Liberty and Leviathan

politics, philosophy & economics

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 131-151

  Pettit, Philip ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

freedom; Hobbes; liberalism; libertarianism; liberty

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248043874     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X05049439     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. See P. Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); M. Viroli, Republicanism (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002).
2. A. Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
3. Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), III: p. 225.
4. Pettit, Republicanism.
5. T. Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994).
6. T. Hobbes, Human Nature and De Corpore Politico: The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
7. T. Hobbes, On the Citizen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
8. T. Hobbes and J. Bramhall, Hobbes and Bramhall on Freedom and Necessity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
9. There are differences between The Elements of Law (EL), De Cive (DC), Leviathan (L), and Hobbes's exchange with Bramhall (HB), but none, I think, that deeply affects the account I offer. True, as Skinner, Visions of Politics, p. 227 notes, there is a passage in The Elements of Law where Hobbes takes a softer line on Aristotle on liberty than he does later, but, as we shall see, this does not appear to signal a radically different attitude.
10. J. Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana and a System of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 20.
11. S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 118.
12. Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature, p. 212. Hobbes makes the point most explicitly in Leviathan, Ch. 26, Section 2: ‘he is free, that can be free when he will: Nor is it possible for any person to be bound himself; because he that can bind, can release; and therefore he that is bound to himselfe onely, is not bound’.
13. Hobbes says in the English edition of Leviathan that, considered ‘as delivered in the word of God’, natural laws may be ‘properly called laws’, but as noted by the editor, Edwin Curly, this sentence was omitted from the later Latin edition (L: 100-1). See also Hobbes, Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, p. 97.
14. As suggested earlier, I disagree with Quentin Skinner in thinking that there is no major shift in Hobbes's thinking about liberty between The Elements of Law, written in 1640, and later works. Skinner, Visions of Politics, p. 236 of vol. III mentions as one indication of a different view in the earlier work that Hobbes there distinguishes between ‘the voluntary offer of subjection, and yielding by compulsion’ (EL: 126). But that distinction, motivated as it is by taxonomic purposes, should not be taken to suggest that Hobbes thinks that the fear activated by compulsion makes an act of submission less than voluntary; he does not think that, as the quotation in the text clearly shows.
15. Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature.
16. This gloss may help to explain why I think that there is no confusion in Hobbes's introducing a mention of liberty as non-obstruction at this point in his characterization of liberty as non-obligation. See also Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature, p. 226.
17. Skinner, Visions of Politics, p. 213.
18. The obstacles may affect what the agent can do on a narrower or wider front. This latter point, too, is suggested by the analogy. ‘Water. when it is open on all sides spreads; and the more outlets it finds the freer it is’ (DC: 151).
19. Skinner, Visions of Politics, II: ch. 7.
20. T. Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy: The First Section Concerning Body (London: Andrew Crock, 1656).
21. Skinner, Visions of Politics, pp. 226–7.
22. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism.
23. But see H. Steiner, An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994) and I. Carter, A Measure of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
24. J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843), p. 503.
25. Pettit, Republicanism.
26. Pettit, Republicanism.
27. W. Paley, The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Vol. 4, Collected Works (London: C. and J. Rivington, 1825).
28. J. Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham.