The democratic element in Hobbes's Behemoth

Filozofski Vestnik

Volumn 24, Issue 2, 2003, Pages

  Creppell, Ingrid ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Behemoth; Democracy; Disorder; People; Thomas Hobbes

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248057018     PISSN: 03534510     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. I have used the following editions of Hobbes's works: Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
2. and Behemoth or the Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). All quotations from Leviathan will be cited in parentheses as L with page numbers following. All citations from Behemoth, because they are so numerous, will simply refer to the page numbers of the University of Chicago Tönnies text.
3. In the spirit of Skinner's work, I take historical context to be significant in understanding the meaning of a philosophical text such as Hobbes's. Skinner's recent work on Hobbes situates him in the rich literary and linguistic context in which Hobbes worked (primarily the rhetorical tradition of Renaissance Europe). I will focus on a specifically political context to which Hobbes was responding and I will read Behemoth as showing us that Hobbes's context of work is also not fully categorizable in Hobbes's own terms, that is, not all the problems that Hobbes struggled with were perfectly transparent to him.
4. Tom Sorell, "Hobbes's Persuasive Civil Science," The Philosophical Quarterly 40 (July 1990): 342.
5. See, among others, on Hobbes's use of rhetoric and scientific reasoning: Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
6. Tom Sorell, Hobbes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), and "Hobbes's Persuasive Civil Science";
7. and David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
8. See, for example, the works on Hobbes and education by S.A. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
9. and Geoffrey M. Vaughan, Behemoth Teaches Leviathan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002).
10. Reason and Rhetoric, 12.
11. She writes: "It is not enough that the people who pick up Leviathan be persuaded by Hobbes's argument; the insights it contains must be very widely disseminated, and reproduced perpetually, if Hobbes is to succeed in this practical political project. Part of this task will involve reproducing acceptance of Hobbes's argument for his principle - his 'science of politics' - and part will consist in reproducing those interests that, when properly conceived, provide people with reason for adhering to the principle...How are these things to be done? They are to be done through an aggressive process of education...Pursuing a process of socialization, or of moral education, will encourage the formation of properly conceived interests, and instill in people a desire to do what the satisfaction of these interests requires. A solid education of this sort will, Hobbes thinks, eliminate both the discontent and the 'pretense of right' that are, in his view, necessary conditions of rebellion. This makes reeducation necessary to Hobbes's project of building a perpetually stable social order...But not only is proper education necessary if social stability is to be maintained: Hobbes comes very close to suggesting that it may also be sufficient" (Lloyd, Ideals and Interests, 158, 159, 161).
12. See also Mary Dietz, "Hobbes's Subject as Citizen," in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Mary G. Dietz (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1990), for a discussion of Leviathan as a tract on civic virtue.
13. Most commentators on Behemoth see it as reinforcing or reflecting the analytic conclusions of Hobbes's Leviathan and insofar as it does that, it is taken to deepen our picture of Hobbes's political theory. Royce MacGillivray, in "Thomas Hobbes's History of the English Civil War A Study of Behemoth," Journal of the History of Ideas 31 (1970): 179-98, notes: "it is necessary to ask what connection exists between the political doctrines of Behemoth, with its fierce Royalist loyalties, and the political doctrines of Hobbes's previous writings...In Behemoth, Hobbes has applied to actual political events the conclusions of his political philosophy" (183).
14. Stephen Holmes, in his "Introduction" to Behemoth or the Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), vii, likewise comments that in the later text, Hobbes applied historically and concretely the analytical framework about sedition, rebellion
15. and the breakdown of authority that he had developed in his earlier positive political writings. Richard Ashcraft, in "Ideology and Class in Hobbes' Political Theory," Political Theory 6 (February 1978): 27-62, sees it as closely tied to Hobbes's moral science laid out in Leviathan, making it a "scientific history," and not a "history" yielding only prudential knowledge, as Hobbes's classification of Thucydides might lead one to expect. Lloyd also emphasizes Behemoth's corroborative effect - the causes of disorder are religious conflict and diversity of judgment about one's transcendent interests, which, according to her, a reinterpretation of the whole of Leviathan would lead one to see.
16. Hobbes explicitly stated his intent to have Behemoth published. He explains in 1679: "I would fain have published my Dialogue of the Civil Wars of England, long ago; and to that end I presented it to his Majesty: and some days after, when I thought he had read it, I humbly besought him to let me print it; but his Majesty, though he heard me graciously, yet he flatly refused to have it published." English Works, ed. William Molesworth (London, 1839-45 [hereafter cited as EW]), 4: 411.
17. As many commentators have noticed, Behemoth is an example of what Hobbes commended Thucydides for accomplishing: "the principal and proper work of history being to instruct and enable men, by the knowledge of actions past, to bear themselves prudently in the present and providently towards the future." EW 8: vi.
18. th century a negative term.
19. See David Wootton, "Introduction" to Divine Right and Democracy, ed. David Wootton (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), for a helpful synopsis of the democratic elements of the English Civil War.
20. th centuries. Christopher Hill observes that "In all countries of Western Europe the period of peasant revolts was the period of the formation of absolute monarchies," but if and when those monarchies became "absolute" they had first to quell not only the peasants and common people, but the newly empowered propertied classes. Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 182. Indeed, it was fear of the radical headless mass that led the bourgeois into dependence on the monarchy. Elite differences could be buried to crush the destabilizing aspirations of the lower orders.
21. Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution 1529-1642 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972), 49.
22. See also Tuck's discussion of the republican nature of the English Revolution in Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Hill emphasizes the politicization of the general population as well, noting that the Commons began to appeal to the people in resolutions against popery, Arminianism, and tonnage and poundage, and extended this appeal to the "lower orders" by encouraging them to sign the Root and Branch Petition in 1640. Hill, Change and Continuity, 192.
23. Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric, 432.
24. Ashcroft "Ideology and Class," 29, emphasizes Hobbes's "outrage" in Behemoth, but as Skinner notes "to think of Hobbes's prose as a clear window through which we can gaze uninterruptedly at his thought is a serious mistake" (Reason and Rhetoric, 13). Vaughan has perhaps gone farther than any other commentator on Behemoth in reading between the lines, indeed as ignoring what Hobbes seems to be evidently arguing in his explanation and denunciation of the Civil War. I think this sensitivity to Hobbes's ulterior ends and his sophisticated use of language is very important but can be overextended. For a discussion of the Behemoth as a work of Restoration history see Vaughan, Behemoth Teaches Leviathan, 92 ff. He claims that Hobbes had no interest in joining the ideological war fought by historians after the cessation of civil war violence. While it may be true that he did not want openly to side with the Royalist as opposed to Republican camp, this should not prevent us from seeing Hobbes's efforts as essentially ideological nonetheless. "Ideology" is not reducible to the standard party positions.
25. Normally, readers see only one half Hobbes's approach and paint him as an arch anti-democrat. For example, MacGillivray observes: "Hobbes has sometimes been recognized as one of the prophets of modern totalitarianism, and there are passages in Behemoth in which he seems to foreshadow some of its darker practices." "Thomas Hobbes's History," 197.
26. An interesting question is whether Hobbes saw himself as writing during a time of unique historical significance. One might interpret Hobbes to regard his own analysis and solution as unique without his considering the problem he was solving to be unique to a changing world. In this sense, Hobbes would not have believed that historically significant and truly new changes were taking place. In Dialogue II of Behemoth, Hobbes presents the following exchange which would support the conclusion that Hobbes saw the nature of his solution as singular but not the historical problem itself: A: "[F]or the government of a commonwealth, neither wit, nor prudence, nor diligence, is enough, without infallible rules and the true science of equity and justice." B: "If this be true, it is impossible that any commonwealth in the world, whether monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, should continue long without change, or sedition tending to change, either of the government or of the governors." A: "It is true; nor have any the greatest commonwealths in the world been long free from sedition. The Greeks had for awhile their petty kings, and then by sedition came to be petty commonwealths; and then growing to be greater commonwealths, by sedition again became monarchies; and all for want of rules of justice for the common people to take notice of; which if the people had known in the beginning of every of these seditions, the ambitious persons could never have had the hope to disturb their government after it had been once settled" (70). Ultimately, I believe Hobbes saw the conditions he lived in as new.
27. Much of the secondary literature on Behemoth sees it primarily as an indictment of elites exploiting doctrines for seditious purposes. Deborah Baumgold in particular makes this argument in Hobbes's Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): "The menace of ambitious elites is a principal theme of Behemoth...The work identifies ambitious Presbyterian ministers and ambitious gentlemen - i.e., Puritan leaders and Parliamentarians - as the chief leaders in the Civil War." And she goes on to claim that "sedition requires legitimation. With respect to the role of ideas as causes of rebellion and civil war, it is important to distinguish the idea of a conflict over ideology from that of conflict legitimized by ideology. Hobbes held the latter view of rebellion, but not the former" (81-84). Skinner claims that "Behemoth lays the blame for the catastrophe of the 1640s on two groups above all...the Presbyterians 'and other Fanatick Ministers'...[and] the democratical gentlemen in the House of Commons." Reason and Rhetoric, 431-32.
28. Robert P. Kraynakin "Hobbes's Behemoth and the Argument for Absolutism," The American Political Science Review 76 (December 1982): 837-47, links the content of ideas and elites but then denies the inherent power of the content itself: "Hobbes's history shows that the civil war was caused by opinions and doctrines of right, which were created and exploited by ambitious intellectuals solely for the purpose of displaying their wisdom and learning" (838).
29. Lloyd writes: "For Hobbes, the English Civil War is first and foremost a religious war." Ideals as Interests, 193. It is however not exactly clear what it means to call a conflict a "religious war" - for discussion see for instance Konrad Repgen, "What is a 'Religious War'?" in Politics and Society in Reformation Europe, ed. E.I. Kouri and Tom Scott (London: MacMillan Press, 1987), 311-28.
30. This doctrine confuses the people about which authority should determine action for public purposes, leading to "two kingdoms in one and the same nation, and no man...able to know which of his masters he must obey" (8).
31. In presenting the remarks of "A" and "B" as signifying a face-value meaning, I do not assume that Hobbes wrote without rhetorical effect in mind or without layers of pedagogy embedded in his presentation of ideas. There is no doubt that Hobbes was not always straightforward in his meaning. Yet, I read the dialogue in Behemoth as for the most part representing alternatives that Hobbes countenanced and that his purpose was to manage the logic of their presentation, leading the reader to denounce fragmenting religious and democratic demagogues. While I find Vaughan's imaginative reading of Behemoth fruitful, I am not convinced that the substance of what the interlocutors say is only meaningful to the extent that it tells us how A is educating B - such that we as readers are only meant to witness B's reaction to A's arguments and not meant to react to the arguments and narrative of war themselves.
32. Again Baumgold, in Hobbes's Political Theory, and in "Hobbes's Political Sensibility: The Menace of Political Ambition," in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Dietz, argues that Hobbes's political theory was constructed as a response to the ambitious and power-hungry. Hadn't Hobbes described Leviathan as King of the children of pride? She writes: "In the world of politics as Hobbes conceives it, elite actors are the principal figures. Ordinary subjects are subordinate figures on the landscape, followers who 'receive their motion' from rulers and those who would be rulers." Hobbes's Political Theory, 121. While she rightly emphasizes his concern with elite conflict, we need to keep in mind that Hobbes was concerned with a more systemic social collapse and not simply with sources of disturbance or disruption that all political regimes inevitably harbor. There is no political system in which elites do not struggle for power. Under what combination of factors would system dissolution occur? The mobilization of the masses must be an important part in answering this. While they may initially "receive their motion" from instigators (given the fact that they are not generally political initiators) ordinary people are not unthinking, disinterested place-holders for the elite. They cannot be counted on to be completely predictable and hence of no theoretical importance.
33. Hobbes distinguishes between "the multitude" and "the people" in order to mark the difference between, respectively, a random collection of persons with heterogeneous motives and objectives (a crowd), and a constituted collectivity with a unified will. See De Cive: The English Version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), Ch. VI. "The people" is the conceptualization of a multitude who have unified into a single entity obligated to the sovereign. The actions of a multitude have no moral consequences according to this definition, unlike the actions of a people. I have used the term "the people" less formally, to refer to the multitude on the cusp of becoming a moral entity. I believe Hobbes does so as well in Behemoth. One point of the sovereign was to overcome the anarchic element of the multitude and to form an obligating "person" based on the consent of all.
34. 132 times to be exact. If we also count "people" the total is 199. I thank Lee Sigelman for providing this word count based on computerized text analysis.
35. These words are not synonymous though Hobbes uses them interchangeably.
36. The people act in typical ways. While Hobbes portrayed human nature in universal terms in Leviathan - notably, humans are afraid of death, they are competitive and seek glory - he also constantly took note of differences among individual types as well as distinctive characteristics pertaining to the roles of groups in society. Not all persons are equally glory-seekers, some are more generous than others, and so forth. Similarly, specific features are associated with various roles of persons in society. Behemoth clearly exemplifies Hobbes's sociological observations: the clergy, London merchants, Lords, vainglorious intellectuals in the universities - each group displays characteristic types of interests and attitudes in acting in the public sphere.
37. That Hobbes does not have a theory of leadership perse is indicative of his approach to politics, justice and democracy. But it may also be a theoretical weak spot in a political theory. Rousseau, who took over so much of Hobbes's work, recognized the essential foundational role of the "lawgiver."
38. Again, on the independence of judging, in Dialogue 4, in discussing the Rump Parliament in 1648, he concludes "By these their proceedings they had already lost the hearts of the generality of the people, and had nothing to trust to but the army; which was not in their power, but in Cromwell's" (160).
39. The King, assuming his power to be secure embarked on "that unlucky business of imposing upon the Scots, who were all Presbyterians, our book of common-prayer" (28). This provocative move triggered alarm and anger among Presbyterians and other religious dissenters within England, mobilizing them to join with democracy-minded Parliamentarians in the House of Commons to challenge the king about more fundamental constitutional issues of authority.
40. I thank John Ferejohn for helping to clarify this point.
41. Skinner notes at the end of his study of Hobbes's rhetoric that, "[I]n teaching philosophy to speak English, Hobbes at the same time taught it a particular tone of voice. As we have seen, the tone is very much that of the sane and moderate savant beset on all sides by fanaticism and stupidity. We cannot expect reason to triumph, the tone implies, since the foolish and ignorant will always be in a majority. But we can at least hope to dicomfit them by wielding the weapons of ridicule, deriding their excesses, sneering at their errors, drawing our readers into a scornful alliance against their general benightedness." Reason and Rhetoric, 436.
42. In principle, Hobbes stated that sovereignty could be institutionalized as monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, but that the form most conducive to peace was monarchy. In principle, Hobbes had also argued that democracy was the origination of all forms of government (see De Cive, VII, 5) because in the initial coming together of a group of people, their agreement to found a body politic was a democratic one. This original democratic moment must inevitably lead to a decision about who would govern on an ongoing basis, and this latter decision established the permanent form of government - preferably for Hobbes a monarchy or aristocracy. See Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 310 ff.
43. and Baumgold, Hobbes's Political Theory, 41 ff., for discussion of this issue.
44. See also Murray Forsyth, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constituent Power of the People," Political Studies 29 (June 1981): 191-203, for the argument that Hobbes was the originator of the doctrine of "the people" as the constituent power of the body politic, the founding principle of the American and French Revolutions.
45. Wootton, "Introduction," Divine Right and Democracy, 57.
46. In Sorell's words: "the obligations of subjects to their sovereigns are entirely one-sided. By the covenant that institutes the commonwealth each of the many makes a free gift of his right of self-governance to whomever becomes the sovereign, but since this person transfers or lays down no right himself, he can enjoy the benefit of the transfer of right from the multitude without having to give up some right in return." Hobbes, 119.
47. Tuck argues in "Hobbes's Moral Philosophy," The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 186, that "Hobbes regarded politics as the solution to the conflicts characteristic of mores." He interprets Hobbes's political theory as a response to skepticism implying that the philosophical context is more important to understanding Hobbes's work than the political one (granting of course that some philosophical problems and solutions are themselves more salient in some periods than in others). The fact that politics is itself always and necessarily a realm of conflict would seem to be an important obstacle to its providing a solution to skepticism.
48. Sheldon Wolin, "Hobbes and the Culture of Despotism," in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Dietz, 19. Vaughan insists as well that Hobbes aimed to create "docile people." Vaughan, Behemoth Teaches Leviathan, 134.
49. Sorell, in "Hobbes's Persuasive Civil Science," esp. 350-51, discusses the concept of "counsel" as a way to understand what Hobbes may be grasping for in a new type of public speech. "When Hobbes tries to make room for an alternative to passion-stirring speech that is still prescriptive but also rational, scientific, and material for deductive reasoning, it is not immediately clear that he has the resources to do so" (350). I would suggest that what Hobbes's own writing exemplifies is the beginnings of modern ideology insofar as it is prescriptive, explanatory, and attempts to provide a "world-view" - that is, it is not just a series of discrete counsels or pieces of advice, but gives an integrated depiction of human nature and institutions.
50. Hill, Change and Continuity, 181-204, passim.
51. Quoted in Keith Thomas, "The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought," in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C. Brown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 200.
52. That Hobbes rejected the Aristotelian conception of natural hierarchy in favor of human equality provides a foundation for the normative centrality of the non-elite person as well.