A discrição da presença do princípio de reciprocidade na formulação hobbesiana oblitera importantes dimensões na sua teoria. Entre estas, a necessidade intrínseca de que os súditos estejam instados a utilizar a sua capacidade de produzir juízos. Apresentam-se diversas circunstâncias que corroboram essa tese, o que mostra que a atividade de julgar não foi confiscada pelo soberano. Ao contrário, ela é mesmo necessária para o seu sistema.

Hobbes treats individual property as regulated by stable law, yet dependent on the arbitrary will of the sovereign. In this paper I catalogue the different definitions of property present in his main political and legal works – The Elements of Law, De Cive, Leviathan and A Dialogue between a philosopher and a student – with the aim of showing how he attempted to square those commitments. I record how the definitions of property affect his views about how sovereigns hold property, (...) the nature of the liability of subjects to having their property confiscated by the sovereign, and the legal conflicts that may arise between subjects and their rulers regarding such confiscations. (shrink)

This is a book about Hobbes's philosophy as a whole, viewed through the lens of his philosophy of science. Political philosophy is claimed to have a certain autonomy within Hobbes's scheme of philosophy and science as a whole, and in particular, a kind of autonomy in relation to natural sciences. Hobbes's moral and political philosophies guide action --of both individual subjects and sovereigns. They have a role in a special kind of rhetorical product called counsel. In natural science (...) Hobbes probably exaggerates the explanatory powers of mechanics --the theory of matter in motion-- including by an attempted assimilation of geometry to the sciences of motion. (shrink)

This article proposes that Hobbes runs two different arguments for sovereignty in Leviathan. The one is polemical and takes up the notion of a covenant from early-modern resistance theory in order to redeploy it in the cause of absolutism. The other is biblical and constructs an image of the sovereign whose authority is a Mosaic legacy. The one argument is addressed to the unruly subject and teaches obedience, whereas the other is addressed to the sovereign and sets out the positive (...) vocation of a Christian ruler. The conjunction of secular materialism and divine right in Leviathan becomes less puzzling when the book’s addressees are differentiated. By depriving the subject of any right of appeal to God in protest against the sovereign, Hobbes dismantles one of the bulwarks of early-modern resistance. This motive for secularism has understandably no role to play in Hobbes’ conception of the sovereign. Indeed, as far as facilitating the sovereign’s biblically framed vocation is concerned, the secularism of Leviathan is arguably simply a means to an end. (shrink)

Although Hobbes' understanding of the sovereign's position in a state and Descartes' understanding of God arose completely independently from each other, there is a strong structural similarity between the two. After elaborating on this point, the author demonstrates the metaphysical foundation of Hobbes' conception of the sovereign. The main thesis of the paper is that the subjectivity of sovereign is not the so-called 'empirical' subjectivity of early modern philosophy, but that it is equivalent to God's subjectivity, as understood in Descartes (...) as immense power. Nakon pokazivanja postojanja velike strukturne slicnosti izmedju Hobsovog razumevanja polozaja suverena u drzavi i Dekartovog razumevanja Boga, i pored njihove medjusobne potpune nezavisnosti, u tekstu se pokazuje metafizicka utemeljenost Hobsove koncepcije suverena, odnosno brani se osnovna teza da subjektivnost u liku suverena nije tzv. "empirijska" subjektivnost rane moderne filozofije, vec da je ekvivalentna Bozjoj subjektivnosti, kako je ona razumevana kod Dekarta kao neizmerna moc. (shrink)

Plato's thinking on courage, manliness and heroism is both profound and central to his work, but these areas of his thought remain under-explored. This book examines his developing critique of both the notions and embodiments of manliness prevalent in his culture, and his attempt to redefine them in accordance with his own ethical, psychological and metaphysical principles. It further seeks to locate the discussion within the framework of his general approach to ethics, an approach which focuses on concepts of flourishing (...) and virtue, rather than on consequences or duty. The question of why courage is necessary in the flourishing life in its turn leads to Plato's bid to unify the noble and the beneficial and the tensions this unification creates between human and divine ideals. The issue of manliness also raises problems of gender: does Plato conceive of the ethical subject as human or male? (shrink)

ABSTRACTOne long-running conundrum in Husserlian phenomenology revolves around the question of the identity of what Husserl calls the transcendental ego, a mysterious figure that he identifies as the subject of a genuinely transcendental phenomenology. In dialogue with both Husserl and his assistant and collaborator Eugen Fink, I attempt in this article to give a solid account of the identity of this transcendental ego, and in particular to explain the connection between this figure and the empirical ego of the individual phenomenologist. (...) I make particular reference to Fink's depiction of a "personal union" between these two egos in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation and to certain unclear hints in Husserl's 1923/1924 lectures on First Philosophy. Ultimately, I develop my own account of such a union, which explains the transcendental ego as a certain mode in which the phenomenologist might investigate his own experiences. On this basis, I argue, the status of phenomenology as a transcendental discipline can be understood without subjecting that discipline to certain criticisms that have been levelled against it. (shrink)

Laplacean determinism remains a popular theory among philosophers and scientists alike, in spite of the fact that the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, with which it is inconsistent, has been around for more than fifty years. There are a number of reasons for its continuing popularity. One, recently articulated by Honderich, is that there are too many possible interpretations of quantum mechanics, and the subject is too controversial even among physicists to be an adequate basis for overturning determinism. Nevertheless, quantum (...) mechanics is an enormously successful theory, considering the quantity and variety of its predictions which have been verified under conditions never dreamt of by its originators; and the Copenhagen Interpretation is the only widely accepted interpretation of it. Although a hidden variable theory consistent with the results of quantum mechanics is not impossible, one of its major advocates admits that it is highly speculative, and far from adequately developed. Yet such a theory would be needed to reconcile Laplacean determinism with quantum mechanics; most of the controversies alluded to by Honderich are irrelevant. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is the greatest work of political philosophy in English and the first great work of philosophy in English. In addition, it presents the fundamentals of his beliefs about language, epistemology, and an extensive treatment of revealed religion and its relation to politics. Beginning with premises that were sometimes controversial, such as that every human action is caused by the agent's desire for his own good, Hobbes derived shocking conclusions, such as that the civil government enjoys absolute control (...) over its citizens and that the sovereign has the right to determine which religion is to be practiced in a commonwealth. Hobbes's contemporaries recognized the power of the arguments in Leviathan and many of them wrote responses to it. Selections from books by John Bramhall, Robert Filmer, Edward Hyde, George Lawson, William Lucy, Samuel Pufendorf and Thomas Tenison are included in this edition. Leviathan is divided into four parts: In the first part, Of Man, Hobbes presents a view of human beings and of the natural world in general that is materialistic and mechanistic. In the second part, Of Commonwealth, he defends the theory of absolute sovereignty, the view that the government has all the political power and has the right to control any aspect of life. In the third part, Of a Christian Commonwealth, he critiques concepts like revelation, prophets, and miracles in such a way that it becomes doubtful whether they can be rationally justified. In the fourth part, Of the Kingdom of Darkness, he explains various ways in which priestly religion has corrupted religion and transgressed the rights of the sovereign. In this revised edition of Hobbes's classic work, A.P. Martinich improves Hobbes's punctuation for the sake of clarity. He has also added new notes for readers, extensive cross references, and substantial part of Hobbes's reply to Bramhall's The Catching of Leviathan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility: Husserl and Fink on the Phenomenologizing Subject by Denis DŽANIĆD. J. HobbsDŽANIĆ, Denis. Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility: Husserl and Fink on the Phenomenologizing Subject. Cham: Springer, 2023. x + 236 pp. Cloth, $119.99Denis Džanić’s Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility, despite its superficially historical focus on a specific period of collaboration between Edmund Husserl and his somewhat wayward protégé Eugen Fink, addresses key (...) systematic issues in transcendental phenomenology, namely, how the act of phenomenologizing should be understood in connection with the specific human beings who aim to become phenomenologists, and what the answer to this question tells us about both the genuine subject of phenomenology and the motivation for phenomenologizing. These questions are important for our understanding of not only the historical development of phenomenology but also the practice and goals of phenomenology—specifically, for a conception of phenomenologizing as a project in which we, as particular, historical, empirical figures, might want to engage.Much of the book focuses on laying the groundwork for understanding these complicated issues both historically and systematically. Džanić does an admirable job of tracing the rapidly evolving interactions between Husserl and Fink, both as intellectual collaborators on this philosophical project and as a pair of very human figures who ultimately found themselves pursuing quite different solutions to the problems of the subject and origin of phenomenology. He focuses particularly on the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Fink’s attempt to extend Husserl’s famous text to include a phenomenology of the act of phenomenologizing itself (including Husserl’s marginal comments on the text), although he draws on a number of other significant texts and manuscripts (mostly Husserl’s, albeit with an extended aside on Heidegger) wherever they are helpful for explicating the complex evolution of Husserl’s thought on the subject. Admittedly, the book thus takes on a challenging task—both because of the difficult nature of this topic and because of the obscurity of the technical terms required to discuss it. However, despite the necessarily enigmatic character of the relevant language, Džanić’s attempts to explore the main outlines of this issue are worthwhile, particularly due to his ability to resist the temptation to view Husserl’s thought here as monolithic.In the early chapters, Džanić explicates in detail the rather complicated solution that Fink proposed to this difficulty, namely, the abandonment (to some extent) of the ultimately human origin of phenomenology in favor of a fundamentally nonhuman (and eventually meontic) conception of the transcendental ego, which generated a great deal of elaborate and (at least in the Sixth Meditation) inadequately supported speculation. For Fink, both the motivation to phenomenologize and the act of phenomenologizing itself ultimately stem from a source that is fundamentally prior to—in a(n onto)logical rather than temporal sense—any empirical ego or empirical act of phenomenologizing, a source that merely “enworlds” itself (in various complicated senses that Džanić does [End Page 145] an admirable job of clarifying) in the apparently anthropologistic, everyday world of individual phenomenologists. Džanić calls this interpretation of phenomenology Fink’s “epistemological anti-humanism,” and it serves as the basis for one potential (radically anti-Heideggerian but nevertheless somewhat disappointing) solution to the question of why we should phenomenologize at all. As Džanić notes, this solution was at least briefly taken up by Fink’s mentor Husserl himself, although the degree to which Husserl actually endorsed this path beyond the level of a fleeting flirtation remains questionable. Ultimately, as Džanić rightly highlights and as becomes abundantly clear in Husserl’s (often rather scathing) notes on Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation, he abandoned this interpretation.Accordingly, in the later chapters of the book, Džanić traces Husserl’s ultimate development of a quite different solution to the problems of the origin and motivation of phenomenology—a solution that, unlike his brief foray into Finkian grandeur, views the act of phenomenologizing as essentially rooted in human possibility (that is, as part of the famous lifeworld that features so prominently in Husserl’s work, especially in the Crisis and other late texts). After his collaboration with and... (shrink)

Psychology has been considered to have an autonomy from the other sciences (especially physical science) in at least two ways: in its subject-matter and in its methods. To say that the subject-matter of psychology is autonomous is to say that psychology deals with entities—properties, relations, states—which are not dealt with or not wholly explicable in terms of physical (or any other) science. Contrasted with this is the idea that psychology employs a characteristic method of explanation, which is not shared (...) by the other sciences. I shall label the two senses of autonomy ‘metaphysical autonomy’ and ‘explanatory autonomy’ The question of whether psychology as a science is autonomous in either sense is one of the philosophical questions surrounding the (somewhat vague) doctrine of ‘naturalism’: questions concerning the extent to which the human mind can be brought under the aegis of natural science. In their contemporary form, these questions had their origin in the ‘new science’ of the 17th century. Early materialists like Hobbes (1651) and La Mettrie (1748) rejected both explanatory and metaphysical autonomy: mind is matter in motion, and the mind can be studied by the mathematical methods of the new science just as any matter can. But while materialism (and therefore the denial of metaphysical autonomy) had to wait until the 19th century before starting to become widely accepted, the denial of explanatory autonomy remained a strong force in empiricist philosophy. Hume described his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) as an ‘attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects’—where ‘moral’ signifies ‘human’. And subsequent criticism of Hume’s views, notably by Kant and Reid, ensured that the question of naturalism—whether there can be a ‘science of man’—was one of the central questions of 19th century philosophy, and a question which hovered over the emergence of psychology as an independent discipline (see Reed 1994). In the 20th century, much of the philosophical discussion of the autonomy of psychology has been inspired by the Logical Positivists’ discussions of the UNITY OF.... (shrink)

This paper considers the implications for education of a reworked ancient Greek ethics and politics of flourishing, where ‘flourishing’ comprises the objective actualisation of our intellectual, imaginative and affective potential. A brief outline of the main features of an ethics of flourishing and its potential attractions as an ethical framework is followed by a consideration of the ethical, aesthetic and political requirements of such a framework for the theory and practice of education, indicating the ways in which my approach differs (...) from other recent work in the field. I argue that the teaching of philosophy in schools and philosophical approaches to the teaching of other subjects are ideally suited to meet the pedagogic requirements of individual and communal flourishing so understood, contributing greatly both to the understanding of what a well-lived life might be, and to the actual living of it. I further argue that these requirements are not only derived from ancient Greek philosophy but are in turn especially well-served by the teaching and deployment of Greek philosophy itself. My claim is not that Greek philosophy has all the answers, or that other philosophers and philosophical approaches should be excluded; it is simply that Greek philosophy offers rich resources for those seeking to introduce children and young people to philosophy and to foster thereby their flourishing in both childhood and as adults. (shrink)

This paper describes the role of information architecture in the design of socially sustainable pervasive information spaces. The framing of information architecture as an essential part of Design Thinking extends current and historic notions of the field of information architecture. The discussion introduces the notion of the ‘contrived ontology’ which can be understood as the intentional meaning that design infuses in its artefacts, services and systems. Further, we argue that contrived ontology aligns with central themes within humanistic frameworks which view (...) reality as subjective construct. This forms the central theoretical meditation herein: we contend that while design is always an act of interpreted cultural determination, at the scale of Floridi’s infosphere, the immediacy and immersive social reality of technology will become frictionless within our human experience. As this occurs, there is a moral and ethical imperative to ensure social sustainability and to this end that the meanings and intentions that inform the mature design of our human-made world are visible and accountable. It is towards this end that information architecture can make a valuable contribution. (shrink)

It is not clear, on the face of it, whether Thomas Hobbes's legal philosophy should be considered to be an early example of legal positivism or continuous with the natural-law tradition. On the one hand, Hobbes's command theory of law seems characteristically positivistic. On the other hand, his conception of the "law of nature," as binding on both sovereign and subject, seems to point more naturally toward a natural-law reading of his philosophy. Yet despite this seeming ambiguity, Hobbes scholars, for (...) the most part, have placed him within the legal-positivist tradition. Indeed, Hobbes is usually regarded as the father of legal positivism. Recently, however, a growing number of commentators has begun to question this traditional classification. Although it is clear that Hobbes is not a natural lawyer of the same mold as Thomas Aquinas, it is, nevertheless, increasingly becoming evident that the traditional characterization of Hobbes as a positivist in the same vein as Jeremy Bentham or John Austin is also incorrect. There are important naturallaw aspects of Hobbes's view that one ignores only at the cost of a proper understanding of his theory of law. (shrink)

The Archive is a central but paradoxical image in the work of the con temporary French artist Christian Boltanski (born 1944). Because Boltanski is obsessively concerned with the death-like rupture and loss by which experience is continuously reduced to fragmentary and inac curate memories of the past, especially regarding the adult's perception of childhood, archives represent for him a potential means of regaining access to what has been lost and is being mourned. However, Boltan ski's installation and performance works that (...) investigate the powers of archives set out ironically the absurdly limited and misleading processes of an archive. Photography in particular is shown to be unreliable, more icon than document, challenging rather than asserting notions of cat egory and coherence. The notion of the icon, moreover, underlines the spiritual dimension that accompanies this absurdist relationship with the past. Our faulty but much-desired awareness of a past gives complex value to our present, often in a touching, pathetic way, however arbitrary the means involved. The trail of the archive leads to an uncertainty that is nonetheless precious. The many subjects that Boltanski treats in this light vary disarmingly and controversially from the trivia and detritus of everyday living to the supreme seriousness of the Holocaust. He also transforms himself and his family into a labyrinthine and playful archive. Here a curious relationship emerges with the reputation and books of his brother, the sociologist Luc Boltanski. Christian borrows with no explicit acknowledgement the archive resources of Luc's sociological research as a sub-text in his visual works. Even more surprisingly, Luc Boltanski published in 1993 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 11 No. 4 © 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) [0952-6951(199811)11:4;121-140; 006612]Poème, a collection of highly emotive and personal poetry about the past and the Holocaust. The problems raised by Christian Boltanski and by Luc conflate the personal and historical dimensions of the Archive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy by John DeweyCharles A. HobbsJohn Dewey. Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012, 351 pp., index.John Dewey’s latest publication marks a watershed moment for scholarship in American philosophy, and, in addition to Dewey himself, we have editor Phillip Deen to thank for discovering it (among the Dewey papers in Special Collections at Morris Library of Southern Illinois (...) University) and editing it. We see Dewey late in life (early 1940s) engaged mainly in a critique of the modern, ancient, and (fragmentarily) medieval philosophical periods, which Dewey argues, are eras not nearly as distinct as traditional understanding admits. In the Introduction, Deen helpfully explains how we are now bequeathed incomplete but in most [End Page 122] cases quite robust chapter drafts that amount to another substantial work by Dewey. While published by Southern Illinois University Press, this volume is not itself part of The Collected Works of John Dewey. Still, the careful editing (of what are actually a number of manuscripts) is comparable in its excellence. There is also a well-done Index.The scope is twofold: retrospective and prospective. Chapters one through seven trace the development of so-called modern philosophy along with its central epistemological problem, with the aim being to demonstrate how thoroughly “unmodern” such philosophy has been. Then, chapters eight through fourteen constitute a genuinely modern approach that naturalistically and functionally undercuts the epistemic problem of subject/object and points to a revolution in the process of knowing.We turn to the retrospective, beginning in the first chapter with the acknowledgement that Dewey comes to philosophy itself as a kind of anthropologist, something we note as consistent with the influence of Franz Boas on Dewey (with whom Dewey was a colleague and intellectual ally at Columbia for about thirty-five years). This is further underscored by a lengthy quotation of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski on the meaning of culture (p. 290). The ongoing history of philosophy is itself a cultural activity. Indeed, citing James, Dewey declares that “The sickliest way in which a student of philosophy can approach his subject-matter is that of a search for ultimate impersonal revelation of truth.” (p. 16) Rather, let the philosopher have the pragmatic attitude of openness “... to truth from whatever source it comes” (ibid).With that, Dewey once again turns to the Greeks, who initiated “The Discovery of Rational Discourse” (Ch. III) as underscored by the Socratic means of cooperative discourse, with the dialogues—not lectures—being evidence of the Athenian philosophical revolution in turning “from discussing nature and giving an account of it to the examination of the nature and procedure of discussion and report” (p. 38). Yet this project, despite its initial promise, failed for lack of a genuine logic of experimentation or inquiry. Then philosophy focused on going beyond the natural, beginning with the medieval “Search for Salvation” (Ch. IV, a significantly less developed and unified chapter draft). “Modern” philosophers then rightly replaced grand cosmic schemes with a focus on human nature (Ch. V), but they went too far with their introspective methods, gradually resulting in the same consequence supernaturalism had produced: a dualism of mind and nature, as if human nature is somehow not a part of nature. As we recall from Human Nature and Conduct (1922), human nature is not independent of but rather interdependent (or, using Dewey’s later term, transactional) with the rest of nature. The key is to avoid hypostatizing mind and better to talk of culture as nature. [End Page 123]With the Renaissance onward, humans have been “Wandering between Two Worlds” (Ch. VI), and endless arguments between “rationalists” and “empiricists” overlook what these camps share, namely a psychology assuming a fundamental split between subjective/objective and assumptions about certainty as founded upon various first principles or substances. The result is the stagnation of philosophy while science flourishes. Dewey cites Bertrand Russell as an example of continued insistence on such a priori principles (p. 106).We find ourselves in an epoch split between scientism and moral and religious fundamentalism, the result of a lingering tenacious investment in bad elements from ancient and medieval... (shrink)

In his 1922/1923 articles for the Japanese magazine _Kaizō_, Edmund Husserl identifies a particular “humanity” or human culture by the purposeful idea [_Zweckidee_] consciously embraced by the community. This purposeful idea is attained through rational self-formation on the part of the community in a manner analogous to the rational self-formation of the individual human being. Thereafter, it can be referenced to distinguish different cultures (or stages of cultural development) from one another through its objective manifestation in communal groups and cultural (...) products, as Husserl retraces in a historical account of the development of Western history. This paper explores the essential character of this conception of the purposeful idea from both an exegetical and a systematic perspective, examining in particular the relationship between such an idea and the values experienced by individual subjects within a culture (which are, according to Husserl, also available at the level of objective culture in relation to a communal subject). The paper argues that Husserl’s basic conception of the purposeful idea is a good model for understanding certain essential characteristics of cultural constitution in general, although some of his fundamental assumptions—especially the strict identity he attempts to establish between a purposeful idea as such and the specific goal of universal, rational self-understanding—turn out to be somewhat more questionable in light of the connection between the purposeful idea and the genuinely felt values underlying it. (shrink)

The article argues that Hobbes articulates a modern problematic of reason, where the shared rationality of human beings is an integral part of the danger they present to each other, and where reason suggests a solution, the social contract and the laws of nature, enforced and interpreted by absolute sovereign authority. This solution reflects a tension in modern reason itself, since it requires the alienation of self-determination of the rational human subject precisely to preserve the condition for the possibility of (...) the rationality of the rational human subject, i.e. one’s life, which is threatened by the very rationality of other human subjects. I discuss interpretations of Hobbes which stress the other motives of conflict, i.e. competition and vanity, and acknowledge that they play a role in the threat subjects present to each other, but argue that the danger presented precisely by shared rationality, which I discuss with some reference to the Hegelian dialectic of consciousness and mutual recognition, has been underplayed by Hobbes’ interpretation. (shrink)

This article presents a philosophical framework for physician-family ethical decision-making for the controversial cases of withdrawal, initiation, or continuation of treatment for spina bifida infants. The well-known criteria for selective treatment proposed by Lorber are shown to be ethically sub-optimal on the grounds that they are based on a general conception of the decision framework that is open to serious criticisms and questioning.We propose a model of joint physician-family decision-making that we think represents a more rational method of balancing patient (...) autonomy with the professional expertise and international moral norms of physicians. We raise serious reservations about the wisdom of allowing the state to intervene too strenously in this type of decision, in many cases. (shrink)

This article presents a philosophical framework for physician-family ethical decision-making for the controversial cases of withdrawal, initiation, or continuation of treatment for spina bifida infants. The well-known criteria for selective treatment proposed by Lorber are shown to be ethically sub-optimal on the grounds that they are based on a general conception of the decision framework that is open to serious criticisms and questioning.We propose a model of joint physician-family decision-making that we think represents a more rational method of balancing patient (...) autonomy with the professional expertise and international moral norms of physicians. We raise serious reservations about the wisdom of allowing the state to intervene too strenously in this type of decision, in many cases. (shrink)

Although sovereign jurisdictional authority is not itself a kind of property right for Hobbes, it is the object of the sovereign’s (not the state’s) proprietary rights. Jurisdictional authority for Hobbes is foundationally over persons rather than territory, so that the sovereign’s territorial jurisdiction is parasitic on jurisdiction over persons. Territory nevertheless plays a significant role in determining subjects’ political obligations because the sovereign’s ability to protect subjects is necessary for such obligations, and control over space is necessary to protect subjects. (...) Yet Hobbes shows why the modern ideology of the state does not univocally posit the state as an intrinsically territorial entity. There are two traditions here: The Lockean one that, in grounding jurisdictional authority in private dominion over things, portrays the state as intrinsically territorial, and the Hobbesian one that, in deriving property rights from jurisdictional authority, does not. (shrink)

Hobbes’s theory of authorisation poses numerous puzzles to scholars. The weightiest of these conundrums is a supposed contradiction between chapter 17 of Leviathan, that calls for unconditional submission to the sovereign, and chapter 21, that defends the liberties of the subject. This article offers a fresh perspective on the theory’s consistency, function and addressees. While existing research doubts the theory’s consistency, focuses on its immunisation function and on the subjects as the theory’s main addresses, the paper argues that Hobbes’s theory (...) of authorisation is consistent with the doctrine of the liberty of subjects, and that it serves the dual purpose of immunising the sovereign against criticism and disciplining the sovereign via a counsel of memento mori: A hitherto underexplored element of authorisation theory is a reminder of the mortality of sovereignty directed at the sovereign to convince him to make restricted use of his absolute right to rule. Hobbes’s theory of authorisation can thus be read as part of a complex argumentative strategy for peace, rooted in a ‘liberal absolutism’ which is not as paradoxical as it sounds, and which is reflected in the frontispiece by the friendly smile of the sovereign. (shrink)

The idea that the Leviathan frontispiece offers a visual summary of the contents of the work is widespread. However, the analysis of the frontispiece often under-explores Leviathan's text or leaves certain iconographic elements aside. In discussions of the Scholastics ‘Dilemma’ emblem, for instance, the image is commonly reduced to a representation of ‘logic’ or ‘scholasticism’, leaving aside the intricate interrelationship between the objects present in the image and their connection with the content of the book. This paper argues that this (...) image helps understanding Hobbes’ critique of Scholastic doctrines and their political effects in Leviathan. For Hobbes, these supposedly pure philosophical concepts either in logic (trident of the ‘Syllogism’) or metaphysics (‘Real/Intentional’ bident) hide a central part of Scholastic thought: a ‘seditious’ political conception claiming that the Pope has an indirect right to temporal power in affairs concerning spiritual matters theory (‘Spiritual/Temporal’ and ‘Direct/Indirect’ bidents). The Scholastic model made the common people believe that the Pope would have at least as much authority as the Sovereign. When faced with the choice between obeying either the Pope or their Civil Sovereign the subjects would find themselves in a dangerous ‘Dilemma’. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of the political implications of Hobbes’s theory of imagination and his solution to the threat posed by the imagination to political stability. While recent work has correctly identified the problem the imagination poses for Hobbes, it has underestimated the severity of the problem and, accordingly, has underestimated the length to which the Hobbesian sovereign will have to go in order to solve it. By reconstructing Hobbes’s account of sleep and the operation of the imagination (...) during sleep, this paper argues that the Hobbesian sovereign who seeks to solve the problem of the imagination must maintain his subjects in a ‘state of sleep,’ by preventing any kind of new inputs from disturbing their imagination. This solution suggests that the citizens of the Leviathan state are not sleeping sovereigns, but rather sleeping subjects. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes’s most important recommendations for a sovereign reader concerned the governing of opinion. Due to the spread of false doctrines and their powerful champions, Hobbes was afraid that subjects would have opinions contrary to the maintenance of peace. His solution comprehended a combination of civic education and censorship. This text explains how Hobbes justifies his recommendations from the perspective of individual deliberation. It argues that Hobbes conceived censoring circulating doctrines as a way of keeping subjects’ minds like clean paper, (...) ready for the sovereign to imprint civil doctrine in them through teaching, thereby increasing the chances of influencing subjects’ (free) deliberation, and thus of producing obedience. (shrink)

Hobbes would say that this level of apprehension is inevitable in any society that isn't governed by a sufficiently powerful central ruler. Just as in our world, some people or groups would have more power than others, and some of these might have more power than most. The Emperor would still be subject to the demands of the Spacing Guild, for example, while the Spacing Guild would still need to be on good terms with the governor of Arrakis because of (...) the Guild's absolute dependence upon spice. In a world like this, it would be difficult not to see potential threats around every corner, and with good reason. And in this state of wariness, political and social stability will be tough to attain. Hobbes had seen firsthand the terrible destruction that civil war could unleash, the horrific loss of life and destruction of security. (shrink)

This paper brings to light an unexplored aspect of Hobbes’s argument that political authority rests upon subjects’ consent. Consent enacts a transfer of subjects’ right of nature to the sovereign, yet she already possesses a natural right to everything. What moral difference, then, does this make to her possession of power, and how? In my reading, the difference lies in the rise of new obligations befalling the sovereign by means of an indirect mechanism: That many individuals, hoping for safety, transfer (...) their right of nature to the sovereign triggers an obligation for her to accept the role of a ruler and perform the duties attached to it, for the sake of the peace enjoined by the laws of nature. This reading should also confirm the possibility of a consensual foundation for the Hobbesian right to punish and shed new light on Hobbes’s notion of tacit consent. (shrink)

By focusing on the exchange between Descartes and Hobbes on how the self is related to its activities, Berkeley draws attention to how he and Hobbes explain the forensic constitution of human subjectivity and moral/political responsibility in terms of passive obedience and conscientious submission to the laws of the sovereign. Formulated as the language of nature or as pronouncements of the supreme political power, those laws identify moral obligations by locating political subjects within those networks of sensible signs. When thus (...) juxtaposed with Hobbes, Berkeley can be understood as endorsing a theologically inflected version of deontological ethics in which moral laws are linked directly to the constitution of the self. (shrink)

Legal positivism dominates in the debate between it and natural law, but close attention to the work of Thomas Hobbes -- the "founder" of the positivist tradition -- reveals a version of anti-positivism with the potential to change the contours of that debate. Hobbes's account of law ties law to legitimacy through the legal constraints of the rule of law. Legal order is essential to maintaining the order of civil society; and the institutions of legal order are structured in such (...) a way that government in accordance with the rule of law is intrinsically legitimate. I focus on Hobbes's neglected catalogue of the laws of nature. Only the first group gets much attention. Its function is to facilitate exit from the state of nature, an exit which Hobbes seems to make impossible. The second group sets out the moral psychology of both legislators and subjects necessary to sustain a properly functioning legal order. The third sets out the formal institutional requirements of such an order. The second and third groups show Hobbes not concerned with solving an insoluble problem of exit from the state of nature but with the construction of legitimate order. Because a sovereign is by definition one who governs through law, Hobbes's absolutism is constrained. Government in accordance with the rule of law is government subject to the moral constraints of the institutions of legal order. (shrink)

Legal positivism dominates in the debate between it and naturallaw, but close attention to the work of Thomas Hobbes – the``founder'' of the positivist tradition – reveals a version ofanti-positivism with the potential to change the contours of thatdebate. Hobbes's account of law ties law to legitimacy throughthe legal constraints of the rule of law. Legal order isessential to maintaining the order of civil society; and theinstitutions of legal order are structured in such a way thatgovernment in accordance with the (...) rule of law is intrinsicallylegitimate.I focus on Hobbes's neglected catalogue of the laws of nature.Only the first group gets much attention. Its function is tofacilitate exit from the state of nature, an exit which Hobbesseems to make impossible. The second group sets out the moralpsychology of both legislators and subjects necessary to sustaina properly functioning legal order. The third sets out the formalinstitutional requirements of such an order. The second and thirdgroups show Hobbes not concerned with solving an insolubleproblem of exit from the state of nature but with theconstruction of legitimate order. Because a sovereign is bydefinition one who governs through law, Hobbes's absolutism isconstrained. Government in accordance with the rule of law isgovernment subject to the moral constraints of the institutionsof legal order. (shrink)

Hobbes's political theory has traditionally been taken to be an endorsement of state power and a prescription for unconditional obedience to the sovereign's will. In this book, Susanne Sreedhar develops a novel interpretation of Hobbes's theory of political obligation and explores important cases where Hobbes claims that subjects have a right to disobey and resist state power, even when their lives are not directly threatened. Drawing attention to this broader set of rights, her comprehensive analysis of Hobbes's account of political (...) disobedience reveals a unified and coherent theory of resistance that has previously gone unnoticed and undefended. Her book will appeal to all who are interested in the nature and limits of political authority, the right of self-defense, the right of revolution, and the modern origins of these issues. (shrink)

In this article we examine the true scope of the right Hobbes recognizes, even for the subjects of a State, to life. We hold that the right to live includes the subject's right not to accept to be deprived not only of life but also of limb; a right not to have to kill; a right not to accept to be imprisoned. The sovereign of course has a right to kill, mutilate and arrest but the conflict of his right and (...) the subject's is an original feature of Hobbes's political thought, not to be found for instance in Locke's. Also, since life is motion and desire is a continual progress from one object to another, the mere survival of the subject is not enough to make him content once peace has been achieved. The expression of the subject's discontent is illegal, but it may happen since we can understand the right to live as a right to an ever more ambitious desire. The ruler who wants to avoid discontent and its uncivil effects should in a certain measure pave the way for economic development, in order to permit the subjects to at least partially attain their desire. Obviously this is not a moral duty of the sovereign, but a prudential one, if he does not want to risk losing his office. (shrink)

Hobbes' theory of sovereignty is in three parts. One is concerned with the causes of the dissolution of commonwealths. Another is concerned with the rights of properly established sovereigns, where the rights in question remedy the causes of the dissolution of commonwealths. The third part consists of a statement of the duties of sovereigns: constraints on the proper exercise of sovereign rights. Even when the rights of sovereigns are exercised properly, sovereignty is fragile. This is because there are problems of (...) making a sovereign power last beyond the lifetimes of a single sovereign or the leading members of a sovereign assembly, because there are always difficulties with putting the interests of a sovereign's subjects before other interests, and because sovereign rights are exercised in at best a permanent cold war with other sovereigns. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore in what respects Thomas Hobbes may be regarded as foundational in international thought. It is evident that in contemporary international relations theory he has become emblematic of a realist tradition, but as David Armitage suggests this was not always the case. I want to suggest that it is only in a very limited sense that he may be regarded as a foundational thinker in international relations, and for reasons very different from those (...) for which he has become infamous. In the early histories of international thought Hobbes is a cameo figure completely eclipsed by Grotius. In early histories of political literature, the classic jurists were often acknowledged for their remarkable contributions to international relations, but Hobbes is referred to exclusively as a philosopher of a positvist ethics and absolute sovereignty. It is among the jurists themselves that Hobbes is believed to have made important conceptual moves which set the problems for international thought for the next three centuries. He conflates natural law and the law of nations, arguing that they differ only in their subjects—the former individuals, the latter nations or states. This entailed transforming the sovereign into an artificial man, not in the Roman Law sense of an entity capable of suing and being sued; rather, as a subject not party to a contract, but created by a contract among individuals who confer upon it authority. This subject is not constrained by the contractors, but is, as individuals were in the state of nature, constrained by the equivalent of natural law, the law of nations in the international context. Throughout, the methodological implications are drawn for modern historians of political thought and political philosophers who venture to theorise about international relations. (shrink)

Ruth Macklin argued that dignity is nothing more than respect for persons or their autonomy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, difficult decisions are being made about the allocation of scarce resources. Respect for autonomy cannot justify rationing decisions. Justice can be invoked to justify rationing. However, this leaves an uncomfortable tension between the principles. Dignity is not a useless concept because it is able to account for why we respect autonomy and for why it can be legitimate to (...) override autonomy in times of critical care resource shortages. Dignity affirms the worth of the human individual as a meaning-making embodied subject, who is always in relationship to others, the world, time, and transcendence, and who realizes their dignity through their moral behaviour. Such an understanding means people should be helped to make morally right decisions about their own treatment, which may include forgoing potentially beneficial treatment for the good of others. Respect for dignity does not require fulfilling the morally wrong choices of one who insists on treatment at the expense of others. Dignity also protects the discretion of clinicians to make decisions appropriate to their competence by prohibiting the application of broad-based criteria such as age. (shrink)

In their theories of international order, Hobbes and Kant are not as far apart as earlier interpreters have claimed. Both consider peace between states and mutual respect for their sovereign independence to be necessary for securing domestic order. For both Hobbes and Kant, order arises from the very “independency“ of states in a manner that is different from the independence of individuals in a state of nature. Both regard the independency of states and their commitment to the prosperity of their (...) subjects as principles that support a long-term orientation toward peaceable cooperation. The most significance difference between Hobbes and Kant concerning international order arises from Kant's attributing to individuals a cosmopolitan right that makes the international order more subject to potential conflict concerning the rights of individuals, but also gives his theory a stronger normative framework for the development of shared norms than what is found in Hobbes's political theory. (shrink)

The overall goal of the article is to reexamine Hobbes’s concern to respond to the challenges of the republican perspective on the relationship between the liberty of subjects and the political power. If, according to Skinner, republican theorists appealed to sources of classical antiquity, I argue that Hobbes chooses to offer a blend of classical and theological ideas in order to generate a “science” of the political life within the confines of a postlapsarian world dominated by passion and the fear (...) of death. If the image of God is maintained in the Hobbesian politics, it is because Hobbes needed a model of imitation of a stability that the individuals dominated by passions failed too often to have. Hobbes also needed a model of omnipotence and providence to be imitated by the sovereign. This complex relationship between the theological heritage of the past and the novelties inaugurated in political thought by Hobbes’s accent on human passions triggers a series of changes in Hobbes’s understanding of the law of nature and natural right. The article brings to discussion Hobbes’s indebtedness to Lactantius in reading Lucretius’s materialism, Augustine’s model of God as a Creator and the theological controversy between intellectualism and voluntarism when formulating his own anthropological perspective on “natural” and “civil” law and right. (shrink)

To understand Hobbes’s handling of Christian scripture in Part 3 of Leviathan we need to see it in the light of his own radical account of the norms controlling public religious speech and practice as set out in Part 2 and in other works such as De Cive and De Corpore. As these texts make clear, Hobbes holds that we ought rationally to venerate the first cause of all, and that the proper way to venerate this awesome and incomprehensible being (...) is to publicly adopt the local culture’s religious practices, however arbitrary or conventional those practices might be. For the seventeenth-century English subject, the Anglo-Protestant scriptural religion provides the appropriate vehicle to express this rationally mandated religious piety, and thus provides a form of devotion that Hobbes embraces in a spirit of genuine religious reverence. At the same time, he also regards this religion, like all scriptural religions, as a conventional human artifact that, given the ear of the sovereign, he might hope to shape in favor of Hobbesian ideals such as civil obedience, the separation of philosophy from religion, and the extirpation of belief in an immaterial spirit-world. The proposed interpretation dissolves systematic problems facing irreligious readings on the one hand, and more straightforwardly Christian readings on the other. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hobbes's Politics Human Nature and the State of War The Laws of Nature and the Rationale for the State The Obligations of Subjects and the Rights of Sovereigns Strengths and Weaknesses of Hobbes's Politics The Rest of Hobbes's Philosophy.

This work intends to demonstrate the existence of limits that hinder the absolute authority of the sovereign in Hobbes’s political theory. Particularly, I will try to identify the concept of honor as the paradigm of this limitation. The field of the manifestations of worth — it will be argued — operates within a logic that runs parallel to that of the State. Moreover, it engenders authorities with high degree of autonomy. To be sure, the sovereign power can intervene in (...) this field by means of persuasion and coercion, but it will never be able to erase the resistances and limitations imposed by signs of honor. (shrink)

Hobbes’s science of politics rests on a dual analysis of human beings: humans as complex material bodies in a network of mechanical forces, prone to passions and irrationality; and humans as subjects of right and obligation, morally exhortable by appeal to the standards of reason. The science of politics proposes an absolutist model of politics. If this proposal is not to be idle utopianism, the enduring functioning of the model needs to be compatible with the materialist analysis of human behaviour. (...) In this paper, I argue that Hobbes's attempts to render his science of politics compatible with his materialism are only partly successful; a fuller compatibility is achieved in the political writings of Spinoza. -/- Published with reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 221-224. Reprinted as: Sandra Field (2015), 'Hobbes and human irrationality', in T. Nardin (ed.) Rationality in Politics and its Limits, Abingdon: Routledge, 31-44. With reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 45-48. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article engages with a key interpretive puzzle in Hobbes’s political thought – his seemingly contradictory view of liberty of conscience – and argues that Hobbes theorizes civic education as a powerful tool to confront and refashion prevailing views of conscience in early modernity. While influential accounts have recovered more ‘tolerant’ arguments in Hobbes’s political thought, recent revisionist accounts have argued that Hobbes does not merely advocate for the compulsion of outward conformity but also subjects’ inward persuasion. Yet this (...) nuanced attention to the sovereign’s role in cultivating obedient, peaceful subjects does not attend fully to his shaping of the consciences of his subjects. Situating Hobbes in the early modern discourse on casuistry, as well as political debates on educational reform, reveals that the sovereign can and should try to shape the consciences of subjects, specifically returning to a view of conscience as a kind of ‘knowing with’ others. Reframing Hobbes’s project of civic education as a strategy to ‘gently instill’ the consciences of subjects does not merely shed light on the interpretive puzzle of Hobbes’s ambivalence towards toleration but also draws attention to one of the most powerful and arguably underappreciated ways to overcome the threat of conscience to sovereignty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of metaphor, (...) but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

Hobbes says a great deal about the rights of subjects, particularly in Leviathan, and yet, despite his apparent insistence on the importance of the rights of the subject, the prevailing view amongst modern Hobbes scholars has been that rights of Hobbesian subjects are weak. The dominant view of Hobbesian rights as weak and insignificant is the view of modern Hobbes scholarship, which analyses Hobbes's political theory at great distance from his intellectual milieu and from the dramatic political events of the (...) time. Hobbesian absolutism is understood to rule out rights of any strength or significance on the part of Hobbesian subjects and particularly, any rights held against the sovereign. The significance of defining subjects' rights as Hohfeldian liberty rights is that liberty rights lack any correlative duties on the part of others. The sovereign's authority and right to rule are made dependent on his ability and willingness to protect the subjects' aggregate right to self‐preservation. (shrink)

This article addresses the modern concept of sovereignty as a multivocal and conflictual semantic field, arguing for the necessity to trace its genealogy based on the structural tensions that haunt its logical framework – as well as its representations – rather than on a linear historiographic reconstruction. In particular, the scrutiny I propose aims to examine a series of exchanges that have been characterizing this concept since the beginning: the global and the European, the maritime and the territorial, the colony (...) and the state, the imperial and the proprietary. The problematic balance between ‘imperium’ and ‘dominium’ is indeed assumed here as the turning point of the rise of a sovereign power that appears to be originally rooted in the very production and governance of the global space, thus giving up all possible Eurocentric narratives of modernity. To illustrate my argument, I focus on the frontispieces to three of Thomas Hobbes’s most important books, that is, his translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars, De Cive and Leviathan. A thorough analysis of these images enables us to understand how these lines of force traverse the very heart of modern European political concepts, along with the mirroring effects that constantly bounce their normative construction of subjectivity back and forth from the periphery to the centre and, ultimately, from the market to the state. (shrink)

This article addresses the modern concept of sovereignty as a multivocal and conflictual semantic field, arguing for the necessity to trace its genealogy based on the structural tensions that haunt its logical framework – as well as its representations – rather than on a linear historiographic reconstruction. In particular, the scrutiny I propose aims to examine a series of exchanges that have been characterizing this concept since the beginning: the global and the European, the maritime and the territorial, the colony (...) and the state, the imperial and the proprietary. The problematic balance between ‘imperium’ and ‘dominium’ is indeed assumed here as the turning point of the rise of a sovereign power that appears to be originally rooted in the very production and governance of the global space, thus giving up all possible Eurocentric narratives of modernity. To illustrate my argument, I focus on the frontispieces to three of Thomas Hobbes’s most important books, that is, his translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars, De Cive and Leviathan. A thorough analysis of these images enables us to understand how these lines of force traverse the very heart of modern European political concepts, along with the mirroring effects that constantly bounce their normative construction of subjectivity back and forth from the periphery to the centre and, ultimately, from the market to the state. (shrink)

In Leviathan chapter 31 Hobbes refers to atheists and deists as "God's enemies." The contrast class is God's subjects in what he calls the Kingdom of God by Nature. This chapter offers an account of how one submits to God to become God's natural subject. The explanation reinforces the distinction between a primary and secondary state of nature. Submission to God obligates natural subjects to obey the laws of nature because the precepts of those laws acquire thereby the normative force (...) of law. The view further explains why submission to God differs from submission to a civil sovereign, despite the fact that both are voluntary. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.1 (2001) 21-37 [Access article in PDF] Conscience and the Concealments of Metaphor in Hobbes's Leviathan Karen S. Feldman Introduction Conscience is not a topic of terribly heated debate in Hobbes research. 1 Nevertheless, my claim in this article is that conscience in the Leviathan, which Hobbes poses as an example of the dangers of metaphor, is not merely an example of the dangers of metaphor, (...) but rather is the most dangerous metaphor, the metaphor that corrupts knowledge and thereby makes error and deception possible. Hobbes's brief account of conscience, which appears in the chapter of Leviathan on the ends of discourse, tells the story of the insinuation of metaphor into proper nomenclature; however, his example of the metaphorical use of the word conscience turns the story into one in which public knowledge itself is made private and thereby corrupted. Moreover, according to the story, private conscience is itself invented by means of a metaphor; it is in effect metaphorized into being. 2 With the emergence of private conscience, the potential of privatization expands from the privatization of the meaning of words to an entire private sphere of opinion. The metaphorical corruption of conscience invents a new understanding of knowledge as isolated from other witnesses, and the resultant privatization of truth lends itself to the corruption of that truth. Thus, whereas Hobbes characterizes the wrong use of names (of which metaphor is an instance) as a threat to accurate judgment and reason (L 22-23, 34, 161-62), as I will argue in the sections following, Hobbes's demand for the preservation of proper meaning in Leviathan corresponds to an anxiety regarding privacy and its peculiar potential for corrupting truth and knowledge. Hobbes's worries as to the dangers that metaphor poses to the stability of the commonwealth thereby converge with his worries about the dangers of conscience to the principle of public authority (cf. Strong 1993). [End Page 21] Hobbes's condemnations of conscience In Leviathan, conscience is condemned as a source of principles of human decision and action in a commonwealth. The problem with conscience as a principle of action is that it renders each individual inventor of his own rules and judge of his own actions. In brief, individual conscience is incommensurable with the public authority that defines a commonwealth: Another doctrine repugnant to civil society, is, that whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of good and evil. For a man's conscience, and his judgment is the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous. Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law, sinneth in all he does against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own reason; yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth; because the law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be guided. Otherwise in such diversity, as there is of private consciences, which are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no man dare to obey the sovereign power, further than it shall seem good in his own eyes. (L 311) In this account, conscience is not just inferior to civil law as a principle guiding action, but at odds with civil society and the good of the commonwealth. The fact that conscience is private renders it problematic for the commonwealth for several reasons: First, as privately invented, it may be erroneous. Likewise, because it is private, conscience does not possess any binding power outside the individual, private sphere. Each person may be bound by his own conscience, but insofar as consciences differ, standards of action differ, and this leads to the undermining and distraction of the commonwealth. Likewise, private consciences may be divergent from one another, and the conflicts in private judgment produce conflicting actions that disturb the peace of the commonwealth. This rule of privacy is, moreover, associated with primitive life and with the state of nature... (shrink)

“What must be thought,” Jacques Derrida writes in the closing pages of Rogues, “is this inconceivable and unknowable thing, a freedom that would no longer be the power of a subject, a freedom without autonomy, a heteronomy without servitude, in short, something like a passive decision.”1 To certain readers of Derrida, this passage, coming near the end of Rogues, written some two years before he passed away, would mark the fundamental failure of his thought. “What must be thought …”: (...) an exhortation, an ethical injunction, but seemingly also a final plea at the end of a long career that, many…. (shrink)

Early modern theorists linked the idea of sovereign power to a conception of absolute power developed during the medieval period. Ockham had reframed the already extant distinction between God's absolute and ordained powers in order to argue that God was free of moral constraint in ordaining natural law for human beings. Thus, the natural law could command the opposite of what God had ordained if He wished to make it so. Bodin extended Ockham's argument to earthly sovereigns, who do not (...) (he argued) have to obey civil law. However, Bodin undermined his absolutism by maintaining that civil law has to be consistent with natural and divine law. Hobbes more consistently argued that while mortal sovereigns are accountable to God, the power of sovereigns to command is not subject to moral constraints. Underlying Ockham's view of God's sovereignty, and Bodin's and Hobbes's view of earthly sovereigns, is a notion of the will's unconstrained power. But this notion is self-referentially incoherent. This incoherence, in turn, infects the very notion of sovereignty. (shrink)