Hobbes's bourgeois moderation

Polity

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 52-74

  Hayes, Peter ^a  

^a Sch of Social and Intl Studies   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0042856360     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3235367     Document Type: Article

References (94)

1. Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, tr. A. M. Sinclair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936).
2. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1966); C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
3. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1966); C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
4. C. B. Macpherson, Introduction to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1968), 9-63.
5. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1953), 252.
6. Isaiah Berlin, "Hobbes, Locke and Professor Macpherson," Political Quarterly 35 (1964): 444-68, reprinted in Thomas Hobbes: Critical Assessments, ed. Preston King (London: Routledge, 1993) I: 55-76; J. D. C. Carmichael, "C. B. Macpherson's 'Hobbes': A Critique," Canadian Journal of Political Science 26 (1983): 61-80,
7. Isaiah Berlin, "Hobbes, Locke and Professor Macpherson," Political Quarterly 35 (1964): 444-68, reprinted in Thomas Hobbes: Critical Assessments, ed. Preston King (London: Routledge, 1993) I: 55-76; J. D. C. Carmichael, "C. B. Macpherson's 'Hobbes': A Critique," Canadian Journal of Political Science 26 (1983): 61-80,
8. Isaiah Berlin, "Hobbes, Locke and Professor Macpherson," Political Quarterly 35 (1964): 444-68, reprinted in Thomas Hobbes: Critical Assessments, ed. Preston King (London: Routledge, 1993) I: 55-76; J. D. C. Carmichael, "C. B. Macpherson's 'Hobbes': A Critique," Canadian Journal of Political Science 26 (1983): 61-80,
9. reprinted in King, Thomas Hobbes, 359-79;
10. Alan Ryan, "Hobbes and Individualism," in Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and A. Ryan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 81-105;
11. Keith Thomas, "The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought," in Hobbes Studies, ed. Keith C. Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 185-236.
12. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 11.
13. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (London: Harper Collins, 1930), 57.
14. The second and third laws of nature concern contracts in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1968), 190-203. The first law of nature establishes property in Thomas Hobbes, De Cive: The English Version (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) Ch. IV, Sec. IV, 78. The first law in Leviathan and fundamental law in De Cive is to seek peace.
15. The second and third laws of nature concern contracts in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin, 1968), 190-203. The first law of nature establishes property in Thomas Hobbes, De Cive: The English Version (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) Ch. IV, Sec. IV, 78. The first law in Leviathan and fundamental law in De Cive is to seek peace.
16. Hobbes, Leviathan, 209.
17. Hobbes, Leviathan, 212.
18. Hobbes, Leviathan, 214.
19. Hobbes, Leviathan, 385.
20. Hobbes, Leviathan, 82.
21. Hobbes, Leviathan, 385-86.
22. For a discussion of the influence of Hobbes's laws of nature in the eighteenth century see Eduardo A. Velásquez, "Rethinking America's Modernity: Natural Law, Natural Rights, and the Character of James Wilson's Liberal Republicanism," Polity 29 (Winter 1996): 195-96.
23. Anthony Ascham, A Seasonable Discourse, Wherein is Examined What is Lawful during the Confusions and Revolutions of Government, London, printed, and to be sold by Richard Janeway in Queen's Head Court in Pater Noster-Row, 1689 (1st publ. 1649), 8-9; Hobbes, Leviathan, 209-210. Also compare Hobbes's discussion of public charity and necessary laws in Leviathan, 387, 388, and Macpherson's discussion of the Putney debates between Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and the Levellers in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism,
24. Anthony Ascham, A Seasonable Discourse, Wherein is Examined What is Lawful during the Confusions and Revolutions of Government, London, printed, and to be sold by Richard Janeway in Queen's Head Court in Pater Noster-Row, 1689 (1st publ. 1649), 8-9; Hobbes, Leviathan, 209-210. Also compare Hobbes's discussion of public charity and necessary laws in Leviathan, 387, 388, and Macpherson's discussion of the Putney debates between Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and the Levellers in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism,
25. Ascham and Hobbes are compared in Irene Coltman, Private Men and Public Causes (London: Faber, 1962), 223-24.
26. George Tullie, Moderation Recommended in a Sermon Preached before The Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen at Guild Hall Chappel (London, Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Churchyard, 1689), 20;
27. Hobbes, Leviathan, 210-211. Also compare Leviathan, 185.
28. Hobbes, Leviathan, 210-211. Also compare Leviathan, 185.
29. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 139.
30. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 140.
31. Hobbes, Leviathan, 388.
32. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 157
33. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 142.
34. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 140
35. Hobbes, Leviathan, 183-84; 82-83; 211-12; 385.
36. Hobbes, Leviathan, 269.
37. Hobbes, Leviathan, 204-205.
38. Hobbes, Leviathan, 199, 270-71, 345-46.
39. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 143.
40. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 143.
41. Hobbes, Leviathan, 216; 210-11.
42. Hobbes, Leviathan, 387; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 146.
43. Hobbes, Leviathan, 387; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 146.
44. Hobbes, Leviathan, 375.
45. J. D. C. Carmichael suggests that Macpherson finds bourgeois ideology in the work of Hobbes in a manner akin to a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. See "Reply: Macpherson Versus the Text of Leviathan," Canadian Journal of Political Science 26 (1983): 390-92.
46. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, ed. L. G. Crocker (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 200, 211.
47. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 106.
48. The market, in which values are not fixed but are determined by bargaining, provides Hobbes with a useful simile to help explain how the degree of honor in which someone is held is not related to intrinsic capabilities, but rather to the nominal value set upon them by others: "as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price." Hobbes does not imply that honor is always determined by shifting market values as he continues to explain that recipients of public honor are nominated by the sovereign; Leviathan, 152.
49. Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965); Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965).
50. Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965); Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965).
51. Ryan, "Hobbes and Individualism," 100.
52. Hobbes, Leviathan, 295.
53. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 42.
54. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 62-63. Also see Macpherson's Introduction to Leviathan, 50.
55. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 62-63. Also see Macpherson's Introduction to Leviathan, 50.
56. C. B. Macpherson, "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man," in Democratic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 241.
57. Hobbes, Leviathan, 211.
58. Macpherson, "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man," 241; J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Phaidon Press, 1944).
59. Macpherson, "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man," 241; J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Phaidon Press, 1944).
60. For example, see Burckhardt's description of Leon Battisa Alberti, in The Civilizanon of the Renaissance, 85-87.
61. C. B. Macpherson, "Problems of a Non-market Theory of Democracy, " in Macpherson. Democratic Theory, 40-52.
62. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161; Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 41.
63. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161; Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 41.
64. Hobbes, De Cive. Ch. I, Sec. IV, 46.
65. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161.
66. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161.
67. Hobbes, Leviathan, 161-62.
68. Hobbes, Leviathan, 162.
69. Hobbes, Leviathan, 150, 139, 149.
70. These capacities include the ability to engage in philosophy, which requires leisure, which in turn requires a commonwealth to maintain the peace. Hobbes, Leviathan, 683.
71. Leo Strauss, "Review of C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke," in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 230.
72. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 118.
73. Macpherson sometimes adopts this true/but mode of presentation: "And while he was critical of the concentration of wealth by monopolies and of 'the great number of Corporations,' he took it for granted that the sovereign state would permit individuals such bourgeois freedoms as 'the Liberty to buy and sell, and otherwise contract with one another.'" "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man," 243.
74. Macpherson, Introduction to Leviathan, 51. Strauss contends that the underlying argument in Behemoth is that the interests of the bourgeoisie are best served by unquestioning obedience to the sovereign. This is true, but only insofar as Hobbes argues that obedience is in everyone's interest regardless of their class.
75. Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969) Pt. I, Ch. XVII, Sec. I, 87-88; Hobbes, Leviathan, 211. Also see Hobbes De Cive, Ch. III, Sec. XIII, 68. The Elements of Law was completed in 1640, eleven years before the publication of Leviathan in 1651.
76. Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969) Pt. I, Ch. XVII, Sec. I, 87-88; Hobbes, Leviathan, 211. Also see Hobbes De Cive, Ch. III, Sec. XIII, 68. The Elements of Law was completed in 1640, eleven years before the publication of Leviathan in 1651.
77. Hobbes, Leviathan, 162, 185, 211-12.
78. Hobbes, Leviathan, 211.
79. Stephen Macedo argues in Liberal Virtues that the enlightened self-interest implicit in Hobbes's laws of nature is a step towards modern liberal ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 139-141.
80. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 52.
81. Strauss argues that Weber pays insufficient attention to secular political theorists such as Hobbes in Natural Right and History, 61n.
82. Hobbes, Leviathan, 160.
83. Plato, Gorgias, tr. Walter Hamilton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 492-94.
84. By contrast Macpherson argues that "the novelty of Hobbes's assumption is the novelty of the bourgeois view, that material appetites are boundless and that no moral restraint can or need be placed on them," "Hobbes's Bourgeois Man," 244. For the differing views of Hobbes and Aristotle on happiness compare Hobbes, Leviathan, 129-30 with Aristotle, Politics, tr. Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 1323b, 1338a. Strauss discusses the difference between Hobbesian and classical concepts of pleasure in The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 134.
85. For example, see Hobbes's descriptions of religious belief, laughter and pity in Leviathan, Ch. 6. He is not invariably cynical; the same chapter recognizes benevolence, charity and good will to mean desiring good for others.
86. The confusion between individualism and selfishness (which Hobbes does little to dispel), is discussed by Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1, The Spell of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 100.
87. Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 18, 229-36.
88. The identification of Locke as a bourgeois philosopher can be dated back to Jonas Proast's contemporary criticism of his call for toleration, which "how much soever it may tend to the Advancement of Trade and Commerce (which some seem to place above all other Considerations;) I see no reason . . . to expect that True Religion would be any way a gainer by it." It is made famous by Marx's comment that after the puritan bourgeois had triumphed in the English civil war "Locke supplanted Habakkuk." See Jonas Proast, The Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration Briefly Consider'd and Answer'd (Oxford, Printed at the Theatre, for George West, and Henry Clements, 1690), 2; Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 17.
89. The identification of Locke as a bourgeois philosopher can be dated back to Jonas Proast's contemporary criticism of his call for toleration, which "how much soever it may tend to the Advancement of Trade and Commerce (which some seem to place above all other Considerations;) I see no reason . . . to expect that True Religion would be any way a gainer by it." It is made famous by Marx's comment that after the puritan bourgeois had triumphed in the English civil war "Locke supplanted Habakkuk." See Jonas Proast, The Argument of the Letter Concerning Toleration Briefly Consider'd and Answer'd (Oxford, Printed at the Theatre, for George West, and Henry Clements, 1690), 2; Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 17.
90. Hobbes argues that subjects who keep out of public affairs are safe from a single ruler no matter how tyrannical. He does not recognize Arendt's distinction between living in fear under a tyranny and living in terror under a totalitarian regime where retreat into private life provides no guarantee of safety and is ultimately impossible. See Hobbes, De Cive, Ch. X, Sec. VII, 133-34; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 465-67.
91. Hobbes argues that subjects who keep out of public affairs are safe from a single ruler no matter how tyrannical. He does not recognize Arendt's distinction between living in fear under a tyranny and living in terror under a totalitarian regime where retreat into private life provides no guarantee of safety and is ultimately impossible. See Hobbes, De Cive, Ch. X, Sec. VII, 133-34; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 465-67.
92. Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 13, 186.
93. Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 14, 189-201.
94. Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 15, 201-217.