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Hobbes and the Science of Indirect Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Harvey C. Mansfield Jr.
Harvey C. Mansfield Jr.*
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Harvard University
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Extract

The article defines indirect government as self-government through intermediaries authorized by the people, as opposed to the direct rule of the people. It requires that the people abstain from government after authorizing it, and hence that political debate center on whether or how the government is representative, not on what it should do. Almost all modern government is indirect and based on the indirect question of representation. Hobbes, though not the founder of indirect government, was the founder of the science by which men could be induced to consent to be governed not in accordance with their opinions of good and bad but on the basis of their passions, particularly fear. To achieve a form of consent that was voluntary and yet not based on opinion, he was forced to understand consent almost as resigning to the inevitable, yet his purpose in attempting to expel opinions from politics was to clear away divisions of opinion, especially religious opinion, and thus remove the obstacle to progress in human power. Hobbes' doctrine and modern representative government must both be understood from the historical standpoint of Hobbes' hostility to Christianity.

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Articles
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American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 97 - 110
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Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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References

1 Hobbes said this in 1646 before he published the Leviathan, in which (and not before) his new political science culminates in the theory of representative government The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, SirMolesworth, William (ed.), 11 vols. (London, 1839–1845)Google Scholar, hereafter EW, I, ix; VII, 470–471; Goldsmith, M. M., Hobbes' Science of Politics (New York, 1966), pp. 228–229 Google Scholar; Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago, 1952), pp. 1–2 Google Scholar. Quentin Skinner has brought to notice a number of Hobbists in Hobbes's time (though not the most prominent one); but he does not justify his claim that Hobbes “represents” a view, since he finds no pre-Hobbesian Hobbist “The Ideological Context of Hobbes' Political Thought,” Historical Journal, 9 (1966), 286–317 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Oakeshott, Michael, Introduction to Leviathan (Oxford, 1957), pp. xvi-xvii, liii Google Scholar; Laird, John, Hobbes (London, 1934), ch. 2Google Scholar; Gauthier, David P., The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, 1969), p. 70 Google Scholar.

2 Hobbes, , Leviathan, Smith, W. G. Pogson (ed.) (Oxford, 1965), Ep. Ded., p. 4 Google Scholar; ch. 11, p. 79; ch. 29, p. 251; ch. 30, p. 259; ch. 31, p. 285; Rev. p. 557; De Homine, XI.9, 11 Google Scholar; XII.12; XIII.3, 5–6; Mintz, Samuel I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 125–126 Google Scholar; Wolin, Sheldon S., Politics and Vision (Boston, 1960), p. 247 Google Scholar. Cf. Polin, Raymond, Politique et Philosophie chez Thomas Hobbes (Paris, 1953), p. 150 Google Scholar, who believes that Hobbes was a conservative; see note 3 below.

3 Leviathan, ch. 20, p. 160; ch. 26, p. 212; ch. 30, p. 259; Rev., p. 555; see Watkins, J. W. N., Hobbes's System of Ideas (London, 1965), p. 153 Google Scholar. Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1260b33–7.

4 This intention kept him from making a distinction between pure and applied political science, as recently suggested to him by McNeilly, F. S., The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York, 1968), p. 190 Google Scholar. On the importance of theory for modern representative government, see my article, “Modern and Medieval Representation,” Nomos, vol. XI (1968)Google Scholar, Representation, Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, G. (eds.), pp. 55–82 Google Scholar.

5 Leviathan, ch. 8, pp. 52–53; ch. 11, p. 76; ch. 13, pp. 94–95; ch. 15, pp. 117–118; ch. 20, p. 154; ch. 21, p. 166; ch. 37, p. 344; De Homine, XIII.5.

6 Leviathan, ch. 10, pp. 68–70; 73–74; ch. 11, pp. 76–77; ch. 28, pp. 245–246; ch. 29, p. 256; ch. 30, pp. 261, 266, 270; The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Tonnies, F. (ed.) (Cambridge, 1929), II.4.9Google Scholar; De Cive I.2, EW, II, 29.

7 Leviathan ch. 6, p. 41; ch. 18, pp. 136, 139; ch. 20, pp. 158–159; ch. 29, p. 257; Watkins, op. cit., pp. 138, 152.

8 Macpherson fails to make this distinction, and hence fails to accept the opposition between the state of nature and civil society; he can then conclude that Hobbes's “natural man” reflects his “civilized man” instead of forming the basis for a critique of his contemporary civilization. For Hobbes, it is rather that civilized man as we see him too much reflects natural man as we might find him; but if we find natural man, we will be driven to transform him into civilized man as he might be, living commodiously in peace. As for finding natural man, Macpherson quotes Hobbes's remark that the state of nature was never actual “generally … all over the world” to show that the state of nature is a mere logical hypothesis, when in fact it shows the contrary. Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962), pp. 19–29, 43–45, 101–105 Google Scholar; Leviathan, ch. 13, pp. 97–98.

9 Leviathan, Intro., p. 9; ch. 6, p. 44. By moving from the various objects of the passions to the similitude of the passions Hobbes takes refuge, according to Watkins, in “an unfalsifiable metaphysical proposition,” since the passions have to be attributed rather than inferred from the evidence of them in their objects. This criticism applies to the extent that Hobbes's “natural man” is a scientific hypothesis, not an actual fact; for Watkins does not deny that the existence of passions can be inferred from passionate behavior. But this psychological uniformity, whether attributed or seen, has for its purpose the anti-metaphysical reduction of soul to body and therewith the exclusion of miraculous irregularity from human consideration. Let Mr. Watkins say whether his openness to “reports of strange goings-on in faraway places” includes “claims to divine inspiration made by seditious preachers.” Watkins, op. cit., pp. 107–109.

10 Aristotle, Politics, 1253a2–18; Leviathan, ch. 17, p. 130. See Polin, op. cit., ch. 1 and Strauss, Leo, “On the Basis of Hobbes's Political Philosophy,” in What is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, Ill., 1959), pp. 174–178 Google Scholar.

11 Leviathan, ch. 13, p. 98.

12 Ibid., ch. 14, p. 108.

13 Hobbes rejects the term “consent” in favor of “covenant” unless “consent” is understood to include “subjection.” Ibid., ch. 17, pp. 129–131; ch. 18, p. 133; cf. ch. 16, p. 126; De Cive, V.4–9, XI.1, EW II, 65–69, 143.

14 Leviathan, ch. 18, pp. 137–140; ch. 19, p. 146; ch. 30, pp. 260–261, 269; ch. 31, p. 285; ch. 44, p. 473; Rev., pp. 548, 555.

15 Ibid., ch. 14, p. 105.

16 Ibid., ch. 14, p. 100; ch. 42, p. 388.

17 Ibid., ch. 19, p. 143; ch. 22, p. 172; ch. 26, p. 204; ch. 38, p. 345; ch. 42, pp. 443, 451.

18 Ibid., ch. 17, cf. pp. 131 and 132; ch. 23, p. 185; Polin, op. cit., p. xix.

19 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), pp. 194–196 Google Scholar.

20 “ … he that is bound to himself onely, is not bound”; and the reason is that he cannot give away his right of defending himself. Leviathan, ch. 21, p. 167; ch. 26, p. 204; ch. 28, pp. 238–239.

21 Obligation in the state of nature exists in a state of suspension, waiting for “validation” (to use Warrender's term) by a common power. Warrender's commendable attempt to show that Hobbes is more than a mere legal positivist unfortunately denies the truth that he used natural law in an attempt to establish the absolute sovereignty of legal positivism. Absolute sovereignty is necessary because natural law cannot operate in the absence of civil law; and this is so because without a common power, the just man, the first performer, will suffer for his justice. Thus he can justly “anticipate” the criminality of the criminal, i.e. become the first aggressor. (Leviathan, ch. 13, p. 95) Then the purpose of natural law as it exists in the state of nature is to excuse, not to obligate. Indeed, men will not obligate themselves unless they know they are excused from natural obligation, unless natural law is derived from a natural right When the state of nature is understood as essentially an excuse for men, and then compared with its Christian equivalent, the result is not favorable to the grounding of obligation upon God's will. Warrender, Howard, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford, 1957), pp. 63, 70, 105, 147–148, 288 Google Scholar; De Cive, III.27, XV.7, EW, II, 46n, 209.

22 Leslie Stephen said that Hobbes, “would be more consistent, if not more edifying, if he threw the contract overboard altogether.” Hobbes (New York, 1904), p. 193 Google Scholar. But to understand his theory of obligation one must look for a consistent intention that explains its difficulties and inconsistencies. It is perhaps just but surely unedifying to make Hobbes consistent against his will.

23 Leviathan, ch. 13, p. 97; ch. 17, p. 132; ch. 20, p. 153; ch. 22, pp. 178, 180; ch. 27, p. 237; ch. 30, p. 263; De Cive, VIII.1, EW, II, 109. Schochet says that because the consent of children to parental dominion is tacit, the family rather than the individual remains “the basic social unit for Hobbes.” It would be better to say that because the obedience of children to parents in a form of consent, the individual rather than the family remains the basic unit in ana outside society. Schochet, Gordon J., “Hobbes on the Family and the State of Nature,” Political Science Quarterly, 82 (1967), 443–445 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought,” in Hobbes Studies, Brown, K. C. (ed.) (Oxford, 1965), p. 189 Google Scholar.

24 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1111b7–11; Hobbes, , Leviathan, ch. 6, p. 47 Google Scholar; ch. 14, p. 107; ch. 21, p. 161; cf. ch. 45, p. 509; EW, IV, 243–245, 272–273. See Pennock, J. Roland, “Hobbes's Confusing Clarity—The Case of Liberty,” Hobbes Studies, pp. 107–108 Google Scholar; Watkins, op. cit., p. 134.

25 Leviathan, ch. 14, pp. 107–108; ch. 20, p. 153; ch. 46, p. 534.

26 Stephen, op. cit., pp. 194–195; Warrender, op. cit., pp. 5–7, 141–142, 167; Watkins, op. cit., p. 140; Mayer-Tasch, Peter, Thomas Hobbes und das Widerstandsrecht (Mainz, 1964), p. 46 Google Scholar; Plamenatz, John, Man and Society: Machiavelli through Rousseau (New York, 1963), pp. 134–136 Google Scholar; Wernham, A. G., “Liberty and Obligation in Hobbes,” Hobbes Studies, pp. 137–138 Google Scholar.

27 Leviathan, ch. 3, pp. 20–21; ch. 5, pp. 36–38; ch. 8, pp. 55–56; ch. 13, p. 94; ch. 20, p. 160; ch. 21, p. 165; ch. 25, p. 200; ch. 46, p. 519.

28 Ibid., ch. 8, p. 55.

29 Ibid., ch. 14, pp. 99–100; ch. 15, pp. 113, 122–123; ch. 18, p. 137; ch. 20, p. 160; ch. 26, p. 205; ch. 42, pp. 402, 406; De Cive, II.1, EW, II, 14–16.

30 Leviathan, ch. 18, p. 137.

31 Ibid., ch. 2, pp. 14–15.

32 Ibid., ch. 3, p. 21. Speech is not necessarily specifically human, but conceiving is; Ibid., ch. 4, p. 31; De Homine, X.I. The specifically human faculty of science is supported by the “singular passion” of curiosity; a lust of the mind for knowing causes, “a perserverance of delight in the continuall and indefatigable generation of knowledge.” The causes to be known are not things above men which men take pleasure in understanding, but tilings capable of being manipulated by men for the sake of increasing human power. With their natural curiosity, however, men do not have “curiosity to search natural causes.” They are commonly satisfied with supernatural causes, their curiosity misled by their fear of invisible spirits. This Hobbes's science aims to dispel. Leviathan, ch. 3, p. 20; ch. 6, p. 44; ch. 8, p. 61; ch. 11, pp. 80–81; ch. 12, pp. 82–83, 86; ch. 37, pp. 343–344.

33 Ibid., ch. 6, p. 44; ch. 11, p. 75; ch. 35, p. 314.

34 Ibid., ch. 5, p. 37.

35 Ibid., ch. 5, p. 38; Warrender, op. cit., p. 269. Brandt, Frithiof, Thomas Hobbes' Mechanical Conception of Nature (Copenhagen, 1928), pp. 221–228 Google Scholar.

36 Leviathan, ch. 14, p. 102; ch. 28, p. 239.

37 Ibid., ch. 14, p. 101; see ch. 15, p. 115; ch. 16, pp. 123–124; ch. 18, pp. 133–135; ch. 27, p. 233; De Homine, X.5; De Cive, III.3, EW, II, 31. See also Taylor, A. E., “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes,” Hobbes Studies, pp. 38–39 Google Scholar; Warrender, op. cit., pp. 230–231, 337, who rightly senses the danger to his interpretation from this passage; Watkins, op. cit., pp. 153–154, 161; Wolin, op. cit., p. 267; Polin, op. cit., p. 144; Strauss, , The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, p. 105 Google Scholar.

38 Leviathan, ch. 5, pp. 34–35; ch. 13, p. 98. Note that Hobbes does not use the distinction between error and absurdity at ch. 4, pp. 28–29.

39 Ibid., ch. 6, p. 41; ch. 22, pp. 173–175; ch. 24, p. 196.

40 Ibid., ch. 5, pp. 36–37.

41 Ibid., ch. 30, p. 259. The answer to Hume's unanswerable question, “Why are we bound to keep our word?”, is that it is against reason not to. Hume, , Essays Moral, Political and Literary (Oxford, 1963), “Of the Original Contract,” p. 468 Google Scholar; see Cropsey, Joseph, “Hobbes and the Transition to Modernity,” in Ancients and Moderns, Cropsey, Joseph (ed.) (New York, 1964), p. 224 Google Scholar.

42 See Watkins, op. cit., pp. 76–84, 92; Plamenatz, op. cit., pp. 124–125; Peters, Richard, Hobbes (London, 1956), pp. 170–173 Google ScholarPubMed; Polin, op. cit., pp. 190–193; Skinner, Quentin, “Hobbes's ‘Leviathan,’” Historical Journal, 7 (1964), 326 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barry, Brian, “Warrender and his Critics,” Philosophy, 43 (1968), 129–130 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gauthier, , The Logic of Leviathan, p. 98n Google Scholar; and Warrender, op. cit., pp. 93, 98–99, 110; Taylor, loc. cit., pp. 39, 44–45; Hood, F. C., The Divine Politics of Hobbes (Oxford, 1964), pp. 4, 29–30 Google Scholar; McNeilly, F. S., The Anatomy of Leviathan, pp. 183–185, 209–210 Google Scholar.

43 “For whatsoever men are to take knowledge of for Law, not upon other mens words, but every one from his own reason, must be such as is agreeable to the reason of all men; which no Law can be, but the Law of Nature.” Leviathan, ch. 26, p. 208. So Hegel: “Previously ‘ideals’, whether it was the Holy Scripture or positive right cited as authority, were laid down; against this Hobbes sought to derive the bond of the state and the nature of its power from the principles that lie within us, that we recognize as our own.” Hegel, G. W. F., Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Bolland, G. J. P. J. (ed.) (Leiden, 1908), p. 915 Google Scholar. Speaking of the promise in the contract, Bentham said: “It was still necessary to determine … the question men studied to avoid [that of the people's happiness] … in order to determine the question they thought to substitute in its room [that of keeping one's promise] …” A Fragment on Government. The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Bowring, John (ed.), 11 vols. (New York, 1962), I, 269 Google Scholar. But the purpose of Hobbes's argument is to determine universally that the people's happiness can be assured by the justice of keeping promises; then the question of their happiness need not arise as such in political disputes.

44 Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 14–37 Google Scholar; 55–59, 113; Wolin, op. cit., p. 279; Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 190n Google Scholar.

45 Leviathan, ch. 19, p. 143; ch. 22, pp. 172–175.

46 Op. cit., p. 58.

47 Gauthier, on the other hand, is so pleased with the “authorization view” that he does not see that its formality was designed to promote a certain content or end; op. cit., ch. 4.

48 Leviathan, ch. 18, pp. 136–137.

49 Ibid., Intro., p. 10; ch. 25, p. 200; ch. 27, p. 227.

50 Ibid., ch. 18, p. 139; ch. 29, pp. 250–254; ch. 36, p. 335; ch. 39, pp. 361–363; ch. 40, pp. 370–371; ch. 42, pp. 387, 421–423; 444, 450; ch. 43, pp. 457, 461; ch. 44, 472–477; ch. 47; Behemoth, EW, VI, 362–363 Google Scholar. Taylor concludes that “the only difference” between Hobbes and Thomas Aquinas in this matter is that Aquinas makes the ecclesiastical power the authorized interpreter of Scripture (loc. cit., p. 52). This is a beautiful combination of exaggeration and understatement.

51 Leviathan, ch. 26, p. 205.

52 Civil laws are artificial chains “fastened at one end, to the lips of that Man, or Assembly, to whom they have given the Soveraigne Power; and at the other end to their own Ears.” Hobbes seems to leave the eyes free to see what they must after his instruction, Leviathan, ch. 2, pp. 17–18; ch. 12, p. 82; ch. 32, p. 287; ch. 36, pp. 336–337; ch. 42, p. 388; ch. 45, pp. 498–499, 509; ch. 46, pp. 533–534; ch. 47, p. 543. Thus there is no inconsistency in the sovereign's interpreting religion on his own responsibility and deciding good and evil on the responsibility of the subject; cf. Watkns, op. cit., p. 161n.

53 Leviathan, ch. 46, pp. 522–523.

54 Ibid., ch. 7, pp. 49–50; ch. 36, pp. 335–336.

55 Ibid., ch. 5, pp. 37–38; see ch. 4, p. 32; ch. 5, p. 36; ch. 7, pp. 50, 52; ch. 8, pp. 53–54; ch. 15, pp. 122–123; ch. 25, pp. 197, 199; ch. 26, p. 215; ch. 34, pp. 303, 307; ch. 35, p. 319; ch. 36, p. 324; ch. 39, p. 361; Rev., p. 555. Joseph Cropsey has recently made this unnoticed aspect of the Leviathan the theme of an important study, loc. cit., pp. 220–221.

56 Leviathan, ch. 7, p. 50; ch. 29, p. 249; ch. 30, p. 273.

57 Ibid., ch. 28, p. 246.

58 Ibid., ch. 17, p. 132; ch. 45, p. 499; Strauss, , The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, p. 28 Google Scholar; Watkins, op. cit., p. 75. Dietrich Braun argues that the Mortall God is the consequence of “the absolute positing of one's own reason as God,” but he does not appreciate what private reason has to yield, viz., the power of deciding good and bad, to secure its “absolute positing.” Braun, Dietrich, Der Sterbliche Gott (Zurich, 1963), pp. 184, 194, 252 Google Scholar.

59 Leviathan, ch. 33, pp. 301–302; ch. 35, p. 317; ch. 36, p. 335.

60 The very idea of representation is traced to transubstantiation, Ibid., ch. 44, pp. 478–479; ch. 45, p. 511. The earthly sovereign “may be called the Image of God”; Hobbes makes him an artificial man; Ibid., ch. 45, p. 508. Cf. Cropsey, loc. cit., p. 225, on the personation of the true God; and on the trinity, cf. Leviathan, ch. 16, p. 123 and ch. 42, pp. 383–384.