The composition of Hobbes's elements of law

History of Political Thought

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 16-43

  Baumgold, Deborah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

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EID: 1442354334     PISSN: 0143781X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (108)

1. Thomas Hobbes, 'Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion, of Thomas Hobbes', in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol. IV, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1840), p. 414.
2. Ferdinand Tönnies, 'The Editor's Preface', in Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural & Politic, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge, 1928), pp. ix-x; and George Croom Robertson, Hobbes, cheap edition (Philadelphia, n.d.), pp. 50-1.
3. Ferdinand Tönnies, 'The Editor's Preface', in Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural & Politic, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge, 1928), pp. ix-x; and George Croom Robertson, Hobbes, cheap edition (Philadelphia, n.d.), pp. 50-1.
4. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 52.
5. Richard Tuck, Hobbes (Oxford, 1989), pp. 19, 24.
6. Noel Malcolm, 'A Summary Biography of Hobbes', in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, 1996), p. 41 note 52, pp. 28, 27.
7. A.P. Martinich, Hobbes: A Biography (Cambridge, 1999), p. 156.
8. Malcolm, 'Summary Biography', pp. 26-7; and Tuck, Hobbes, p. 20. Cf. Robertson, Hobbes, pp. 48-52.
9. Malcolm, 'Summary Biography', pp. 26-7; and Tuck, Hobbes, p. 20. Cf. Robertson, Hobbes, pp. 48-52.
10. Malcolm, 'Summary Biography', pp. 26-7; and Tuck, Hobbes, p. 20. Cf. Robertson, Hobbes, pp. 48-52.
11. For a similar view, see E.G. Jacoby, 'Thomas Hobbes in Europe', Journal of European Studies, 4 (1974), pp. 57-65, p. 63.
12. Thomas Hobbes, The Correspondence, ed. Noel Malcolm (2 vols., Oxford, 1994), Vol. I, p. 29. Malcolm supplies information on Warner, pp. 29-30, notes 3-4.
13. An autobiography written several years before Hobbes's death recalls daily communication with Mersenne about this view of perception and the mechanical view of nature on which it was based. Hobbes writes in the third person: 'When he was staying in Paris, he began to investigate the principles of natural science. When he became aware of the variety of movement contained in the natural world, he first inquired as to the nature of these motions, to determine the ways in which they might effect the senses, the intellect, the imagination, together with the other natural properties. He communicated his findings on a daily basis to the Reverent Father Marin Mersenne, of the Order of the Minim Brothers, a scholar who was venerated as an outstanding exponent of all branches of philosophy.' Thomas Hobbes, 'The Prose Life', in The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, with Three Lives, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford, 1994), p. 247.
14. Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural & Politic, ed. Tönnies, 1.2.4, p. 3. (References are given to Part, chapter, section and page.)
15. Ibid., I.7.1, p. 21.
16. Ibid., I.2.4, p. 3.
17. e brayne'.
18. Thomas Hobbes, 'The Verse Life', in The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, with Three Lives, ed. Gaskin, p. 257: 'Whether on Horse, in Coach, or Ship, still I/Was most Intent on my Philosophy ./One only thing i'th' World seem'd true to me,/. . ./One only True Thing, the Basis of all/Those Things whereby we any Thing do call./. . . /To Matter, Motion, I my self apply'. The continuation of the passage is quoted on p. 23 below.
19. For an excellent account of this, see Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 15-19.
20. e fixed stars, and such as here on earth is fire.' Thomas Hobbes, 'To the Right Honourable the Marquis of Newcastle [dedication to 'A minute or first draught of the Optiques', 1646], in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol. VII, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, 1845), p. 468.
21. John Aubrey, 'Thomas Hobbes', in Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 150; and Hobbes, 'Prose Life', pp. 246-7.
22. John Aubrey, 'Thomas Hobbes', in Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (Ann Arbor, 1962), p. 150; and Hobbes, 'Prose Life', pp. 246-7.
23. Johann P. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (New York, 1992), p. 14.
24. Hobbes, Elements of Law, p. xvii. See, also, I.13.3-4, pp. 50-1, where Hobbes defines the 'mathematici' as those who employ the geometrical method.
25. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 15.
26. On Grotius' influence on Hobbes's thinking, see Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, 1979).
27. Noel Malcolm, 'Biographical Register of Hobbes's Correspondents', in Hobbes, Correspondence, Vol. II (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 887-8.
28. 'Sir Kenelm Digby to Hobbes, from Paris', in Hobbes, Correspondence, Vol. I, pp. 42-3.
29. Jean Jacquot and Harold Whitmore Jones, 'Introduction', in Thomas Hobbes, Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White (Paris, 1973), p. 16. Malcolm concurs in the identification (Hobbes, Correspondence, p. 49 note 2).
30. Jean Jacquot and Harold Whitmore Jones, 'Introduction', in Thomas Hobbes, Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White (Paris, 1973), p. 16. Malcolm concurs in the identification (Hobbes, Correspondence, p. 49 note 2).
31. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 48; Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 23-4; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 17. Sommerville relates Hobbes's arguments to the immediate political context in 'Lofty Science and Local Politics', in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 246-73.
32. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 48; Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 23-4; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 17. Sommerville relates Hobbes's arguments to the immediate political context in 'Lofty Science and Local Politics', in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 246-73.
33. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 48; Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 23-4; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 17. Sommerville relates Hobbes's arguments to the immediate political context in 'Lofty Science and Local Politics', in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 246-73.
34. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 48; Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 23-4; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 17. Sommerville relates Hobbes's arguments to the immediate political context in 'Lofty Science and Local Politics', in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 246-73.
35. Thomas Hobbes, De Cive: The English Version entitled in the first edition Philosophicall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford, 1983), pp. 35-6 (emphasis omitted).
36. Tuck, Hobbes, comments that 'these must have been the "questions" to which Hobbes was referring - the argument of the Elements of Law is particularly well judged as a contribution to the Ship Money debate, on the King's side' (p. 24).
37. Hobbes, De Cive, p. 35 (emphasis omitted).
38. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 38; Tuck, Hobbes, p. 19; Jacoby, 'Thomas Hobbes in Europe', pp. 62-3. Cf. Tönnies, 'Editor's Preface', p. vii.
39. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 38; Tuck, Hobbes, p. 19; Jacoby, 'Thomas Hobbes in Europe', pp. 62-3. Cf. Tönnies, 'Editor's Preface', p. vii.
40. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 38; Tuck, Hobbes, p. 19; Jacoby, 'Thomas Hobbes in Europe', pp. 62-3. Cf. Tönnies, 'Editor's Preface', p. vii.
41. Robertson, Hobbes, p. 38; Tuck, Hobbes, p. 19; Jacoby, 'Thomas Hobbes in Europe', pp. 62-3. Cf. Tönnies, 'Editor's Preface', p. vii.
42. Hobbes, Elements of Law, I.1.1, p. 1.
43. Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 20-3.
44. Hobbes, De Cive, pp. 35-6 (emphasis omitted).
45. Hobbes, 'Verse Life', pp. 257-8.
46. Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1993), p. 210.
47. J.C. A. Gaskin, 'A Note on the Texts', in The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, with Three Lives, ed. Gaskin, p. xlvii.
48. Martin Dzelzainis, 'Edward Hyde and Thomas Hobbes's Elements of Law, Natural and Politic', The Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 303-17, notes evidence that Hobbes edited the work after this date, altering whichever copy was available (p. 313).
49. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 172 note 42; see also Martinich, Hobbes, p. 122.
50. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, p. 172 note 42; see also Martinich, Hobbes, p. 122.
51. Hobbes, 'Considerations upon the Reputation . . . of Thomas Hobbes', p. 414.
52. Love, Scribal Publication, p. 47, citing J.W. Saunders, 'The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry', in Essays in Criticism, Vol. I (1951).
53. Love, Scribal Publication, p. 47, citing J.W. Saunders, 'The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry', in Essays in Criticism, Vol. I (1951).
54. Love, Scribal Publication, p. 177: '[S]cribal publication [w]as a means by which ideologically charged texts could be distributed through the governing class, or various interest-groups within that class, without their coming to the knowledge of the governed'.
55. Hobbes, Elements of Law, p. xviii.
56. Love, Scribal Publication, p. 184.
57. Ibid., p. 185.
58. Hobbes, Elements of Law, p. xvii.
59. Love, Scribal Publication, p. 192.
60. Ibid., p. 179.
61. See Malcolm's notes to the Correspondence, Vol. I, p. 171 note 2.
62. See Lisa T. Sarasohn, 'Was Leviathan a Patronage Artifact?', History of Political Thought, XXI (2000), pp. 606-31.
63. Hobbes, Elements of Law, I.6.4, p. 20. See, also, I.13.3, pp. 50-1: 'they proceed from most low and humble principles, evident even to the meanest capacity; going on slowly, and with most scrupulous ratiocination (viz.) from the imposition of names they infer the truth of their first propositions; and from two of the first, a third; . . . and so on, according to the steps of science'.
64. Ibid., p. xv (chapter title).
65. Ibid., I.1.1, p. 1.
66. Ibid., I.2.1, p. 2 (capitalization in the chapter title is taken from 'The Order' in the Harley 4235 manuscript).
67. Emphasis follows the Harley 4235 manuscript.
68. The passage is quoted on p. 22 above.
69. John Aubrey, 'The Brief Life', in The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, with Three Lives, ed. Gaskin, p. 236.
70. Note that this is among the chapters from which highlighted definitions are absent.
71. Hobbes, Elements of Law, II. 1.l, p. 83.
72. Capitalization in the chapter titles follows Harley 4235.
73. Hobbes, Elements of Law, II.5.1, p. 107.
74. Ibid., II.2.1, p. 92.
75. Hobbes, De Cive, VII.5, p. 109: 'Those who met together with intention to erect a City, were almost in the very act of meeting a Democraty.'
76. Hobbes, Elements of Law, I.19.7, p. 80: The covenant is said to consist in every man 'oblig[ing] himself to a single or collective ruler; and, if the latter is the case, 'then also they covenant, that every man shall hold that for the command of the whole council, which is the command of the greater part of those men'.
77. Ibid., II.1.3, pp. 84-5.
78. Ibid., II.2.2-3, pp. 92-3.
79. Ibid., II.2.6-7, p. 94.
80. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth, 1968), XVIII, p. 231.
81. Hobbes, Elements of Law, I.19.7, p. 80.
82. Hobbes, Leviathan, XVIII, p. 230.
83. 'This submission . . . is then made, when each one of them obligeth himself by contract to every one of the rest, not to resist the will of that one man, or counsell, to which he hath submitted himselfe' (Hobbes, De Cive, V. 7, p. 88).
84. This section draws on my discussion of Bodin's influence on Hobbes in 'When Hobbes Needed History', in Hobbes and History, ed. G.A.J. Rogers and Tom Sorell (London, 2000), pp. 25-43, pp. 26-7.
85. Hobbes, Elements of Law, II.8.7, p. 137.
86. Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. R. Knolles (Cambridge, MA, 1962), II. 1, p. 194.
87. Hobbes, Elements of Law, II.8.6, p. 136: 'this error seemeth to proceed from this, that men ordinarily understand not aright, what is meant by this word law, confounding law and covenant, as if they signified the same thing'.
88. Bodin, Six Bookes, I.8, p. 93. See, also, I.6, p. 58: In return 'for the faith and obeifance he receiueth', the sovereign 'oweth iuftice, counfell, aid, and protection'; and IV.6, p. 500.
89. Hobbes, Elements of Law, II.8.3, p. 134.
90. Hobbes, Leviathan, XXIX, p. 369: 'From the same books, they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all Slaves. I say, they that live under a Monarch conceive such an opinion; not they that live under a Popular Government: for they find no such matter.'
91. Bodin, Six Bookes, II.7, p. 250. Hobbes is likely to have come across this passage because it immediately follows a discussion of the impossibility of divided sovereignty.
92. Hobbes, Elements of Law, II.1.1, pp. 83-4.
93. Ibid., II.2.1, p. 92.
94. Ibid., II.3.1, p. 99.
95. Ibid., II.5.1, pp. 107-8.
96. Quentin Skinner, 'Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas', History and Theory, VIII (1969), pp. 3-53, p. 17.
97. Hobbes, Leviathan, XIV, p. 189.
98. E.g. Tuck, Hobbes, pp. 62-3, who argues that the first is Hobbes's 'real' definition, which is consistent with the second by virtue of the right of private judgment. See, also, pp. 109-12, for a discussion of rival views, notably Oakeshott's position that Hobbesian natural right is unlimited.
99. Aubrey, 'Brief Life', p. 236.
100. Malcolm, 'Summary Biography', p. 18.
101. Michael Kiernan, 'General Introduction' and 'Textual Introduction', in Francis Bacon, The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall (Cambridge, MA, 1985).
102. One of Hobbes's earliest critics thought he was vulnerable on this score. See Dzelzainis, 'Hyde and Hobbes', p. 306: Hyde 'thought it entirely possible to mount a damaging assault on Hobbes based on the inconsistencies between Leviathan and earlier expositions of his political theory: "I dare say he will find somewhat in Mr Hobbs himself, I mean in his former Books, that contradicts what he sets forth in this, in that Part in which he takes himself to be the most exact, his beloved Philosophy"'.
103. Glenn Burgess, 'Contexts for the Writing and Publication of Hobbes's Leviathan', History of Political Thought, XI (1990), pp. 675-702, p. 690. (I disagree, however, with Burgess's characterization of the three 'strata' in Leviathan - aboriginal democracy; authorization and representation; and, lastly, the de facto defence of Engagement - since it appears to me that the first is not part of the work. My suspicion is that Hobbes's composition process is more complex than Burgess's schema suggests.) See, also, Jacquot and Jones, 'Introduction', p. 79: 'l'ouvrage ne résulte pas d'une rédaction continue, mais d'une juxtaposition, dans un certain ordre, de pages écrites à divers moments'.
104. Glenn Burgess, 'Contexts for the Writing and Publication of Hobbes's Leviathan', History of Political Thought, XI (1990), pp. 675-702, p. 690. (I disagree, however, with Burgess's characterization of the three 'strata' in Leviathan - aboriginal democracy; authorization and representation; and, lastly, the de facto defence of Engagement - since it appears to me that the first is not part of the work. My suspicion is that Hobbes's composition process is more complex than Burgess's schema suggests.) See, also, Jacquot and Jones, 'Introduction', p. 79: 'l'ouvrage ne résulte pas d'une rédaction continue, mais d'une juxtaposition, dans un certain ordre, de pages écrites à divers moments'.
105. Hobbes, Elements of Law, I.15.1, p. 58: 'There can therefore be no other law of nature than reason, nor no other precepts of NATURAL LAW, than those which declare unto us the ways of peace'.
106. Hobbes, De Cive, II. 1, p. 52.
107. My thanks to lain Hampsher-Monk and an anonymous HPT reviewer for suggesting these concluding points.
108. Highlighting of key terms follows the Harley 4235 manuscript.