the contrary, when arguing
that people are more or less equal in power, Hobbes does not see it necessary to
demonstrate that peoples secondary powers, such as the assistance and favor they
receive, are equal. Rather, the equality of power is established merely by considering equality in faculties: strength, wit, and knowledge. Correspondingly, the true
measure of any inequality of power that does exist is determined not through
comparison of secondary powers, but through the clash of bodily strength (EL
I.14.15; DC i.34, i.6).
Honor is the internal conception of the superiority of another persons power.14
The signs15 by which power or its excess above that of others can be recognized
are called honorable. They include not only the direct effects of a power, but
also effects at several causal steps away from that power, by which its existence is
indirectly inferred. For instance, general reputation amongst those of the other
sex is honorable as a sign directly consequent of power generative; boldness is
honorable via a more indirect signification: it is a sign consequent of opinion of
our own strength: and that opinion a sign of the strength itself (EL I.8.5). If secondary powers are powers in the proper sense, then their superiority should merit
honor, even without reference to faculties. However, to the contrary, whenever
Hobbes proposes superiority of secondary powers to be honorable, he takes care
12
Numerous commentators take the view that they are; see Goldsmith, Hobbess Science of Politics,
6671; Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, 2425; Lazzeri, Les racines de la volont
de puissance: le passage de Machiavel Hobbes, 23645; Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, 3546; Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics,
9295; Read, Thomas Hobbes: Power in the State of Nature, Power in Civil Society, 5056; Spragens,
The Politics of Motion: The World of Thomas Hobbes, 11011; and Warrender, The Political Theory of Hobbes:
His Theory of Obligation, 31213.
13
While most of De cive aligns with this analysis, the third theological part does not, aligning more
closely with the analysis of the later texts; contrast, for instance, DC i.23 with DC xv.13.
14
This could be superiority compared to the power of the beholder, but it could equally be superiority compared to the average. For instance, a powerful individual can honor their subordinate
by praising them (EL I.8.6).
15
A sign is a thing that a person has experienced as regularly occurring antecedent or consequent to
something else, which they conjecture will occur in this combination again in the future (EL I.4.910).
64
A person has reason to glory when their feeling of superiority of power is grounded
in reality, whereas vainglory is the feeling without the real power. However, Hobbes
directly denies that association with others gives rise to justifiable glory. [N]or
does association with others increase ones reason for glorying in oneself, since
a man is worth as much as he can do without relying on anyone else.16 Similarly,
Hobbes insists that reliance on fame to achieve glory indicates a lack of power
(EL I.9.20). In both cases, the secondary power (association, or the deference and
assistance of those who recognize ones fame) is not by itself reason for glory; in
other words, it is not a power in the proper sense.
Thus, despite the initial presentation of secondary powers as powers in their
own right, they are only incorporated into the analysis insofar as they are reduced
back to natural faculties:17 they are mere conduits for or indicators of the only
things properly called powers, which are natural faculties.18
In what I call the positionality claim, Hobbes asserts that power is intrinsically positional.
And because the power of one man resisteth and hindereth the effects of the power
of another: power simply is no more, but the excess of the power of one above that
of another. For equal powers oppose, destroy one another; and such their opposition
is called contention. (EL I.8.4)
The analytical part of this positionality claim is reiterated and relied upon constantly throughout Hobbess early texts.19 Capacities are only effective in their
Hobbes, On the Citizen, i.2.
There are also other corroborations in the text. First, the definition of secondary powers
such farther powers, as by them are acquired (EL I.8.4)already indicates that for something to be
a secondary power, it is necessary that it should have a connection to faculties. Second, Hobbes says
that power is known by the actions that it produces; he does not countenance that it might be known
directly, as would be the case if secondary powers such as riches and friends were themselves truly
powers in their own right (EL I.8.5).
18
Thus, Tuck is mistaken to claim that in the view of The Elements of Law and De cive, [p]ower is
itself a matter of belief, as is shown by his [Hobbess] discussion of the concepts of glory, false glory
and vainglory (Tuck, Introduction, On the Citizen, xxi).
19
Indeed, the analytical part of the positionality claim also reinforces my argument about secondary
powers. Friendship is one of the key examples of secondary power. If friendship is properly a power,
then it ought to be consistent with the analytical part of the positional claim, according to which if
16
17
65
excess over one another; if you and I race to grab an apple, but I am faster, then
I have the effective capacity to grab the apple. Your capacity, because comparatively inferior, is entirely ineffective. Hobbes elaborates this point in an extended
reflection on the analogy between human life and a race (EL I.9.21). Indeed, his
definitions of glory, honor, and the honorable all involve comparison of power.
However, even if the positionality claim is indisputably analytically central, there
still remains a terminological question. The positionality claim proposes a new
use of the word power. Power is no longer an individuals capacity (whether their
faculties or also their secondary powers), but rather the excess of their capacity
over the capacity of relevant others: for instance, it is the superiority of my strength
that is a power, not the strength itself. The terminological question asks, in these
early texts, is the term power used equivocally for both these meanings, or is it
reserved for one or the other? In fact, the use of the term power to mean noncomparative capacity is clearly dominant in the text. To start, Hobbes frequently
characterizes human power as faculties, not as the comparative excess of faculties
(EL I.1.4, I.8.4, I.14.1). Furthermore, glory and honor are defined in terms of
the comparative excess of power; if power already meant this comparative excess,
Hobbes would need instead to define glory and honor directly in terms of power
(EL I.8.5, I.9.1). Similarly, if power were already comparative, Hobbes should not
speak of a situation of equal forces as a situation in which there is equal power,
but rather no power at all (EL I.14.3). Thus, throughout the text of The Elements of
Law, Hobbes maintains the term power for the faculties: relational comparison
is crucial to understanding the outcomes of human power, but it is not built into
the concept of power itself.
1.2
A social ontology is an account of the kinds of entities that exist in the social
domain.20 The first building block of Hobbess early social ontology is the idea
discussed in section 1.1 that humans are equal in power; a fuller account can be
reconstructed by considering how these equal powers can be combined. Hobbes
distinguishes two possible modes of combination. On the one hand, if a number
of individuals, each retaining their own distinct will, nonetheless coordinate to act
toward a shared end, then this concourse of their wills is called concord, consent
or consensio, forming an association or societas. Their wills are temporarily aligned
but remain distinct (EL I.12.7, I.19.4; DC v.35). On the other hand, if a number
of individuals combine their separate wills through a binding and punitively enforced covenant to form a single collective will, then this is called a union (unio, EL
I.12.8, I.19.6; DC v.67). The exemplar of a union is the political commonwealth.
something is a power, its effectiveness lies in its excess over that of others. Indeed, it is true that if I
have more friends than you, then I can achieve more of my ends. However, consider the relation not
between two enemies who compare the size of their bands of friends, but rather between two friends.
In friendship, two peoples powers combine to generate more effective power rather than cancelling,
contrary to the positional claims requirements. Thus friendship cannot truly be a power. The same
reasoning will apply for any informal association: even if such an association is included on the list of
secondary powers, Hobbess analysis shows them not to be powers in the proper sense of the word.
20
Pettit, Rawlss Political Ontology, 15774.
66
67
union, consciously deciding to join together and act by a single will under a leader
(EL II.8.1, II.8.11; DC xii.11, xiii.13). For an informal association is not durable
enough; it will be subject to the same tendency to dissolution as in the state of
nature. The lack of concern with informal groupings is also reflected in Hobbess
strategy for neutralizing the threat to the commonwealth posed by seditious
groups. Hobbes offers rhetorical condemnation of would-be leaders of seditious
unions, belittling their claim to good judgment (EL II.8.1215; DC xii.1013), and
he recommends to the sovereign that it should deploy harsh punitive measures
specifically for the ambitious (EL II.9.7; DC xiii.12). Even though there are other
factors of discontent that conduce to unrest,24 to prevent sedition it is sufficient
simply to undercut the formation of unions by targeting their would-be leaders.
1.3
I now turn to consider the power of the union that is the commonwealth, or what is
the same, the power of the sovereign. A natural persons power is her or his faculties; I argue that we can understand the power of the sovereign in the same way. A
commonwealth is a union, which is characterized by its possession of a single will.
This unity of will allows Hobbes to conceive of the commonwealth as a fictional
(artificial) person (EL I.19.68; DC v.612).25 Just as a natural person (a human
individual) has faculties, Hobbes is happy to attribute faculties to the sovereign.
For the body politic, as it is a fictitious body, so are the faculties and will thereof
fictitious also (EL II.2.4). These faculties are the faculties of the sovereign conceived in its fictional unity; and this fictional unity is constituted by a covenant in
which subjects fully transfer their powers (their faculties). Consequently, the power
of the sovereign, which is its faculties, is the sum of the powers of all its subjects.
For the power [potentia] of the citizens is the power [potentia] of the commonwealth,
that is, his power who holds the sovereignty [summum . . . habet imperium] in the commonwealth. (DC xiii.2)26
68
Hobbes concedes that this bending of wills is not perfect: for he envisages that the
sword of justice will be needed not only to frighten subjects away from disobedience
but also to discipline them when they do disobey (EL II.1.910, II.9.6). Nonetheless, for the most part actual disobedience is presumed not to be too disruptive; it
will be a marginal, foolhardy occurrence, not threatening the civil order.
Thus far I have discussed the sovereigns power in the sense of its potentia.
Power as potentia is a concept shared across the natural and human domains of
Hobbess science, and has a meaning close to causal capacity. But this is not the
only or primary question of political power. Traditionally, when in English one
speaks of the power of a commonwealth, this corresponds to the Latin term
potestas or imperium, which has the overtone of authorized power, or authority.
Indeed, the terms sovereign, sovereignty, and sovereign power are all generally translated as summa potestas, or summum imperium, the highest potestas or
imperium.30 Nonetheless, for Hobbess early texts, this is a distinction that makes
no practical difference.31 The sovereigns potentia is already understood as the
juridical transfer of the potentiae of subjects, and this is simply equated with the
authority power (potestas/imperium) of the sovereign.
28
It is incorrect to consider the potentia of the sovereign in these texts as its actual effectiveness
toward its ends, as do Johnston (The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural
Transformation, 45) and Warrender (The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, His Theory of Obligation, 31213).
29
See also EL II.1.6.
30
Silverthorne, Political Terms in the Latin of Thomas Hobbes, 5068.
31
Silverthorne, Political Terms in the Latin of Thomas Hobbes, 5068.
69
This Authority [Potestas], this Right to give Commands, consists in the fact that each of
the citizens has transferred all his own force and power [suam vim et potentiam] to
that man or Assembly. (DC v.11)32
2
Throughout his political texts, both early and late, Hobbes aspires to offer a science of politics, that is, to put the study of politics on a sure foundation. In these
texts, scientific understanding is characterized in opposition to mere experience
or prudence, which simply reports what has occurred or what tends to occur.34
Rather, the crucial aspect of science is good definitions (EL I.5.414, I.6.4; L
iv.1213, vii.4). For instance, consider the opening discussion of human nature
in The Elements of Law:
Mans nature is the sum of his natural faculties and powers, as the faculties of nutrition, motion, generation, sense, reason, etc. For these powers we do unanimously
call natural, and are contained in the definition of man, under these words, animal
and rational. (EL I.1.4)
A good definition will contain all and only those properties and powers belonging to a given phenomenon considered in its nature, or in other words, not as an
isolated particular but as an instance of a larger class. Correspondingly, scientific
understanding of a given phenomenon subsumes it under a definition, legitimately
abstracting away from any minor empirical aberrations. To understand a circle
drawn on paper in front of me, it is important that I understand its principle (that
it should be constructed by tracing out points equidistant from a given locus); it
is irrelevant that it may have tiny imperfections in the way it is actually drawn (DC
Epis.5, Pref.9). Thus, a Hobbesian science of man investigates not an individual
humans causal effectiveness per se, but the causality proper to her or him as laid
out in a good definition of her or his nature.35 Nonetheless, there are limits to
this tolerance: science has to have some connection to the reality it purports to
explain. 36 As with the circle drawn on paper, it is permissible for there to be some
small imperfection of the phenomenon compared to its scientific model; but
Hobbes, On the Citizen, v.11.
Hobbes, On the Citizen, vi.27. See also EL I.19.10; DC x.16.
34
EL Epis.xvxvi, I.1.1, I.4.1; DC Epis.49, Pref.4, Pref.9, Pref.18; L, Chapter v, Section 17; L ix.
35
In this respect, Hobbess science is similar to the scholastic method, viewing power as potentiality proper to an individual and belonging to it. Indeed, Brandt demonstrates that Hobbess very
early writings are deeply steeped in the Aristotelian system (Thomas Hobbess Mechanical Conception of
Nature, 17). As Spragens puts it, Hobbess idea patterns paralleled those of Aristotle to an astonishing
degree even as he drastically refashioned their contents (The Politics of Motion: the World of Thomas
Hobbes, 8). More generally, Hobbess science has been characterized as less experimental that that of
his contemporaries: see Anstey, Experimental Versus Speculative Natural Philosophy, 215; Shapin,
Schaffer, and Hobbes, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 7.
36
In Oakeshotts view, [Hobbess] conception of philosophy as the establishment by reasoning
of hypothetical causes saved him from the necessity of observing the caution appropriate to those who
deal with facts and events (Introduction, xiv). However, on my reading this is unjust.
32
33
70
this divergence must remain small if the science is to hold its own.37 I argue that
Hobbess later political view in Leviathan finds the aberrations of social and political reality from the causality of faculties to be significant; understanding power as
faculties misses the overwhelmingly social determination of the human capacity
to achieve ends in the social sphere. This forces a recalibration of his science of
man, his social ontology and his science of the commonwealth.38
2.1
The phenomenon to be explained by the science of man is human behavior; and
in light of the science of commonwealth that builds upon it, we see in particular that the science of man is interested in human social and political behavior.
Leviathan observes that a persons causal effectiveness is primarily constituted by
the aid or forbearance of the informal constellation of people around them. Correspondingly, rather than restrict the ground of individual power to the faculties
internal to that individual, I argue that Leviathan offers a new analysis by which
human power is a socially constituted and potentially shifting property. 39 I make
this argument primarily on the basis of Leviathan chapter x, a recognizable descendent of the analysis of human power in The Elements of Law (EL I.8). The very
close similarity of the two passages has concealed the deep conceptual change
37
I concede that in the scholastic tradition to which Hobbes is indebted (see n. 35), there is one
circumstance under which a scientifically rigorous explanation is exempted from the requirement
to accord with the actual phenomena whose nature is being explained. For Aquinas, most sciences
are theoretical sciences that explain actual phenomena. By contrast, practical sciences do not even
purport to do this; for human nature is fallen and so a science of human nature merely explains how
humans ought to behave. (For a concise characterization of this distinction, see Matheron, Spinoza et
la dcomposition de la politique thomiste: Machiavlisme et utopie, 5154.) However, this exemption
does not apply to Hobbess political works. For in these texts, first, the science of individual human
power is not presented as a science of duty but as a science of real capabilities (see section 1.1). And
second, the divergence at issue in the case of the science of the commonwealth concerns not the
divergence between the model and actually existing commonwealths, but between a commonwealth
established in accord with Hobbess model and Hobbess claim that such a commonwealth will function peacefully (see section 1.3).
38
This has not been noted in existing comparisons of Hobbess texts, such as Schuhmann, Leviathan and De cive, 31; and Tuck, Introduction, Leviathan, xxxviii.
39
Most commentators do not discuss power/potentia at all. The only commentators who detect a
change in the analysis of power/potentia across the texts are Rudolph (Conflict, Egoism and Power in
Hobbes, 7388); Carmichael (C. B. Macphersons Hobbes: a Critique, 361, 36869); and McNeilly
(The Anatomy of Leviathan, 14447).
The following commentators do discuss power/potentia as a generalized effective capacity and
observe its relational grounding; however, they err in not discerning any difference in the account
across Hobbess texts (or in some cases explicitly denying any such difference): Foisneau, Hobbes et la
toute-puissance de Dieu, 20210, 6162; Frost, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on
Ethics and Politics, 13172; Goldsmith, Hobbess Science of Politics, 63, 6671; Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and
Political Theory, 9394; Lazzeri, Droit, pouvoir et libert : Spinoza critique de Hobbes, 6177, 11821; Lazzeri,
Les racines de la volont de puissance: le passage de Machiavel Hobbes, 23645; Macpherson,
Introduction, 3438; Macpherson, Leviathan Restored: A Reply to Carmichael, 381 (an explicit
denial of any change); Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, 3546;
Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, 9295; Read, Thomas Hobbes: Power in
the State of Nature, Power in Civil Society, 5056; Spragens, The Politics of Motion: the World of Thomas
Hobbes, 11011; Tuck, The utopianism of Leviathan, 12930; Tuck, Introduction, On the Citizen,
xxi; and Zarka, Hobbes et la pense politique moderne, 12934.
71
from most interpreters; but the closeness of the passages makes the small changes
I identify more significant.40
Where The Elements of Law defined power as faculties (EL I.8.4), Leviathan opens
with a definition of power that enshrines a privilege to effects:
The power [potentia] of a man (to take it universally) is his present means to obtain
some future apparent good. (L x.1)
Secondary powers also find a new definition, supplementing the backward relation
to faculties in The Elements of Law (EL I.8.4) with a forward relation to effects. They
are now called instrumental powers, and are defined as those which, acquired
by these [natural powers] or by fortune, are means and instruments to acquire more
(L x.2; my emphasis). Because the criterion for being counted as a power points
forward to effects, not back to origins, any causal genesis for a power is acceptable: secondary powers are explicitly included in the general definition of power
in equal standing with natural faculties (L x.1).
Are secondary powers still only powers in a derivative sense? To the contrary,
I claim that secondary powers are now genuine powers in their own right, and
this status is not dependent on any connection to natural faculties. The refusal
to privilege faculties and the shift of focus to effects is systematically reflected in
examples. Something is honorable if it is a sign of power. In early and late texts
alike, nobility or good birth are certainly honorable, but in The Elements of Law, it is
by reflection as a sign of power of ancestors (EL I.8.5), whereas in Leviathan it is a
sign that one may easily obtain aid (L x.45). Riches were previously honorable as
signs of the power that acquired them (EL I.8.5); now riches joined with liberality is power, because it procureth friends and servants; without liberality, not so,
because in this case they defend not, but expose men to envy, as a prey (L x.4).
The definition of power is thus conceptually different, but does it have the same
extension? Might it still be the case that human faculties for the most part explain
humans causal efficacy in the social domain? Indeed, according to the account
in the early texts, it so happens that secondary powers are usually only generated
when there are natural faculties underlying them. If this is correct, then there is
no substantive difference between the views, despite the change of definitions.
Against this suggestion, I argue that in Leviathan, Hobbes has come to see that
some of the most important social and political powers rest on interpersonal effects and a near total disconnection from faculties.
Honor is the key mechanism by which an individuals secondary powers are
produced from their faculties. In The Elements of Law, honor is the internal conception of the superiority of another persons power, and it gives rise to certain
characteristic external actions (EL I.8.6). If I think someone else is more powerful
than me, I will tend to defer to her, obey her, and be polite to her. For this reason,
deference, obedience, and politeness are all signs of honor. It is clear that the
deference, obedience, and politeness of others increase the honored individuals
40
The two passages stand in the same place in the text, after the discussion of the passions and
before the establishment of the commonwealth; the internal sequence of the analyses of power are
very similar (starting with natural power, then instrumental powers, then honor); many of the same
examples are used.
72
capacity to achieve her ends, and indeed, this behavior constitutes secondary
power (favor and perhaps friendship) for the honored individual. As I argued, in
The Elements of Law, an individual is truly worthy of honor only to the extent that
she also possess power as a natural faculty. However, the honoring mechanism can
malfunction, meaning that secondary powers can arise in the absence of natural
faculties. If I defer to someone because I believe her to be superior in power, but I
am mistaken in this assessment, my deference is no less real for its faulty grounds.
In the early works, such secondary power grounded in error and not linked to
faculties falls outside the scope of scientific analysis: they can be considered contingent accidents41 that have nothing to do with individual human power. They
are secondary powers but only in a degenerate sense; and they are presumed only
to be a marginal phenomenon.
The crucial question for Leviathan will be whether this kind of power not
grounded in faculties is a central or a marginal phenomenon. It is certainly no
longer definitionally marginal. Honor is redefined as the manifestation of the
value that we set on one anothers power, where value is not absolute, but a thing
dependent on the need and judgment of another (L x.1617).42 This redefinition removes the distinction between proper and degenerate honor, and between
proper and degenerate secondary power. The internal conception motivating the
honoring behavior is no longer susceptible of truth or falsity according to some
common standard; rather, it is a matter of individual judgment. Even if the honorer
values something other than faculties, and even if she is mistaken to think that
the thing she values is truly present, her behavior is still honor and still constitutes
power.43 Furthermore, I argue that this kind of power, where the connection to
faculties is likely or certain to be lacking, is central, not merely definitionally but
also substantively. It is given systematic privilege in Hobbess examples of power;
the connection to faculties is replaced by a connection to the dispositions of other
humans. Reputation is only a tenuous sign of the presence of natural faculties, yet
reputation is power because it draweth with it the adherence of those that need
protection (L x.5).44 Indeed more strongly, reputation is a power even when the
reputation is contrasted to fact:
[W]hat quality soever maketh a man beloved or feared of many, or the reputation of
such a quality, is power. (L x.7; my emphasis)45
Even more strongly again, as is implicit in this quoted passage, the reputation
need not even be reputation of having superior faculties; it could merely be a
41
This is a term from the later De corpore, referring to those effects that are not related to the causality in question (Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy the First Section, Concerning Body, Chapter IX, Section
10; Latin text in Hobbes and Molesworth, Thom Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera, Vol. 1).
42
On this new definition, there is also the change that the characteristic behaviors of placating
and propitiating are no longer signs of honor, but they are honor itself.
43
Strauss observes a change in the relation between honor and power, and specifically the greater
role for power; but he interprets this as Hobbess attempt to hide the humanistic moral basis of his
thought (The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and its Genesis, 115n2, 169). On my reading, there
is no such subterfuge, simply a change in the understanding of the human capacity to achieve ends,
as I have argued.
44
This is also foreshadowed in De cives theology (DC xv.13), although not in its political doctrine.
45
See also L x.56, 8, 10.
73
reputation of superior secondary power (L x.38). Thus, on the late view, power
arises from a reverberation of appearances and reputations in a network of social
relations: insofar as the power so generated has effects, it has full status as power.
An example is provided by Hobbess own canonical model of the commonwealth. In what sense does the sovereign by institution have the same power to
enforce covenants as a conqueror?46 The sovereign by institution does not possess overwhelmingly superior force as a natural person. However, when soldiers,
guards, judges, executioners, and subjects in general play their commanded roles in
wielding the metaphorical sword of justice and do not thwart its operation, anyone
seeking to disobey will be punished. But why do the soldiers, guards, judges, and
executioners do their part even though the sovereign does not personally have
a sword to compel them? They do so because each of them believes that every
other subject will uphold the command of the sovereign, including wielding its
sword as commanded. This network of belief and compliance is a real power for
the sovereign, no less than the direct superior force of a conqueror (L xvii.13).47
As Hobbes remarks in Behemoth, [T]he power of the mighty hath no foundation
but in the opinion and belief of the people (B 16).
Even if power is often relationally constituted, might there be natural capacities
or faculties that count as powers nonrelationally? To the contrary, exercising any
capacity in a world populated by other people relies on their conduct, perhaps
their aid but at minimum their non-interference. Consequently, in Leviathan all
power is socially constituted. This is not the claim that natural faculties or capacities themselves are always socially constituted. Certainly, many capacities do not
in themselves need to be understood interpersonally: the capacity to speak many
languages, to run a four-minute mile, or to understand the natural world. Rather,
the claim is that if (as I have argued) power in Leviathan is human effectiveness
toward ends, then even a faculty that is not intrinsically social will only count as a
power insofar as it is socially recognized; being dishonored can vitiate the possibility
of any natural faculties serving as a means to future apparent goods. For example,
Hobbes considers science to be a small power, because even though taken by itself
it enormously improves a persons capacity to manipulate the world around her
to her ends, it is not recognized as a power: The sciences are small power, because
not eminent, and therefore not acknowledged in any man (L x.14). It is little
use to the scientist to have a capacity to manipulate nature if the people among
whom the scientist lives and works thwart her activities.48 Superior natural faculties, which might constitute great powers considered in isolated abstraction, are
useless in the real social world against well-developed secondary powers. Indeed,
the distinction between power and mere faculty is marked from the very start of
Leviathans analysis. Natural faculties are said to be power only insofar as they are
L xvii.15.
Such power, though great, can be fragile: if I suspect others are about to shift their allegiance
or otherwise cease upholding the sovereigns power, then I may do so also, so as not to be aligned with
a losing force. See my discussion of sedition in section 2.3.
48
Is this a pointed criticism of Bacons view of scientific knowledge as power? Knowledge may be
power, but it is insignificant in the context of human existence in society.
46
47
74
75
fundamental human end of security and the capacity to pursue future desires
unmolested. To return to Leviathans account of riches, riches do not count as
powers because they can be exchanged for specific goods: for Hobbes states that
riches are only a power when combined with liberality (L x.4). Liberality makes
no difference to the capacity to carry out direct exchanges, but it does make a
difference for allegiance. People desiring to advance or protect their own general
power will give the possessor of riches their allegiance insofar as they hope to
receive whatever unspecified assistance they may require from those riches in the
future. Liberality gives rise to this hope; illiberality quashes it (L x.4).
It is always possible to restrict ones analysis to consider faculties or capacities in
artificial isolation and to abstract away from this looser social context of allegiance:
one can always consider the scientist apart from the mob, the race competitors
apart from their supporters. This was the procedure of the early texts. But if the
phenomenon to be explained under the rubric of power is human effectiveness,
and if, as Leviathans account proposes, allegiance is the central determinant of
this effectiveness, then such abstraction vitiates the analysis of power. On this new
account, power is neither natural faculties nor any other attribute that could be
neatly accommodated as a possession of the individual: human power lies fundamentally in relations.51 In contrast to De Cive and The Elements of Law, Leviathan
finds an individuals human nature and power to lie outside of her or him, both
physically and conceptually, in her or his potentially shifting and relational social
context.52 Allegiance becomes the fundamental constituent of power: as such, an
individuals power may well fluctuate in ways beyond her control.
2.2
Hobbess new conception of power marks not merely a semantic or definitional
change: to the contrary, I now argue that it gives rise to a substantively different
social ontology. Where the discussion of power in The Elements of Law stressed
the tendency of humans to isolation and fragmentation unless they are brought
together in a formal union, now Leviathans discussion of power brings to the fore
an opposite phenomenon. Humans have a constant tendency to form associations,
some of which are politically significant even though they are not bound into a
union. I argue that in Leviathans new social ontology, Hobbes envisages an active
social domain from which groupings constantly emerge apart from any process
of covenant, and in which inequalities are constantly generated.53
51
A similar argument is offered by Rudolph. Rudolph argues that from The Elements of Law to
Leviathan, Hobbes moves from understanding appetite as a biological attribute to understanding it
as socially constituted; correspondingly a move from understanding power as a drive to power as an
acquired characteristic (Conflict, Egoism and Power in Hobbes, 7388; The Microfoundations of
Hobbess Political Theory, 3452).
52
Against Oakeshott, who claims that Leviathans science takes the human individual in isolation
(Hobbes on Civil Association, 3234). Foisneau documents another respect in which Leviathans social
theory moves to a more relational analysis: a change from justice understood in Aristotelian terms as
commutative or distributive, and injustice as tort, to justice understood as determined by a market,
injustice as breach of covenant (Foisneau, Leviathans Theory of Justice, 105).
53
The new social ontology has only occasionally been noted. The work of Tarlton and Frost is truly
an exception in this respect; see Tarlton, The Creation and Maintenance of Government: a Neglected
76
I concede that for Hobbes, humans desire security to last all the time of their
life, and this requires a formal commonwealth; any temporary association around
specific momentary purposes does not serve this purpose (L xvii.5). However, I
Dimension of Hobbess Leviathan, 30727; and Frost, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics, 13172. Even those who appreciate the interpersonal character of Hobbess
later conception of power tend to attribute to him a consistent social ontology of power as fragmented
and isolated. (See notably Macpherson, Introduction, 5556; Montag, Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza
and His Contemporaries, 90103.) Macpherson complains that Hobbes does not anticipate the formation of cohesive classes, and that he focuses too much on centrifugal forces rather than centripetal
ones (Introduction, 5556; see also Leviathan Restored: A Reply to Carmichael, 38385). But in
this section, although I concede Hobbes does not consider class formations, I argue that Leviathan (L
x) is very interested in centripetal forces. (In this vein, see Carmichael, Reply: Macpherson Versus
the Text of Leviathan, 391.)
54
Tarlton, The Creation and Maintenance of Government: A Neglected Dimension of Hobbess
Leviathan, 311. It is common in the literature to miss this distinction, and still to claim equality of
power in the state of nature. See for instance Martinich, Hobbes, 26; Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on
Language, Mind, and Politics, 1012; and Read, Thomas Hobbes: Power in the State of Nature, Power
in Civil Society, 514.
55
Hobbes should perhaps have seen this problem for equality even in his earlier texts: for he
acknowledges that there are families in the state of nature, and different sized families will have different power (EL II.4.2). However, Hobbes does not make any indication there of being aware of the
problem, perhaps because of his methodological abstraction to individuals considered like mushrooms
(Hobbes, On the Citizen, viii.1).
56
In a similar vein, Hobbes characterizes life in the state of nature as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short (L xiii.9; my emphasis).
77
claim that Leviathan explores a new option for association that lies between a momentary association motivated by specific goals and a formal union for the sake of
permanent security. This association oriented toward mid-range goals comes about
in a new fashion, which correspondingly endows it with the possibility of durability and political salience, even if not the supreme security of a permanent union.
Leviathans account of power gives systematically more emphasis to informal
associations. In The Elements of Law, the positionality claim pits individual against
individual, and the only salient possibility of human coalition is a formal union
via covenant, a topic deferred to later in the book (EL I.8.4). By contrast, in
the corresponding point in the text of Leviathan, Hobbes replaces the focus on
fragmentation with aggregation.57 Hobbes asserts that the greatest human power
is strengths united (L x.3); although one example of strengths united is a
commonwealth united by sovereign covenant, he also explicitly countenances a
compound of powers depending on the will of each particular, as for example
friendship. That is, the greatest of human powers is achieved not only by a formal
union bound by a permanent covenant into a single will; rather, it can also be
achieved in an informal association where wills remain separate.58
In earlier texts, associations were formed by separate individuals agreement
on specific shared ends. Correspondingly, whether because those ends were superseded or because of other differences or passions, the associations tended to
collapse.59 Leviathan by contrast envisages an alternative and anthropologically
more deeply rooted basis for association. As I argued in section 2.1, individuals
perpetually seek power by taking care to placate and propitiate (to honor) those
whom they speculate could harm or assist their own ends. They seek to ally themselves in such a way as to advance and protect their ability to live securely and
pursue their more specific ends. However, this very same behavior has an effect
that is not necessarily intended either by those honoring or those honored: it
constitutes patronage networks, security blocs, gangs of followers, and allegiance
groups. In other words, the desire for power leads to the spontaneous formation
of associations, superseding the rough equality of individuals with the inequality
of more or less mighty groupings.60 For instance, recall that riches are a power
insofar as they garner allegiance.61 When multiple individuals offer their allegiance
to the possessor of riches, an association is constituted.
57
Both McNeilly and Carmichael observe the account of The Elements of Law envisages universal
opposition of powers, whereas Leviathan envisages limited opposition, including the possibility of
friendship groupings (Carmichael, Macphersons Hobbes: A Critique, 361, 36869; McNeilly, The
Anatomy of Leviathan, 14447). Most other commentators consider Leviathans social ontology to be
fragmented and isolated; see for instance Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, 5879;
Oakeshott, Introduction, xxxivxxxv; and Read, Thomas Hobbes: Power in the State of Nature,
Power in Civil Society, 514.
58
In the Latin edition, the greatest (maxima) power is the formal union of wills: a federation where
wills remain separate is said to be second in power (proxima). Nonetheless, the point of the English
edition still holds: an informal union is a considerable power. Indeed, by contrast in the earlier texts,
it was not even possible to attribute a single potentia to an association.
59
See section 1.2.
60
L x.59, x.20, x.38, x.45. Hobbes adds other more specific tendencies relevant to formation of
allegiance in his chapter on manners (L xi.45, x.7, x.1618, x.27).
61
See section 2.1.
78
Furthermore, these associations of allegiance have greater durability than associations for specific ends. The motivating desire of clients in these associations
is not tied to transient specific goals, but to the perpetual goal of advancing and
protecting their own general power. By consequence, the association so formed
is potentially capable of motivating behavior over an extended period of time.
Consider now the factors that destabilize associations even among those with durably shared goals, notably envy and disagreement. These do not arise so acutely
in spontaneous associations of allegiance and patronage. If I envy my partner in
a cooperative enterprise and covet her goods, it may be impossible to continue
cooperating; by contrast if I envy the wealth of my patron and covet her goods, I
am likely nonetheless to continue to be her client in hope receiving some benefit
(L x.19, x.23). If I disagree with my patrons decisions but still hope to be favored
by her, then I have a strong reason to put my disagreement aside (L x.28, x.30).
These kinds of association are not merely potentially stable, but they are also
potentially very great powers. The Elements of Law asserts the positionality claim:
powers cancel out each others effects. At the corresponding point in Leviathan,
Hobbes notes the opposite phenomenon, of accumulation and increase: For the
nature of power is in this point like to fame, increasing as it proceeds; or like the
motion of heavy bodies, which, the further they go, make still the more haste (L
x.2). The mechanism of this self-increase is social. Allegiance is not only a power in
itself, but it is also a sign of power. As a sign of power, it attracts honor, very likely
in the form of more allegiance. X has a lot of friends, so I want to be her friend;
y has henchmen, so I do not want to annoy her; I heard that people plan to back
z, so I back z too: in all cases the reputation of holding many peoples allegiance
leads to ever more people placating and propitiating, or in other words, to a bigger and more solid social grouping (L x.38).
To be sure, I am not claiming that these associations have a guaranteed stability.
The very nature of their constitution carries a deep risk of instability: if my reason
for offering my allegiance to a powerful individual or organization is my perception of her power and the likelihood of my benefiting from it, then should that
perception change, I will withdraw my allegiance. Worse, given that my estimation
of that power may be largely based on the evidence I see of others opinion of that
power, if ever I suspect that others are shifting their allegiance, I will be quick to
do the same. But the fact that these associations may be unstable does not prevent
them from existing, and under many circumstances proving quite durable. One
example that Hobbes considers at length is religious association. Religion can
give rise to durable social compounds that do not rely on sovereignty or punitive
covenant, although they may subsequently be captured politically (L xii.12, 19,
20, 21, 24).62 Further examples are seditious associations, and even the power
of the sovereign itself, as I will show in section 2.3. These associations break the
former equality of power: on the new social ontology, we see a much more uneven
texture of social life. Individuals are no longer largely equal in power: some have
the allegiance and support of more people than others.
This anthropology of religious association was entirely lacking in the earlier texts.
62
79
2.3
In his early texts, Hobbes presumes that the sovereigns punitive incentive will be
sufficient to render subjects obedient, and to bring its effective power to meet
the power to which it is entitled. In this section, I argue this picture comes under
pressure in his later civil science. For the changed social ontology envisages a social
sphere much less amenable to decisive unification, and consequently forces a potentially much greater gulf between the sovereigns entitled capacity and its effective
capacity. I argue that in Leviathan Hobbes addresses this problem by developing
a dual science of politics.63 Potentia now refers only to the sovereigns effective
capacity and does not purport to illuminate entitled capacity; entitled capacity
or authority is now considered separately under the heading of the sovereigns
potestas or imperium.64 To be sure, the science of potestas is dominant in Hobbess
works,65 explaining commentators neglect of his science of potentia.66 However,
the development of a distinct science of potentia corresponds to a new understanding of the problem of politics. The challenge for the political philosopher is not
merely to establish a science of entitled power elaborated through a doctrine of
right blithely assuming that effective power will readily follow; it is also necessary
63
I concede that Hobbess explicit taxonomies of science do not list these separately (L ix).
However, in Leviathan the two concepts are given distinct systematic treatment, unlike the early texts
where they were conflated. Malcolm argues that Hobbes equivocates between understanding cause as
the consequences of names and as the consequences of facts; correspondingly he offers two sciences
of man confused together (Malcolm, Hobbess Science of Politics and His Theory of Science, Aspects
of Hobbes, 155). Against this view, I do not find confusion in Hobbess texts; rather, I agree with Matheron in finding two complementary analyses (Spinoza et la dcomposition de la politique thomiste:
Machiavlisme et utopie, 77).
64
In this light, it is a mistake to characterize Hobbes as the exemplary opponent of constituent
power, as do Montag (Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries, 9295) and Kalyvas (Popular
Sovereignty, Democracy, and the Constituent Power, 22344). It is also an error to use analysis of De
cives Latin as a guide for the terminology in Leviathan, as Silverthorne does (Political Terms in the
Latin of Thomas Hobbes, 5068).
65
Especially in De cive, which lacks the elements of the larger system of science of the powers of
bodies.
66
Many commentators simply neglect Hobbess account of the sovereigns capacity, attributing
to Hobbes only a juridical science of potestas (only a science of what ought to occur), for instance:
Martinich, Hobbes, 4353; Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, 11540;
Spragens, The Politics of Motion: The World of Thomas Hobbes, 11224, 15158; and Tuck, Hobbes, 6476.
However, there are several commentators who supplement their account of Hobbess juridical science with a direct denial that he has a science of effective power. These include Goldsmith, Hobbess
Science of Politics, 93214, especially 176; Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, 3539;
Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation, 70, 122,
215; Montag, Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries, 90103; Oakeshott, Introduction,
xxviixxix; Read, Thomas Hobbes: Power in the State of Nature, Power in Civil Society, 51420;
Sorell, Hobbes, 821; and Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and its Genesis, 5978, 169.
Rational-choice readers of Hobbes also only offer an account of authority. Kavka (Hobbesian moral and
political theory, xiii, 1920) reconstructs Hobbess descriptive theory of politics, as an account of what
ideally rational agents would do. He then faults Hobbes for not giving an account of irrationality in
his descriptive theory (438). But as I will argue, Leviathans account of the sovereigns capacity power
offers just such a descriptive theory; Kavkas theory lies closer to the entitled capacity theory, which is
what subjects would do if they always had sufficient rationality to obey. (See also Hampton, Hobbes and
the Social Contract Tradition, 17388.)
80
to understand the real determinants of effective power as systematically and precisely as possible, in order to bring that effective power to coincide with right.67
Hobbess civil science seeks to explain the establishment and maintenance of
peace and security. If the sovereign has power in accord with its entitlement (that
is, if there is obedience), peace is achieved. If there is disobedience, the sovereign
has less capacity than that to which it is entitled. Should there be a great deal of
disobedience, the civil order degenerates into anarchy and war. Nonetheless, in
the early texts civil science takes the form of a science of the sovereigns power
(potentia) as a fictional person: an analysis of potentia as sovereigns faculties (its
entitled capacities from subjects), and not its effective capacity. Hobbes does not
offer any systematic account of the sovereigns effective capacity insofar as that
may diverge from the capacities to which it is entitled. This is acceptable, because
Hobbes claims that the sovereign will in fact have effective capacity commensurate
to its right. First, he anticipates that in the face of the punitive incentive, subjects
will generally hand over their power to the sovereign in accord with its right.68
Second, the threats to the sovereigns power are easily identified and controlled.
The social order is understood as one of flat, fragmented equality of power among
subjects, with no individual having sufficient power to challenge the sovereign. The
only way in which the sovereign order is threatened is when subjects deliberately
form a faction for the purpose of overthrowing the sovereign. Correspondingly, the
commonwealth is secure so long as it can prevent the formation of such unions.69
Thus although the science of the sovereigns potentia provides an account of
sovereigns entitlement to rather than its achievement of obedience, divergence
between these two will not be too grave.
In the view of the later text, Leviathan, there is a different and much graver
threat to the commonwealth.70 It is posed by groupings that are mere associations,
not unions, and that are not formed with seditious intent, but that simply emerge
according to the spontaneous dynamics of the pursuit of power outlined in section
2.2. Hobbes shows a new and persistent concern with eminent individuals, the
immoderate greatness of towns, and the accumulation of treasure by monopolies
or farms (L xxii.3132, xxvii, xxix.19, xxix.21). The presence and perpetual emergence of informal associations is newly recognized in Leviathan as a political fact
to be dealt with, even though such associations fail in Hobbess view to provide a
tenable alternative to sovereign rule. This concern is further developed in Behemoth,
in which the wealth, influence, and popular support of religious groupings and
great towns are identified as the matrix of Englands descent into civil war (B 34).
67
Frosts analysis (with which I am otherwise sympathetic) is hampered by presuming a single
unified use of the English term power, and not observing its correspondence to the systematic Latin
distinction between potentia and potestas. She gives an excellent account of power as capacity, but
presumes this also directly accounts for the sovereigns authority or rightful power; see Lessons from a
Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics, 13172.
68
As I argued in section 1.3.
69
As I argued in section 1.2.
70
Johnston also finds a change in the sovereigns vulnerability: he argues the sovereign finds
itself more sensitive to opinion (The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural
Transformation, 7880).
81
There are two reasons why these groups pose a problem, even though they are
not formed for the sake of sedition. First, they provide means for sedition, if the
intent does arise. In the early texts, the means of sedition are only secured after
an active decision to form a faction for the purpose of sedition. In Leviathan, the
means (power blocs not dependent on the sovereigns pleasure) are always being
generated, even without any seditious intent. Thus, should an ambitious individual
develop seditious plans, they may already have at their disposal the means to put
these plans into action; it will be that much more difficult for the sovereign to
arrest these plans.
[P]opularity of a potent subject (unless the commonwealth has very good caution of
his fidelity) is a dangerous disease, because the people (which should receive their
motion from the authority of the sovereign), by the flattery and by the reputation of
an ambitious man, are drawn away from their obedience to the laws, to follow a man
of whose virtues and designs they have no knowledge. (L xxix.20)
The second reason why these groups are dangerous to the sovereign is even more
serious. The existence of other powers within the social order in itself means the
sovereign has less effective capacity. Powerful subjects tend to engage in the commonplace pursuit of advantage; they do not in general have the intent to seize
power or to destroy the civil order, but they do want to have things their way. In
particular, they think they ought not be punished, and hope to escape punishment.
And that such as have multitude of potent kindred, and popular men, that have gained
reputation amongst the multitude, take courage to violate the laws from a hope of
oppressing the power to whom it belongeth to put them in execution. (L xxvii.15)
The sovereign knows that when it wants to issue or enforce some command that is
inconvenient to the powerful subject, it cannot presume it will secure obedience
from that subject, and perhaps not from the subjects supporters either. For the
powerful subject and her or his followers have the power simply not to comply.
They may comply in some cases, they may limit their reaction to noncompliance, or
they may be provoked into hostile retaliation to teach the sovereign not to trespass
on their concerns. This is vividly illustrated by King Charles Is abortive attempts
to impose the Book of Common Prayer on Scotland and to demand Ship Money
(B 2830, 3637). In all cases, the sovereigns power is weakened. It cannot simply
ignore the fact of powerful subjects in society and make no concessions to them,
because any successful display of disobedience publicizes the subjects power and
gains her or him even more allegiance. For this reason, crime from presumption
of strength giving impunity is much more politically pernicious than the everyday
crime from hope of not being discovered (L xxvii.30).
However, no alternative response from the sovereign is clearly better. For if the
sovereign acknowledges the limits on its own effective power, it is drawn into a game
of appeasement, which can only end badly. The sovereign may bestow benefits
on a subject (whether exempting from punishment or making policy to please)
for fear of some power and ability he hath to do hurt to the commonwealth
(L xxviii.25). Such benefits are extorted by fear and are in this sense sacrifices
that the sovereign makes for the appeasing of the discontent of him he thinks
more potent than himself (L xxviii.25). However, this strategy does not encour-
82
83
variable property: the capacity that it exercises through whatever actual obedience
of subjects it is able to garner.
To be sure, there is a difference between the sovereign and any other figure
that finds itself obeyed. For the sovereign is entitled to the obedience of subjects
(L xvii.1314). Even if in fact its potentia is limited by a disobedient populace, it is
entitled to have the greater potentia that would correspond to their obedience.73
Indeed, Hobbes understands the sovereigns behavior in appeasing powerful subjects as its behavior qua natural individual; this is contrasted with its power as the
person of the commonwealth, by which it is entitled to obedience (L xxviii.25).
The sovereign is so entitled not only because obedience has been promised to it
through covenant, but also more importantly because natural law stipulates that
such a covenant is needed for peace (L xiv.45). Indeed, the early science of the
sovereigns power as a science of entitlement is retained, but now under heading
of potestas/imperium. It is still very important to get this correct: Hobbes places first
in his list of causes of the dissolution of the commonwealth the sovereign resting
content with less power [potestas] than to the peace and defence of the commonwealth is
necessarily required (L xxix.3).
The transformation of Hobbess treatment of power has far-reaching consequences for his science of politics. Juridical arguments may generate an account
of right and authority, but a cursory appeal to punitive incentives is insufficient
to establish the possibility that political order under such a juridical model could
stably exist. Where De Cive asserts that all commonwealths alike possess a stable
potentia that is equated with their imperium, now the corresponding passage in Leviathan raises the concern that despite its stable potestas, a commonwealth might
suffer a diminished potentia (DC x.16, L xix.4). In the later texts, establishing the
correct doctrine of juridical potestas/imperium now needs to be distinguished from
and supplemented by a difficult and quite separate analysis of how the concretely
causal potentia to which the sovereign is entitled is to be achieved and sustained.
Effective power is no longer conceived as a stable possession but as a variable and
relationally constituted effective capacity. This transformed conception of power
illuminates the domain of lived politics below the neat categories of the juridical
sphere, promising to offer a better understanding of actual dynamics of political
stability, and what threatens it.74
84
Although Hobbess language is gendered, his conceptual analysis is to a remarkable degree ungendered, particularly by comparison with other canonical figures
from the history of political thought (for instance, consider Hobbess refusal to
naturalize the authority of men over women [L, chapter xx, sections 45]). Correspondingly, while for the sake of exegetical clarity I make some concession to
the original Hobbesian terminology (for instance, retaining science of man), otherwise I will frequently reformulate Hobbess arguments in gender neutral terms.
85
Critical
10.1080/13698231003787844
FCRI_A_479306.sgm
1369-8230
Original
Taylor
202010
13
jmd24@cam.ac.uk
JohnDunn
000002010
and
&Review
Article
Francis
(print)/1743-8772
Francis
of International
Ltd
(online)
Social and Political Philosophy
Hobbes held distinctive views about the role of power in organizing and
directing human life and posing the central problems of politics. His
English vocabulary (unlike his Latin vocabulary) conflates conceptions
of force, instrumental capacity, right and entitlement in a single term. It
remains controversial how far he changed his conception of human
nature over the last four decades of his intellectual life from a more to a
less egoistic version, and how far, if he did, any such change modified
his recipe for pacifying human collective life. The best way of tracking
the development of Hobbess political thinking is to trace the ways in
which he saw the shifting contributions of power to human life in
assisting, enabling or impeding human beings in living and acting as they
wish.
Keywords: power; right; danger; Hobbes
Agenda
What Hobbes thought about power was interesting, complicated, quite hard
to understand, and in the long run exceedingly important. That much, probably, is common ground amongst modern interpreters of Hobbess views,
whether they think him wildly and scandalously mistaken, and profoundly
pernicious in his impact precisely because of his errors, or deeply and
dismayingly accurate in his fundamental assessment of the human condition
and what it practically implies (cf. Arendt 1946 at one end of the continuum,
through Leo Strauss 1936, 1950, 1953, to Carl Schmitt 1996, pp. 83107, esp.
88, 90, 95). Still more so, no doubt, if they vacillate irresolutely between the
two assessments, finding it impossible to position themselves solidly beyond
the reach of either.
Many elements have entered by now into the scale and scope of these
disagreements. To locate their sources and track their effects would require
an exploration of much of the subsequent history of western political thinking
(cf. on a far smaller scale Malcolm 2002, pp. 457545). Only after such a
tracing could we be reasonably confident of seeing steadily which is the more
accurate view of Hobbes himself (let alone of the human condition which he
*Email: jmd24@cam.ac.uk
ISSN 1369-8230 print/ISSN 1743-8772 online
2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13698231003787844
http://www.informaworld.com
418
J. Dunn
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J. Dunn
Besides this prominent and potentially equivocal role within his vocabulary, power was also for Hobbes at least two other things: an endlessly
evocative image (Alexander 1971) within his notably dramatic imagination,
and a key theoretical conception (or perhaps two different but equally key
theoretical conceptions) within his remarkably intense struggle to systematize
an understanding of human life and its place within the rather evidently nonhuman universe in which that life must be lived.
The idea of power formed the core of his sense of what human life is
really like; it also furnished a foundation for his conception of what human
beings, like all other components of that universe, in the end consist in. It thus
bridged, precariously but nonetheless persistently, the subjective and the
objective, the view from within and the view from nowhere, what Bernard
Williams called an absolute conception of reality (Williams 1978), and the
most explicitly anthropocentric (human-centred and so human-relative)
elements of that reality (cf., plausibly, Baumgold 2003, esp. p. 170). How
exactly did this bridge work? How was the join effected? That question has
teased Hobbess cleverest interpreters from his day to ours. It seems reasonable today to presume that in the end it cannot really have worked that there
must have been a definite hiatus between the two, if indeed the relation was
anything more than a pun on the meaning of a word, a simple equivocation.
Even over the question of how Hobbes himself saw it as working, how he
perceived the conjunction, the ablest modern commentators, including his
endlessly patient and acute biographer Noel Malcolm, have yet to hit upon a
wholly convincing answer.
If you suppose that this presumed bridge between the objective and
subjective elements in Hobbess thought cannot really have spanned the
chasm, why should it be of the faintest continuing importance why Hobbes
himself believed it to do so? We can be certain that for Hobbes himself that
belief mattered greatly, not least because he chose to lavish such a large part
of his relatively abundant stock of free time in pressing forward the lines of
geometrical and scientific inquiry, designed to search out and capture the
properties of that painstakingly objectified universe. But why should it matter
in the least to us that it mattered so much to him? Why is it not a purely
contingent fact about the highly idiosyncratic preoccupations of someone
who died a very long time ago?
There are at least two reasons why it still has a pressing claim on our
attention. One is the impact of Hobbess imagination on the imaginations of
other human beings who have lived later: the length of the shadow which he
has cast, and its intimate continuing presence within our own imaginations,
whether we notice it or not, and its impress, however unawares, on how we
now see and feel: perhaps even on what we ourselves now are. The other,
more elusively, lies in the singular (perhaps even unique) force of his
conception of one very specific element within human life, the place of
politics in making that life practicable at all on any continuing scale, but also
421
422
J. Dunn
can hope to get what they want, and struggle for the opportunity to get it. Of
course Hobbes well knew that they can and often do think and judge in many
quite other ways, of an altogether less focused and self-aware kind. But insofar as they did, he was quite confident, they must be doing so deludedly and
inefficaciously, except by pure accident. Insofar as it could become selftransparent, and insofar as it could be lived reasonably, human life could only
take the form of a ceaseless quest for power.
Hence the force of the metaphor of life as a race we must suppose to have
no other goal, nor no other garland, but being foremost. And in it
To endeavour is appetite.
To be remiss is sensuality.
To consider them behind is glory.
To consider them before is humility.
To lose ground with looking back vain glory.
To be holden, hatred.
To turn back, repentance.
To be in breath, hope.
To be weary despair.
To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation.
To supplant or overthrow, envy.
To resolve to break through a stop foreseen courage.
To break through a sudden stop anger.
To break through with ease, magnanimity.
To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity.
To fall on the sudden is disposition to weep.
To see another fall, disposition to laugh.
To see one out-gone whom we would not is pity.
To see one out-go we would not, is indignation.
To hold fast by another is to love.
To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity.
To hurt ones-self for haste is shame.
Continually to be out-gone is misery.
Continually to out-go the next before is felicity.
And to foresake the course is to die. (pp. 5960)
Think of the Tour de France, and then think of that race as all of human
life. The celebrated passage from Leviathan in 1651 shows us the implications of that conclusion even more clearly. It shows us why that race is bound
to prove even more gruelling than the Tour de France itself, since, unlike the
latter for most of its participants, it has no living end. It goes on as long as we
do, and when it stops, we stop with it (Hobbes 1991, p. 70). Felicity is not an
ultimate end or highest good, but
a continuall progresse of the desire from one object to another; and the attaining
of the former, being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is, That
the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of
time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desires.
423
So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And
the cause of this is not alwayes that a man hopes for more intensive delight,
than he has already attained to; nor that he cannot be content with a moderate
power; but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which
he hath present, without the acquisition of more.
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J. Dunn
But this Hobbes quite explicitly denies. Self-preservation is the most basic of
human rights: the one right which can never be fully alienated. But it is not
more basic than the restless desire of power after power, because that desire
is precisely what there is to preserve. Even the humblest never give up that
insatiable quest. They just become too paralysed by fear to act on their
desires. Only the dead give up the quest; and they give it up, not in order to
pursue something else, but because, as my mother pointed out to me dryly on
her deathbed, they are no longer there. To foresake the course is to die
(Hobbes 1991, p. 60).
The Power of a Man, Hobbes tells us at the beginning of Chapter X of
Leviathan, is his present means to obtain some future apparent Good (1991,
p. 62). For the man in question it is thus defined in part by whatever does
happen to appear good to him (cf. Malcolm 2002, p. 442). But it is also
defined, of course, by the efficacy of the means which happen to be available
to him. Note, again, the presence of both the subjective and the objective
elements, the person-relative and the wholly impersonal. And the value or
worth of a man, what subjectively must motivate him to find available means,
is objectively simply his Price, that is to say, so much as would be given for
the use of his Power: and therefore is not absolute: but a thing dependent
on the need and judgment of another And, as in other things, so in men,
not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price (p. 63). Power is an
exhausting quarry to pursue because it can never be captured; but its relativity
makes it also an unnerving preoccupation. Sometimes it accumulates under
its own momentum, like Fame, increasing as it proceeds, or like the motion
of heavy bodies, which the farther they go, make still the more hast (p. 62).
But it can also deflate, apparently under just the same momentum. Nothing
succeeds like success; but nothing, too, can fail quite like failure. Hobbess
picture of what life is like is not a comforting one, and it leaves out a good
deal. But there is something eerily persuasive about it.
Is that eerie persuasiveness a reflection of its epistemically irresistible
realism, or of Hobbess spectacular talent for rhetorical manipulation of his
readers, or does it issue instead from its suggestive, if inadvertent, instability
of perspective, its constant and not wholly self-transparent oscillation
between the subjective and the objective? That oscillation may well be
disastrous for Hobbess own constructive intellectual ambitions; but it may
have interesting implications for those who can read him now, and use their
reading of him to think through for themselves quite how to see the settings
of their own lives.
Hobbes himself certainly claims something very different from this. Not
only does he insist, in De cive as elsewhere (Hobbes 1998, II, 1, p. 32), that
The method of starting with definitions and avoiding equivocation is of
course the proper method for those who leave no opportunity for counterargument. He continues to insist, nine years later in the Review and
conclusions to Leviathan, that as to the Whole Doctrine, I see not yet, but
425
the Principles of it are true and proper; and the Ratiocination solid. For I
ground the Civill Right of Soveraigns, and both the Duty and Liberty of
Subjects, upon the known naturall Inclinations of Mankind, and upon the
Articles of the Law of Nature; of which no man, that pretends but reason
enough to govern his private family, ought to be ignorant (Hobbes 1991,
p. 489). His purpose in writing it was to set before mens eyes the mutuall
Relation between Protection and Obedience; of which the condition of
Humane Nature, and the Laws Divine, (both Naturall and Positive) require
an inviolable observation (p. 489). His confidence in the validity of his
argument and the overwhelming importance of his message did not extend to
the expectation (particularly by 1651) that the solidity of the reasoning
would win general applause, or elicit universal conviction. Unlike his natural
philosophy, which he did expect would attract his readers, if he could only
complete its publication, For such Truth, as opposeth no mans profit, nor
pleasure, is to all men welcome (p. 491), he was very well aware that his
political argument threatened the interests and clashed with the tastes of far
too many of his contemporaries for most of them to welcome it with the
slightest warmth.
That argument is one about right, not about fact or the causal structure of
the universe: about the civil right of sovereigns and the duty and liberty of
subjects. Its key conclusion, as noted, is that men must inviolably observe the
mutual relation between protection and obedience. If and where they find
themselves protected, they have no defensible option but to obey. This tells
them little about what to do wherever they find themselves far from protected,
in downtown Monrovia or for that matter Nablus, or Tel Aviv, or Baghdad.
It is a highly incomplete guide on how to act in face of political chaos. What
it tells them is simply that, if and where they are lucky enough to find themselves confronted by political order, they should accept that order and defend
it to the best of their ability. Within the scope over which it did apply, within
the space of effective protection, this is an extreme doctrine and was clearly
intended to be so. What it did was to remove, within that space, all topics of
disagreement from the political arena, and thus remove politics (agreement
and disagreement about what to do publicly and together) along with it.
Hobbess greatest intellectual enemy was Aristotle; and what he held against
Aristotle was not just the latters, as it seemed to him, archaic conception of
what the universe consisted in and why it operated as it did, his outdated view
of the subject matter of the science of nature, but at least as much the prominent role which Aristotle assigned to serious public evaluative disagreement
in his picture of how human beings should try to live with one another. For
Aristotle, since the opportunity to judge together what is good, and then do
your best to realise that good in a life with others, is the main point of living
with others, any such concession was not just reckless and unjustified. It
involved a deliberate abandonment of the main purpose of human life on any
scale larger than a family. But for Hobbes, all such disagreement was always
426
J. Dunn
427
over its precision (1965). But there are several evident respects in which it
conspicuously fails to fit the model of a feudal society, a social order in which
it is firmly presumed that the great bulk of its members should know their
place, and conscientiously refrain from jostling their betters. And no one
could readily miss its disparity from the answers suggested by classical
philosophy, whether Stoic, Aristotelian or Platonic.
The key implication of viewing life as a race is the dominant role it
assigns to competition in structuring anyones life the imperative and
compulsion to view your own life always in relation to and at odds with the
lives of others, and not either as an exercise in internal self-fashioning or
modification, or in external cooperation and more or less extended friendship.
It is not that Hobbes disrecommends cooperating with others, or being a true
friend, or even achieving a high degree of self-control (any more than he
disrecommends the same styles of conduct on the part of states towards one
another: Malcolm 2002, ch. 13). It is simply that the force of his recommendations of what all his contemporaries would have agreed to be good
behaviour is pretty feeble when set beside the overwhelming impact of his
portrayal of incessant and intensely motivated competitiveness. It is also fair
to say that this rather prominent contrast in imaginative impact is matched by
the comparatively thin rational grounding which Hobbes was able to provide
(or at any rate, chose to offer) for the styles of personal conduct which he did
approve.
Hobbes, then, did not urge his readers to be obsessively competitive. He
merely assumed that they were obsessively competitive, could not readily
cease to be so, and could be induced to recognize that they were so themselves, and that they needed to reckon with the practical consequences of
virtually everyone else who had any effect on their lives also proving to be so.
Obsessive competitiveness in oneself might seem at worst a regrettable
personal pathology. But in others it was also plainly a very serious hazard: a
source of clear and present danger, to say nothing of vaguer and even more
imponderable dangers in the middle distance. Hobbess picture of politics
centred on that source of danger, and on the very practical challenge of keeping it within bounds. The Laws of Nature, which both summarize how men
should behave, and indicate how, why, and under what conditions they can
have good reason to behave as they should, seek to bridge this diagnosis, as
it figures within an individual as seen from their own point of view, and as it
features in all other individuals who affect them, when these are viewed by
them firmly from the outside. These laws purport to express a consistent and
impartial viewpoint, which will not simply collapse in its motivational force
when exposed to the partial motivation of every actual human agent. Whether
or not that is a coherent intellectual hope is an extremely old question, no
closer to being settled now than it was in the fourth century BC. (It was still,
for example, the elusive prize of the entire intellectual lives of two remarkable philosophers, who died quite recently John Rawls [1972, 2006] and
428
J. Dunn
429
430
J. Dunn
431
432
J. Dunn
Behemoth), it is inherently unlikely that he did see the matter quite that way,
especially in the later stages of his intellectual life. Like Schmitt after him
(1996), Hobbes unmistakably viewed mans political condition as a predicament, and the main source of that predicament as the dangers which humans
pose to one another and the enmity which arises from those dangers. Neither
construes human political life through a generalized human propensity for
enmity. Both view the human prevalence of enmity principally as a product
of perceived dangers, real or imaginary. What marks Schmitt out from
Hobbes is his perspective on our response to those dangers: the identification
and choice of enemy and friend. For Schmitt, locating ones enemies in the
face of danger is always partly a process of choice, and inherently linked to
finding and choosing ones friends. For Hobbes the propensity to choose
friends is itself a source of danger (almost as dangerous as beliefs themselves), both irremediably inchoate and endlessly disturbing of judgment.
Any hope of safety lies in the painfully artificial stabilization of judgment,
undisturbed by particular passions, around a power sufficient to secure it.
Wherever it is urgently needed (Baghdad this month), this seems a lot to hope
for. One of the two, plainly, was an overwhelmingly more powerful and
original thinker than the other (as well as an altogether more admirable man).
But each nevertheless perhaps saw something which the other in some
measure missed.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for the helpful responses to earlier versions of the text from Johan
Tralau and Stephen Holmes, and for the kind and extensive aid of Deborah Baumgold
in revising it.
Notes on contributor
John Dunn studied history at Cambridge and Harvard. He is a Fellow of Kings
College and Professor of Political Theory in Cambridge. His books include The
political thought of John Locke (1969), The politics of socialism (1984), Locke
(1984), The history of political theory (1996), and Setting the people free (2005).
He has been a visiting professor in Ghana, India, Japan, Canada, Italy, and the
United States (Tulane, the University of Minnesota, Yale). He is a Fellow of the
British Academy, chaired its Political Studies Section from 19941997 and served
on its Council from 20042007. He is also Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Strauss, L., 1950. On the spirit of Hobbess political philosophy. Revue internationale de philosophie, 4, 405431.
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Thomas, K., 1965. The social origins of Hobbess political thought. In: K.C. Brown,
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Williams, B., 1978. Descartes: the project of pure inquiry. Harmondsworth:
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Williams, B., 1993. Shame and necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Williams, B., 2006. The sense of the past. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Richard W. Alexander,
The
metaphor,
strange.1
For
some
scientists,
philosophers,
create
"models,"
now
years
The Evergreen
"myths,"
commentators
State College
no
on Hobbes
longer
have
employ
new
or
pointed
"correspondence,"
system
operates
by
complex
of
logic
mechanical
only
some
of
the
most
crucial
and
obvious
ones.
We
can
1 See
31
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Alexander
32
but I suspect
have a deeper
such metaphors
significance.
to Hobbes's metaphors,
If we pay attention
piece them together,
and question the logic that integrates them, I suspect we come close to
far more
the subjective
than his famous
which,
assumptions,
"method,"
control?his
guide?even
construct,
it would
most
demonstrate,
still be
that
the
were
Even
prove.
do not
this
so revealed
the "myth"
to
resemblance
arise
metaphors
elucidate,
important
remarkable
The
thinking.
Picture which
theories
of
denied,
bears
and
Order
the
Corre
this re
is ordinarily felt to have destroyed:
the
of
the
of
Hobbes's
raises
relation
issue
immediately
an issue generally by
thought to that of his immediate predecessors,
enormous
in
of
the
effect on subse
favor
of
Hobbes's
study
passed
which Hobbes
spondence
semblance
theory.
quent
it
tions
On
raises.
abstruse
the
at
elements
the
as
Hobbes
the
of
his myth
only
to
elements
other works,
elaboration
sketches
of
expense
I mean
whole
one
of
himself
larger
the
I shall,
known.
well
for Hobbes
part
on
concentrate
more
also,
thought
of
system.
to Leviathan.
is by the
the art whereby
God hath made
the world,
and governs
so in this also
in many
that it can make
other
imitated,
things,
. . .Art
an artificial
and most
that rational
animal.
goes yet further,
imitating
man.
of nature,
work
For by art is created
that great LEVIATHAN
excellent
NATURE,
art of man,
as
called a COMMONWEALTH,
an
or STATE,
is but
the natural,
than
of greater
stature
and
though
strength
the sover
in which
for whose
and defence
it was
and
intended;
protection
...
the
to the whole
is an artificial
life and motion
body
eignty
soul, as giving
were
at first made,
the parts
of this body politic
pacts and covenants,
by which
or the let us make man,
set together,
and united,
resemble
pronounced
that^a/,
artificial
by God
To
man;
in the
describe
creation.
the nature
of
this
artificial
and
the
man,
I will
consider
which
is man.4
4
in English Works,
ed. Sir William
Molesworth
Leviathan,
to Hobbes's
references
in the text and
in, ix-x. Further
works,
several volumes
of the Molesworth
edition
(E.W.).
(London,
in notes,
First,
the matter
thereof,
artificer;
both
1839-45)?
are to the
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The Myth
of Power:
Hobbes's
Leviathan
33
In the beginning
there exist God and the unformed matter of the
world. God inHis omnipotence
commands that this matter take form.
to hold the now-formed
He continues
in its order by His
universe
Power.
Supreme
As
guage
for men
own
of
part
animal
this
but
reason.
achieves
But
in the unique
(except
God
creates
He
universe
not
does
an
man,
animal
gift of language.
institute
lan
By
governments
create their
polities.
decencies
this
chaos,
commodities,
men
covenant
where
fear
one
with
of
death
to
another
To
pervades.
all
invest
escape
their
separate
the "mortal
into one sovereign artificial power?the
Leviathan,
in
the
Leviathan
social
This
then
establishes
order
world, build
god."
powers
ing
a new
social
universe
in accordance
with
the
Laws
and
of Nature,
be allowed
the
stituted?then
in effect
power
sovereign
ceases
to
exist,
the
com
monwealth
dissolves back into the state of mere nature. This dissolu
tion can happen at large, as in a civil war, or for individuals at any
time
they
refuse
to
acknowledge
the
sovereign
power.
creates
mand)
the
"the
commonwealth,
man."
artificial
state
These
ments
ments
on
the
other
two
levels.
But
whereas
this
structure
of
"cor
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Alexander
34
existence
Curiosity,
consideration
cause;
and incomprehensibility.
or
of
love
the
till of necessity
there
whereof
cause,
God.
So
that
it
without
cannot
they
For as a man
by
effect,
he must
is no
to
of causes,
and
cause;
to this thought
knowledge
seek the
come
but
former
impossible
inclined
being
though
nature.
selves
the
is
causes,
conceive,
and
is the
of
cause,
to make
draws
again,
at last,
is eternal;
any profound
to believe
there
a man
the
cause
there
that
which
from
the
of
that
is some
is it men
inquiry
is one
into
call
natural
God
eternal;
thereby
to his
idea of him
in their mind,
answerable
any
men
them
that
is born blind,
talk of warming
hearing
the fire, and being
to warm
himself
easily
by the same, may
brought
men
and assure
there
call fire,
is somewhat
himself,
there, which
have
there
image
of him
an
have
visible
cause
idea
of
of
in his mind.5
(in,
92-93)
Hobbes
argued in many places that God and the soul must both
be corporeal. He also maintained
that it was impious to assign any
to God other than existence,
attribute
incompre
infinity, eternity,
and omnipotence
(in, 350-54).
hensibility,
Infinity, eternity, and in
he calls "negative"
attributes;
they express only
comprehensibility
our inability to conceive God's magnitude,
duration, and so on (in,
27). Indeed, apart from existence, the only positive attribute he con
But Hobbes derives a good
sistently applies to God is "omnipotence."6
5This
like many
another
much more
than its
in Leviathan,
contains
passage,
surface meaning,
and it may be useful to indicate briefly here just how densely meta
is. Consider,
for instance,
the unstated
from design con
phoric the passage
argument
in the innocuous
tained
"their admirable
order." Consider
the image of the
phrase
fire. Fire stands not only for the world which
cannot be seen, but for the intellectual
fire is linked to the sun (cf. 1, 75; iv, 7), and
light (cf. in, title page, and pp. 36-37);
thus to God Himself
to the burning
and in a later reference
(both in this passage
bush
v, Hobbes
But both
and vn,
(cf. in, 5, 169, 569-70;
who have an idea of its nature
and philosophers
Moses),
(cf.
and Chance
argues extensively
these attributes
ultimately,
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The Myth
Hobbes's
of Power:
Leviathan
35
to
is content
follow
about
information
his
1. In a discussion
marks:
"The
Moses.
We
of "The Absurd
matter
unformed
can,
however,
together
piece
some
views.
opinion
of the world,
of Gentilism"
a
was
god,
by
the
he re
name
of
original
in
clear that the "absurdity"
(in, 99). The context makes
is in attributing
godhead to the chaos, not in assuming an
chaos itself. A later passage links Chaos v/ith the state of mere
nature:
"For
Chaos"
volved
when
Christian
take
men,
not
their
Christian
sovereign,
(111,427).
2. In Leviathan Hobbes
approves the Genesis version of Creation,
even to such details as the creation of man from dust (in, 615), and the
commands of the great Fiat. His remarks on this indicate that God
exists prior toHis created world?
"the command of God, to the light,
to
the
firmament,
be" was
to
the
sun,
and
stars,
when
he
commanded
them
to
(hi, 35i)-7
3. In "The Author's Epistle
as
speaks of Philosophy
to the Reader"
own
and your
as it was
its father,
imitate
the creation:
if you
[therefore]
reason move
let your
the deep
of
upon
must
those
that
lie in confusion
things
the
child
but
like
of
the
world
the world
. . .
not
fashioned
yet,
perhaps
. . .
a thing
confused
in the beginning,
in good
will be a philosopher
earnest,
own cogitations
and experience;
your
mind
and
be set asunder,
distinguished,
its own name
set in order;
that is to say, your method
with
stamped
that of the creation.
The
of the creation
resemble
order
was,
light, dis
one
every
must
on His
Power
is one of Hobbes's
basic concepts,
and is linked to his
Omnipotence.
of cause,
will
and desire,
domination,
submission,
command,
generation,
for all the diverse
becomes
and so on. "Power"
types
obligation,
highly metaphorical,
of power Hobbes
thinks to be exactly
like one another.
7But one
also puzzle over the ambiguous
relations
between
i, io-n,
E.W,,
might
notions
410-14;
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Alexander
36
Unction
man;
of day
after
and,
templation
and after
will
and
the
night,
creation,
the
the firmament,
the commandment.
the
space,
to command.
be, reason,
definition,
is grown
up, subjection
man
sensible
luminaries,
Therefore
the
sensible
stars,
order
creatures,
of con
man;
quality,
(1, xiii)
is established
The metaphoric
link between rationality and Creation
again in the Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance where
Hobbes
about
remarks
their
so many
followers,
drawn
"arguments
of this argument,
words
from
natural
especially
strangers
to our
"I
reason":
in the Schoolmen
and
language,
such
(v,
19-20).
rebukes the
with Bishop Bramhall, Hobbes
4. In a controversy
Bishop: "From that I say of the universe, he infers, that I make God
to be nothing: but infers it absurdly. He might
indeed have inferred
that I make him a corporeal, but yet a pure spirit. I mean by the uni
and so
verse, the aggregate of all things that have being in themselves;
do all men else. And because God has a being, it follows that he is
either the whole universe, or part of it. Nor does his Lordship go about
to disprove it, but only seems to wonder at it" (iv, 349).
From
such
remarks,
one
can
all of which,
processes.
in Leviathan
"Form"
analyzed
a Creation
reconstruct
story.
God
is created
Creation
Hobbes's
of sexual
product
of
"generation"
derives
attributes
of the active and passive causes taken
together (iv, 309). The form of the generated thing is implicit (but not
in its causes. Thus: (a) the "form" of a triangle is im
"^formed")
plicit in the definitions of "angle," "a side," "line," and so on, which
combine (copulate) to cause the triangle; (b) the "form"?that
is, the
a proposition
is implicit in the two names copulated;
meaning?of
(c) the form of an animal is implicit in the attributes of the male and
from the combined
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The Myth
of Power:
Hobbes's
Leviathan
37
to produce thoughts;
involve the
(f) mathematical
operations
In thought,
of numbers.
(the addition and subtraction)
copulation
cause and effect, all the attributes of the
and mechanical
procreation,
of the
thing caused are wholly
implicit in the combined attributes
causes themselves. God
active and passive (the effective and material)
another
acts,
then,
in an
on
an
unformed,
passive
matter
to generate
verse,
matter
immense,
finely
complex,
tuned
formed
uni
in the original
then cooperate
mechanism.
dissolves.
The
sovereign
is also
a "mortal
god."
Moreover,
Hobbes often speaks of God as a King. Now what can all this mean if
in common with Kings or souls? Kings are the
God shares nothing
souls of the body politic, they create the commonwealth,
they rule by
their commands which are the law, they have absolute power and
exercise it to maintain
order. So does God inHis Kingdom, Nature.
or
comes close to identifying God with Nature,
In all this Hobbes
calling God the "soul of the world," a Neo-Platonic
opinion that he
the deeper we get into such matters
in Hobbes's
text.
explicit statements
toward state
argument was moving
actions of God, or the details of the
incomprehen
stopped short, declared the matter
that he accepted the Scriptural account.
differs
Man, "that rational and most excellent wTork of Nature,"
from other animals essentially only in this: that he has been given the
gift of tongues, he has language; he possesses words
(in, 11, 33; i,
66-68; iv, 2; v, 186 ff.).
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Alexander
38
was
most
invention
of all other,
that of SPEECH,
noble
and profitable
or appellations,
men
of names
and their connexion;
consisting
whereby
register
recall
them when
their thoughts;
and also declare
them one to
they are past;
for mutual
and conversation;
without
there had been
another
utility
which,
nor society,
nor contract,
nor peace,
no
neither
men,
amongst
commonwealth,
The
more
than
God
himself,
amongst
that
and wolves.
The
lions, bears,
to name
how
Adam
instructed
first
such
author
of
creatures
speech
as he
was
pre
sented to his sight; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter. But this
was
the
sufficient
creatures
as to make
degrees,
language
might
as the experience
to add more
him
and use of
names,
and to join them
in such manner
give him occasion;
by
so much
and so by succession
himself
of time,
understood;
as he had found use for. . . . (m,
gotten,
18-19)
to direct
should
be
to language that
is devoted
essential point for our argu
of Babel, from His peculiar
contract with the Jews, from the coming of Christ) God interferes in
man's political and social life only by teaching him language. Through
sense and speech man acquires his peculiar psychology,
and thereby
But he also acquires through
all contentions, malice, and depravity.
sense and speech logic, reason, geometry,
sciences, and all civilized
commodities.
Men
are
capable
of
reasoning
their
way
to
an
under
tive"9
case,
process
would
international
be
an
confusion
analysis
from
and the
intense
experience?in
individualism,
Hobbes's
acquisi
8 In his
all acts to God. These
Hobbes
with Bramhall,
does attribute
controversy
are not God's
the chains of causality
immediate
acts, but only His because
through
in God. See E.W.,
all acts originate
in, 197-98; v, 105-106,
340.
ultimately
9For discussions
see Neal Ward
of this "method"
Renaissance
Gilbert,
Concepts
of Sci
(New York,
Randall,
Jr., "The Development
of Method
i960); John Herman
1 (1940), 177-206;
in the School of Padua,"
entific Method
and Ralph M. Blake,
JHI,
et al,
"Introduction."
Theories
Walter
(Seattle,
J. Ong,
of Scientific Method
i960),
and the Decay
is also
Mass.,
S.J., Ramus: Method,
of Dialogue
(Cambridge,
1958),
should not be confused with the Ramists.
very useful, but Hobbes
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The Myth
tiveness,
and
civil
war
of
his
own
of Power:
Leviathan
Hobbes's
causes
England?to
39
na
in human
the structure of
second operation
(that which controls
would work from the facts of human nature through an
to a comprehension
of the Laws of
analysis of human psychology,
and thence to the generation of the Leviathan?the
great end
Nature,
which directs our chain of reasoning
153). The
(in, 13-15, 36-37,
sureness of Hobbes's
this
absolute
design springs from our making
ture. The
Leviathan)
system?its
and
definitions,
its
rules,
out
its matter?ourselves,
of
nonsocial-nonpolitical
ever
nor
generally,
"state
has
to human
of mere
knowledge,
nature"
we
does
must
not
"feign"
now
exist
such
as he himself always
state. The "state of mere nature" is for Hobbes,
fiction. Hobbes
feigns it by a process he also
insists, a methodological
uses when he defines "space" by imagining all things but himself
is then uthe phantasm of a thing existing without
annihilated?"space"
in which we consider
the mind simply; that is to say, that phantasm,
no other accident, but only that it appears without us" (1, 91-94) .n
of the
Hobbes
feigns the state of mere nature by the annihilation
10For a detailed
and
of this complicated
idea, see Arthur Child, "Making
analysis
in
Publications
in Hobbes,
and Dewey,"
Vico,
University
of California
No.
The Historic
13 (1053), pp. 271-310.
Development
Enriques,
Federigo
is also very helpful.
trans. Jerome Rosenthal
(New York,
1929), pp. 68-75,
of Logic,
11This
on by George Croom Robertson,
is commented
Hobbes
(Edin
similarity
a trivial quirk
in Hobbes's
appear
1886), p. 143 n. This may
burgh and London,
we make ourselves
is an imaginary
construct
"Space"
thought, but it is in fact essential.
some
Hobbes's
of "body"
insist now that it is an existent
definitions
by ratiocination.
now that it is "full space"
no dependence
what
upon our thought,"
(cf. 1,
"having
at
of Body
and Space allow us to consider
definitions
in, 381). Hobbes's
102, with
can "make" Body:
insofar as body be con
least one sense in which human
reasoning
on our imagination
But our
then Body depends
for its definition.
sidered "full space,"
on sense
of Body,
of Space depends
that is, ultimately
definition
upon our memory
Knowing
Philosophy,
the subjective
thus form part of Hobbes's
definitions
bridge between
in Hobbes,"
See S. Morris
and Equivocation
Engel,
"Analogy
De
is also pertinent.
pp. xxvi-xxvii,
Oakeshott,
(1962), 330-32.
can
of "space"
of the intricacies
of seventeenth-century
definitions
tailed discussion
be found inMilic" Capek, The Philosophical
(Princeton,
Physics
Impact of Contemporary
I.
Mass.,
Concepts
Jammer,
of Space
1954). Samuel
1961), and Max
(Cambridge,
this defini
The Hunting
Mintz,
of the Leviathan
(Cambridge,
1962), pp. 92-95, discusses
to that of Henry More.
tion as opposed
These
perception.
and the objective.
xxxvn
Philosophy',
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Alexander
40
Nature
then
proceed,
to
reason,
by
The
Leviathan.
generate
"freedom,"
"covenant,"
etc.?initiates
the
macrocosm-microcosm
traditional
Hobbes
always
the thought
discusses
analogy,
Human
of
construction
com
the
con
Himself
the WTord?God
come closer when we consider first
Nature
that
second
and
as psychology,15
that
is, as
process.)
"Laws
of Nature"
has
always
been
puzzle,
puzzle
greatly
pp. 262-65.
pp. 265 ff.
it clear that "Word" here is used "metaphorically"
makes
sure, Hobbes
the world,
to stand "for the decrees and power of God"
(in, 409). God, Who makes
the world absolutely,
and thus has no need for "words"
knows
per se in the Creation.
so that we can imitate Him.
But He gives us words
15
iv, 2-3; i, 67.
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The Myth
of Power:
Hobbes's
Leviathan
41
the traditional
of the phrase, and aware of the way in
interpretations
use
which his peculiar
of it contrasted
and conflicted with those
traditions.16
face
we
Unfortunately
can
do
little
more
than
scratch
the
sur
here.
In Leviathan Hobbes
only to those "precepts"
the
sovereign
power,
only
when
commanded
by
the
"mortal
god."
all men
are somehow
he repeatedly
insisted
to
and
follow these laws,
this seeming inconsistency
has
"obliged"
produced a long and so far inconclusive debate about just what it was
Hobbes believed was the basis of "obligation"?God's
omnipotence?
that
Nevertheless
human
reason?
the King's
commands?
We
complicate
the matter
even
if we accept Mortimer
that Hobbes
im
Taube's
argument
of
understood
the
observable
the
regularities
plicitly
physcial universe
be "laws of
laws," as they have come to be called?to
?"physical
further
nature"
commanded
by
God.17
16Frederick
of Natural
A. Olafson,
"Thomas
Hobbes
and the Modem
Theory
a fine discussion
iv (1966), 15-30, provides
Law," Journal
of the History
of Philosophy,
to traditional
relation
Law
theories:
traditional
Natural
of Hobbes's
Natural
LawT
who would
theories
left unresolved
law conflicted with Natural
judge when a positive
resolves
this conflict by making
his Laws of Nature
only "procedural,"
Law; Hobbes
the content
how to set up the commonwealth,
but never specifying
of posi
directing
tive law. See also Otto Gierke, Natural
Law and the Theory of Society,
1500 to 1800
1957; orig. 1913), esp. pp. 60-61.
(Boston,
17Mortimer
"Dr. Zilsel on the Concept
of Physical
Taube,
Law," Philosophical
that follows I shall make
Review, lii (1943), 305. In the discussion
just this assumption,
but I do it knowing very well that Hobbes
himself refused to use the phrase "laws of na
in
ture" in this way. We are faced with the paradox
that Hobbes
denies what
explicitly
men will or not, they must
be
other places his language
strongly
implies. "Whether
. . .But to call this power of God, which
to the divine power.
extendeth
subject always
itself not only to man, but also to beasts, and plants, and bodies inanimate,
by the name
use of the word. For he only is properly
is but a metaphorical
said to reign,
of kingdom,
that governs his subjects by his word, and by promise
of rewards to those that obey
therefore in the
them with punishment
that obey it not. Subjects
it, and by threatening
nor creatures
of God, are not bodies inanimate,
they under
irrational; because
kingdom
"
as his ...
stand no percepts
(ni, 344; cf. 11, 204-205).
I can only sketch in a possible
The
idea of God commanding
"laws
explanation.
to the physical universe was growing at this time. Often
it went hand in hand
of nature"
with a Neo-Platonic
animism, which Hobbes would
reject. But it could also imply, as it
had no further need of God's
which
forward, an ordered universe
An Essay onMetaphysics
[Oxford,
power for its maintenance
(R. G. Collingwood,
as I have already
Hobbes
1940], p. 49), an idea which,
repudiated. We are
suggested,
the "physical
law" metaphor
left with the paradox: Hobbes's
suggests
language strongly
did
from Newton
active
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Alexander
42
of
In
Nature."
and what
"Laws"?
is "Nature,"
there
is also
a necessary
Laws
Hobbes's
and why
i. Hobbes
2. But
are
sense
what
of
Nature,
of Nature?
theory of Law.
sense
"laws"
in which
are
ideal
of the funda
of universal
realities, that is, descriptions
descriptions
mental
regularities underlying all existent civil polity.
3. And there is a further sense in which
they are "precepts,"
"rules,"
"dictates,"
I submit
Corpore
same
or
"counsels."
thing
He
"cause."
continues
that
while
the name
of laws, but
theorems
concerning
improperly;
what
are but
for they
conduceth
to
the
are
they
the
same
at one time we
to its ability to
particular Law
if "considered"
is a description
to call by
or
conclusions,
used
conservation
and
de
universal mechanism;
isThe Creation?the
is the ordinary operation of that mechanism;
from unformed
is the art used to create that mechanism
matter;
4. Human
nature
is, then,
the
aggregate
of human
attributes
con
from his time on; but he himself draws back from this and re
grew so powerful
and impact of the
For extensive
of the development
discussions
it as "metaphor."
see Taube,
Freedom
and Determinism
law" metaphor,
Causation,
(London,
"physical
Re
of Physical
of the Concept
Law," Philosophical
1936); Edgar Zilsel, "The Genesis
in China
Science and Civilization
(Cam
view, li (1942), 247-49; and Joseph Needham,
which
jects
533-43
bridge,
1956), 11, 519-21,
18
see also 1, 5, and rv, 309.
1,127-28;
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The Myth
of Power:
Hobbes's
Leviathan
43
iv,
2.)
matter,
the
passive
active
of God's
properties
of unformed
"will."
constructs,
and
And
precepts.
because
He
commanded
in the Creation,
them, they were "laws." Imitating God's Operations
the philosopher
first comes to an understanding
of human nature,
which he knows "by nature"
if he will examine his own behavior
and apply the already-proven-reliable
methods
of
disinterestedly
These accurate descriptions
of human
Euclid, Galileo, and Harvey.
behavior are rational reconstructions
by the philosopher
examining a
creation of God, of the regularities built by God into the man-ma
can construct
this understanding
the philosopher
his
asking how we can bind these irrational, selfish, concupiscent,
chine. With
system,
competitive
men-machines
into
one
harmonious
commonwealth.
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Alexander
44
union
mystic
This
This
than
same
the
and
done,
in Latin
CIVITAS.
This
wealth;
carcase
of a man,
An even more
The
other.
which
by
his
explicit
error
a "mor
soul,
public
the members
departed,
statement
of
of that great
that
defence,
mortal
(in,
god,
to
158)
that
life and
giving
are governed
though
immortal,
motion
to
the
common
than
by it no more,
soul,
(in, 321-22)
the
first argument
the
is, that he says,
[Bellarmine's]
as of a natural
one of an
body,
depend
commonwealth,
but they depend
It is true, they cohere
only on the sovereign,
together;
which
is
the commonwealth
is the soul of the commonwealth;
failing,
other
members
is the generation
to speak more
rather,
reverently,
the immortal
and
under
God, our peace
is the
as
sovereign
or
LEVIATHAN,
we owe
which
. . . the
the
person,"
or concord;
it is a real unity
of them
all, in one
. . .
of every man with
every man.
by convenant
so united
a COMMON
in one person,
is called
consent,
made
person,
the multitude
WEALTH,
in "one
as "generated"
dissolved
of
body
his
every
of a common
natural
in this
no one man
so much
as cohering
on a known
sovereign;
dependence
of a
for want
dissolve
into earth,
to another,
for want
of the
just as the members
soul to hold
them
together.
(hi, 576-77)
in these passages
involved
taken
complex set of metaphors
to
to
to
the
the
union
God
link
soul,
mystical
"generation,"
together
to the sovereign power, to kings.
of all in one, to the commonwealth,
The key to this complex is Hobbes's
concept of cause. The efficient
The
on the "material
or
cause"
cause,"
working
"power")
or
are
"cause
the
cause,"
together
simple,"
"passive
power")
("passive
or the
to produce
all causes
the
cause."
When
"sufficient
necessary
cause
("active
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The Myth
of Power:
Hobbes's
Leviathan
45
443)?as
active
cause
generates
the
living
man;
and
as
the
"es
sence" of man, as life itself (in, 615), the soul might be considered to
be the man. The soul is especially like God in that it holds the body
together by His
together by its power just as God holds His Creation
Power. When a multitude
of men combine their separate wills into one
in doing which they are both
will, they generate the commonwealth,
cause (in, x), and the effect itself. The soul of
effective and material
this body politic is the sovereign power?the
sovereign, the King, the
"mortal god." The sovereign contains in his person all the people; he
of the commonwealth
(courts,
actively generates all the institutions
armies, churches, parliaments,
commerce) ; and he holds
universities,
in order through his laws and his invincible power.
the commonwealth
is the commonwealth,
in his person the
The sovereign
containing
whole people as a unity. And so the sovereign, the King, like God, is
efficient cause, material cause, and the effect itself.
All the attributes
of an effect are implicit in the attributes of its
several
causes.
If
the
causes
are
themselves
perfect,
the
generation
wealth),
naturally,
But
has not been truly set forth until Hobbes's De Cive. And so,
all the commonwealths
into
of the wTorld have dissolved
wars.
to those older
Hobbes's myth bears the most striking resemblance
and the
familiar from the doctrine of Correspondences
political myths
complex of notions surrounding the King's Two Bodies.19 The order of
the Macrocosm
ismirrored in the microcosm Man, and mirrored again
19Excellent
1957).
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46
Alexander
it
and
govern.
And,
of a mystical
as in the
to
transmits
the
all
other
is the
care
dential
municates
bers
of
under
thereby
to the head,
said body politic,
whereby
is incorporated,
which
the people
and
several
the
and
it subsists
be
may
and
so is the
compacted,
law
that
ligament
members
bones
and
all
bound
the
other
together
members
and
of
united
the
body
due
their
the
the
imparting
and
life,
lives and
is invigorated.
to the
compared
The
law
or
nerves
(to go back
to the
truest
in one
their
offices
several
by the nerves,
can not change
as the head
of the body
natural
by the law. And
or sinews,
can not deny
to the several
their proper
energy,
parts
can a king,
is the
of blood;
who
neither
and aliment
proportion
discharge
community
its nerves
as
to
in it the blood,
person,
(according
provision
the
derivation
one
it in the blood,
that
of the people,
is, the pru
having
it transmits
for the public
and com
good, which
as the principal
and to all the rest of the mem
part;
intention
and
body
lives, having
members,
with
body,
natural
philosopher)
which
is a sort
which
kingdom,
to guide
regular
head,
head of the body politic, change the laws thereof, nor take from the people
is theirs,
what
20 Sir
cinnati,
by
right,
John Fortescue,
1874), pp. 36-37.
against
De
their
Laudibus
consents.20
Legum
Angliae,
trans.
Francis
Gregor
(Cin
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The Myth
There
of these
some
of
are,
course,
the
versions
was
sovereign
Leviathan
between
differences
many
Hobbes's
traditional
medieval
of Power:
Hobbes's
versions
not
47
above
version
In
themselves.
the
as he
Law,
is
inHobbes,
but instead reigns as a steward of an already existent Law.
In the tradition
law is only occasionally
defined as "command."
Hobbes
insists that the commonwealth
is "artificial" whereas
the
more traditional
versions
insist that the
(for instance Bellarmine's)
commonwealth
is
"natural."
Hobbes's
derives
sovereign
his
power
point
the
resemblance.
general
instance,
wholly
unoriginal,
retailer
of
to much
by a method
he
never
argues
the
same
profoundly
from
them.
different.
He
Hobbes
argues
common
but
may
from
most
analogy.
as Forset,
conclusions
was
that
everything
he
comes
to
use metaphors,
system
them
but
of mechanical
cause and effect, with God as the essential First Cause and the con
the vast
tinuing cause of all things natural and "artificial." In Hobbes
are linked together mechanically
into one
network of correspondences
universal world-machine,
each part linked with every part. Indeed,
Hobbes's
metaphors
and
analogies
are
always
grounded
in what
Hobbes
thinks
21 W.
Political
Allen,English
(London,
J.
1967; orig. 1938), p. 83.
Thought 1603-1644
22For
it can be argued that Hobbes
believed
it to be a fact that the thought
instance,
is exactly like the process of sexual genera
process
conception,
imagination)
(perception,
tion. His friend Harvey
argued
just this at great length in De Generatione
Animalum,
a metaphor
which
the same year as Leviathan. Thus
appears at first to be
published
little more
than a play on the word "conception"
in what Hobbes
may be grounded
fact.
seriously believed was biological
23See n.
11, above.
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Alexander
48
Forset
him.
no
needs
reason.
and
language,
theory
complex
With
Forset,
sense
of
memory,
perception,
is all.
analogy
as it
In spite of this logic, the general shape of Hobbes's myth,
I think this fits with
is quite conventional.
from Leviathan,
own statements
of intention. Hobbes
in all his
proposed
in sound scientific princi
political writings to ground civil philosophy
emerges
Hobbes's
so much
ples?not
to
innovate
doctrine
as
to ground
received
already
itics. The
were
now
everywhere
bases
of civil order,
called
into
never
All
question.
firmly
manner
established,
of men
imag
by
the
same
methods
and
with
same
the
certainty
as
geom
etry and the new sciences, then he could establish a civil philosophy
that would both confirm traditional order and also eliminate a root
cause
of
disorder.
would
follow,
and
no man
would
be
able
to
claim,
on
rational
or theo
24
m,
and
Chs.
7-10,
and Conclusion,"
46, 47, and "A Review,
rv, 72-73.
esp. p. 9; 11, ix-xxiv;
esp. pp.
712-14.
See also
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1,
The Myth
of Power:
Hobbes's
Leviathan
49
mutually
and
supportive,
then
that
the
contem
many
are of the
such absolute
sovereignty
poraries who had undermined
of Darkness.
ideas about absolute
Hobbes's
Kingdom
sovereignty
in his day?they
had been too
could not have been truly "shocking"
often stated by too many eminently reputable men in the past. It was
this method
that was shocking, and certain corollaries of this method
?his
denial of "spirit," his cynicism about the claims of the religious,
for authorities,
his arrogance toward the Universities,
his contempt
his rejection of sentiment, and so on. (This is not to say that his con
"myth" had it not been
temporaries would have all accepted Hobbes's
for his method.
After all, there were several rival "traditions."
The
common lawyers, with their myth of an "immemorial
law," belong in
a medieval
tradition just as much as Hobbes does.25 They would have
authoritarian
system, and indeed they did
quarreled with Hobbes's
so vigorously.)
knew that he could not
But surely, it will be objected, Hobbes
the various antagonists
of his day, that his sys
succeed in persuading
tem was bound to anger and dissatisfy
everyone. I believe so. And I
on Hobbes's
that mordant
believe this recognition
part motivates
irony, that magisterial
despair so many readers sense inHobbes.26 The
whole system is, on one level, a bitter joke. Hobbes
exploits not only
authoritarianism?the
of Medieval
the magic catchwords
Body Pol
he justifies them through a fiction which
itic, the Laws of Nature?but
also exploits all the magic catchwords of the new Libertarians?state
of
nature,
common
property,
social
contract.
In
so doing
he
antago
friends by implicitly
he an
nizes his Royalist
justifying Cromwell,
an
to
their
the
liberty
reducing
absurdity
Independents
by
tagonizes
aristocrats by insisting
from it, he antagonizes
and deriving Monarchy
on total equality before the Law. And he does so with calm sureness?
a rationality all rational men must recognize and respect. That is why
are serious. And there is much more
the ironies are so deadly?they
on
than
just
irony.
going
25See
cf. John Bowie,
Pocock,
pp. 30-69;
26This discussion
of Hobbes's
irony owes
Hobbes
something
1951).
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5o
Alexander
a traditional,
to substitute
I wish somehow
mode
for
habitual
of
Hobbes's
hard
thought
analogical
"literary,"
to banish the philosopher
and intro
nosed mechanistic
nominalism,
duce the poet. Far from it, I would insist on the profound importance
the non
mechanistic
of Hobbes's
logic. I have tried to elucidate
It may
seem
that
in his thinking
assumed
(what I call his
superstructure
as
some
to
of
his
well
habitual
and
indicate
patterns of
"myth");
cause and
matter
and
mechanistic
of
order;
(annihilation
thought
Hobbes's
"uniform
calls
Morris
trend of
S.
Engel
effect, etc.)?what
rational,
mind."27
are
There
philosophers
who
on
concentrate
small
discrete
and
in geometry,
are,
believe
we
perceive
the
somewhat
unconscious,
somewhat
pp.
attempts
irrational
to de
328, 332.
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Conatus
as
active
power
in
Hobbes*
JUHANI PIETARINEN
The idea of active power played central role in the 17th Century philosophy and
science. The idea is as follows: if not prevented, bodies necessarily do certain
things in virtue of their power. This kind of thought naturally arose from what
might properly be called the law of persistence, according to which moving bodies continue their motion unchanged if no new external force intervenes.1 What
bodies do in virtue of their power was called actions, and in terms of actions
such things as resistance, pressure and affections were explained. What is this
active power? One of the main aims of philosophers in the 17th and 18th
Centuries was to find a good answer to this question.
I consider here the answer given by Hobbes. It is very important at least in
two respects. First, Spinoza and Leibniz received decisive insights from
Hobbes's developments; in Leibniz's case this has been documented rather well,
but Spinoza seems to owe very much to Hobbes as well, although this has
remained largely unnoticed by Spinoza and Hobbes scholars. Second, the
answer lays the foundation to Hobbes's own philosophy, not only to his physical explanations but also his psychological and political theory. We know that
the latter two rely essentially on the principle of self-preservation or conatusprinciple, and this, as I argue below, derives from his considerations on active
power and the principle of persistence. In virtue of the conatus-principle,
Hobbes's physics, psychology and politics form a unity.
Active and passive power
In the Short Tract (written in the first half of the 1630s) Hobbes defines 'agent'
as a body that has power to move, and 'patient' as a body that has power to be
` I am indebtedto Olli Koistinenfor
many useful commentsand for advisingme about the relevantrecent discussionon dispositions.
' Daniel Garber
prefers to speak of this law as a law of persistencerather than as a law of inertia, because before Newton 'inertia' meant somethingelse than the tendencyof bodies to persist in their motion; see Garber's 'Descartes and Spinoza on persistence and conatus,' Studia
Spinozana 10, 1994, pp. 43-67.
71
moved (ST I, principles 3 and 4). The power of agent is said to be active and the
power of patient passive. For instance, understanding is 'a motion of the animal
spirits, by the action of the brayne, qualified with the active power of the externall object' (ST III, conclusion 6), so that 'understanding (as a power) is a passive power in the animal spirits to be moved by the action of the brayne' (corollary to conclusion 6). What does Hobbes mean by active power?
Principle 9 of the first section states: 'Whatsoever moveth another, moveth
it either by active power inherent in it self or by motion received from another.'
In the third section we find the proof that nothing can move itself (conclusion
10). The same important statement appears also in the manuscript catalogued
among the Classified Papers of the Royal Society: 'There is nothing, yt can give
a beginning of motion to itself. All determinations must proceed from some
other movements.'2 In De Corpore the principle is stated as follows:
'Whatsoever is at rest, will always be at rest, unless there be some other body
besides it, which, by endeavouring to get in its place by motion, suffers it no
longer to remain at rest' (11.8.19). Hobbes denies clearly that active power could
be anything like a capacity of bodies to initiate their actions; it is not self-causing power.
But if bodies receive their motions from other bodies, are they not entirely
passive? What point is there to say that the brain has active power, when external objects determine its motions? To put it briefly, Hobbes's idea seems to be
this: when the brain, affected by the power of external objects, acts on animal
spirits, it does not just let the externally caused motion to pass on but reacts to
it, and how it reacts depends on its own power. However, as a mere reaction to
external influence, the brain shows only its passive part, and to learn to know
the active power we have to look for causal effects of the brain on other bodies,
that is, how it acts on them. Both actions and reactions depend on the nature or
constitution of things. Let us see how this kind of explanation is developed in
Hobbes.
He makes a false assumption when he says that 'all action is local motion'. For when I
press, for example, with a stick against the ground, the action of my hand is communicated to the whole of that stick, and is transmittedas far as the ground, even though we
do not suppose in the slightest that the stick is moved - not even indiscemibly,as he goes
on to assume.'
finds Hobbes's reason for the claim that inclination is motion
'extremely feeble': Hobbes argues that the beginning of motion must be motion,
but, Descartes asks, 'who granted him that inclination was the beginning or a
part of motion?' (ibid. p. 91).
This indicates that Descartes did not take seriously Hobbes's suggestion for
explaining pressure by means of actual motions. He rejected it with considerable arrogance, as the exchange shows. In contrast to Descartes's attitude, young
Leibniz greeted Hobbes's ideas with enthusiasm thirty years later.8 He accepted
the idea of endeavor as the beginning of motion and developed it further.
Descartes
Descartes's
phenomenalism
(1)
" For instance, in the Elements of Law he speaks of 'the endeavouror internal beginning of
animal motion' (1.7.2),and in the Leviathan he writes that the 'small beginnings of motion,
within the body of man, before they appear in walking, speaking, striking, and other visible
actions, are commonlycalled endeavour' (Chapter6).
" See Mackie's
thorough discussion on three different views of dispositions in his Truth,
Probability and Paradox, chapter 4 'Dispositionsand powers' (ClarendonPress, 1973).
76
down, and because the falling is a local motion of the ball, it must have a beginning and the beginning must have a cause. However, the cause of the ball's falling
cannot be the table's collapsing but something that existed before it, so that the
local motion must have begun already before the collapsing. The beginning of
this motion is the inclination or endeavor of the ball to fall down; it is a small
movement by which the ball pushes the table out of balance, and this explains the
pressure of the ball against the table. When the table collapses, the ball continues
the already started motion.
We may notice from this reasoning that it relies on the same law of persistence to which Descartes appeals in explaining his notion of tendency, namely
that bodies will continue their present motion if no other body causes a change.
Hobbes gives an a priori reason for the law by appealing to the principle of sufficient reason: 'For if we suppose nothing to be without it, there will be no reason why it should rest now, rather that at another time; wherefore its motion
would cease in every particle of time alike; which is not intelligible' (DCo
VIII. 19). Because this law is a conceptual truth in Hobbes, so is the hypothetical
truth in (2), and this does not accord with a realist interpretation of the dispositional notion 'endeavouring'.
Hobbes offers a general definition of the notion in De Corpore:
I define endeavourto be motionmade in less space and time than can be given;that is, less
than can be determinedor assignedby expositionor number;that is, motion made through
the length of a point, and in an instant or point of time (XV.2).
It is interesting to note that here endeavor does not mean just the beginning of a
local motion but any indefinitely small motion. That a body X endeavors to do
something does not only mean that it has begun to move but also that it continues its motion if nothing is changed in the environment. Another interesting thing
is Hobbes's conclusion that 'all endeavour, whether it be in empty or in full
space, proceeds not only to any distance, how great soever, but also in any time,
how little soever, that is, in an instant' (DCo XV.7). This is so because every
endeavor is a motion by which a body displaces another body wich does the same
to the next, and so on. Thus Hobbes arrived to the view that for every causal
process there must be the very first beginning, and these beginnings fix all
motions in the universe. The universe consists of actual local motions and these
in turn of imperceptibly small motions; there are no merely possible motions or
actions.
Hobbes is remarkably rationalist in his reasoning: "Nor makes it any matter,
that endeavour, by proceeding, grows weaker and weaker, till at last it can no
longer be perceived by sense; for motion may be insensible; and I do not here
examine things by sense and experience, but by reason" (Dco XV.7).
77
Endeavor
as active power
In De Corpore Hobbes identifies active power with efficient cause with the difference that 'cause is so called in respect to the effect already produced, and
power in respect to the effect to be produced hereafter; so that cause respects the
past, power the future time' (X.1). Active power is a disposition of bodies to produce effects, that is, their endeavor to move other bodies in some determinate
way. Hobbes equates active power with the endeavoring of bodies.
This equation is very important, for it led Hobbes to consider active power
as the nature or essence of things. Hobbes did not develop this idea systematically, but for Spinoza and Leibniz it turned out to become crucial. In De
Corpore Hobbes writes:
'[T]he beginningof individuationis not always to be taken either from the matter alone,
or from form alone. But we must consider what name anythingis called, when we inquire
concerningthe identityof it. [I]f the name be given for such form as is the beginning of
motion, then, as long as that motion remains, it will be the same individualthing; as that
man will be always the same, whose actions and thoughts proceed all from the same
beginningof motion, namely,that which was in his generation; and that will be the same
river which flows from one and the same fountain,whetherthe same water,or other water,
or something else than water, flow from thence; and that the same city, whose acts proceed continuallyfrom the same institution,whether the men be the same or not' (H. 11.7).
The identity of an individual thing consists of the motion by which its existence
begins; a body is the same individual as long as its initial motion remains. In
other words, the essence of things consists of their initial motion. But when we
consider the beginning of motion as the endeavor, and when the endeavor is
identified with active power, the conclusion follows that the essence of things
consists of the power they have when they come into existence. Let us call it the
inherent power of things.
Hobbes never records this kind of inference anywhere, nor states explicitly
that the essence of things is their inherent power, but some evidence for such
thinking can be gathered from what he writes. In De Corpore he explains how
a bent crossbow tends to restore itself, because the 'endeavour or motion of [its]
internal parts, by which they were able to recover their former places or situations, was not extinguished' (XXII. 18). When bent, the bow endeavors to return
to the posture it had before, and when the force keeping it bent is removed, it
necessarily does so. Hobbes says that it has an 'appetite' for restitution, that is,
it endeavors to preserve its nature. If the crossbow 'remains a long time bent, it
will get such a habit, that when it is loosed and left to its own freedom, it will
not only not restore itself, but will require as much force for the bringing of it
back to its first posture, as did for the bending of it at the first' (XXII.2050). The
78
bow acquires a new 'habit' (habitus), a new essence that is, and it ceases to be
a bow. In the Decameron Physiologicum (1674) Hobbes explains:
[T]he smallest parts of a hard body have everyone,by the generation of hardness, a circular, or other compound motion; such motion is that of the smallest parts of the bow.
Which circles in the bending you press into an ellipsis, and an ellipsis into a narrowerbut
longer ellipsis with violence; which turns their natural motion against the outward parts
of the bow, and in an endeavourto stretch the bow into its former posture.15
This is Hobbes's explanation for the structural nature of material things: they
consist of certain smallest parts, each having a characteristic initial motion, and
the endeavor or inherent power of bodies consists of the initial motions of these
parts. Individual things preserve their identity as long as they have this inherent
power, and similarly their existence depends on it.
The most important idea here is that by the inherent power individuals are
compelled to self-preservation. In this way Hobbes arrives to what may be
called the general conatus-principle:
Every thing endeavorsto preserve its own existenceas far as it can by its own power.
The principle has a crucial role in Hobbes's political philosophy. In De Cive
Hobbes writes that 'the first foundation of natural right is this, that every man as
much as in him lies endeavour to protect his life and members' (1.7; italics original). Hobbes clearly thinks that the principle is a general natural law in the same
sense as the law of persistence is an eternal and immutable law of nature. He
writes: 'For every man is desirous of what is good for him, and shuns what is evil,
but chiefly the chiefest of natural evils, which is death; and this he doth by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves downward'
(ibid.). Political individuals can be treated, Hobbes thinks, like any other bodies,
and the explanation of the motion of bodies should be based on the same notion
of active power or endeavor both in physics and in politics. Spinoza adopted
essentially the same reasoning, and the conatus-principle established in the third
part of the Ethics constitutes the foundation of his psychology and politics as well.
Hobbes clearly read the idea of physical power or force into his notion of
endeavor. He defines resistance as 'the endeavour of a moved body X either wholly or in part contrary to the endeavour of another moved body Y which touches it,'
and a body presses another when 'with its endeavour it makes either all or part of
the other body to go out of its place' (DCo XV.2). Most explicitly, physical force
15
English WorksVII,p. 135.
79
is defined in terms of impetus that is 'nothing else but the quantity or velocity of
But if the endeavor is nothing but motion obeying the law of
endeavour'
persistence, the same criticism that Leibniz leveled at Descartes's attempt to
explain physical power as the tendency of bodies to remain in a given state applies
here, too. If endeavors are considered just as motions, bodies are not able to resist
or press each other merely in virtue of them. Leibniz did not say this of Hobbes's
reasoning, but he saw the problem and made certain important developments.
Leibniz realized the importance of Hobbes's idea of endeavor as a point-like
entity and the idea that bodies are structures of the endeavors of their simplest
parts. But because simplest parts cannot be divisible, they cannot be extensional,
and Leibniz made the ingenious conclusion that the endeavors must be non-extensional 'power points' that occupy a certain region in the space, and this idea was
decisive for his philosophical work, as he wrote to Amauld in November 167 1. 17
Leibniz corrected the fatal mistake of Hobbes: to be useful in the explanation of
physical phenomena, the notion of power must not be defined in terms of motion;
these two are entirely different kinds of things. Ironically enough, on this point
Leibniz supported Descartes against Hobbes, but as already mentioned, he rejected Descartes's conclusion that material things as such are totally powerless.
Active and passive dispositions
'
In spite of the failure of explaining the nature of power, Hobbes's idea that the
endeavoring of bodies is inherent power was an important achievement. How
bodies behave in actual circumstances depends on their structural nature consisting of power-like entities. Thus the analysis (2) of 'endeavors' as dispositions can be generalized as follows:
(3)
'fi
Accordingto Howard Bernstein,Hobbes's endeavor 'is a common ancestorof two very different ways of conceptualizing"force", that is, of Newton's dynamica and Leibniz's dynamice' (HowardR. Bernstein, 'Conatus, Hobbes, and the YoungLeibniz,' Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science 11, 1980, p. 26).
" Bernstein
(op.cit.) gives interesting evidence about the importance of Hobbes's idea of
endeavorto Leibniz's physical and philosophicalwork.
80
We have seen that causal relations are for Hobbes non-contingent, which
implies that the power of things is non-contingently related to what they do in
virtue of it. If X has power to cause event E, then in suitable circumstances E
will be necessarily produced by X, otherwise we would not claim X to have the
power. Hobbes says that 'every act, that shall be produced, shall necessarily be
produced; for, that it shall not be produced, is impossible; because ... every possible act shall at some time be produced' (DCo X.5 ; the term 'act' refers to what
is produced by the power, i.e. to the passive counterpart of power). Thus Hobbes
represents what Mackie tellingly calls the rationalist view of dispositions.'8
Hobbes makes extensive use of the explanatory pattern involved in (3) and
(4). Consider for instance his explanation of thoughts and emotions. The inherent power or essence of human individuals (and other individual animals) consists of certain kinds of 'vital motions' that are motions 'begun in generation and
continued without interruption through their whole life' (Leviathan VI, 1 ). In
the Elements of Law (2.8) Hobbes describes how the vital motions of the brain
exhibit such power when they are acted on by externally caused motions
through the nerves: the brain resists such motions by its own vital motion, and
becomes affected by them. The affections are changes in the inherent power of
the brain, and we experience such affections as thoughts. The affected brain in
turn sends motions through the nerves to the heart where an affection arises
through the resistance of the heart's vital motion, and we experience such affections as emotions. All actions and passions of bodies are explained in the similar way: body X exercises its power on body Y whenever X makes a change in
or affects the inherent power of Y, so that the affection depends on both the
nature of X and the nature of Y. X exhibits active, and Y passive power: 'the
power of the agent is that which is commonly called active power,' and the passive power 'is the power of the patient' (DCo X.1).
Rom Harr6 has revived this kind of distinction and argues for its relevance
to the analysis of disposition terms in causal explanations." He associates the
term 'power' with agency, 'with the initiation of trains of events,' and the term
'liability' or 'passive power' with a disposition to suffer change in virtue of the
essential nature of things. Such properties as solubility, inflammability, brittleness etc. are liabilities rather than powers, but usually things have both powers
and liabilities. 'The concepts of power and liability are the poles of a spectrum
of concepts, distinguished by the relative degree to which we assign responsibility for particular behaviour between intrinsic conditions and external circum-
`8
Op.cit.,p. 142.Mackie arguesthat the rationalistview shouldbe rejectedin favor of the realist view.
19Harr6, cit., 87.
op.
p.
81
stances,' Harr6 says, and 'to ascribe a power is to say that when any of a certain
specific kind of phenomenon occurs the intrinsic nature of the things involved
are in more or less measure responsible for that phenomenon occurring' (p. 88).
Haff6 seems to take the rationalist stand that the relation between the behavior
of things and their inherent power should be taken to be conceptual and not
causal in the Humean contingent sense. This indeed would be in agreement with
Hobbes and the 17th Century rationalism. We cannot say, however, that Haff6
has justified the rationalist view of dispositions, for his argument is open to
severe criticism, as pointed out by John Mackie.2 But this matter need not concern us here.
2Mackie,
op. cit., pp. 138-39.
82