In Our Time - Hobbes

Episode Date: December 1, 2005

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued: "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". For Hobbes, the difference between order and disorder was stark. In the state of nature, ungoverned man lived life in "continual fear, and danger of violent death". The only way out of this "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" existence, he said, was to relinquish all your freedom and submit yourself to one all powerful absolute sovereign. Hobbes' proposal, contained in his controversial and now classic text, Leviathan, was written just as England was readjusting to life after the Civil War and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. In fact, in his long life Hobbes’ allegiance switched from Charles I to Cromwell and back to Charles II. But how did the son of a poor clergyman end up as the most radical thinker of his day? Why did so many of Hobbes' ideas run counter to the prevailing fondness for constitutionalism with a limited monarchy? And why is he regarded by so many political philosophers as an important theorist when so few find his ideas convincing? With Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge; David Wootton, Professor of History at the University of York; Annabel Brett, Senior Lecturer in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge University.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, quote, during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they're in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.

Thus Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century natural philosophy, who was principally interested in political theory. For Hobbes, the difference between order and disorder was stark. In the state of nature, ungoverned man lived a life in continual fear and danger of violent death. The only way out, he argued, was to submit yourself to warn all-powerful, absolute sovereign. Hobbes' proposals contained in his controversial and now classic text, The Leviathan, was written just as England was readjusting to life after the Civil War, the execution of the king and the rule of Oliver Cromwell.

so many of Hobbes' ideas run counter to the prevailing demands for constitutionalism with a limited monarchy, and why is he regarded by so many political philosophers as radical and important today? With me, to discuss the life and work of Thomas Hobbes, like Quentin, Regis Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, David Wooden, Professor of History at the University of York, and Annabel Brett, senior lecturer in political thought and intellectual history at Cambridge University. Quentin Skinner, the character of Hobbs' theories was essentially absolutist. Can you give us an overview of his political theory?

Yes, well, there are four texts. The first is the elements of law, which he circulates at the time of the resumming of Parliament in 1640. Half of that is a psychology. The second half is a politics. And then he translates that into Latin and publishes it in 1642. That's the day kiwi. The third text is Leviathan, published in 1651. And then much later he translates that himself in time.

to Latin. The theory undergoes extremely interesting variations, but I suppose that the absolutely fundamental point he wants to make is that it is always rational to give up all your rights to one sovereign, whether that be a natural person or a body of persons. And the celebrated account of the state of nature is intended to show you why it is rational to give up all your rights, because as you indicated in the opening quotation, the alternative to not doing so is war. Can you give us some idea of how he developed into such a powerful thinker? He's a sketched so that people know what we're talking about, his early life, the university and so on.

Yes. Well, he comes from a relatively poor family in the West Country, his father's an illiterate, alcoholic clergyman. But he has a rich uncle who sends him to Oxford. He's a second son, so I guess he's intended for the church, which is quite a thought. and he graduates from Oxford in 168, not going into the church, but another very well-worn path of the time. He immediately joins a noble household.

It's a rather strange story. Lord Hardwick was looking for a tutor for his son, Lord Hardwick who became the first Earl of Devonshire in 1618. His son is 18, but he just got married, and of course that debars him from being an undergraduate. So his father wants a tutor and writes to Hobbs' college and they recommend Hobbs.

That's in itself very strange because Hobbs is only three years older than the boy, but apparently, according to John Aubrey, Hobbs's first biographer, the young Sprigg had said that he did not want a grave doctor, he wanted someone his own age. And Hobbs is appointed,

fresh out of Oxford, and effectively stays as he calls himself a servant in the Devonshire household for the rest of his incredibly long life, that's to say, for nearly 70 years. It is an extraordinary story, isn't it? I mean, he's a tutor in residence with great independence, often at odds with the family he was a servant too, as he put it to him out.

Absolutely. David Wooden, during the 1620s, Hobbes undertook an extraordinary linguistic task which was to translate Thucydides' history of the Paloponnesian War. Why was that so difficult, and why do you think he did it? Well, I think why he does it. He tells us later that the reason he does it is that he wants to understand democracy. and Thucydides has written about the democracy of ancient Athens.

And it's at a moment when Parliament is trying to assert authority against the king. And so Hobbes, I think, thinks that there is a move towards something he would call democracy in England, and he's very much opposed to it. And he thinks Thucydides is opposed to democracy, and he turns to him for that. The other reason I think for reading Thucydides and translating him is that Thucydides is a brilliant student of power politics and of international relations. and Hobbes, when he comes to present his theory of the state of nature, says that this standard situation in which you can actually see people in the state of nature

is to see one state dealing with another state. And I think if you read Thucydides, what you see is vicious power politics in action, and that becomes the model for Hobbes of what the state of nature is. What are you attracted to Thucydides? Because Thucydides seem to show that democracies are always chaotic, and did that idea underpin the next great work again referred to by going to? like when the elements of law, the de Keeva. I think that's right.

I mean, as far as Hobbes is concerned, what matters is that there should be a supreme authority whose word is law, effectively. Now, in principle, that could be a democracy. The problem with democracies is they're very bad at reaching decisions, and they keep changing their mind. So that in that sense, Hobbs prefers to have one person in charge. So he didn't trust humans as a group, did he?

His views of them are fairly savage. Everybody knows. The only quotation, I think, that everybody knows from a philosopher is that life is, solitary poor, nastism, British and George. Hobbes thinks in it, for theoretical purposes, you must assume that people are selfish and that they are only interested in improving their own situation in the world,

and that this brings them into conflict with other people who are also trying to improve their own situation in the world. And that conflict has no natural limit. So as far as he's concerned, you must assume that everybody is murderous in their intentions towards everybody else. He assumes that we're driven by the pursuit of pleasure and by the attempt to avoid pain. And in that sense, we are machines,

and we respond entirely automatically and appetitively to the prospect of increasing pleasure or avoiding pain. Annabel Brett, we've just heard about some ideas that Hobbes had about our psychology. In the second part of elements of law, he examines how human nature can be subjected to a political discipline. Can you tell us about, tell us something of that? Yes, well, I think that elements of law is a really key text because it establishes some crucial lines of argument

that I think go through all his political works. And the basic parallelism he wants to draw is between the absolute liberty of an individual in the state of nature and the absolute power of the sovereign to decide in the body politic. So really in order to understand how we make the body politic and we subject ourselves to this absolute will of the sovereign, we have to understand a little bit of the psychology and of the liberty that characterises the state of nature.

So essentially that liberty is a liberty to act at will. And as David's just said, Hobbes doesn't think of the will in the way that we would think of the will, really, as some kind of free power to choose between two options. For Hobbs, the will just is the passions or the appetite, specifically the last appetite in deliberation, and therefore it's necessitated. And therefore to act at will is simply to act upon your last appetite or aversion towards a particular course of action. Just to round up this section, if we may, David Wooden, can you just place Hobbes' thought as we come to the outbreak of the civil war

in the context of the impending civil war? What's important about Hobbs' thought in 1640 is he is an extreme, his politics are extreme. He wants to insist that the king has the authority to do whatever he wants. Crucially, for example, all property essentially belongs to the king. The king can tax anybody, any amount, whenever he wants. He needn't go to Parliament for consent. And by pushing that line of argument, Hobbes is setting himself against anyone who wants to claim that royal authority is limited and that subjects have rights.

And his politics in that sense is way off the scale of normal political discourse. But it's one that's very attractive to a range of supporters of absolute monarchy. But in 1640, he went again, he had to escape to Paris. What was that escape prompted by? Yes. Well, he does seem suddenly to panic. the long Parliament assembled on the 3rd of November in 1640 Hobbes had circulated the elements of law in May in quite a large number of copies

it's not printed but it's manuscript printed and in fact 12 manuscripts survive quite a number of them up the road in the British Library and he therefore fears that the sort of view which as Dave has rightly said he's put forward in the elements of law is going to get him into real trouble and he may not be wrong because only a week after they met the long Parliament announced that it would investigate people who held the view that Parliament was not an essential part of the Constitution.

And he writes a letter to Lord Scudamore from Paris saying that the day after he heard that, he just decided to leave. And he takes the first boat out, his trunk has to be sent on after him. He just about scrapes enough money together. And there he stays in Paris from the end of 1640 until he returns to England in 1652. but the irony is for the greatest of the English political theorists is that the great work of political theory was written in Paris. Yes, and let's turn to that now, to the Leviathan, Annabel Brett, which he started in 1649,

and the year in which Charles first was tried and executed. He put forward in the Leviathan, one of the things he did, we can dwell on the Leviathan for a while, he put forward what we thought of as fairly radical ideas about morality. Can you talk to us about, can you talk to us about, Can you tell us what those ideas were? Yes, I mean, basically he reduced all being to matter in motion. And therefore, what he was getting rid of was the idea that being is partly constituted by some specific form,

which has some specific good, objectively in its nature. And for the scholastics, specifically human form, as distinct from animal form, was distinguished by these powers of reason and of ways. So reason is a natural faculty that you have naturally to be able to discern both what is, but also what is naturally and objectively morally good. And Thomas Aquinas referred to that as the light of God's countenance, which is actually signed upon us from the Psalms, this natural illumination of our minds, which is reason.

And in parallel with that we have a will which is able to choose this natural moral good which we can discern by reason. And all of these two distinguish us from animals and are part of specifically human nature. Now what Hobbes says, we've already seen him get rid of the will. The will is simply appetite. Now what he does, and it comes to the foreign leviathan,

is to get rid of this idea of an objective morality. So for Hobbs, we don't have this natural light within us which enables us to discern what is naturally morally good for mankind. So is he in effect saying David Witten that there's no objective foundation for goodness. He's absolutely saying that. He's saying what is good is what's good for me. And I'm entitled to make any view,

take any decision about what good is. If I say it's good for me, that makes it good. It's to completely eliminate any idea of objective, right and wrong, objective good and evil. It's to insist that we create our own good through our experience of pleasure and pain and nobody can tell us that we're right or wrong about it. And consequently, there is no limit to what we're entitled to do

if we think we're pursuing something that's good for us in a state of nature. Was that thought to be subversive at the time? It still sounds quite subversive now. It's outrageous. I mean, let's be clear about this. What makes Hobbs an interesting political theorist or an interesting philosopher in general is that he comes up with outrageous positions, which he argues for so strongly that you have to be impressed by the argument

and you have to actually worry greatly about where he's actually wrong. And that's what he thinks political... philosophy in general should be, gets his idea of philosophy, we're told, from reading Euclid. And he opens Euclid, and he sees a conclusion, and he thinks that must be wrong. And he goes back, and he works through the argument, and he sees that it has to be right.

And his whole idea of philosophy is that you will persuade people to think things that they would not otherwise have thought, and you will persuade them in such a way that they see that they can't disagree with you. And you do this by defining your terms, so that your terms are clear and perspicuous, as Annabelle said, and then by working through deductions until you get to a conclusion that as it were, is forced upon people.

And so if you follow Hobbs, you'll be forced to accept that there is no such thing as right and wrong other than your own will. There's a famous frontispiece of the Leviathan, Quentin Skidda, which depicts an extraordinary image. Could you tell us what that image is and then tell us what it says? Yes. Well, there are two versions of the frontispiece. There's the one that you find in the wonderful presentation copy of Leviathan

on vellum presented to the man who became King Charles II which is now in the British Library and that is a drawing and then there's the engraving which is the frontispiece of Leviathan there's an interesting difference which is in the engraving a large number of small people who make up a monstrous body that rises over the countryside looking up with their backs to us into the face of this great figure and some of these are men with hats on some of them are women

and some are actually carrying babies. That is not the version that Hobbes himself seems to have designed. In the presentation copy of Levitin, what you see is a lot of faces rather strangely looking out at us. But the fundamental idea is the same in both versions, which is that a large number of individuals have in some way been made into one and that they make one kind of monstrous body.

And that answers to what I think to be really the fundamental thought in the politics of Leviathan, which maybe I could try to say a word about. Well, where we've been left by Annabelle and Dave, absolutely rightly, is with these passional figures in a state of nature. And it's very important that the state of nature is a state of individuals. It's crucial to Hobbes' absolutist politics that he has to get away from the idea of the people as a body of people. Because if there are a body of people who are conceived to contract or covenant with a sovereign,

then if the people is one party to a contract and the sovereign the other, they can impose terms upon the sovereign and they'll be very stupid not to. Hobbes wants to get away from the thought that any terms can be opposed on sovereigns. And he does that by denying that there's any such thing as the body of the people. There are only individuals. So what is the contract? Well, the contract or covenant can only be, he insists, a contract between each and every one of these individuals

that there be a sovereign. So we each agree with each to name a certain person. But the subtlety of the theory, which I think the frontist piece very brilliantly illuminates, is that the act of all of us agreeing with everyone who should be sovereign makes us one, because we now have a representative who has one will and one voice and can act. But since we authorise those actions, they are the actions of one person. as he says. So the act of authorising a representative

turns the multitude into one. He says, it's the unity of the representer, not the unity of the represented, that maketh the people one. However, you can now ask a new question about the people, which is, what is the name of this person that the multitude turns itself into

by the act of agreeing a sovereign? And the answer to that question is the state. That's what the state is. It's a multitude of individuals who have been raised, rendered one by putting themselves under this figure. David, you're taking out another element from the frontispiece that Clinton didn't mention, which is that this vast body of Leviathan, which is made up of all the subjects,

is standing there towering over the countryside, and he's holding two things in his hands. One is the implements of military power, and the other is the Crozier, the implement of religious power. And one of the important features of Hobbes' argument by the time he's presenting it in Leviathan is that he's insisting that the ruler not only controls all men. power of compulsion, but that the ruler also, as it were, controls the marketplace in ideas, that the ruler will be able to tell people what to think, that he will control what is preached from the pulpits, he's able to legislate about what people ought to believe. Hobbes would prefer him not to legislate too much because he likes people to have a certain amount of freedom

of argument. He obviously benefits himself from the great freedom under the Cromwellian regime. But in principle, the ruler can legislate for people to believe anything. religion, because we're talking about essentially full of religious strife as well as political strife, where did religion find its place in Hobbes's philosophy? Well, when Hobbes starts out, he says very little about religion. The peculiar thing that happens in LeBarthen is that the book becomes half of the book is about religion. And he discusses religion at great length.

And he's taking advantage of the fact that you can speak very freely under Cromwell's regime. And the religion he presents is a most astonishing religion because, as we've been saying, he's a materialist. He therefore doesn't believe in the soul. He can't believe in angels or demons as spiritual beings. He can't even believe that God is a spiritual being. So he has to construct a religion because he wants to insist that he is religious.

He has to construct a religion in which there are no spiritual beings, in which there is no possibility of survival except as a material survival, and in which the whole of the Bible has to be re-read in order to eliminate any suggestion that there could be a spiritual existence. and that creates a very peculiar religion indeed. But also with his extreme sensationalism, that's to say the origins of all our cognition must in the end be the senses, he's going to have no track whatever with the idea

that we can know anything about God. We can't know anything about God because we can only know in a sensory way. So the religion that you end up with is, as Dave is implying, an extremely minimalist one. One thing which I think is important about that is that it is connected, I think, with a theme which isn't always sufficiently stressed in Hobbes,

which is the desire to liberate. He wants to liberate people from the fear that they are under when they are under ecclesiastical authorities who frighten them with hell. There's no such place. Who frighten them with the idea of demons and devils. There's no such beings

who frighten them with the idea that there are witches who can do them harm. None of this spiritual world exists, so none of these powers exist. But just as he was charged with going massively against the grain in 1640 politically, he's open to the charge of heresy now, especially in the protectorate. Yes. Well, the moment when that charge becomes very serious is after the restoration of 1660, Parliament is in an extremely reaction, removed, religiously speaking.

And indeed in 1666, there is introduced into Parliament a decision to exist. examine certain books for heresy. And Leviathan is specifically mentioned. The danger was that heresy was a capital crime. But Hobbes, although he's a very old man by now, has a characteristically aggressive response to this, which is that he decides to make himself an expert on the law of heresy. And he immediately writes a book called the dialogue between the philosopher and the student of the common laws, in which he goes in detail into the history of the English law of heresy. He also writes a history of heresy, and he emerges very typical of Hobbs with the definition of what heresy is.

That's to say, using as he always does, etymology for definitions. And he determines that what it is to hold heretical view is simply to hold a minority opinion. And he asks how it could possibly be criminal to hold the minority opinion. We have somebody who was a monarchist under Charles I. And then he fled to Paris

because of the increasing limited monarchy views and ended up with Breggicide in the Civil War. And he came back and he was very pleased. pleased to be under Cromwell, and then Charles I second came back, and as luck would have it, he'd been his tutor in Paris for a little while, so he just about got through that. All this time, can I just bring back into play the support he was getting from the Cavendish family? How did that keep operating there, Gordon?

Well, I think it's one of the remarkable things about Hobbes, I think, is that people seem to like him, and because they like him, they put up with opinions that they regard as outrageous. I mean, Bishop Bramwell, who attacked him, said that he respected and liked him, the man, but he hated the opinions. And his relationship with the Cavendish family, I think, has to be based upon the fact that they have a good deal of personal affection for him, because they continue to protect him and they look after him and they care for him and they regard him as part of their extended family,

even though his politics are never theirs. And after the restoration, their politics are weak politics and they're in favor of limited monarchy. And yet Hobbes is there continuing to insist that the monarchy should be absolute. and when he writes behemoth, a history of the English Civil War, he effectively complains that Charles II has failed to take his opportunity at the restoration to establish absolute power and has allowed Parliament back in, which was a great mistake, as it were.

That's the implicit story he tells. Now, then one point you just made earlier, which I think we should take up, is this very important fact about the capacity of Hobbes himself to survive different regimes and, as it were, the theory as well, because I think, as you were implying, this has a very strong theoretical, grounding in Hobbs and it's important I think in Leviathan to see that that is not a legitimate

text, that's not a defence of monarchy and Hobbes' theory of political obligation is what we need to say a word about here. I mean it seems to me that what's very important after, as you say, the regicide and the abolition indeed of the institution of monarchy is

the government that's thereby been established under the Cromwellian Council of State is it a lawful government? And of course royalists will want to say well, no, because even if they've executed Charles I first, there is a living son, so he must be the king by inherited right, because obligation goes with the right to rule. And others will want to say, well, that may not be the case, but the radicals, the levellers and parliamentarians will want to say, but this has just been a military push. I mean, what's happened is that the army has intervened in politics, and nobody has given their consent. And I think it's very important that in Levantam, Hobbes says himself at the end

that his main aspiration was to see his way around those two arguments. And the argument about conquest he sees his way around, through this, again, back to Dave's adjective, outrageous fear of freedom, which is that if you submit to a conqueror for fear of death, you nevertheless submit freely because you deliberate that this is better than death, so that's a free act. So you do consent to conquest. But as to the notion that this is not legitimate because political obligation has to correlate with right,

it's fundamental to Hobbes's Leviathan, and perhaps it's most important doctrine that that is wrong, that the question in politics is always who is protecting us. And so for Hobbs, the question is, who is protecting you? Well, Charles I definitely isn't, he's dead, his son definitely isn't, he's abroad. Cromwell's Council of State is. There is peace, taxes are being gathered, things are settling down, And as Hobbs says, the end, meaning the motive, the end of protection is obedience. David.

Well, I think that's one side of the coin, yes. You enter government to be protected. You want peace. But how is it possible for government to protect you? It's possible for government to protect you because government has the power to terrify you. The foundation of Hobbs' political theory is fear. He himself says that he and fear were born twins. He's born during the Armada invasion.

And you can't separate in Hobbs' political theory the capacity. of government to protect you from the capacity of government to kill you. And so when Hobbes says that a military dictatorship, which is what Cromwell is effectively establishing, that a military dictatorship is a legitimate form of government, why is it legitimate? Because it's capable of terrifying everybody. And that's what makes it legitimate. And in that sense, you can understand that what that does is evacuate from politics any notion of higher principle being based in the political order.

What you get out of the political order is simply peace and stability. if you're lucky enough that the military dictatorship doesn't choose to cut you away. It would seem that authoritarian ever since all over the world can use that as justification, can't they, I mean. Well, in one sense, but I mean I would disagree that Hobbes' Commonwealth is merely a reign of terror. In Chapter 30, when he's talking about the duties of the sovereign representative, he says he must actually inform the subject to the grounds of his sovereign rights, because his rights depend on our natural obligation. We have to understand that, to understand our subjection.

If we're merely terrorized into subjection and we take the sovereign as our enemy, then it will disintegrate. There's the implication. We have to own what he does. Exactly. So I would say that, for one thing. But the other thing I would say about Hobbs and today is that on the one hand, he's a useful counter to any kind of complacency, that the civility we enjoy is somehow natural and we just have it anyway. It's a very delicate construct for Hobbes. We could lose it at any point.

So that's one. And the other way in which I think he's still relevant is to lose this teleology, this inherent superiority of man over nature. And particularly now, I think, with environmental concerns, we need to bear that in mind. I'd like to come back on the reign of terror question. I mean, Hobbes' arguments necessarily and deliberately contain subtle ambiguities. But the foundation of Hobbes' political thought, I think, as Quentin made clear,

is a very peculiar doctrine of consent. If a highwayman comes up to me and says, your money or your life, and I hand over my money, as far as Hobbs is concerned, I've agreed to it, and I've entered into a contract to hand over my money. Most willingly. Most willingly. So something done under fear is voluntary. And in that sense, all our relationships with the sovereign are voluntary, but simultaneously done under fear.

And so we can be terrorized into consent. And where we normally think if we're terrorized, we're not consenting, Hobbs insisted that if we're terrorized, we are consenting. That's right. But there is something very important to. remember in the politics of 1649, which is when Hobbes is writing Leviathan, which is that the government did ask for a loyalty oath. In October 1649, Parliament demands that people so-called engage. Every male over the age of 18 had to sign, it was all sent around to the parish churches, that they accepted that England was now a republic. So the question, is it a lawful regime, is the

key question. And Leviathan answers, yes, it's a lawful regime, because it's protecting you. Thank you for Anna M. L. Bread, David Wooden and Quentin Skinner. Next week, we're talking about artificial intelligence. Thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.uk, forward slash radio 4.