What does the process of tracking these keywords reveal about Hobbes’s construction of power? How, for example, do his treatments of death and liberty modify or complicate his theory of power? What are the implications of these constellations for Mills’s and Hirschman’s arguments about the place of Leviathan in the intellectual histories of capitalism and white supremacy? How, by extension, do they challenge or amplify Runciman’s point?
The student responses quoted below were informed by the following readings:
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Book 2
Tracking the use of the keywords “motion” and “resistance” while reading “Of Common-Wealth” was interesting in that there are few instances in this section of Leviathan where those words are used explicitly, but the few instances in which they are explicitly used serve to bring attention to interesting ideas. One of these ideas is a summary of the Hobbesian construction of power: “the Soveraign, is the publique Soule, giving Life and Motion to the Common-wealth” (chapter 29) and “all resistance to the essential Rights of Soveraignty” is “Rebellion” that should be forbidden and worked against by the office of the sovereign (chapter 30). This idea that, in establishing the commonwealth, the designated sovereign, whether that be a single monarch (which is what Hobbes prefers) or an assembly, has absolute power over its subjects purely because, without this sovereign, the commonwealth will not be able to sustain itself, and its subjects will relapse back into a violent state of nature… The idea of motion in particular was also used to define what “liberty” or “freedom” looked like under a commonwealth, especially under his preferred form of commonwealth, the monarchy. Hobbes defines liberty as “the absence of Opposition,” specifically the absence of “external Impediments of motion” (chapter 21). It also seems that Hobbes means for these impediments to be physical, for he does not consider the bonds of laws and such to be a deprivation of one’s liberty (since they are not physical) and argues that subjects actually have a lot of liberty under a monarchy, which definitely contradicts the modern/popular notions of life under such an absolute government.
– Aryan Ashraf
Because of this close relationship between the sovereign and power, power appears to be indivisible. Hobbes writes that the “Essence of Soveraignty” consists of rights that are “incommunicable, and inseparable,” for “a Kingdome divided in it selfe cannot stand” and thus the Sovereign must always be a unitary whole (127)… One discussion of law I found curious was Hobbes’s claim that the sovereign “is not Subject to the Civill Lawes” (184). It was not the claim itself that was interesting—sovereignty not being restrained by law seems in line with the rest of Hobbes’s argument—but rather the justification for this point. The sovereign is immune from these laws not because they don’t apply to him, but because “having power to make and repeale Lawes, he may when he pleaseth, free himselfe from that subjection, by repealiing those Lawes that trouble him, and making of new” (184). Thus the sovereign can’t legally break the law, he can just undo it, do what he wants to do, then remake the law—the law still bounds his sovereign power in even a way he cannot overcome.
– J. Doe
Hobbes later states, “The Obligation of Subjects to the Sovereign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them” and “The end of Obedience is Protection” (p. 153). Thus, the contract, or covenant, between a government and its people is void when the government is no longer able to maintain peace; obedience is no longer required by the people when their government does not protect them. However, if (a) the contract between a government and its people is void when the government no longer is able to maintain peace and (b) there is no valid rebellion or any kind of opposition under a sovereign because this is simply considered by Hobbes to be rebellion against oneself, the question simply becomes what is considered “peace” and its opposite, “warre.” By this I mean, when are conditions satisfactorily war-like enough—in Hobbes’s definition of war, which in the state of nature leaves every man to defend his own rights without protection from a sovereign—for the contract to be considered void, as opposed to people’s opposition to the government being seen as rebellion. These two pieces of rationale can be used to categorize what is valid “rebellion” and what isn’t, thus deciding what (if any) forms of opposition a Hobbesian government may accept. We also see similar rationale used to justify or invalidate sociopolitical movements of opposition throughout history, for instance the American Revolution. Hobbes’s construction of power here begs the question: what is the point at which rebellion is justified by a government’s failure to protect its people?
– Emily Lathers
The following idea felt radical, but in large part accurate. When someone is struggling to survive, it is the fault of the sovereign for placing him in such a situation, and thus it is a justified action. This is not something that holds in the modern day laws, where stealing food to survive is still viewed as stealing food. I do not know whether Hobbes’s idea was ever implemented in the political system of his time, but it is a justified one and very interesting to contemplate.
“When a man is destitute of food, or other thing necessary for his life, and cannot preserve himselfe any other way, but by some fact against the Law; as if in a great famine he take the food by force, or stealth, which he cannot obtaine for mony, nor charity ; or in defence of his life, snatch away another mans Sword, he is totally Excused”
– Kip Rodes
As a physicist and bureaucrat, Hobbes is well acquainted with both the concept of “Force” as a mathematical concept and as a physical means of achievement. By looking at the investigation of “force” in Leviathan as the work becomes less a work of abstract theory and more a series of prognoses for a State, we can track Hobbes’s increasingly pragmatic train of thought as he investigates the specifics of his society and the workings of its people… Hobbes shows us those who are slaves to the passion of “Sudden Glory” (pg. 45) and are forced by their own insecurities to observe and ridicule the “defects of others”. Here, Hobbes is investigating a specific application of a force: a passion-driven, emotional force that exerts itself on society. As leviathan shifts its focus to the interactions between men and the influence of passion on those interactions, his concept of force shifts from an abstract magnitude to a shaper of our interpersonal interactions.
– Ben Rosin
…So then for Hobbes, the notion of power becomes a question of how to harness or modify nature. This is seen in the ways the contract puts limits on the natural liberties of man.
“But civil Law is an Obligation; and takes from us the Liberty which the Law of Nature gave us. Nature gave a Right to every man to secure himself by his own strength, and to invade a suspected neighbor, by way of prevention: but the Civill Law takes away that Liberty, in all cases where the protection of the Law may be safely stayd for. Insomuch as Lex and Just, are as different as Obligation and Liberty.” (p. 200)
– Kestrel Valdez
“Feare and Liberty are consistent; as when a man throweth his goods into the Sea for feare the ship should sink, he doth it nevertheless very willingly, and may refuse to doe it if he will : It is therefore the action, of one that was free…” (Hobbes, ch. 21, p. 146)
Here, Hobbes claims that Subjects exercise a certain amount of free will in choosing to obey or disobey their Sovereign, but Fear incentives compliance over rebellion, giving one the motivation to exercise control over Passions of Nature in favor of deference to the Sovereign. Fear, then, allows the Sovereign’s will to reign supreme over all of Nature, both the State of and Laws of. This is in direct contrast to Luther, who believes that commands aren’t given so that we might follow them but so that we know what to aspire to even if we are not equipped to follow the command. And since, according to Luther, all action is predetermined, one cannot choose to obey or disobey a command; that choice has already been made by God and thus any and all action is acceptable and expected. By this logic, Nature will always overcome Fear, meaning that power lies in the whoever Nature gives it to.
– Nina Zhuo
The student responses quoted below were informed by the following readings:
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Books 3-4
With this and many other arguments on the semantics of scripture and such, Hobbes makes a very anti-Calvinist argument: people can obey their sovereigns even if the laws of the sovereign go against what is understood to be the laws of God. By not only distinguishing that there is no real Kingdom of God in the present day but also that obeying the sovereign avoids eternal torment in life on Earth as well as in the afterlife, that having faith and obeying laws is the way into heaven, that a martyr is not someone who dies for their belief in God but rather someone who physically witnessed the resurrection, and that the Church itself (with its false Pope and clergy) is already shrouded by the Kingdom of Darkness, Hobbes makes the Calvinist stance of fighting for godliness no matter what appear self-righteous by using the literal meanings of scripture to show that such behavior was never asked of Christians in the first place, especially when the institution itself on Earth is so flawed. In all, it serves to support Hobbes’s belief that unwavering allegiance to the sovereign no matter what, even if one’s faith contradicts with the sovereign’s actions, is a necessity.
– Aryan Ashraf
Before moving into intense Biblical exegesis, Book III attempts to argue that the root of Christian authority lies in the Holy Scripture (“The question therefore here, is of the Power to make the Scriptures (which are the Rules of Christian Faith) Laws”), and that it is ultimately the Sovereign who has authority over what counts as canonical Scripture (“Therefore hitherto, the Canonizing or making of the Scripture Law, belonged to the Civill Sovereign”) (356-357). Effectively, this means that “both State, and Church are the same men” and the Sovereign is the one who rules over both (378). The long, Scriptural arguments aim to support this central claim through showing (among other things) that one can obtain Salvation through believing that Jesus is the Christ—which is something internal to a person, such that even if the Sovereign commands you to publicly declare otherwise, your faith will still keep you saved—and that the Kingdom of God was an actual Civil Kingdom which is no longer extant (it started with Moses as its Sovereign and ended with Saul) and thus cannot be the basis of any rebellion against one’s Sovereign. Indeed, Book IV lays out how the cui bono of the Church’s claim to be supreme in civil affairs results from a desire for power. He also, at a point that I can’t find now, refers to God as the “Soveraign of Soveraigns” which is an interesting conception to think about.
– J. Doe
In chapter 38 Hobbes writes, “It is impossible a Common-wealth should stand, where any other than the Sovereign, hath a power of giving greater rewards than Life; and of inflicting greater punishments than Death” (p. 306-307). Here, Hobbes uses the forces of life and death as the forces of coercion by a civil sovereign to maintain power. He contrasts the physical aspects of life and death with the biblical “breath of life” (p. 272), eternal life that Hobbes argues would have been given to Adam if he had not sinned, and eternal torment as found in the scriptures with punishments worse than death itself – the “Plague of Darkness,” “Everlasting, and Unquenchable Fire” (p. 313). There may be similarities between the “breath of life” (p. 272) Hobbes mentions and Aristotle’s “vital principle” which “as being in the form of a natural body, holding life in potentiality.” However, Hobbes uses this notion of the “breath of life” as evidence of the spirit of God, rather than the foundation for all living things like Aristotle does, which for Hobbes would be motion. Furthermore, Hobbes quotes scripture portraying God as “not a God of the Dead, but of the Living; for they all live to him” (p. 310). There is thus a peculiar distinction to be drawn here between the respective powers over life and death of a civil sovereign reigning over a common-wealth and God reigning over the “Kingdom of God” (chap. 31). Hobbes portrays the civil sovereign as having the power to give rewards and punishment on the greatest extremes of life and death, whereas God may have this power but is ultimately not a “God of the Dead” (p. 310). The first quote therefore may refer to a civil common-wealth or the “kingdom of God” as a kind of common-wealth, furthered by Hobbes’s descriptions of “a Kingdome, wherein God was King” (p. 282).
– Emily Lathers
I decided to examine the word justice in the text, because the historical context that we learned about in the last class focused strongly on what was right and wrong for each person. The concept of what is right, honorable and just is a very powerful one, and also one that can be extremely divisive, especially when people have strong views about the correct outlook on life. Justice here is something that men are predisposed to, but also have to seek out in their lives and find in order to properly maintain a commonwealth. He states that “the Makers of Civill Laws, are not onely Declarers, but also Makers of the justice, and injustice of actions”. This signifies the strong value that is assigned to justice, with it being tantamount to right and wrong. It also signifies that right and wrong are things that are to be determined by the law makers, rather than the individuals. He goes so far as to say that “if any else can make a Law besides [the sovereign], all Commonwealth, and consequently all Peace, and Justice must cease”.
– Kip Rodes
Because of the way in which Hobbes’s writing challenges the sovereignty of the church and its influence over the state, I chose to follow the word “Ordained” in books 3 and 4 of Leviathan. I think that Hobbes’ atypical use of the word helps him redraw the power dynamic between the church and state—combatting the notion that the church rules and elects its leaders through a holy, super-political system. Hobbes’s makes it clear that rulers have the same right to power that pastors or bishops do—and can exert this power over each of their people, including those in the church. In fact, rulers can “ordain” pastors as they see fit (pg. 421) to influence the teachings of the church… In Book 4, Hobbes uses ordained in a revolutionary sense, to demonstrate the administrative decisions of the leviathan itself, allowing the commonwealth to ordain public schools for different spheres of training. In this way, Hobbes shows us that ordainment, and thus the power structure of the church, is self-contained, and cannot influence the people of the commonwealth without the consent of the sovereign—who wields the same god-given power awarded to the church.
– Walter Ben Rosin
In Books three and four I started tracking peace and contract but I found myself focusing on Hobbes’ use of the word contract in contrast to his use of the word covenant. A covenant refers to a spiritual agreement while contract a civil one yet Hobbes switches between the two in unclear ways in this section of the text. This seems like an important distinction to understand as the original covenants between God and prophets seem to form a foundation for Hobbes’ understanding of contract. Yet, Hobbes makes unclear the delineation between the two words and even switches between them in the same paragraphs… (pg. 323)
This seems like an important difference for Hobbes to note as in this whole section of the text his goal is to demarcate where the churches power ends and the sovereign takes control. What made Abrahams agreement with God contractual as opposed to only a covenant?
– Kestrel Valdez
Hobbes makes the general claim that Faith is an untouchable, internalized phenomenon that cannot be Commanded away, even by the Lawfull Civil Sovereign. However, he maintains that a Sovereign has the power to suppress the performance of Faith in his expectation of Obedience on that grounds that Obedience is a moral obligation under Christian ideology. In other words, a Subject may have internalized certain ideologies regarding Faith, but the performance of that Faith can be lawfully and morally restricted according to Sovereign Will. In this dynamic, Sovereign Power operates to reorient the innate, obliging the Subject to act only on the impulses and desires that suit the Sovereign’s needs. Power lies in the overriding of Faith with the demand for Obedience so that, whatever the Subject may think internally, they will comply externally. For Hobbes, the Sovereign doesn’t take away Faith, but convinces Subjects that they can only act on their Faith in a way that would be productive to the pursuit of Peace as the Sovereign defines it. The state of Faith, then, is separate from Obedience but the act of Faith, in the Hobbesian world, is bound by Obedience.
– Nina Zhuo