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Political Theory and Historiography: A Reply to Professor Skinner on Hobbes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Howard Warrender
Howard Warrender
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Type
Communications
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The Historical Journal , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 931 - 940
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 [a] ‘The ideological context of Hobbes's political thought’, The Historical Journal, IX (1966), 286–317Google Scholar; see also [b] ‘Hobbes's Leviathan’, The Historical Journal, VII (1964), 321–33Google Scholar; [c] ‘History and ideology in the English Revolution’, The Historical Journal, VIII (1965), 151–78Google Scholar; [d] ‘Thomas Hobbes and his disciples in France and England’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII (1965–1966), 153–67Google Scholar; [e] ‘Conquest and consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy’, in The Interregnum: The quest for settlement 1646–1660, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (London, 1972), pp. 79–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cited hereafter as Skinner [a], [b], etc.).

2 Skinner [a], 317.

3 Taylor, A. E., ‘The ethical doctrine of Hobbes’, Philosophy, XIII (1938), 406–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Skinner [a], 313; also Brown, Stuart M. Jr, ‘Hobbes: the Taylor thesis’, The Philosophical Review, LXVIII (1959), 303–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Warrender, Howard, [a] The political philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar; see also [b] ‘The Place of God in Hobbes's Philosophy’, Political Studies, VIII (1960), 48–57Google Scholar; [c] ‘Obligations and rights in Hobbes’, Philosophy, XXXVII (1962), 352–7Google Scholar; [d] ‘Hobbes's conception of morality’, Rivista Critica di Storia delta Filosofia, XVII (1962), 434–49Google Scholar; [e] The Study of Politics (Belfast, 1963)Google Scholar; [f] ‘A postscript on Hobbes and Kant’, Hobbes-Forschungen (Berlin, 1969), pp. 153–8Google Scholar (cited hereafter as Warrender [a], [b], etc.).

5 Warrender [a], 222–33, 335–7; [f]> I53–8.

6 Skinner [a], 313–17; [b], 321–3.

7 With reference to misconceptions, I should note Professor Skinner's assertion that my interpretation of Hobbes had been subject to damaging criticism in Raphael, D. D. ‘Obligations and Rights in Hobbes’ (Philosophy, XXXVII (1962), 345–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Skinner [b], 321). As Professor Skinner specifies neither the criticism nor the damage, I can only reply on the main point. Professor Raphael made a number of excellent and valid observations on Rights. I answered in the same journal to the effect that despite the merits of Professor Raphael's distinctions, Hobbes did not in fact use the term in the sense he required and the appropriate implications were not found in Hobbes's work (Warrender [c]). It should be remarked that had Professor Raphael been correct, my general case (for a more moralistic Hobbes) would not have been damaged, but strengthened.

8 Warrender [a], 307–12, 323–9; [b], 49–56. I indicate that if God were eliminated from Hobbes's system, he would lose a certain formal analogy between civil law as command of the sovereign, and natural law as command of God; but this is a relatively minor point and would leave Hobbes's main system unaffected.

9 Somewhere, I have said that without these two concepts Hobbes would have been a seventeenth-century Thrasymachus, and his political theory could have been written on a postcard.

10 Though Professor Skinner's de facto theorists were prepared to appeal to parts of Hobbes's theory when it suited them, they did not all in any event regard Hobbes as one of themselves. Of the more notable, Ascham, Anthony, for example (in the second and enlarged edition of his book Of the Confusions and Revolutions of Governments (London, 1649Google Scholar; reprint New York, 1975), pp. 108, 119–21), brackets Hobbes with Grotius as a defender of perpetual allegiance.

11 Complaining of the state of philosophy in his day, Hobbes protests that the knowledge of the Law of Nature has lost its growth, ‘not advancing a whit beyond its antient stature’; and later in describing his own attempts to rectify the position, he refers to natural law as ‘that Law which in this whole book I have endeavoured to unfold;…’ (De Cive, Epistle Dedicatory; ibid. XIV, §4; both quoted from the English version, Philosophicall Rudiments…).

12 Pufendorf, S., Elementorum Jurisprudentiae Universalis (Hagae-Comitis, 1660)Google Scholar, the preface; De Jure Naturae et Gentium (Londini Scanorum, 1672), book 11, ch. III, and book VIII, ch. 1)Google Scholar.

13 In some copies of Hobbes's, Philosophicall Rudiments… (London, 1651)Google Scholar is included a dedicatory epistle ‘signed’ C.C. in which Hobbes is so described.

14 There is indeed less divergence between de facto and natural law theory than Professor Skinner suggests. Both share the assumption that political obligation cannot be completely validated by civil law alone. Despite Hobbes's preparedness to sweep decisively into the domain of the civil law the many disputed areas of his time, the civil law could not on his analysis be entirely self-sufficient. His functional account of sovereignty required an initial or global political obligation, and left at least a hypothetical point of termination to such obligation, neither of which could be covered by the civil law itself; and he closed the hiatus by appealing to natural law. [‘But that sinne which by the Law of nature is Treason, is a Transgression of the naturall], not the civil Law…But if some Sovereign Prince should set forth a Law on this manner, Thou shalt not rebell, he would effect just nothing. For except Subjects were before obliged to obedience; that is to say, not to rebel, all Law is of no force;…’ (De cive, XIV, § 21). Or again, ‘For a civil law, that shall forbid rebellion…is not, as a civil law, any obligation, but by virtue only of the law of nature, that forbiddeth the violation of faith; which natural obligation, if men know not, they cannot know the right of any law the sovereign maketh’ (Leviathan, xxx, §3).] This position upon which Hobbes is very explicit is not only a considerable reason for regarding him as a natural law theorist, it brings him into the critical area of the de facto argument.

Neither the Commonwealth nor the Protectorate couid be validated in terms of pre-existing civil law. In providing a theoretical case for allegiance to such regimes, however, Hobbes had already comfortably outflanked the de facto theorists. The latter wobbled, attempting initially to cover the situation economically with a simple assertion of the sufficiency of power itself and considerations of self-interest, only to find that this did not give an adequate argument for obedience. It only gave an argument for obeying when one must or cannot escape, or for keeping one's head down until one can fight back successfully. It was then necessary to reopen the discussion in terms of passive and active obedience, which required for the latter some justification beyond the mere power relationship. The more allegiance the de facto theorists demanded, the nearer they approximated to Hobbes's position.

15 Professor Skinner has presented a more general statement of his viewpoint in [f] ‘The limits of historical explanations’, Philosophy, XLI (1966), 199–215Google Scholar. This does not however fill the bill indicated. He is here concerned with the history of political ideas and related historiography, not with political theory. His analysis of P1 being influenced by P2, for example, is not here in question. Macpherson, C. B. in The political theory of possessive individualism (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar provides an example of a historicist revaluation that is well executed and valid on its own basis. This would give some meaning to a ‘historical absurdity’ for those who accept that basis.

16 Zagorin, P., for example, who gives what is generally a very useful and discriminating historical treatment of Hobbes (in A history of political thought in The English Revolution (London, 1954), ch. XIII), nevertheless resorts to a window-dressing explanation (p. 177)Google Scholar.

17 Oakeshott, Michael (ed.), Hobbes: Leviathan (Oxford, 1946)Google Scholar; A. E. Taylor, ‘The ethical doctrine’; Stephen, Leslie, Hobbes (London, 1904)Google Scholar; Hood, F. C., The divine politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar.

18 The historical influence of political ideas is full of theoretical paradox. From Marx's political theory, for example, who would have predicted that its greatest influence would lie with relatively underdeveloped and peasant societies?

19 A great deal of Warrender [a] is concerned with the general role of natural law in Hobbes's theory (esp. IV, v, VII, 213–19, 274–5, 308–11, 322–9). One molecule treated in considerable detail is the role of contract or covenant (III, X).

20 De Cive, VIII, §§3, 4, 9; Leviathan, xx, §§7, 8.

21 A significant example is provided by Hobbes's assertion: Irresistible power obliges. Characteristically, Hobbes proceeds to qualify this position by indicating that such power is found only in God, and that less power does not oblige; which puts a different complexion upon the whole business. Equally characteristically, Ascham noted Hobbes's first assertion, but passed over his qualification.

22 Hobbes made a very propitious beginning in a field I have attempted to develop elsewhere, and have termed ‘macroethics’ (the ethics of impersonal relationships). For a political theorist to be deflected in any way from such an endeavour in deference to a group of seventeenth-century de facto apologists would clearly be a disturbing prospect and a remarkable disposition of priorities.

23 Warrender [d], 445–9; [e], sect. IV. Indeed, where Professor Skinner objects that Hobbes is not a natural law philosopher but a rationalist or utilitarian, he is appealing largely from Tweedledum to Tweedledee. Despite disclaimers, both Bentham and the early classical economists were in the same boat as Hobbes (ahistorical and universalistic) and using essentially his geometrical method.