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Duke University Press, Philosophical Review The Philosophical Review
Duke University Press, Philosophical Review The Philosophical Review
Duke University Press, Philosophical Review The Philosophical Review
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DISCUSSION
To proceed beyond this point, however, to ask in turn, why the individual
ought to obey natural law, is to make a new departure and the treatment of
this problem is an addendum to, rather than a continuation of, the main
argument which has been outlined in the first two Parts of this work. What
has been examined above is the substructure of the obligation to obey natural
law, in the sense of the pattern of consequences that derive from it; whereas
the investigation of the ground of this obligation is concerned solely with its
superstructure. Although the acceptance of different solutions to the question
of the ultimate ground of obligation in Hobbes's theory, gives a different
significance to his pattern of rights and duties, it does not in itself change
that pattern, nor prejudice the account of it in the form in which it has been
presented.2
1 Oxford, I957.
2 P. 278.
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HOBBES ON OBLIGATION
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THOMAS NAGEL
4 Ibid., p. I20.
5Warrender, p. I4.
6Ibid., p. 2i8.
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HOBBES ON OBLIGATION
7'
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THOMAS NAGEL
The laws of nature, that command the individual to seek peace, keep cove-
nants, etc., are from one point of view rational maxims for self-preservation;
and one answer to the question of why the citizen should obey the civil law,
is that obedience constitutes the best means to his preservation. . . . This
answer, given in terms of self-preservation, however, is concerned with motive
and not with obligation ... this consideration does not ensure their obligatory
character; it is only in their aspect of being commands of God that they are
laws and hence oblige. Thus the reason why I can do my duty is that I am
able ... to see it as a means to my preservation; but the reason why I ought
to do my duty is that God commands it.?1
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HOBBES ON OBLIGATION
11 Warrender, P. 94.
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THOMAS NAGEL
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HOBBES ON OBLIGATION
These dictates of reason, men use to call by the name of laws, but improperly:
for they are but conclusions, or theorems concerning what conduceth to the
conservation and defence of themselves; whereas law properly is the word of
him that by right hath command over others. But yet if we consider the same
theorems as delivered in the word of God, that by right commandeth all
things, then are they properly called laws.13
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THOMAS NAGEL
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HOBBES ON OBLIGATION
from self-interest. But this one passage seems to imply that the ground
of obligation cannot be self-interest but must be the authority of a
commander. It seems to imply, in fact, that one cannot be obliged to
obey any precept for which the hurt of not obeying is one's own. This
would entail that one could not be obliged to obey the laws of nature,
so that this interpretation of the passage involves a result so drastic
that it is not to be accepted lightly. I think that if we consider the
passage more closely, however, it will be seen why this restriction need
not apply to the laws of nature.
"A man may be obliged to do what he is commanded, as when he
hath covenanted to obey," writes Hobbes, and he says that if one
covenants to obey counsel, "then is the counsel turned into the nature
of a command."16 Hobbes is describing a difference between two
types of imperative utterance. (The chapter concerns counsel and the
position of counselors.) He says that if we obey a man's counsel it is
because we want to, and if we are obliged to obey him, then we do not
do so because we happen to consider each of his commands to be in
our own interest, but because we are obliged to obey him, so it is no
longer counsel but command. He is analyzing the concepts of counsel
and command in terms of the very different sorts of reasons for which
we obey the two sorts of imperatives. In one case we obey because the
individual precepts seem to us directed to our own benefit; in the
other case we obey because we are obliged in general to obey the
precepts of that particular individual. But this does not exclude the
possibility that our general obligation to obey him whom we have
covenanted to obey is based finally on self-interest. All that is meant,
I think, is that it is logically excluded that we should be obliged to do
whatever someone tells us and that it should at the same time be
called counsel. This can apply as well to the commands of God as to
those of the civil sovereign. But is is quite irrelevant to the obligatory
status of anything other than imperatives uttered by a person of some
sort. Hobbes does not claim, as Warrender seems to think, that the
only possible source of an obligation to do something is that it is the
command of someone in authority. He is just making a mild grammat-
ical observation of somewhat restricted scope.
It is possible to think of the laws of nature as something other than
either command or counsel. Warrender feels that to call them pru-
dential maxims is to classify them as counsel, and so to make them
necessarily nonobligatory in Hobbes's system. But when Hobbes
16 Ibid., p. 24I.
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THOMAS NAGEL
17 Ibid., p. 346.
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HOBBES ON OBLIGATION
18 Ibid., p. 350.
19 Ibid., p. 352.
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THOMAS NAGEL
20 Ibid., p. I45.
8o
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8i
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THOMAS NAGEL
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THOMAS NAGEL
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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