DOI: 10.1111/ejop.

12244

Hobbes on Teleology and Reason

Guido Parietti

Abstract: Starting from considering how radical Hobbes’ rejection of teleology was,
this paper presents a coherent reading of Hobbesian reason, as applied to the
justification of political obligation, striking a more perspicuous third way between
the ‘orthodox’ (based on self-interest and consequentialism) and the ‘revisionist’
(moralizing, or variously substantive) readings. Both families of interpretations
are partial to some elements of Hobbes’ thought, therefore incapable of providing
a coherent reading of its whole. A precise rendering of Hobbes’ deontological
reason allows a better hermeneutical understanding of his philosophy as well as
a keener appreciation of its relevance for past and present political thought.

1. Introduction

While claiming that civil philosophy was no older than his own De Cive may have
been slightly exaggerated, Hobbes surely has been pivotal for modern political
thought. A good way of grasping his impressive set of innovations—unifying
the themes of sovereignty, authority, representation, and his religious
positions1—is to focus on the rejection of teleological reasoning.2 Hobbes’
commitment to mechanism was of course central to his opposition to
Aristotelian–Scholastic philosophy, but here we shall see how the critique of
teleology is equally if not more important for establishing political obligations.
The very title of Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth
Ecclesiasticall and Civill conveys which amongst the Aristotelian causes matter in
the study of politics—power is, crucially, equated with the efficient cause (Hobbes,
1655: X.1; Zarka, 1996: 71)3—to the exclusion of the final cause, which was the most
relevant one for Aristotle himself,4 and still undergirded Scholastic philosophy.
Hobbes’ opposition to nostalgia for ancient virtue and to religion as a
justification for disobedience—both errors conducive to civil war (Hobbes, 2010:
136–137)—would be theoretically vindicated by the exclusion of teleology from
reason in general. The exclusion of the final good from the political domain—a feat
for which Hobbes has been considered crucial (Strauss, 1953: 166–202; Voegelin,
1999: ch. 5–6)—goes hand in hand with the rise of instrumental rationality as the
model for any possible rationality,5 as diagnosed, with various levels of despair,
by any number of thinkers, such as Weber, Heidegger, Habermas, and so on. The
notorious problem of an exclusive fixation on instrumental rationality is, broadly
speaking, that of meaning: if the sense of everything we can rationally understand
is to be instrumental to something else, what is then that gives value or significance
to the whole chain (Nozick, 1993: 134)?

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1108 Guido Parietti

If we were concerned only with understanding the world, perhaps it would be

possible to wave away the question, for example by accepting that
meaninglessness is all there is, or by relegating meaning to a non-rational domain
(as in the standard facts/values distinction). Such a luxury is not available for
politics, where the question is how to justify obligations that must actually be
respected—on pain of consequences so bad, especially according to Hobbes, that
any lingering skepticism would promptly be cured by pain and death.
Within Hobbes’ philosophy, however, self-preservation—or even a considerably
richer concept of the good life (Van Mill, 2001: ch. 5; Steinberger, 2002: 857)6—must
be construed as something else than a final end; otherwise, the teleology expelled
from the title would sneak back into the text, and the avowed commitment to
mechanistic explanations, including human minds and their passions, would be
immediately renounced. In this regard, Hobbes’ own prose is not particularly
helpful, for Leviathan is full of references both to the concept of a final end, and
to specific instantiations of it, even as direct justifications for sovereignty.7 If we
were to take it literally, Hobbes’ attempt to produce a science of government, based
on efficient causes, as any proper science ought to be, would be immediately
contradicted by the text.
In a sense, we could stop here, for it is clear that the pretense to derive
normative conclusions from efficient causes is wrongheaded, being a sub-species
of the naturalistic fallacy. Nevertheless, a deeper enquiry is warranted: firstly,
because there is obviously more than such an easy contradiction in Hobbes’ work;
secondly, because Hobbes’ appreciation of the problems created by teleological
reasoning, as well as his way of circumventing them, are still relevant for our
current issues with political justification. Thus, untangling the affair between
Hobbes’ political philosophy and teleological reasoning is the first aim of this
paper, which will then proceed to examine the underlying concept of reason, and
its role in evading the finalistic conundrum.

2. The General Question: Between Teleology and Mechanism

A plausible way to ease the contradiction between an avowedly mechanistic

philosophy and the invocation of final ends could be to restrict the exclusion of
teleology to a specific kind, the Scholastic metaphysics, according to which each
and every thing would exist within an all-encompassing chain of final causes
tending toward God, as the unmoved mover.8 One could repudiate that as
superstition regarding the physical world, while maintaining that people are able
to set their own ends, and thus could build their institutions accordingly.9 This
might not require a metaphysical commitment to free will—which Hobbes did
not harbor (Hobbes, 1651: VI.5, VI.53, XXI.1–4; Hobbes, 1640: XII.1-5)10—for even
the mere illusion of choosing one’s own ends is politically consequential, thus
relevant for civil philosophy. All the more so if the ends people fancy to give
themselves could be reduced to psychological efficient causes, which is one aim
of Leviathan’s first part.11

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That would be a simple reading, ascribing to Hobbes a classical depiction of

men as governed by passions (mechanistically re-worked), which could be
restrained and/or better directed by the use of reason. Hobbes’ would explain
reason itself through a chain of mechanistic causes, but its role in directing action
against passions’ impulses would remain analogous. There is something to such a
solution, but without properly considering the meaning of Hobbesian reason, it
cannot be satisfying. Hobbes’ problem, in fact, is that he must go beyond such
a psychological determinism—for the psychological mechanism of fear, taken as
the matter to which consequential reasoning could be directly applied, causes
war and misery, not peace, as we shall see—and yet he has to do so without
falling back into teleology. This means that neither a direct causal route starting
from his mechanistic psychology, nor the application of consequentialist
reasoning to our desires and inclinations taken as ends to be realized, can justify
obedience to the sovereign in a coherently Hobbesian way.
A relapse into teleological reasoning should be excluded not only for
epistemological reasons—teleology is superstition, ‘a dream’12—but also because,
in any such model, the final determination of what people must do could not be
vested in any one person, for otherwise that person would be authoritative, and
not the end. The implication of using any one telos as the normative determinant
of action is that everyone must judge for himself: a receipt for chaos and
violence, according to Hobbes, not sovereignty and peace. This problem is
intrinsic in any teleological grounding, not just the Thomistic–Aristotelian
version: the fact that Hobbes had before him the two examples of disorders
created by religious disputes and appeals to republican liberty may support
empirically, but does not limit theoretically the validity of the political argument
against teleology.
Even the minimal telos of preserving one’s own life could jeopardize the
construction of sovereignty, unless its logical consequences were somehow
tamed.13 The immediate political problem is not with teleology in abstracto, but
rather with judgments about particular actions. In fact, any end’s fulfillment
intrinsically follows the action, thus the adequacy of the latter to the former
cannot be observed until after the fact. Thence, we cannot act for an end but on
our judgment about future results of particular actions, which is inherently
uncertain, fallible, and prone to conflict with the judgments of others (even before
accounting for value pluralism).
Efficient causes might be considered equally uncertain in epistemological
terms, but we should recall how Hobbes’ idea of causation was not the self-
critical one we could harbor today. Hobbes’ causes were wholly deterministic
and objective, and that was the point of employing them as the true ground
of scientific knowledge, as opposed to scholasticism’s teleological fancies. People
err in judging about efficient causes too, but if the causes are thought as reliably
deterministic in themselves, such errors are not decisive, because people’s
behavior would still be efficiently caused, despite their fanciful opinions.
Knowledge would remain relevant to construct the proper Commonwealth,
but it would not need to be universally shared,14 provided that the ‘artificial

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man’ (Hobbes, 1651: Intr.1, XXI.5, XXIV.13) were somehow put in motion.
Surrendering the judgment about our actions to the sovereign is the crux of
Hobbes’ political philosophy (Hobbes, 1651: XVII.4, 13, XVIII.1, 3, 6, XXIX.6,
XLVI.35), and we should appreciate how this would imply the exclusion of
any kind of teleological reasoning, be it transcendent (religion), secular
(republican virtue, freedom), or even wholly individualistic (including
consequentialist/utilitarian variants).15
Despite the radical rejection of teleology, though, sovereignty cannot be
instituted without a rational (reckoned) departure from fear considered as a
psychological mechanism. This is made clear through Leviathan’s chapters XIII–
XIV. While the fear of death (alongside the desire for a commodious living) is
pronounced a passion ‘that incline men to peace’ (Hobbes, 1651: XIII.14),
Hobbes also shows how the desire for safety derived from such fear, in
conditions of natural equality (and therefore diffidence: Hobbes, 1651: XIII.3),
is amongst the causes of war:
And from this diffidence of one another, there is no way for any man to
secure himself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles,
to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power
great enough to endanger him: and this is no more than his own
conservation requireth, and is generally allowed. [...] And by consequence,
such augmentation of dominion over men, being necessary to a man’s
conservation, it ought to be allowed him. (Hobbes, 1651: XIII.4)

So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of

quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. (Hobbes,
1651: XIII.6)

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common
power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called
war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man. (Hobbes,
1651: XIII.8)
Fear, absent an already established commonwealth, results in war because
everyone is motivated to accumulate as much power as they could in order to
make themselves as safe as possible from others (Hobbes, 1651: XI.2). The effects
of fear are thus bifurcated: present an ordered Commonwealth, it indeed
‘disposeth’ to peace and obedience, but absent that, fear, resulting in competition
and diffidence, causes war. Such bifurcation is mirrored by the ‘general rule of
reason’:
... that every man, ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of
obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use,
any helps, and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule,
containeth the first, and fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek
peace, and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature; which
is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves. (Hobbes, 1651: XIV.4)

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That the laws of nature do not bind, and thus the second clause of the ‘general
rule of reason’ would be operative, in the absence of a sovereign guaranteeing that
other people would also perform according to such laws, Hobbes repeated multiple
times (Hobbes, 1651: XIV.4, XIV.18),16 but the following is probably the most forceful
assertion:
But because covenants of mutual trust, where there is a fear of not
performance on either part, (as hath been said in the former chapter,) are
invalid; though the original of justice be the making of covenants; yet
Injustice actually there can be none, till the cause of such fear be taken
away; which while men are in the natural condition of war, cannot be
done. Therefore before the names of just, and unjust can have place, there
must be some coercive power, to compel men equally to the performance
of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment, greater than the
benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant; and to make good that
propriety, which by mutual contract men acquire, in recompense of the
universal right they abandon: and such power there is none before the
erection of a Commonwealth. (Hobbes, 1651: XV.3)
We see how not only fear—here the more specific fear of not performance,
which however is still motivated by the preoccupation for safety—does not
produce peace and order, but to the contrary it is only once ‘such fear be taken
away’, after the Commonwealth is instituted, that covenants become binding
and justice/injustice acquire their meanings. Since without an already
established Commonwealth the fear of death produces war, it cannot be
considered a mechanistic–psychological cause of submission (that works only
when one fears the already constituted Sovereign), nor indeed the simple matter
to which instrumental reason could be applied to produce the correct political
prescriptions. It is only through the application of a different concept of reason,
as we will see in our fourth section, that fear can make us incline toward peace.
Thus, it is not just a matter of recognizing that fear (or anything, indeed) cannot
work as a reliable cause for people’s behavior; that much would be trivial.17
Even conceding that mankind has a natural desire to avoid death and misery,
which the natural state would produce in abundance, the path that, from such
starting point, would produce the sought political prescriptions can be neither
causal–mechanical nor consequentialist.
Hobbes’ reason was ‘natural’, but not in the sense of being unfailingly
actualized (natural laws cannot be derived from their factual observance—Hobbes,
1640: XV.1; Johnston, 1986: 94–98; Gert, 1996). Thus, despite the common reading
of Hobbes as a realistic assessor of the world,18 the fact that his ‘civil philosophy’
was normative, and strongly rationalistic, is hardly debatable (Ryan, 1996:
212–213).19 Hobbes’ view of how the world goes would matter for the practical
success of his theory—he may have modified the rhetorical presentation of his
philosophy in order to obtain better results (Johnston, 1986: chs. 2–3; Skinner,
1996: ch. 9–10 and conclusion)—but not for its rational validity. Clearly, reason
must be considered normative even while being natural (Gert, 2001: 245; Hoekstra,

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2003: 115). This is promptly understandable by recalling that Hobbes’ model was
classical geometry, not experimental physics,20 much less empirical social sciences.
Accordingly, norms and principles may be correct by nature, but that does not
imply anything about compliance, just as the certainty of geometry does not mean
that we cannot err in performing a demonstration (Hobbes, 1651: V.3).
We have thus observed how the factual correctness of Hobbes’ premises is
irrelevant to establish whether he could construct his philosophy only through
mechanist means. Regardless of the actual motivational strength of fear and
self-interests, within Hobbes’ framework these mechanisms would not result in an
ordered Commonwealth, but rather in the natural state of war.21 The need to go
beyond psychological causes is not related to their motivational reliability. To the
contrary, the more secure and forceful the mechanisms were taken to be, the more
necessary would be to find something else—reason, properly understood—to move
beyond them.
In itself, this is nothing new: the first thing everyone learns on Hobbes is that the
natural condition of men, where fear is not assuaged by coercion, is a state of
affairs that people have every reason to avoid, but which they cannot escape unless
they submit to an absolute sovereign. The oft-missed point is that it is not possible
to use fear, and the inconveniences of the state of nature, as the starting material
that, through the application of instrumental rationality, would produce the
justification for the institution of a Commonwealth. The way that goes from the
fear of death to the Commonwealth is not, and within Hobbes’ framework cannot
be, a consequentialist argument based on the avoidance of bad outcomes. There is
one strand of literature that, precisely because it tried hard to force Hobbes’ reason
into the consequentialist framework of contemporary game theory, starkly
highlighted the aforementioned problem. Before proceeding to say something
more about the structure of Hobbesian reason, I will therefore turn to this family
of interpretations.

3. Game-theoretical ‘Fooles’ and the Limits of Consequentialism

The history of the application of game theory to Hobbes’ studies is long (Gauthier,
1969: esp. 76 ff; Hampton, 1986; Kavka, 1986), and still ongoing (Eggers, 2011;
Moehler, 2012), despite the vociferous criticism it has elicited (Neal, 1988; Ewin,
1992; Lloyd, 1998). I will not examine the entirety of this literature—much the less
the broader ‘orthodox interpretation’ of Hobbes as the philosopher of self-interested
contractarianism (Gaus, 2013)—which would be far too much for this paper, but
only a small section of it: the discussion of the exit from the state of nature, and more
specifically Hobbes’ answer to the ‘foole’ (Hobbes, 1651: XV.4–5; Zaitchik, 1982;
Hampton, 1986; Kavka, 1995; Hoekstra, 1997). The arguments advanced by these
studies have been, on their own terms, decisively refuted by Pasquale Pasquino
(Pasquino, 2001); yet they remain useful, ex negativo, to better understand the limits
of consequentialism within Hobbes’ framework.

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The question of whether, and how, it is possible to leave the state of nature
through instrumental rationality is older than game theory, and it does not
exhaust the possible applications of such a perspective to Hobbes. However, in
a sense the issue has to be the focus of any ‘strong’ game-theoretical
interpretation of Hobbes,22 because if the ‘game’ of the natural state—the
formalization of which remains contentious (Moehler, 2009; Eggers, 2011;
Vanderschraaf, 2013), though the prisoner dilemma is commonly picked—were
‘solved’, it would be possible to give a justification of sovereignty in accordance
with the prevailing notion of instrumental rationality. In view of such a goal, it
would make sense to abandon close exegesis—Hobbes could never have thought
of his philosophy in the formalized way of modern game theory—to move
toward a theory that, while still Hobbesian in a broad sense (Hampton, 1986),
could purport to go beyond Hobbes, perhaps thanks to the refined logical
instrumentation we can deploy today (Kavka, 1986). Nevertheless, at least one
connection with the Hobbesian project remains relevant insofar as one seeks a
rational justification—held to a validity standard from the actor’s perspective—
and not just a functional explanation, as could be provided by a sociological point
of view.23
The main problem with this undertaking is that it would appear impossible to
leave the state of nature, given Hobbes’ descriptions of it and the rationality
available to ‘natural’ individuals. Within the Leviathan’s framework the natural state
not merely is, but must be an insoluble conundrum; otherwise, it would not represent
such a terrible occurrence as to justify the surrender of power and judgment to the
sovereign.24 Consequently, attempts to ‘solve’ the ‘game’ of the natural state focused
on Hobbes’ answer to the ‘foole’, which prima facie may seem to offer a way out. The
fool’s contention is:
... that every man’s conservation, and contentment, being committed to his
own care, there could be no reason, why every man might not do what he
thought conduced thereunto: and therefore also to make, or not make;
keep, or not keep covenants, was not against reason, when it conduced
to one’s benefit. (Hobbes, 1651: XV.4)
This has been interpreted as an objection against the rationality of keeping
covenants in the natural state that, if valid, would bar the way to leave it by
creating a Commonwealth. Hobbes’ answer (XV.5) focuses on the unpredictability
resulting from such an attitude, which would create a situation impossible to
reckon upon, rendering the fool’s position effectively foolish. While most
commentators found said answer unsatisfying (Zaitchik, 1982: 246–247), or even
‘lame’ (Gauthier, 1989: 548; Harvey, 2004: 43), they also assumed that a proper
response should be found within the same framework, as a defense of the
(instrumental) rationality of keeping faith in the state of nature, so that covenants
could be employed as the means to evade it and create the Commonwealth. The
game-theoretical discussions, thus, focused on the formalization of the state of
nature and the factors that could alter the payoffs, making the ‘game’ more
amenable to a solution.

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While none of these attempts to find a game-theoretical way of exiting the

Hobbesian natural state has been wholly convincing (Kraus, 1993), the most
relevant objection is that all are based on a severe misunderstanding of Hobbes.
As Pasquino reminded us, the natural state is not:
a starting point of the theory from which the possibility of exit must be
explained, but rather [...] a rhetorically useful depiction of the
consequences of wrongful understandings of men’s civil and religious
duties.25 (Pasquino, 2001: 406)
Indeed, the textual evidences to show that Hobbes believed the natural state to
be a situation in which covenants could be made had always been flimsy, mostly
coming down to the following passage,26 preluded to the answer to the fool:
For the question is not of promises mutual, where there is no security of
performance on either side; as when there is no civil power erected over
the parties promising; for such promises are no covenants: but either
where one of the parties has performed already; or where there is a
power to make him perform; there is the question whether it be against
reason, that is, against the benefit of the other to perform, or not.
(Hobbes, 1651: XV.5)
Here, it could seem that Hobbes is limiting the salience of the fool’s question to
those cases where either there is an instituted power to compel or, absent that,
other contractors had already performed their part. This is relevant because it
would appear to be the only instance where the possibility of a valid covenant in
the natural state is explicitly contemplated.27 Moreover, the passage almost seems
to be written to buttress game theory’s favored solution to an iterated prisoner
dilemma. That is to say, a ‘tit-for-tat’ strategy: once other players have cooperated,
to reciprocate cooperation is the best move (Axelrod, 2006). Unfortunately, as
shown by Pasquino, this is due to a lack of clarity, later corrected in the Latin
version, which unambiguously states:
Quaestio enim non est de Promissis mutuis in conditione hominum
naturali ubi nulla est Potentia cogens; nam sic Promissa illa pacta non essent;
sed existente Potentia, quae cogat, et alter promissum praestiterit, ibi quaestio
est, an is, qui fallit cum Ratione, et ad bonum proprium congruenter fallat. Ego
vero contra rationem, et imprudenter facere dico. (Hobbes, 1668: XIV.5)
By more explicitly excluding the consideration of the natural condition, and by
replacing the ‘or’ with an ‘and’, the Latin text clarifies that the answer to the fool
is limited to the civil state’s case, thus entails nothing about covenants in the natural
state. Having established the point, Pasquino proceeds with his argument about
how Hobbes tried to restructure the incentives to obey the sovereign in the civil
state, against the preferences’ framework resulting from prevailing religious
world-views (Pasquino, 2001: 412 ff).28 On this account, the question of leaving
the natural state loses its relevance: it could happen by chance, coercion, or even
for irrational motives (Eggers, 2011: 197–198). The important thing is that the

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arguments to support an already established sovereign are correct, and convincing

for the subjects to boot. This clears the field from attempts to answer a non-existent
question, but it may have the side effect of distracting from the real issue at stake in
Hobbes’ refutation of the fool.
A salient characteristic of interpretations relying on instrumental rationality is
that they tend to take the sovereign power, once instituted, as a rather
unproblematic factor. This chimes in well with the Hobbesian idea of power as
causation (Dahl, 1957; Dahl, 1968; Ball, 1975b; Ledyaev, 1998: ch. 5), which is still
common in the social sciences. From this perspective, the institution of sovereignty
could be considered sufficient to guarantee its own perpetuation, so long as the
subjects were rational, through the payoffs’ restructuring produced by the
sovereign.
Besides the reduction of power to causation, there are many passages in
Hobbes which may be used to argue that he thought of sovereignty in these
terms, from the very figure of the irresistible Leviathan, that ‘Mortal God’
(Hobbes, 1651: XVII.13); to the famous dictum ‘auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem’
(Hobbes, 1681); to the assertion that ‘Reputation of power, is power; because it
draweth with it the adherence of those that need protection’ (Hobbes, 1651: X.5,
see also §5 in the conclusion).29 This, and more, could be read as supporting
the idea that, once the sovereign is in place, its power shall be perpetuated insofar
as the subjects will be able to see that going against such majestic machine would
bring ruin upon them. An efficient cause (power), in conjunction with other
efficient causes (men’s passions), makes the mechanism that pushes people to
behave. Once the creation of the Commonwealth by covenant is no longer a
pressing issue, a coherent mechanistic political science would seem within reach.
There is something to this conciliatory interpretation, but it runs into fatal
problems if it is taken to be the whole story. Besides the substantive point that
political power does not work in this way—no State survives without some
internalized consent from its subjects, and even those failing because they do not
have enough, usually still have more than presumed by radical functionalism—
the deeper issue is the inconsistency of the aforementioned position with Hobbes’
perspective. In fact, if his idea had been that the rationality of submission
depended on the factual avoidance of bad outcomes resulting from anarchy, then
the familiar prisoner dilemma would truly become insoluble at the societal level.
It is obvious that single breaches of the law (defections) would not immediately
produce anarchy; actually, quite a high number of them could be performed while
still enjoying the benefits of an ordered society (Lloyd, 2009: 161–163). Of course,
the point of sovereignty is precisely to guarantee cooperation by threatening
punishment; but punishment itself must be organized and carried on by people.
Hobbes did not think that this could happen without internalized motivations,30
which his own philosophy, adopted by the schools, would have provided.
Moreover, attributing to Hobbes the idea that the preferences’ re-ordering
effected by the power to punish would be sufficient to stabilize the
Commonwealth would make the treatment of religion, and the whole project
of rhetorical persuasion, into superfluous appendices. But the problem runs

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deeper, for once the mistaken focus on the means to leave the state of nature has
been abandoned, the very figure of the covenant becomes useless from the point
of view of instrumental reason; since the only necessary use of the covenants in
game-theoretic interpretations was to set up the sovereign, so as to solve the
problem of mutual mistrust in the natural state. Besides that, covenants, and
even the whole discussion of legitimacy, authority and representation, would at
most be peripheral, as the payoffs’ structure created by the sovereign’s punitive
power would be sufficient to ensure compliance.
Thus, making that much of the question of leaving the natural state was not an
incidental error, but a necessary condition to plausibly advance any
instrumentalist reading of Hobbes; for it would sure be impossible to justify an
interpretation disregarding not only religion and rhetoric, but practically
everything Hobbes wrote, except for the few passages where he dealt directly with
self-interest. Conversely, it is not merely the presence of normative elements that
disqualifies such interpretations, but also the specific example of the fool, which
shows how the calculating individual was considered a threat within the
Commonwealth as much as in the natural state.
The fool, correctly placed within the civil state, represents the individual
employing unrestrained instrumental/consequentialist reasoning, regardless of
any commitment covenanted. Hobbes’ claim is quite specific, starting with the
very denomination of ‘Foole’. He is a fool in the classical Christian sense of
disregarding moral and religious boundaries,31 and he is insipiens, because he
literally does not know what reason is.32 Commentators usually had it as if the
fool were expounding the results of reason as described by Hobbes, who then
needed to backtrack by introducing ad hoc arguments. But this was an
unnecessarily contrived interpretation, born out of the misattribution of an
endorsement of purely instrumental rationality to Hobbes. The text, instead, is
clear:
The fool hath said in his heart, [...] keep, or not keep covenants, was not
against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit. [...] you may call it
injustice, or by what other name you will; yet it can never be against
reason, seeing all the voluntary actions of men tend to the benefit of
themselves; and those actions are most reasonable, that conduce most to
their ends. (Hobbes, 1651: XV.4)
Hobbes’ reply is uncompromising. He does not say that the fool’s position is
prima facie reasonable but upon further consideration it is revealed not to be.
Rather, the Fool’s unprincipled consequentialism is deemed ‘wicked’, and
critiqued as a perversion of reason; the perversion lying precisely the reduction
of rationality to a means-end calculus. Indeed, the ‘foole’ embeds two kinds of
teleological reasoning at once, the private/individualistic (‘one’s benefit’),33 and
that of public troublemakers,34 highlighting how the problem is not with some
specific instances of it, but with teleology qua talis. Uncompromisingly: ‘... those
actions are most reasonable, that conduce most to their ends. This specious
reasoning is nevertheless false.’

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We shall now move to consider which kind of reason, instead, would not be
specious, according to Hobbes.

4. Hobbes’ Deontological Reason, or: Reckoning Reconsidered

That the endpoint of Hobbes’ political philosophy is a deontology—a set of norms

that must be followed regardless of other interests one may have—is not
contentious. Even interpretations focused on self-interest and rational choice have
to concede that much regarding the rules’ logical form (Gauthier, 1969: 28).
Otherwise, it would be impossible to make sense of Hobbes’ project of establishing
obedience to the Sovereign, regardless of his commands’ content, which is as
deontological a rule as it gets. Nevertheless, an unclear appreciation of the way
in which Hobbesian reason produces a deontology has clouded the debate,
producing two opposite fields, both culpable of unilateralism.
On the one hand, those following Gauthier’s trail have tried to assert that a
deontology could be derived from a consequentialist basis, grounded on a
mechanistic psychology, or at least that Hobbes thought it could. Even if this
interpretation were not disqualified by the fact that psychological mechanisms
ground nothing, its result would be to transform Hobbes into a rule-utilitarian
(Kavka, 1986; Kavka, 1995). This is quite a weak position in itself—exposed to
the ‘rule-worship’ critique (Boonin-Vail, 1994: 89), implying the sacrifice of either
the rule to utilitarianism or of utility to a proper deontology—and,
hermeneutically, it would founder on the already examined misinterpretation of
the fool’s passage.35
On the other hand, those who attributed a crisper normative intent to Hobbes,
while convincing in their critiques of the ‘orthodoxy’, seem to have erred in a
different direction. Either by claiming too strong a role for God,36 or by trying to
read a virtue-based ethics into Hobbes (Ewin, 1992; Boonin-Vail, 1994), the formal
idea of reason becomes loaded with substantive contents.37 This might be
understandable as a reaction to the excesses of interest-based interpretations, but
it raises many exegetical doubts—ultimately being incompatible with Hobbes’
limitation of reason to the reckoning of ‘general names’, as we shall see
shortly—and would diminish the radical rupture with the past that made
Hobbes so relevant for modern times.
Focusing on the attempt to eschew teleological reasoning makes things clearer,
because both sides’ excesses result from the attribution to Hobbes of teleological
arguments he could not coherently have accepted, if anything because of the
exclusion of any such thing as a final end (Hobbes, 1651: XI.1). We already saw
how the game-theoretic interpretations were wrong in thinking that Hobbes could
have endorsed individual-level instrumental rationality as the ultimate ground to
justify his philosophy. But a personalized God, issuing commands and moral
norms, is itself the apex of teleology at the cosmological level, as it orders the
universe toward a final end.38 Similarly, virtue ethics is geared toward human

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excellence as the final end to be realized in this world, republicanism being

understood as its political correlative.
The best perspective to date, for both its critique of traditional views and its
original interpretation, is probably Sharon A. Lloyd’s. However, while her
derivation of natural laws from the ‘theorem of reciprocity’ respects the
definitional and formal character of Hobbes’ method, it still represents an unduly
moralizing reading. This is especially visible at the critical juncture of the
demonstration of the ‘theorem’ itself (Lloyd, 2009: 219–236). Lloyd has it as if the
reciprocity theorem—expressing the Golden rule, as the ‘easy sum’ of the laws of
nature (Hobbes, 1651: XV.35)—could be deduced from the application of reason
to the question of acting in accordance with right. The most problematic point is
her third step, the one ‘doing the heavy lifting’:
3. That which is not contrary to reason is judged to be done with right. But
because what is judged to be done without right is not judged to be done
with right, it follows (by contraposition) that whatever one judges to be
done without right is contrary to reason; (Lloyd, 2009: 219)
This does, indeed, ‘jar our contemporary ear’ (Lloyd, 2009: 221), but it would
have sounded equally jarring to Hobbes. On its face, the statement is fallacious
in that it equals one’s unqualified judgment with an absolute determinant of what
is in accord with reason. It would be strange to attribute this view to Hobbes,
worried as he was by people who misjudged to be right what was actually
irrational. The assertion makes more sense in conjunction with Lloyd’s points
4–6, as it is used to establish that one should not do what one judges to be without
right if done by others. Thus the radical subjectivism would be turned into an
intersubjective basis for a morality of reciprocity.
However, even though the conclusion may have the same normative content as
Hobbes’, the legitimacy of such a non-Hobbesian route to reach it remains
questionable. Lloyd, otherwise so keen in finding textual support, has no citation
of Hobbes saying that anyone’s judgment could, per se, establish the rationality
or rightness of anything.39 Instead, she has to rely on a logical inference ‘by
contraposition’ from Hobbes’ assertion that what ‘is not contrary to right reason,
that all men account to be done justly, and with right’ (Hobbes, 1642: I.7).40 Such
an inference is quite impermissible, because the definition of right and reason,
being reciprocal and therefore tautologically coextensive, cannot be used as a test
to establish the rightness, or rationality, of anything until one or the other term is
filled with some content. Worse still would be to convert ‘all men account’, which
evidently is an appeal to general agreement establishing a meaning, into a
determinant power for the particular judgment of any one man.
These logical problems follow from an interpretive one. A more natural way of
reading Hobbes is that ‘what is done in accord with reason is done with right’ can
be meaningfully said only after the content of reason has been determined. Such
content is natural law, which is by definition the determinant of what is right. Since
natural laws result from ratiocination, saying that what is done in accord with
reason is also in accord with right becomes a valid tautology thanks to Hobbes’

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philosophical efforts. If so, then the equivalence of right with reason cannot be
used to establish the reciprocity theorem as the ground of morality.41 To the
contrary, a morality of reciprocity, summed up by the Golden rule, is the final
result, not the starting point of the construction. A result that has amongst its
conditions the existence of an ordered Commonwealth; otherwise, as we saw,
natural laws would not be binding and the cutthroat right of nature would be in
effect. In a truly Hobbesian fashion, thus, morality depends on politics, not
vice-versa.42
Lloyd’s work includes the most thorough critique of the ‘orthodox’
interpretations, while in its constructive part it shows how Hobbes’ reasoning,
through reciprocity interpreted as intersubjective justification, came close to later
philosophical enterprises, such as Kant’s, Rawls’, or even Habermas’ discourse
ethics (though the latter is not contemplated). But Lloyd is too eager to moralize
(or ‘Rawlsify’) Hobbes, and this leads her to misrepresent his position, even while
she is most respectful of his method. In particular, despite the ample space devoted
to downplay self-interest and self-preservation (Lloyd, 2009: ch. 2–3), Lloyd did
not succeed in dislodging the definition Hobbes premised to his treatment of
natural law from its privileged status43:
A LAW OF NATURE, (lex naturalis) is a precept, or general rule, found out
by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of
his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that,
by which he thinketh it may be best preserved. (Hobbes, 1651: XIV.3)44
Since I see no reason not to take this as accurately expressing Hobbes’ position, I
have to concede that ‘orthodox’ interpretations were correct in individuating self-
interest as the basic motive within Hobbes’ system. Nevertheless, we have already
seen how the consequentialist interpretation, resulting in a form of teleology being
the ground of the normative construction, is incompatible with what Hobbes
actually wrote. As anticipated, the way to square these statements is to reconsider
Hobbes’ idea of reason, and how it could not but have led to a deontological set of
rules.
‘Reason defined’, according to Hobbes, is:
Out of all which we may define, (that is to say determine,) what that is,
which is meant by this word reason, when we reckon it amongst the
faculties of the mind. For REASON, in this sense, is nothing but reckoning
(that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names
agreed upon, for the marking and signifying of our thoughts… (Hobbes,
1651: V.2)
This has been read with an almost exclusive focus on ‘reckoning’, whether to
affirm reason as the purely instrumental calculus of means to an end, or to balance
it with other possible meanings of rationality.45 Instead, more emphasis should
have been placed on the restriction to ‘the consequences of general names’.46
Reason is calculus, not of means for any particular end—which would belong to
the domain of prudence, not rational knowledge (Rhodes, 1992)—but rather the

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calculus of ‘general names’, such as obligation, covenant, authority, representation,

sovereignty.
That reason does not deal with particulars is not idiosyncratic to Hobbes, being
a common tenet of diverse accounts of rationality, from Plato and Aristotle up to
Kant. Hobbes’ innovation lay in the strict limitation to names,47 against the
essentialist metaphysics still prevalent at the time. The extent of Hobbes’
nominalism is felicitously expressed by this passage:
The Latins called accounts of money rationes, and accounting, ratiocinatio:
and that which we in bills or books of account call items, they called
nomina; that is, names: and thence it seems to proceed, that they extended
the word ratio, to the faculty of reckoning in all other things. The Greeks
have but one word logos, for both speech and reason; not that they thought
there was no speech without reason; but no reasoning without speech: and
the act of reasoning they called syllogism; which signifieth summing up of
the consequences of one saying to another. (Hobbes, 1651: IV.14)
Here again, we should notice how the ‘consequences’ are not referred to
particular actions, decisions or ends, but rather to ‘one saying to another’
(Consequentiae dicti unius ad alterum conjunctionem). Once the radical nominalism
is taken into account, what remains is indeed in accord with the Aristotelian
definition of syllogism.
With cognizance of the general character of reason, the production of a
deontology starting from individual self-interest is no longer puzzling. The
exclusion of teleology as the proper ground for practical norms is implied by
reckoning’s limitation to ‘general names’, because evaluating the adequacy of
actions to any specific end necessarily entails judging about concrete particulars,
which is the province of prudence, not reason. This is true even when the end
one would like to reckon upon is an absolutely necessary being, such as God, for
it is impossible to escape the inherent particularity of actual actions’ consequences,
regardless of how transcendent the end is alleged to be. Hobbes went further, for
his denial of any knowledge about God—except for its existence and its being
the ultimate efficient cause—chimed in well with his desire to remove it as a
possible final end motivating disobedience and discord. But even if we could know
God, the attempt to use such knowledge to teleologically justify our practical rules
would still be irrational by definition, as it would pretend to reckon with certainty
about the intrinsic uncertainties of actions and their consequences.
The case of the individual trying to reckon about his mundane ends is easier,
for there we do not find the pretense of universality and necessity. It is thus
appropriate that Hobbes devoted an entire half, and then some, of the Leviathan
to neutralize the possibility of religion justifying disobedience to the sovereign,
and merely one paragraph to refute the fool’s misgivings. It is only the shift in
our perspective that has made the latter, and the problem of individual vs. group
rationality, loom so large. We have—at least regarding the prevalent way of
thinking about political matters—become Hobbesian ‘fooles’, precisely because
we believe that reason can be used to reckon about particular actions and their

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consequences. But, once Hobbes’ definition of reason as reckoning of general

names is understood, the rebuke to the fool is no longer ‘lame’, it is rather the
properly trenchant explanation due to those who misunderstand rationality for
the calculus of the means for any one end. In particular, the extreme risk-
aversion that has left interpreters puzzled is not an ‘aversion’—a psychological
disposition—at all, but rather the logical result of a reason bound to reckon
about generalities.
Hobbes’ idea of a generalizing reason can be perhaps grasped by analogy with
another famous definition; according to Kant48:
In the first part of our transcendental logic we defined the understanding
as the faculty of rules; here we will distinguish reason from understanding
calling reason the faculty of principles. (Kant, 1999: 387 [KrV B356])

… reason in its logical use seeks the universal condition of its judgment (its
conclusion), syllogism is nothing but a judgment mediated by the
subsumption of its condition under a universal rule (the major premise).
Now since this rule is once again exposed to this same attempt of reason,
and the condition of its condition thereby has to sought (by means of a
prosyllogism) as far as we may, we see very well that the proper principle
a of reason in general (in its logical use) is to find the unconditioned for
conditioned cognitions of the understanding, with which its unity will
be completed. (Kant, 1999: 391–392 [KrV B364])
This would be to the full-blown result of the definition of reason as ‘reckoning of
the consequences of general names’—even though I cannot reckon whether
Hobbes would have accepted that much. Once reason’s operations are limited to
general names, the process through which it can respond to our desires to achieve
something (here self-preservation, therefore peace) is not that of calculating the
means through which we could get ‘there’ starting from our particular ‘here’, but
rather that of determining the conditions of a peaceful state in general, regardless
of the contingencies we may encounter. Since it reckons of generalities, reason
cannot but produce principles expressing the conditions for what is given.
Ultimately, this is the sense in which Hobbes’ argument is to be understood as a
principled justification of sovereignty, as distinct from a consequentialist
endorsement of it.
The application of reason to discover general conditions goes all the way to the
first ground of Hobbes’ philosophy. Peace itself is reckoned from self-preservation
in this way, since the application of instrumental reason to the basic motive of fear
brings nothing but war. It is only by performing the rational operation of looking
into the conditions to save ourselves in general, which are not the same as the
contingent means to safeguard our own particular life, that we can formulate
‘the first, and fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek peace, and follow it’
(Hobbes, 1651: XIV.4). Finally, Hobbes’ entire anthropology, insofar as it is used
to ground political philosophy, is to be interpreted as an application of reason in
this sense, sidestepping issues of empirical accuracy. If Hobbes’ claims are taken

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seriously, the picture of the natural man can be neither a factual observation nor
merely an ad hoc description instrumental to the author’s preferences.
The men we are to imagine ‘like mushrooms’ (Hobbes, 1642: VIII.1)49 are
devoid not just of obligations toward others, but also of any end actual people
may have—specific objects of passion, not reliably knowable anyway (Hobbes,
1651: Introduction.3). The fact that people do not always want to absolutely
avoid death would not have been a serious objection for Hobbes, because
anything else they may want belongs to the sphere of particular contingencies,
upon which reason cannot reckon. Fear of death is not empirically discovered,
being rather derived, purportedly, from the mechanistic physiology according
to which living organisms are but bodies in motion, shunning death as a decrease
of that motion which is life. The natural man is an abstraction obtained by
removing each and every particularity actual people possess, including the ends
springing from such particularities.
As a basis for a science of man and politics, this may be ‘fledgling’,
‘rudimentary’ and ‘sketchy’ (Lloyd, 2009: 57–59), but such was Hobbes’ view,
and he could not have held a different one on pain of incoherence. In fact, if his
depiction of the natural man were not made of general names, but rather of
particular facts, one should either deny that reason is the basis of science, that
reason is reckoning about general names, or that political philosophy could ever
be a science; all propositions Hobbes forcefully affirmed.

5. Conclusions (with Openings)

The picture of Hobbesian reason resulting from this paper is different from the
‘orthodox’ and the ‘revisionist’ interpretations, though it includes insights from
both, largely thanks to our focusing on the rejection of teleology.
Hobbes’ argument, on his own self-interpretation, is normative and rationalist
all the way down, relying on no contingent premise. This does not make him
less of a materialist, because reason itself allegedly results from the efficient
causes according to which our mind works. In fact, a coherent interpretation
must presuppose that Hobbes was aware of working his philosophical
discoveries through the same reason—ultimately reducible to the mechanistic
result of sensuous excitation, and their echoes creating memory and
imagination, of a thoroughly physical mind (Hobbes, 1651: II–III)—that he was
in turn describing.
Most importantly, the argument is equally rationalist, and allegedly not at all
contingent, all the way up to the construction of the Leviathan. Sovereignty is
thoroughly derivable as the condition for peace, which is in turn the general
condition for self-preservation, which is not an empirical cause of human behavior
but rather the rationally reconstructed motivation of men stripped out of every
particular character they may have. Power as causation (coercion and threat)
certainly enters into the picture, but in the role of guaranteeing the stability of a

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Commonwealth whose existence cannot be assumed without internalized

normative consent by the subjects (aptly convinced by Hobbes’ argumentative
efforts). If this picture is close to the real Hobbes, most common objections, being
based on divergent empirical observations, are not relevant. Instead, any critique
of his derivation of absolute sovereignty should focus on the same rationalist level.
This would chiefly mean to criticize Hobbes’ concept of reason.
In a sense, this would be easy, for by ‘reason’ we mean something different, and
the very notion of an ever-generalizing reason is assumed by Hobbes (following a
long tradition), but not really justified. However, in Hobbes we find decisive
critiques of our own common notion of rationality as instrumental to particular
ends. Indeed, Hobbes anticipated the difficulties encountered by modern theorists
in making the leap from means-end rationality to the justification of political order.
The fool, the religious fanatics and, according to Hobbes, the republican driven by
virtue and liberty, are all examples of the kind of teleological reasoning that cannot
ground a peaceful political order. We should not hastily dismiss the tradition to
which Hobbes harks back; but, if we accept a universalizing image of reason, we
could find within it fruitful resources to criticize Hobbes’ own version, particularly
through Kantian Criticism. While Hobbesian reason is in a sense critical, most
clearly if compared with the previous Scholastic framework, it would also be
found insufficiently so, from a Kantian standpoint.
Hobbes does not properly limit the productive power of reason to the practical
sphere, rather pretending to derive substantive knowledge from pure
ratiocination. Specifically, Hobbes thinks we may know that God exists as the
ultimate efficient cause (Zarka, 1996: 77–79), which ultimately ground the
mechanistic ontology and thus the fear of death as the basic motivation. Here
Kant’s refutation of the physico-theological argument is relevant beyond mere
theory, because Hobbes’ uses the order of efficient causes within a direct line of
justification for his political contentions. Relatedly, the limitation, but also the
asserted inevitability, of teleology within the Critique of Judgment, would be the
most relevant point to assess the validity of the Hobbesian project. Ultimately,
without much surprise, it is still the contingency of the world (from our own
inescapable point of view), or its denial, that would determine the validity of a
normative political philosophy.
This is material for another argument, for which this one may be merely a
premise. However, without getting straight what Hobbes was doing with his
reason it would be impossible to assess the most radical attempt to ground the
most important ideas of modern politics. Thus, what is here written may have a
utility of its own.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to all the colleagues, friends, and mentors, who have read and commented
upon various versions of this paper. I would like to thank David Johnston, Nadia Urbinati,
Stefano Petrucciani, the participants to the 2015 NPSA conference’s panel Reason and its
Limits in Modern Political Thought, and particularly John Mulhern who generously chaired

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1124 Guido Parietti

it. I also wish to thank the editors of the European Journal of Philosophy, and the anonymous
referee, whose probing questions and critiques have been invaluable.

Guido Parietti
Political Science
Columbia University
USA
gp2341@columbia.edu

NOTES

1
This is not to deny tensions within Hobbes’ ouvre, both theoretical and
‘compositional’ (Baumgold, 2008). Nevertheless, while Hobbes may not have fulfilled all
his systematic ambitions, he surely harbored high ones.
2
The most extensive engagement with teleology is in (Hobbes, 1655: IX–X). Hobbes’
opposition to teleology is not prominent in the secondary literature. For example, neither
‘teleology’ nor ‘finalism’ appear in (Springborg, 2007) (there is a single instance of the
adjective ‘teleological’, in relation to non-Hobbesian natural law, on page 233) or in (Lloyd,
2013). Similarly, (Sorell, 1996) includes just two brief references to the absence of teleology in
Hobbes’ philosophy, at p. 216 and in a footnote at p. 326. When mentioned, Hobbes’
engagement with teleology is usually reduced to his antipathy toward the Scholastics,
which does not do justice to the relevance of the topic. The best treatment I have found is
(Leijenhorst, 1996: §§ 4–5).
3
Hobbes’ equation of power with causation has been considered pivotal for (mis)
informing the modern conception of it (Ball, 1975a; Altini, 2010). On the evolving uses of
‘power’, see (Field, 2014).
4
Aristotle, Politics, VII.
5
Hobbes’ conception of civil philosophy could even considered ‘by analogy with
economic argument’ (Ryan, 1996: 213).
6
I am not convinced by attempts to attribute substantive content to Hobbesian
reason. Hobbes appeals to ‘felicity’, in addition to the mere preservation of life, as a
reason to submit to the sovereign, which could lend credence to those ‘richer’
interpretations of his philosophy. While it is true that ‘felicity functions as the
Hobbesian analogue of a final end’ (Rutherford, 2003: 382), felicity is mechanistic in
its origin (the satisfaction of the desires produced by an allegedly fully material mind)
and devoid of any specific content (against ‘traditional versions of eudaimonism’
Rutherford, 2003: 380–381). Only when filled with the concreteness of individual desires
the realization of felicity could become a final end in the proper sense, but such
concreteness, not being general, is by definition within the domain of prudence, not
reason.
7
(Hobbes, 1651: VI.3–20 (the end of reason), XIV.8, XVII.1, XVIII.8 (‘the end of this
institution’[sovereignty]), XVIII.11 (‘the end for which every commonwealth is instituted’),
XXI.15 (‘the end for which the sovereignty was ordained’), XXI.21, XXX.1 (‘the end, for
which he was trusted with the sovereign power’), XXX.21). English Leviathan’s quotations
are from Gaskin’s edition (Oxford University Press, 1996). For ‘end’ the Latin version has
finis, an equally teleologically connoted term.
8
Thus, ‘there is no such finis ultimus, (utmost aim,) nor summum bonum, (greatest
good,) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers’ (Hobbes, 1651: XI.1).

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9
Hobbes’ critique, according to which teleology comes from naïve
anthropomorphism (Hobbes, 1651: II.1), could be read in this way.
10
Gert tried, unconvincingly, to downplay this to a ‘compatibilist view’ (Gert, 1996:
171–173).
11
The reduction of good and evil to mechanistically understood passions would thus
be necessary to overcome teleology. ‘But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or
desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate, and aversion,
evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable’ (Hobbes, 1651: VI.7) The role of
mechanistic psychology has been emphasized in (Gauthier, 1969: ch. 1). See also (Gert,
1996; Frost, 2005; Leijenhorst, 2007).
12
‘The natural philosophy of those schools [of the Grecians], was rather a dream
than science, and set forth in senseless and insignificant language; which cannot be
avoided by those that will teach philosophy, without having first attained great knowledge
in geometry: for nature worketh by motion; the ways and degrees whereof cannot be
known, without the knowledge of the proportions and properties of lines, and figures’
(Hobbes, 1651: XLVI.11).
13
Commentators disagrees on whether that could be done (Schrock, 1991; Burgess,
1994; Steinberger, 2002; Sheridan, 2011).
14
Though of course that would be useful, and it was a major aim of Hobbes’ project
of ‘cultural transformation’ (Johnston, 1986).
15
Hobbes was most worried by religion, but other causes of discord were also
relevant. ‘Transcendent interests’ can be of various kinds (Lloyd, 2009: x-xi). Indeed any
end, taken as fully sufficient to justify action, is transcendent.
16
XIV.33 should be quoted in full: ‘It appears also, that the oath adds nothing to the
obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much
as with it: if unlawful, bindeth not at all; though it be confirmed with an oath.’ Thus,
covenants bind in the sight of God only if performed under the auspices of a sovereign.
Without such guarantee no covenant would be binding according to natural laws; indeed,
there could be no covenant at all (Hobbes, 1651: XV.5). Of course, God himself ‘by right
commands all things’ (XV. 41), which is what would make proper laws of the laws of
nature, but since this command is not directly enforced, one wonders whether the reason
for Hobbes’ inclusion of this clause were more prudential than philosophical. See also
(Hobbes, 1651: XIV.31).
17
Some ‘revisionist’ interpreters try to devalue Hobbes’ psychology, e.g.: ‘This
language [that of the natural desire to self-preservation] diminishes to the point of
having been altogether eliminated by the time he writes Leviathan’ (Lloyd, 2009: 60).
This seems excessive, given the passages referring to fear of death as the motive for
submission: (Hobbes, 1651: XI.4, XIII.14, XIV.29). For a defense of the received view
see (Murphy, 2000).
18
(Gaskin, 1996: xxxi-xxxii, xliii; Bobbio, 1993: 42; Strauss, 1965; Strauss, 1996). Rawls
taught that ‘Hobbes’ psychology derived mainly from common sense observation’ (Rawls,
2008: 29). Gauthier is a notable exception, flatly stating how unrealistic Hobbes was
(Gauthier, 1969: 23–26).
19
Hobbes’ reason is normative while being natural (Gert, 2001: 245; Hoekstra, 2003:
115). Hobbes’ natural man and reason are better viewed as rational reconstructions,
obtained by removing all the elements introduced by obligations in existing societies. His
remarks that natural men were to be considered as ‘sprung up [...] like mushrooms’ should
be read in this vein (Hobbes, 1642: VIII.1; Lloyd, 2009: 76 ff).
20
For Hobbes vs. experimentalism see (Shapin and Schaffer, 2011: esp. ch. 4).

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21
There is an important difference between the Leviathan and earlier expositions of
Hobbes’ civil science; in the former the natural state of war is not presented as contradictory
to reason: (Magri, 1994: 28–31).
22
Weaker game-theoretical interpretations may be limited in their scope of application
(Eggers, 2011) or introduce constraints to instrumental rationality (Moehler, 2012).
23
Some even read Hobbes as a precursor of Luhmann (Zolo, 2011).
24
The suggestion that Hobbes’ men might be unable to rationally leave the natural
state because he depicted them incorrectly, thus, would not be resolutive even on its own
terms (Gauthier, 1969).
25
This seems to have been clear already to Pufendorf (Pasquino, 2001: 410–411;
Pufendorf, 1675: § 23).
26
That covenants in the natural state are invalid, instead, is explicitly asserted
(Hobbes, 1651: XIV.18–19). Thus, the most that the proponents of the thesis could hope for
was to find Hobbes wavering, rather than truly supporting their interpretation.
27
Other passages from which the possibility of a covenant in the natural state could
be inferred are sometimes invoked. For example, XIV.27, XIV.31, XX.4, and XXII.29
(Hoekstra, 2007: 126). XIV.27 is the strongest, stating that ‘covenants entered into by fear,
in the condition of mere nature, are obligatory’. However, immediately thereafter Hobbes
deems these pacts breakable whenever a good reason arises: ‘if a weaker prince, make a
disadvantageous peace with a stronger, for fear, he is bound to keep it; unless (as hath said
before), there ariseth some new, and just cause of fear, to renew the war’. The Latin version is
even clearer: ‘causa aliqua nova et justa oriatur’. Thus, this passage is saying that in the natural
state covenants are valid until any reason to break them arises. Here Hobbes is buttressing
the obligation to obey the sovereign even when submitting out of fear (cf. XIV.20 and XX.2).
Fear does not vitiate the origin, but what keeps the covenant valid and binding is the
sovereign power. Later paragraphs clarify how ‘before the time of civil society [...] there is
nothing can strengthen a covenant of peace agreed on [...] but the fear of that invisible
power, which they every one worship as God’ (XIV.31). But this comes just before Hobbes
explains how oaths in the name of God add nothing to the obligation (see above, fn. 16);
thus, it can scarcely count as an endorsement of covenants in the natural state. XX.4 and
XXII.29, are much weaker, saying nothing about keeping covenants when there may be
reasons not to, which is the relevant issue.
28
Game-theoretical approaches are often criticized for downplaying Hobbes’
treatment of religion (Neal, 1988: 635; Lloyd, 1998: 125–126).
29
The obedience/protection nexus is impossible to miss, but (Schmitt, 1996) did the
most of it. See also (McCormick, 1994).
30
‘For if men know not their duty, what is there that can force them to obey the laws?
An army, you will say. But what shall force the army?’ (Hobbes, 2010: 183).
31
‘The fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done
abominable works, there is none that doeth good.’: Psalms 14:1 (KJV).
32
The insipiens corresponds to a darker symbolism as well, but he still is
characterized as ‘out of reason’ (Springborg, 2011).
33
Thus, we might talk of ‘a Hobbesian critique of rational choice theory’ (Neal, 1988).
However, the reasons are deeper than recognized by Neal, and the answer to the fool is not
an appeal to passions (Neal, 1988: 648–651).
34
Both secular (‘when the heir apparent of a kingdom, shall kill him that is in
possession, though his father...’) and religious (‘The kingdom of God is gotten by violence:
but what if it could be gotten by unjust violence?’), though the latter must be insincere,
‘for the same fool hath said in his heart there is no God’.

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 Hobbes on Teleology and Reason 1127
35
For a different critique (Lloyd, 2009: 299 ff).
36
From the Taylor–Warrender thesis, to more recent exegeses (Taylor, 1938;
Warrender, 1957; Martinich, 2003).
37
A notable exception, critical of the ‘orthodoxy’ but proposing a formal reading of
reason, is (Deigh, 1996).
38
Hobbes repeats almost verbatim the Thomistic argument of the first cause to
demonstrate the existence of God (presented as a natural tendency of reason, which may
cast doubts on whether Hobbes took it to be a valid proof). By itself, without the remaining
four of the Quinque viae, the argument makes God into an efficient cause, which is coherent
with Hobbes’ view that God is body, and incompatible with the attribution of commands to
it, which would presuppose a will and the other familiar attributes of a personalized God
(Hobbes, 1640: XI.2; Hobbes, 1651: XII.25–27). Hobbes’ religious and theological views are
impossible to confront here. A minimalistic deism seems most compatible with Hobbes’
philosophy, even though it is at times contradicted by explicit theological assertions; which
may themselves be motivated by rhetorical efficacy and/or fear of prosecution. For an
overview (Jesseph, 2002; Martinich, 2003; Cromartie, 2008; Stauffer, 2010).
39
Cf. (Hobbes, 1651: V.3).
40
Lloyd cites from the English version in Molesworth: EW, II, 8–9.
41
Though it can be used to argue that the ‘orthodox’ interpretations could not have
gotten Hobbes right; in this sense the passage would belong with the critical part of Lloyd’s
enterprise.
42
It remains true that ‘Hobbes’s science of ethics is foundational for his science of
politics’ (Rutherford, 2003: 385). However, as Rutherford correctly noted, Hobbes’ ethics is
the science of passions, mechanistically understood (Rutherford, 2003: 379), not what we
would today call morality, to which pertains the question of justice, placed by Hobbes
squarely within the instituted Commonwealth.
43
As Lloyd points out, there are different definitions throughout Hobbes’ writings,
whose common core can be reduced to ‘a Law of Nature is a rule found out by reason’,
opening the way for her moral reading. However, the removal of self-interest is not
convincing because it appears in most of Hobbes’ definitions, including the one premised
to the most extensive treatment of natural laws in the Leviathan. It is implausible to suggest
that that is merely one amongst other candidates to a definition (Lloyd, 2009: 100).
44
The Latin version is once again different, for it reads: ‘A LAW OF NATURE (lex
naturalis) is a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden
to do that which seems to him to tend to his own loss’. The difference is relevant to
downplay the motivational role of the fear of death, but the Latin text is still a ringing
endorsement of self-interest as the ground for natural law.
45
Gert’s emphasis on the ‘in this sense’ clause, to attribute multiple concepts of
reason to Hobbes, is unconvincing (Gert, 2001: 246). To me, that simply means ‘in the sense
of defining it amongst the faculties of the mind’, with reference to the previous sentence.
46
One of the few exceptions, noting the significance of ‘general names’, is
(Rutherford, 2003: 373).
47
(Pettit, 2008) re-kindled the attention on Hobbes nominalism; but see also (Ball,
1985; Wolin, 2004: ch. 8, §§ II–IV).
48
The discredit of the ‘Taylor–Warrender’ thesis probably contributed to obscure
obvious similarities. Recent attempts to connect the two are unsatisfactory, as they don’t
grasp how deep the analogies run (Moehler, 2012). Notably, Kant had a direct knowledge
of Hobbes’ works (Gonnelli, 2009).
49
For the politico-philosophical implications of this abstraction (Sagar, 2015).

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1128 Guido Parietti

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