Philosopher of the Month: Thomas Hobbes
When Thomas Hobbes died in 1679 at the age of 91 his reputation as an
atheist in religion and an absolutist in politics not only rendered him highly
disreputable but also served to shunt his political ideas into relative
obscurity for the next three hundred years. He was undoubtedly ahead of
his time and his contribution to political philosophy has only been fully
recognized more recently in the huge range of scholarship devoted to his
most enduring work, Leviathan (1651).
At first, the impact Hobbes might make in the world of philosophy was not
at all certain and it appeared his life would be spent in the conventional way
for a graduate of the time, as a tutor to the sons of aristocracy. But by
chance he gained service with William Cavendish, soon to be Earl of
Devonshire. Hobbes spent the next twenty years as much Cavendish’s friend
and personal secretary as tutor, and the apprenticeship served him well.
Most important, it introduced Hobbes to the scientific circle of England and
France.
During this time Hobbes served as secretary to Francis Bacon – it is through
Hobbes we know the apocryphal story of how Bacon caught his fatal cold,
going out into the winter snow to stuff a dead chicken and prove the
preservative power of freezing.
If Hobbes had achieved the acclaim he desired in his lifetime it would have
been as a scientist. He achieved a modicum of success and a degree of
notoriety, in part through his regular and frequent debates with leading
members of the Royal Society and most notably through the open animosity
between him and the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes.
Hobbes developed a radical theory of light and optics in the 1630s: he was
probably the first person to suggest that color is a creation of the brain and
does not reside in the object. When Descartes published his own theory of
vision in one of the appendices to his Discourse On Method (1637), the
mutual distrust and jealousy grew. Yet Hobbes and Descartes were actually
closely matched in their philosophies. Both were enamored with mathematics
and Euclidean geometry, the power and perfection of logical deduction, and
their belief that mathematics begets physics and that both can explain the
entire nature of reality. The significant difference between them was that
Hobbes was a committed materialist on matters of psychology and the mind.
Between 1641 and 1658 Hobbes published the three parts of The Elements
of Philosophy, a clear early attempt at a unity of science. De Corpore (1655)
combined his views on scientific method, language and logic and formed the
first part of his trilogy. De Homine followed in 1658. But ironically it was the
third part De Cive – actually written first in 1640 – that gained Hobbes his
reputation as a political theorist. In it Hobbes rejected the traditional view
of Plato and Aristotle that political life is natural to human beings. By
denying any innate desire of humans to be governed, the goal of political
philosophy ceases to be the search for a theory of government but instead
becomes a justification for accepting or needing government and a
determination of what kind of government best fits humans’ natural desires.
De Cive served to situate political philosophy firmly within Hobbes’
materialist conception of the world through its requirement for politics to
be predicated on a scientific explanation of the nature of human beings.
But it was not until 1651 and the publication of Leviathan that Hobbes
developed these ideas into a full and detailed political treatise. He initiated
what has become known as social contract theory. He argued the case for
the state and a contract between the individuals in a society and the state.
Significantly, the state is obligated to protect certain natural rights of
citizens, act as arbiter in disputes, and generally enforce the mutually
agreed upon contract. If it fails to do this, the right to govern is forfeit.
The basis for Hobbes’ contract is twofold: first, humans are selfish and
need their egoism restrained in order to act morally; and second, the
establishment of a commonwealth is purely for the mutual benefit of its
citizens.
The most controversial final stage of his argument is that the commonwealth
is best served by a state with absolute powers, able to enforce the contract
if necessary. Paradoxically, at a time of civil war and after the execution of
Charles I, Hobbes defended the principle of absolute rule with a clear
indication that a monarch could best serve the interests of citizens of a
commonwealth as an impartial referee. His consummate skill was in arguing
his case in a way that was palatable to republicans and royalists alike – a fact
that no doubt kept him alive for twenty-eight more years.