Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan Study Notes
Introduction: The Art of the Commonwealth
- Nature and Art: Nature is the art by which God made and governs the world. This nature is imitated by the art of man, specifically in the creation of an "artificial animal."
- Artificial Life: Hobbes argues that life is essentially a "motion of limbs" originating from a principal part within the body. Therefore, automata (engines moving by springs and wheels, like a watch) possess an artificial life.
- The Heart: Comparable to a spring.
- The Nerves: Comparable to strings.
- The Joints: Comparable to wheels that give motion to the whole body as intended by the Artificer.
- The Leviathan defined: Art further imitates man (Nature's most excellent work) to create the "LEVIATHAN," also called a COMMONWEALTH or STATE (Latin: CIVITAS). This is an artificial man of greater stature and strength than the natural man, intended for protection and defense.
- Anthropomorphic Structure of the State:
- Sovereignty: The artificial soul, providing life and motion to the body.
- Magistrates and Officers: Artificial joints (judicature and execution).
- Reward and Punishment: The nerves, which fasten members to the seat of sovereignty and move them to perform duties.
- Wealth and Riches: The strength of the body.
- Salus Populi (People's Safety): The business of the body.
- Counsellors: The memory (suggesting all things needful to know).
- Equity and Laws: Artificial reason and will.
- Concord: Health.
- Sedition: Sickness.
- Civil War: Death.
- Pacts and Covenants: Resemble the "Fiat" or "Let us make man" pronounced by God during Creation.
The Study of Man and Mankind
- Wisdom and Reading Men: Wisdom is acquired by reading men rather than books. However, reading men often results in uncharitable censure behind their backs.
- Nosce Teipsum (Read Thyself): This phrase teaches that because human thoughts and passions are similar, one can understand all other men by looking into oneself.
- Similitude of Passions: Passions like desire, fear, and hope are the same in all men.
- Diversity of Objects: The objects of these passions vary due to individual constitution and education. These are difficult to know because the human heart is "blotted and confounded" by dissembling, lying, and counterfeiting.
- The Governor’s Requirement: One who governs a whole nation must read in himself not just a particular man, but mankind itself. This is described as harder than learning any science or language.
Chapter I: Of Sense
- Definition of Thought: Singularly, a thought is a representation or appearance of some quality or accident of a body outside of us, called an object.
- The Origin of Thought: Everything in the mind is derived from sense. There is no conception in the mind that was not first, totally or in parts, begotten upon the organs of sense.
- The Mechanism of Sense:
- Cause: External bodies or objects press against the sense organs.
- Process:
- Immediate pressure: Taste and touch.
- Mediate pressure: Seeing, hearing, smelling.
- This pressure is continued via nerves, strings, and membranes to the brain and heart.
- Reaction: The heart causes a resistance or "counter-pressure" or "endeavour" to deliver itself. Because this endeavor is outward, it seems to be matter outside the body.
- Sense as Fancy: This outward "seeming" is what men call sense. Sense is nothing but "original fancy" caused by the motion of external things. Qualities (light, color, sound, odor, etc.) are only motions of matter in the objects and diverse motions within us.
Chapter VI – XI: Human Passion and Felicity
- Felicity Defined: Continual success in obtaining things a man desires from time to time (continual prospering).
- Motion and Life: Life is motion; it can never be without desire, fear, or sense.
- The Rejection of Summum Bonum: There is no finis ultimus (utmost aim) or summum bonum (greatest good). Felicity is a continual progress of desire from one object to another; attaining one is merely the way to the next.
- Restless Desire for Power: Hobbes identifies a general inclination of all mankind: a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceases only in death.
- Cause: Man cannot assure the power and means to live well which he currently possesses without acquiring more.
- Kings: Even the most powerful kings seek more power at home through laws or abroad through wars to ensure their security.
Chapter XIII: The Natural Condition of Mankind
- Natural Equality: Nature made men equal in body and mind.
- Body: Even the weakest has enough strength to kill the strongest via secret machination or confederacy with others.
- Mind: Equality of mind (excluding science) is even greater because prudence is simply experience, which equal time bestows on all men in things they apply themselves to.
- Causes of Quarrel: From equality of ability comes equality of hope in attaining ends. If two men desire the same thing that cannot be shared, they become enemies.
- Three Principal Causes of Quarrel:
- Competition: Men invade for Gain (to master persons, wives, children, and cattle).
- Diffidence: Men invade for Safety (to defend themselves).
- Glory: Men invade for Reputation (over trifles like a word, a smile, or a different opinion).
- The State of War: Without a common power to keep men in awe, they are in a condition of war of every man against every man.
- Definition of War: Not just actual fighting, but a "tract of time" where the will to contend by battle is known (similar to the nature of weather).
- Consequences of War: No industry, no culture of the earth, no navigation, no commodious building, no arts, no letters, no society.
- The Famous Dictum: Life in this state is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
- Proof by Action: Even in a state with laws, men lock their doors and chests and travel armed, which serves as an accusation of mankind equivalent to Hobbes’ words.
- Justice in the State of Nature: In this war, nothing can be unjust. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and Fraud are the cardinal virtues.
- Passions Involving Peace: Fear of death, desire for commodious living, and hope to obtain things through industry.
Chapter XIV: Natural Laws and Contracts
- Jus Naturale (Right of Nature): The liberty each man has to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature (his own life).
- Liberty Defined: The absence of external impediments.
- Lex Naturalis (Law of Nature): A precept or general rule found out by reason, forbidding a man to do what is destructive to his life.
- Distinction between Right and Law: Right consists in liberty to do or forbear; Law determines and binds to one of those.
- The Fundamental Law of Nature: "To seek peace and follow it."
- The Sum of Right of Nature: "By all means we can, to defend ourselves."
- The Second Law of Nature: That a man be willing, when others are so too, to lay down his right to all things for the sake of peace and defense, and be contented with as much liberty against other men as he would allow others against himself.
- The Mutual Transferring of Right: This is called a Contract.
- Inalienable Rights: A man cannot lay down the right of resisting those who assault him by force to take away his life, nor rights involving wounds, chains, or imprisonment.
Chapter XVII: Generation and Definition of a Commonwealth
- The Purpose of Commonwealth: The foresight of preservation and a more contented life; getting out of the miserable condition of war.
- The Failure of Natural Laws Alone: The laws of nature (justice, equity, mercy) are contrary to our natural passions (partiality, pride, revenge). Without the terror of power to enforce them ("Covenants, without the sword, are but words"), they cannot provide security.
- Generation of the Leviathan: People confer all their power and strength upon one man or one assembly of men to reduce all their wills to one will.
- The Covenant Formula: "I authorise and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorise all his actions in like manner."
- The Leviathan / Mortal God: The multitude so united is called a Commonwealth. The sovereign is the "Mortal God" to whom we owe our peace and defense under the "Immortal God."
- Definition of Commonwealth: "One person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defence."
Chapter XVIII: The Rights of Sovereigns by Institution
- Inseparable Rights of the Sovereign:
- Subjects Cannot Change the Form of Government: They cannot lawfully make a new covenant to be obedient to any other.
- Sovereign Power Cannot Be Forfeited: The sovereign makes no covenant with the subjects; there can be no breach of covenant on the part of the sovereign.
- No Man Can Protest: Because the major part chose the sovereign, those who dissented must now consent or be justly destroyed.
- The Sovereign Cannot Injure Subjects: Every subject is the author of the sovereign's actions; therefore, the sovereign cannot do injury to a subject, because to do injury to oneself is impossible.
- No Sovereign Can Be Punished: Punishing the sovereign is punishing another for actions the subject themselves authored.
- Judge of Opinions and Doctrines: Necessary to prevent discord and civil war.
- The Right of Propriety: Prescribing rules of civil law (meum and tuum) so subjects know what goods they may enjoy.
- The Right of Judicature: Hearing and deciding controversies concerning law or fact.
- The Right of War and Peace: Making war with other nations and levying money for expenses.
- Choosing Officers: Choosing all counselors, ministers, and magistrates.
- Rewarding and Punishing: According to law or own judgment.
- Giving Titles of Honor: Appointing the order of place and dignity.
- Indivisibility: These rights are the essence of sovereignty and are incommunicable and inseparable. A kingdom divided in itself cannot stand.
Chapter XXI: The Liberty of Subjects
- Liberty Defined: The absence of opposition (external impediments of motion).
- Compatibility of Fear and Liberty: Actions done for fear of the law (e.g., throwing goods overboard in a storm) are still free actions because the actor had the power to omit them.
- Compatibility of Liberty and Necessity: Water has the liberty to descend and the necessity of descending. Human voluntary actions proceed from liberty but also from necessity, as they are part of a chain of causes beginning with God.
- Artificial Chains (Civil Laws): Men have created artificial chains through mutual covenants. Since laws cannot regulate all actions, the liberty of the subject resides in the silence of the law.
- The Sovereign's Power is NOT Limited: The sovereign retains the right of life and death. If a sovereign puts an innocent subject to death (e.g., David and Uriah), it is an iniquity against God but not an injury to the subject.
- Specific Liberties of Subjects:
- Liberty to buy and sell, choose their own abode, diet, and trade.
- Self-Defense: A subject has the liberty to disobey a command to kill or wound himself, or to not resist an assault, because rights to self-preservation cannot be transferred by covenant.
- Non-Incrimination: A subject is not bound to confess a crime without assurance of pardon.
- Military Service: A man may sometimes refuse to fight if he provides a substitute, though failure to serve when the Commonwealth's preservation requires it is a breach of obligation.
- The End of Obligation: The obligation of subjects to the sovereign lasts as long as, and no longer than, the power lasts by which he is able to protect them. The end of obedience is protection. If a subject is taken prisoner and given liberty in exchange for subjection to a victor, they are obliged to that victor. If a sovereign relinquishes sovereignty or dies without an heir, subjects return to the absolute liberty of nature.