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Pasquale Pasquino S Hobbes
Pasquale Pasquino S Hobbes
Pasquale Pasquino S Hobbes
HOBBES, RELIGION,
AND RATIONAL
CHOICE: HOBBES’S
TWO LEVIATHANS
AND THE FOOL
PASQUALE PASQUINO
“Peace at home may then be expected durable, when the common people shall be made to
see the benefit they shall receive by their obedience and adhaesion to their own Sovereign,
and the harm they must suffer by taking part with them, who by promises of reformation,
or change of government deceive them. And this is properly to be done by divines, and
from arguments not only from reason, but also from the Holy Scripture”
Th. Hobbes, A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the
Common Laws of England, London, Printed for William Crooke 1681*
the state of nature and enter civil society”.14 A goal of this paper is to
show that the “equilibrium” of the state of nature is not really a problem
for Hobbes’s political theory, since the question is not to try to figure out
how to escape it, but simply to understand that the concept is used rhetor-
ically, in order to change the mind of those involved in religious civil war.
A passage in chapter 15 of Leviathan, where Hobbes speaks of the
Laws of Nature, seems to give a possible solution to the question posed,
by Hampton, among others. In his answer to the “fool” who is supposed
to claim that “there is no such a thing as justice”, Hobbes replies in the
English Leviathan:
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 [i.e., in the
state of nature]), 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 [italics mine], that is, against the benefit of the other to perform
or not. And I say it is not against reason. (EL., Curley, ch. 15, p. 91).
This text, although not perfectly clear,15 seems nevertheless to open the
possibility of cooperation in the absence of any political authority, since
“it is rational to keep contracts in the state of nature if one party has
already performed [italics mine]”.16
I’ve never been persuaded by that interpretation since it seems to con-
tradict Hobbes’s general argument that allows us to present the state of
nature as a sort of Nash equilibrium.17 Needless to say, I was very pleased
when I discovered that the second edition of Leviathan, published in
Latin in 1668, has a different and unambiguous text.
Although nowadays we usually read the first edition of Hobbes’s major
work published in English in 1651, it would be more appropriate to read
the second one, since a noteworthy fact we must take into account is that
Hobbes devotedly worked on that version for many years.18 The lan-
guage of the academic community in the 17th century was, indeed, not at
all English but Latin, so that if the first version of Leviathan was a book
published in the context of the civil war for a limited public—the one
able to read English—the Latin version is the text that Hobbes worked
out in order to address the communitas doctorum, also not only an inter-
national scholarly public but all of posterity. Thomas Hobbes could not
foresee that the marginal language of a Western European island, parti-
ally as the consequence and unexpected effect of the religious civil war
that took people out of Great Britain, would become a few centuries
afterwards the lingua franca of the international academic community.
Had he been aware of that, he would certainly have spent his time rewriting
a second English edition. But Hobbes was a true humanist19 and he prob-
ably believed that Latin would have been forever the language of the
communitas doctorum. As we know now he was wrong. That prevents
For first, in a state anyone who does what, as far as can be foreseen and understood by
reason, tends to his own destruction [for instance, to disobey the positive/civil laws], even
though something unforeseen happens which makes the outcome fortunate, has neverthe-
less acted imprudently, because what happens is unforeseen.27
The second reason is that no society can accept someone who, like the
fool, says he will break covenants.28 So, either he has to hope he will be
accepted because of the ignorance of the others, which again is imprud-
ent, or else, and more likely, he will be driven out of the society and will
die [ejectus peribit], since outside the commonwealth he will be in the
state of nature “where each one is an enemy to each one and no one can
live securely”; unless he finds new allies and establishes a new society. But
this seems not possible, for the same reasons which caused him to be
driven out of the first society: if he is still insipiens he will continue to
maintain that he shall not keep covenants!
Since no cooperation ( justice, in Hobbes’s language) is possible start-
ing from the state of nature, we can try to make sense of that concept
considering it not as “an origin but a possible destination of society”,
in the words of R. Hardin.29 This point was made quite forcefully by
F. Maitland,30 and was put forward for the first time in the 17th century
by the most popular and authoritative champion of the natural law theory.
The dimension of the Hobbesian concept of the state of nature, which I
suggest calling ‘rhetorical’ (from a logical point of view counter-factual),
quite clearly appears indeed in a smaller work by Samuel Pufendorf, who
has dwelt most on Hobbes, De statu hominum naturali (1675), a work
which is not well-known but deserves to be quoted at length:
Furthermore, a consideration of the natural state of individuals and its misery is very useful
for making citizens love and devote themselves completely to the civil state’s preservation,
and also for making them endure gladly the burdens necessary for the maintenance of
states. For these burdens are but a very small portion of the evils that would have attended
a life without civil bounds, immersion in which would have been far more miserable than
what seems to be the harshest existence in a state. One who has never thought about the
misery of the natural state bears the burdens which rulers impose on citizens with ill will,
as if they were superfluous and contrived either to annoy the people or merely to nourish
the rulers’ ambition and extravagance. In contrast, someone who has correctly estimated the
matter admits that it is no more suitable to complain about such burdens than about the
price of clothes or shoes by which the body is protected against severe weather and injuries.
Indeed, one who has reflected thoroughly upon this natural state will bear more patiently
the unreasonable inconveniences that he sometimes experiences at the hands of rulers. For
these are in fact rarities in the civil state, and counterbalanced by the occurrence of better
things. But in the natural state one could expect equivalent or worse evils not only on a
daily basis, but also without end and measure. Moreover, a judicious citizen will by no
means attribute those inconveniences to the character of the civil state as such and be
therefore more discontented with it; rather, he will acknowledge the general imperfection of
human affairs. For although states were specially devised against the evils that threaten one
Here the existence of Leviathan changes the payoffs of the matrix. The
“fool” is punished for his defection from promises, and cooperation seems
to be a rational behavior and a stable condition. One has then to ask why
the generalized condition of distrust, the state of nature, can emerge out
of that equilibrium. In other words, why is social collapse and the disorder
of civil war a possible destination? If order/cooperation and reciprocal
trust inside the political community with a common power is a Nash
equilibrium for rational actors, why should Hobbes worry about disorder
and disruptive conflicts and care about the means of keeping peace in the
commonwealth? There are many possible answers to that question, but
generally they imply an element of irrationality in human behavior (pas-
sions, shortsightedness, etc.).
Here the real civil war and not the hypothetical war of anyone against
anyone takes on the disruptive face of the state of nature.
This can be presented in the form of a matrix:
o
1,2 0,3
Lc
no
3,0 2,1 Nash equilibrium
Pareto optimum
religious war
o = to obey
p = to protect
Lc = Lutheran citizen
Cs = Catholic sovereign
o
3,3 2,3
peace &
Ch c salvation:
commonwealth
no
1,0 0,0 religious civil
war
(o, p) the Christian citizen obeys the civil laws and gets peace
and salvation, and the sovereign is recognized
(o, np) the Ch citizen obeys without getting protection, he gets
nonetheless salvation and the sovereign enjoys recognition
(no, p) the Ch citizen does not obey and even though he is
protected in his life he will be punished by God after his death
(no, np) the Ch citizen (a Calvinist) and the Anglican sovereign
fight each other: the true instantiation of the state of nature.39
In the last part of a previous article,40 I tried to show that Hobbes was
committed from his first attempt to lay down his political theory, the
Elements of Law, to a major rhetorical venture. The goal of his enterprise
was to modify the payoffs of the “religious civil war” game, that is to
modify the preferences of citizens by modifying their religious beliefs. His
argument in favor of a minimalist Christian religion compatible with
obedience to the civil laws is restated in chapter 43 of Leviathan:
All that is N salvation is contained in two virtues: faith in Christ, and obedience
to laws (EL., p. 398).
But if a Christian king, who holds the foundation, that Jesus is the Christ, deduces certain
doctrines ineptly from that foundation, and commands them to be taught and held, his
command is to be obeyed. For he can be obeyed without danger to the soul [italics mine].
Moreover, no one can rightly judge in a question concerning his own civil obedience. For
no one can judge concerning the doctrines of the faith except the church, i.e., except the one
who bears the person of the church, i.e., except the king, if he is a Christian (LL, see Curley’s
ed., p. 409, fn. 25).
NOTES
* I quote the text edited by J. Cropsey (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press 1997),
p. 57.
1 See, P. Pasquino, “Thomas Hobbes. La condition naturelle de l’humanité” in Revue
pompous and should be avoided in this context, since it doesn’t possess more than an analo-
gical meaning. I decided nonetheless to use it in order to convey synthetically my point that
the state of nature cannot be a starting point. Actually, it is more sensible to claim with
Carl Schmitt that “The starting point of Hobbes’s construction of the state is fear of the
state of nature” (Leviathan in der Staatslehere des Thomas Hobbes [1938], English translation,
Westport, Connecticut-London, Greenwood Press 1996, p. 31).
3 Leviathan, ed. by E. Curley (Indianapolis, Hackett 1994), ch. 13, p. 76, (quoted hereafter
.
as EL.).
4 The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1969).
5
Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1986).
6
Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press 1986).
7 A. Pizzorno, “On the individualistic theory of social order”, in P. Bourdieu and James
Coleman (eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder, Westview Press 1991),
p. 213.
8
In the article cited in fn. 1.
9
See fn. 7.
10 Meaning here: common to the two partners. More generally, Hobbes describes people
dimension of time:
“one of the contractors may deliver the thing contracted for on his part, and leave the other
to perform his part at some determinate time after (and in the meantime be trusted); and
then the contract on his part is called PACT, or COVENANT; or both parts may contract
now, to perform hereafter, in which cases he that is to perform in time to come, being
trusted, his performance is called keeping the promise, or faith, and the failing of performance
(if it be voluntary) violation of faith” (EL., ch. 14, p. 82).
12 In the Elements of Law [1640], XI. 9, Hobbes gives the following definition of trust and
distrust:
“TRUST is a passion proceeding from whom we expect or hope for good, so free from
doubt that upon the same we pursue no other way. And DISTRUST, or diffidence, is doubt
that maketh him endeavour to provide himself by other means”; notice he said before:
“Absolute privation of hope is despair, a degree whereof is diffidence”.
13 See also: “But in a civil estate, where there is a power set up to constrain those that
would otherwise violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable; and for that cause, he
which by the covenant is to perform first is obliged so to do” (EL. p. 85).
and the Social Contract Tradition, p. 132; here she claims that if Hobbes is unable to give an
answer to that question “his argument collapses”.
15 R. Tuck in his article on “Hobbes’s moral philosophy” (Cambridge Companion to
Hobbes, ed. by T. Sorell, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1996, p. 193) writes: “it
must be admitted that this passage [ . . . ] is notoriously obscure”.
16
Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, p. 65. I have to stress that this
idea of possible cooperation in the state of nature is just Hampton’s interpretation of the
text quoted above from the English Leviathan. Her understanding of Hobbes is much more
profound and subtle and it is not the object of this paper to offer a full appraisal of it.
17
c
3,3 1,4
A
nc
4,1 2,2 Nash equilibrium
state of nature
dominant strategy
(c, c) A and B cooperate
(c, nc) A cooperates, but B does not keep the promise
(nc, c) B cooperates, but A does not keep the promise
(nc, nc) A and B do not cooperate
In Hobbes’s state of nature, non-cooperation is the equilibrium state because each person
finds it rational to renege on promises rather than to keep them. The crossed arrows show
that it is not possible (rational) for the actors to leave the bottom left square to move up to
a Pareto superior square.
18 That Hobbes devoted much effort to the Latin translation of his book is what we can
see, for instance, from the letter his publisher Pieter Blaeu sent him from Amsterdam at the
end of November 1667: “Je vous diray au Second lieu que suis biën aise d’entendre que
vous avez desia achevé les deux tiers du livre que vous sçavez, et que vous travaillez tous les
Jours deux heures avec esperance de l’achever avec l’aide de Dieu devant Pasque” (in Th.
Hobbes, The Correspondence, ed. by Noel Malcolm, vol. II, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1994,
p. 693; Malcolm’s English translation [p. 695] says: “let me say that I am very happy to hear
that you have already completed two-thirds of that book (you know which [the Leviathan] ),
and that you are working on it for two hours every day, and hoping to finish it, with God’s
help, by Easter”).
19 He translated Aristotle, Thucydides and Homer; in his Verse Autobiography (in Opera
Latina, vol. I, p. lxxxv) he wrote: “Did learn to speak four languages, to write // And read
them too, which was my sole delight” (I have reasons to believe that the fourth language
next to Greek, Latin and English was Italian — although it is not impossible to claim that
it was Hebrew, or that he did not count English; in fact, one of Hobbes’s tasks in the service
of the Cavendish family was to translate the correspondence with the Venetian friar Fulgenzio
Micanzio, friend and personal assistant of Paolo Sarpi. See N. Malcolm, “A summary bio-
graphy of Hobbes”, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, pp. 17–19, who claims that
never been translated into English. But most of the modifications made by Hobbes in the
Latin Leviathan are now available in the footnotes to the English text edited by Edwin Curley
(T. Hobbes, Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, Indianapolis /
Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1994; the quote above is at p. 91, fn. 5). The
Latin text says: “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 [sic! not or as in English] 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” (Latin Leviathan, Amsterdam, 1668, in Opera Latina, ed. by
Molesworth, vol. III, p. 113; hereafter LL.).
21 See pp. 137–156. Kavka was nonetheless aware that there are problems with his
see A. M. Battista, Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino (Milano, Giuffrè 1989 [2d edition]),
and R. Tuck, “Grotius, Carneades and Hobbes”, Grotiana, New Series, Vol.4, 1983, pp. 43–
62. On insipiens (the fool) and Carneades Hobbes’s source is likely Cicero quoted by
Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones, Migne, vol. VI, pp. 595–96.
24 “Dixit insipiens, ‘Non est justitia; conservationis suae singuli et soli curam gerunt’ ”
(LL., p. 112).
25 “Verumtamen ratiocinatio haec, utcumque speciosa, falsa est”! (ibid., p. 113).
“ ‘Regnum,’ inquit ‘Dei acquiritur violentia. Quid si ab homine acquiri possit per violentiam
injustam, anne contra rectam rationem esset, cum impossibile esset ut inde ullum sibi malum,
sed summum bonum sequeretur’?” (ibid., pp. 112–13; the English text is, as often, less clear
(to me): “The kingdom of God is gotten by violence; but what if it could be gotten by unjust
violence? were it against reason so to get it [= salvation, i.e. eternal life], when it is impossible
to receive hurt by it” (EL., p. 90).
27 EL., p. 91, fn. 6; LL., 113: “Primo enim in civitate, si quis id faciat, quod, quantum
prospici et ratione intelligi potest, ad suam ipsius tendit destructionem, quamquam impro-
visum aliquod accidat quod eventum felicem efficiat, factum nihilominus fuisse imprudenter,
quia improvisum”.
28 Kavka seems to get almost the same conclusion when he writes (p. 141): “Hobbes may
be viewed as pointing out that founders, or preserving members [italics mine], of a common-
wealth will not accept unreliable parties, such as offensive violators of agreements, as
members. [ . . . ] agreement violators are [ . . . ] risking their chances of permanent escape from
the state of nature via the only effective mechanism thereof, membership in a commonwealth”.
Nonetheless Kavka’s language shows that he was thinking in the contractarian perspective
of the possibility of escaping the state of nature, a perspective I’m trying to reverse here.
of Men, Lewinston, The Edwin Mellen Press 1990, pp. 134–135). See the useful Introductory
Essay of this book.
32 On the medieval exempla, see J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University
1986) and, more compellingly, S. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cam-
bridge, Cambridge University Press 1992).
34 Already in 1641, in a letter to the earl of Devonshire, Hobbes wrote: “the dispute
between the spiritual and the civil power has of late, more than anything in the world, been
the cause of civil wars in all places of Christendom” (quoted by F.D. Weil, “The stranger,
prudence and trust in Hobbes”, Theory and Society, vol. 15, 1987, pp. 759–88 [772–73] ). About
the civil war as example of the state of nature, see EL., ch. 13, p. 77: “It may peradventure
be thought, there was never such a time nor condition of war as this [ . . . ] Howsoever, it
may be perceived what manner of life there would be where there where no common power
to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under peaceful government
use to degenerate into, in a civil war [italics mine]”.
35
That Hobbes used to equate long-term self-interest with salvation (eternal life) can be
seen from this observation by A.P. Martinich in The Two Gods of Leviathan, (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press 1992) p. 117: “All Christians have the responsibility to safe-
guard their own souls in this world in order to be with God in the next. This was Hobbes’s
view. When Bramhall denied that Saint Paul or Moses acted in his own self-interest; Hobbes
replied that both of those holy men “died for a good to themselves, which was eternal life
“(English Works, vol. 4, p. 378)”!
36 In his Prose Autobiography (Opera Latina, vol. I, pp. xiii–xxi), we read the following
story:
“[In 1647] when he was confined in bed, gravely ill, in Saint Germain [en Laye], near Paris,
Mersenne [a very good friend of his, and a father of the Franciscan order of the Minims]
came to him, called by some common friend, so that his friend would not suffer death
outside the Roman Church. Seated by the bedside, he began with consolations, and then
expanded for a while on the Roman Church’s power to remit sins. To which [Hobbes]
replied: ‘Father, I have debated all these things with myself some while ago now. To debate
the same things now will be tiresome. You have more pleasant things you can tell me. When
did you last see Gassendi?’. Hearing this, Mersenne changed the subject. A few days later,
Dr. John Cosins, afterward Bishop of Durham, approached him and offered to pray with
him God. Hobbes thanked him and said: ‘Yes, if you take the lead in prayers according to
the rite of our [Anglican] Church.’ This was a great sign of reverence for Episcopal dis-
cipline” (OL, I, pp. xvi; see C., pp. lxiv–lxv).
37 See the chapter 29 of Leviathan (Of the things that weaken or tend to the dissolution of
a commonwealth) where Hobbes lists some Calvinist principles among the doctrines “repugn-
ant to civil society”: “That every private man is judge of good and evil actions”; “whatsoever
after all, be [I do believe actually is] the principal concern of Hobbes and the central focus
of most of his argument” (“Hobbesian political order”, quoted, p. 166). As Spinoza observed
the obedience itself is the true origin of political power (oboedientia facit imperantem); this
takes care of the objection that Hobbes would have “to explain the origin of the resources
needed [by the State] for setting up a penal apparatus” (Pizzorno, “On the individualistic
theory of social order”, quoted above, fn. 7, p. 212).
39 In chapter 43 of Leviathan, Hobbes goes beyond the doctrine he expounded in the
Elements of Law, claiming that obedience is due even to a sovereign which is ‘infidel’ (non
Christian): “And when the sovereign is an infidel, every one of his own subjects that resisteth
him sinneth against the laws of God”! (EL., p. 410).
40 “Political theory, order and threat”, Nomos, XXVIII, (Political Order), 1996; see
pp. 28–32.