aristotelian and ramist rhetoric in thomas hobbes'sleviathan: pathos versus ethos and logos

Aristotelian and Ramist Rhetoric in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan : Pathos versus Ethos and LogosAuthor(s): James P. ZappenSource: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1983), pp. 65-91Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the International Society for the History ofRhetoricStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rh.1983.1.1.65 .

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JAMES P. ZAPPEN

Aristotelian and Ramist Rhetoric in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan: Pathos versus Ethos and Logos

t is generally agreed that one of the more important influences upon modern rhetoric is Peter Ramus, who with his followers was largely responsible for the separation of

rhetoric from other intellectual disciplines,^ and that one of the less important influences upon modern rhetoric is Thomas Hobbes, whose rhetoric in the now standard interpretation is placed in the

'General bibliographies for the study of Renaissance rhetoric include P. Kuentz, "Bibliographie pour I'etude de la rhetorique," XVII' Siecle, 80-81 (1968), 133-42; Keith V. Erickson, Aristotle's Rhetoric: Five Centuries of Philological Research (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1975); and James J. Murphy, Renaissance Rhetoric: A Short-Title Catalogue, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 237 (New York: Garland, 1981).

Important general surveys on Renaissance and later rhetoric include Wilbur Samuel Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (1956; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1961); Wilbur Samuel Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971); Peter France, Rhetoric and Truth in France: Descartes to Diderot (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972); and Marc Fumaroli, Lage de I'eloquence: Rhetorique et <'res literaria» de la Renaissance au seuil de I'epoque classique, Hautes Etudes Medievales et Modernes, 43 (Geneve: Droz, 1980).

Other studies in whole or in part on Ramus and Ramism include Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939; rpt. 1954; rpt. Boston: Beacon, 1961); Walter J. Ong, S.J., "Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric in English," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1 (1949-53), ed. Bruce Dickins and A. N. L.

© The International Society for The History of Rhetoric. Rhetorica, Volume 1, Number 1 (Spring, 1983).

65



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historical context of Ramism.2 Nevertheless, Hobbes's rhetoric lately has received increased attention, sufficient provocation to reexamine its historical context, particularly given the general tendency toward textual exegesis in contemporary studies of Hobbes.^

In conformity with early seventeenth-century usage, Hobbes takes the term 'rhetoric' to mean eloquence, and he denigrates eloquence as a metaphorical use of words suited to the passions. At the same time that he denigrates the name, he restores the substance of the art of rhetoric as it is conceived by Aristotle and reaffirmed by the counterreform against Ramism on the Continent and in England in the early seventeenth century.* In so doing, he preserves the traditional association of rhetoric with other intellectual disciplines— with logic, on the one hand, and with politics and ethics, on the other. Hobbes thus simultaneously maintains two divergent and conflicting attitudes toward rhetoric and toward its place in a work of science. On the one hand, he denigrates rhetoric as a metaphorical use of words suited to the passions and unsuited to a work of reason

Munby (Cambridge, G.B.: Bowes and Bowes, 1953), 260-69; Walter J. Ong, S.J., Ramus and Talon Inventory: A Short-Title Inventory (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958); Walter J. Ong, S.J., Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (1958; rpt. New York: Octagon-Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974); Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1960); Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966); Peter Sharratt, "The Present State of Studies on Ramus," Studi francesi, 47-48 (1972), 201-13; Gary F. Seifert, "Ramist Logic and the Philosophy of Hobbes," Diss. State Univ. of New York at Buffalo, 1973; and Paul E. Corcoran, Political Language and Rhetoric (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1979).

^Ong, "Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric," pp. 265-69; Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory, pp. 511-12, 521; and Seifert, pp. 102-45.

3Recent studies of Hobbes's rhetoric include Gary Shapiro, "Reading and Writing in the Text of Hobbes's Leviathan," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 18 (1980), 147-57; and William Mathie, "Rhetoric and Rationality in Hobbes's Leviathan," Canadian Political Science Association Annual General Meeting, Montreal, June, 1980. One of the numerous studies of Hobbes's philosophy of language is J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas: A Study in the Political Significance of Philosophical Theories, 2nd ed.. Philosophy (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library, 1973), pp. 99-118. The author who argues the need for less textual exegesis and more historical research in studies of Hobbes is W.H. Greenleaf "Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation," in Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters, Modern Studies in Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1972), p. 36.

••Studies of the counterreform, especially in England, include William P. Sandford, "EngUsh Rhetoric Reverts to Classicism, 1600-1650," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 15 (1929), 503-25; Miller, pp. 111-53, 300-30; Raymond Ernest Nadeau, "The Index Rhetoricus of Thomas Farnaby," Diss. Univ. of Michigan, 1950; and Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 282-341.



Rhetoric in Hobbes's Leviathan 67

or science; on the other hand, he admires and imitates Aristotle's Rhetoric and adopts its appeals to logos, ethos, and especially pathos as a basis for his political science. In Leviathan, his most mature work of political science, he attempts to reconcile these divergent and conflicting attitudes by distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate appeals to the passions in works of moral and of natural science, respectively.5 It is Hobbes's singular misfortune that as he seeks to establish his most mature work of political science upon reason that is subject to debate among men and upon the virtues, passions, and manners of men—logos, ethos, and pathos—he appeals at the same time to what strikes his critics as the basest of human passions—a fear for one's own life.* To his critics, Hobbes's own appeal to the passions appears no more legitimate than any other, and probably less so.

This essay presents some details of Hobbes's life and works; a brief sketch of Aristotelian, Ramist, and counterreformist backgrounds to Hobbes's rhetoric; an introduction to Hobbes's attitudes toward rhetoric and science in his early works; and an account of Hobbes's reconstruction of Aristotelian logos, ethos, and pathos as components of a "whole art" of rhetoric in Leviathan.

I.

Hobbes's life and works reveal some of his intellectual debts.^ Hobbes was born in 1588, his birth hastened by his mother's fear of

5The standard editions of Hobbes's works are The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 11 vols. (1839-45; rpt. Germany: Aalen, 1966); Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera Philosophica Quae Latine Scripsit, ed. William Molesworth, 5 vols. (1839-45; rpt. Germany: Aalen, 1966); Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law: Natural & Politic, ed. Ferdinand Tonnies, Cambridge Enghsh Classics (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1928); Thomas Hobbes, Critique du "De Mundo" de Thomas White, ed. Jean Jacquot and Harold Whitmore Jones, L'Histoire des Sciences Textes et Etudes (Paris: Vrin, 1973); and Thomas Hobbes, Thomas White's "De Mundo" Examined, trans. Harold Whitmore Jones (G.B.: Bradford Univ. Press, 1976). Reference to Hobbes's English or Latin works is to E.W. or L.W., volume, and page. Reference to The Elements of Law is to "The Epistle Dedicatory" and page or to part, chapter, and section.

'Contemporary reaction to Hobbes is described in John Bowie, Hobbes and His Critics: A Study in Seventeenth Century Constitutionalism (London: Cape, 1951); Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962); and Charles H. Hinnant, Thomas Hobbes, Twayne's English Authors Series, 215 (Boston: Twayne-Hall, 1977), pp. 146-57.

'Studies of Hobbes's life include John Laird, Hobbes, Leaders of Philosophy (London: Benn, 1934), pp. 3-42; Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (1949; rpt.



68 RHETORICA

the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada. He was educated at Magdalen Hall at Oxford and was admitted to the B.A. degree in February, 1608. For many years, he was tutor to the Cavendish family and later numbered Charles II among his patrons and benefactors. Hobbes's association with the Cavendish family was especially significant since it afforded him time for his studies, especially in Greek and Latin; access to a good library; and contact with intellectual life on the Continent and in England, both through extensive correspondence and through travel. On his visits to the Continent, Hobbes gained his knowledge of the French and Italian languages, his recognition of the limits of scholastic logic, his introduction to Euclid's geometry, and his acquaintance with many of the great intellectuals of Europe in the early seventeenth century—among them Galileo, Mersenne, Gassendi, and Descartes. In his native England, Hobbes also had an acquaintance with men like Bacon and Harvey. Never inclined to an active political life, Hobbes nevertheless sustained an active intellectual life, and he quarreled frequently and sometimes bitterly, with Descartes, with the scholastics in the universities, and with distinguished members of the Royal Society who disputed Hobbes's claim that he had solved the ancient problem of squaring the circle. Hobbes died in 1679, at the age of 91.

The sequence of Hobbes's works is of interest, for Hobbes produced no work of political science until he was past fifty years of age.8 By that time, he had developed both a good knowledge of Greek and Latin and a firm commitment to the new science, especially as exhibited in Euclid's geometry and nourished by his acquaintances on the Continent and in England. Hobbes's first publication was a translation of Thucydides' The History of the Grecian War (1628), and among his last publications were translations of Homer's Iliads (1675)

Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Paperbacks-Univ. of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 147-59; Sir Leslie Stephen, Hobbes (Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Paperbacks-Univ. of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 1-69; and Miriam M. Reik, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1977). Reference to Aubrey's Brief Lives is to page.

^Publication data on Hobbes's works, exclusive of the "briefe" of Aristotle's Rhetoric, are given in Thomas Hobbes in His Time, ed. Ralph Ross, Herbert W. Schneider, and Theodore Waldman (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1974), pp. vii-x. Publication data on Hobbes's brief are given in Ong, "Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric," pp. 260-65; Mary C. Dodd, "The Rhetorics in Molesworth's Edition of Hobbes," Modern Philology, 50 (1952), 36-42; and Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, p. 384. Reik, pp. 19-24, notes the clash between humanism and science in Hobbes's works.




and Homer's Odysses (1675). In the interim, Hobbes published a "briefe" of Aristotle's Rhetoric and several major works in the philosophy of science and in political science. Hobbes dictated to a pupil, possibly as early as 1633, a Latin brief of Aristotle's Rhetoric that was later published in an English version titled A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique (1637)—the first published English translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric.^ The brief was probably based upon Theodore Goulston's De Rhetorica seu Arte Dicendi Libri Tres (1619), the first publication of Aristotle's Rhetoric in England.^o The brief was reprinted in A Compendium of the Art of Logick and Rhetorick in the English Tongue (1651) with a Ramist dialectic edited by Robert Fage and two Ramist rhetorics by Dudley Fenner. The two Ramist rhetorics were originally parts of a Ramist logic and rhetoric by Fenner, complete in three parts—the first English translation of the Ramist rhetoric and the first English volume of both the Ramist logic and rhetoric. All of the works in the 1651 Compendium were attributed to Hobbes. Finally, the brief, with a new title. The Whole Art of Rhetoric, was reprinted with the two Ramist rhetorics by Fenner under the collective title The Art of Rhetoric (1681).ii All of the works in the 1681 The Art of Rhetoric were attributed to Hobbes and were included in Molesworth's standard edition of Hobbes's English works. Thus the first English translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric stands authoritatively side by side with the first Ramist rhetorics in English, all as works of Hobbes.

Meanwhile, Hobbes had also begun to develop his philosophy of science. Sometime between 1630 and 1636, Hobbes wrote "A Short Tract on First Principles," his first effort in the philosophy of science, which remained unpublished in his lifetime. Thereafter, he began to develop his political science, first in The Elements of Law, written (1640) ten years before its publication (1650); next in De Give, published in Latin (1642) and English (1651); and then in Leviathan, also published in English (1651) and Latin (1668). Shortly after the

^A Briefe of the A rt of Rhetorique (London: Tho. Cotes for Andrew Crook). The brief was entered in the Stationers' Register 1 February 1636 (1637) with the initials T.H.

'"API^TOTEAOTZ TEXNH2 PHTOPIKHS, Aristotle, De Rhetorica seu Arte Dicendi Libri Tres (London: Edward Griffin, 1619). Theodore Goulston's name appears at the end of the dedicatory epistle. Dodd, p. 37, observes that Goulston's text and Hobbes's brief have similar chapter divisions.

"Dodd, pp. 38, 40, observes relatively few and inconsequential variants among the editions of 1637, 1651, and 1681.



70 RHETORICA

publication of Leviathan in English, Hobbes returned to the philosophy of science in a major work titled De Corpore, published in Latin (1655) and English (1656); this work was the completion of "A Short Tract on First Principles." De Corpore was part of a larger work in three parts, titled Elementorum Philosophiae or the Elements of Philosophy, which included De Corpore, the first part; De Homine, the second part, published in Latin (1658); and De Give, the third part.

II.

Hobbes's life and works reveal his indebtedness to a complex set of intellectual traditions, not only in rhetoric, but in the philosophy of science and in political science. Not the least complex of these is the rhetorical tradition, which in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was enduring radical changes, in which Hobbes must be accounted a major figure. Among the foremost of these changes, in its impact upon modern rhetoric and modern education, was the effort by Ramus to reform Aristotle.12 Ramism was itself a complex phenomenon, influential in different ways and to different degrees in different parts of Europe.i^ Insofar as it affected Hobbes, however, Ramism may be approached by way of developments in England primarily and by way of some simple tenets that Ramus codified in his famous three laws. Very simply, in the interest of educational reform. Ramus sought to organize and to simplify Aristotle by assigning to particular intellectual disciplines only those components that belonged to each. Thus, of the traditional five parts of rhetoric, invention and judgement or disposition belonged to logic, and elocution and pronunciation belonged to rhetoric. Memory could be dispensed with entirely since it was subsumed by Ramus's reformed logic. In his native France, Ramus's reformed rhetoric rather than his logic was influential in his lifetime, in part because of Ramus's own

'^Studies of the Ramist educational reform include Miller, pp. 111-53, 300-30; Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 146-72; Ong, Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 169-292; and Yates, pp. 231-42. Sharratt, pp. 204-11, reviews some more recent studies on Ramus, induding studies of Ramus's contributions to sdence and mathematics and to poetics.

'3The diffusion of Ramism in Europe and some of its causes are traced in Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 173-281; Ong, Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 295-307; Yates, pp. 234-35; France, pp. 15-16; and Fumaroli, pp. 454-61,




rhetorical skill, and it had the effect of reinforcing the already strong stylistic bent of medieval and Renaissance rhetorics, i* After his death in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, Ramus's influence was stronger in Protestant countries, in Germany particularly but also in England, than it was in France. In Germany, Ramism had its strongest impact and there nurtured the great German encyclopedists of the seventeenth century. In England, Ramism quickly captured the popular imagination, and its influence was broad if not deep. Insofar as it affected Hobbes, Ramism was only one of several rhetorical traditions that intermingled and interacted with each other in complex fashion. Thus, by the time that Hobbes published the first English translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Aristotle was no longer simply Aristotle but Aristotle reformed by Ramus; in turn Ramus was counterreformed by seventeenth-century Aristotelians, among whom Hobbes ought to be numbered the foremost representative in England.

These several rhetorical traditions are complex and interrelated but may be approached by way of the three particular features of Aristotle's Rhetoric that most offended Ramus and his followers. ̂ ^ First, Aristotle conceives of rhetoric as complete in four parts: invention, style, arrangement, and delivery. He gives to delivery only passing attention as a part of style, and he excludes memory.^* Thus Aristotle also conceives of rhetoric in its relation to other intellectual disciplines. Invention, the first part of rhetoric, is composed of the artificial as distinct from the inartificial proofs, and the artificial proofs are in turn composed of the three kinds of proof: logos, which

'••But the diffusion of Ramism in France is a particularly elusive issue. France, pp. 15-16, for instance, notes the influence of the Jesuit colleges in preserving the Aristotelian tradition in rhetoric. However, Fumaroli, pp. 231-423, 454-61, traces a rich Jesuit stylistic tradition and in his treatment of Ramus addresses the stylistic issues raised in Ciceronianus rather than Ramus's logical works.

"Aristotle, The "Art" of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967). Translations are from Freese. Reference is to book, chapter, and page, column, and line (Berlin ed.).

"Seventeenth-century writers regularly used the terms taken directly from the Latin—'invention,' 'judgement' or 'disposition,' 'elocution,' 'memory,' and 'pronunciation'—to designate the five parts of rhetoric. Similarly, they used the terms 'virtues,' 'passions,' and 'manners' to designate the 'virtues,' 'emotions,' and 'characters.' They used the terms 'logic' and 'dialectic' interchangeably. Their usages are not always identical with Aristotle's or with twentieth-century translations or interpretations of Aristotle.



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includes the rhetorical induction, or example, and the rhetorical syllogism, or enthymeme (I, i-xv; II, xviii-xxvi); and ethos and pathos, which include, with considerable overlapping, the virtues, emotions, and characters (I, ix; II, i-xvii). Through the three kinds of proof, rhetoric is related to other intellectual disciplines, to dialectic, on the one hand, and to politics and ethics, on the other:

Now, since proofs are effected by these means, it is evident that, to be able to grasp them, a man must be capable of logical reasoning, of studying characters and the virtues, and thirdly the emotions—the nature and character of each, its origin, and the manner in which it is produced. Thus it appears that Rhetoric is as it were an offshoot of Dialectic and of the science of Ethics, which may be reasonably called Politics (I, ii, 1356a7).

Second, Aristotle conceives of rhetoric "as the faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever" (I, ii, 1355bl). As the faculty of persuasion, rhetoric, particularly in its relation to dialectic, is concerned with the probable, with common opinion:

Rhetoric will not consider what seems probable in each individual case, for instance to Socrates or Hippias, but that which seems probable to this or that class of persons. It is the same with Dialectic, which does not draw conclusions from any random premises—for even madmen have some fancies—but it takes its material from subjects which demand reasoned discussion, as Rhetoric does from those which are common subjects of deliberation (1, ii, 1356bll-1357all).

As such, both dialectic and rhetoric are distinct from sciences, "whose subjects are certain definite things, not merely words" (I, iv, 1359b7). Third, Aristotle conceives of arrangement, his third part of rhetoric, as complete in two or at most four parts:

So then the necessary parts of a speech are the statement of the case and proof. These divisions are appropriate to every speech, and at the most the parts are four in number—exordium, statement, proof, epilogue; for refutation of an opponent is part of the proofs, and comparison is an amplification of one's own case, and therefore also part of the proofs; for he who does this proves something, whereas the exordium and the epilogue are merely aids to memory (III, xiii, 1414b4-5).

These three features do not provide a complete characterization of Aristotle's Rhetoric. However, they do provide the broad perspective against which other details were viewed by Ramus and by others in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.




Ramus's effort to reform Aristotle likewise resists any simple characterization. Insofar as it affected rhetoric in general and Hobbes's rhetoric in particular, however, it may be approached by way of Ramus's famous three laws. The three laws are explained in Ramus's most influential work of logic, published in numerous revisions and translations, beginning with Ramus's own French version, the Dialectique (1555), which contains some important observations on rhetoric and including also the first English translation of the logic, Roland Macllmaine's The Logike of the Most Excellent Philosopher P. Ramus Martyr (1574), which illustrates the reception of Ramus in England.^^ In the Dialectique, Ramus calls the three laws "marques" and identifies them as "du tout," "par soy," and "universel premierement" (84-85, 124). In the Logike, Macllmaine calls the three laws "documentes" and identifies them as the "documente of veri-tie," the "documente of iustice," and the "documente of wysdome" (42). Macllmaine mentions the three documents in the second book of the Logike just as Ramus does in the original. In addition, Macllmaine gives to the three documents special emphasis and special treatment in an epistle to the reader prefixed to the work.'* The explanation in the epistle to the reader gives to the documents special emphasis. Moreover, Macllmaine gives special treatment to the document of justice by placing it first among the three. As explained in the epistle to the reader, the document of justice demands "that in setting forthe of an arte we gather only togeather that which dothe appartayne to the Arte whiche we intreate of, leaning to all other Artes that which is proper to them" (4). The document of verity, now placed second, demands "that all the rules and preceptes of thine arte be of necessitie tru" (5). Finally, the document of wisdom demands "that thou intreate of thy rules which be generali generallye, and those whiche be speciali speciallie, and at one tyme, without any vaine repetitions, which dothe nothing but fyll vp the paper" (5).

"Pierre de la Ramee, Dialectique, ed. Michel Dassonville, Travaux D'Humanisme et Renaissance, 67 (Geneve: Droz, 1964); and The Logike of the Moste Excellent Philosopher P. Ramus Martyr, trans. Roland Macllmaine, ed. Catherine M. Dunn, Renaissance Editions, No. 3 (Northridge, Calif.: San Fernando Valley State College, 1969). Translations of the Dialectique are in part from Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 153-65. Reference to the Dialectique is to pages in the 1555 and 1964 editions, respectively. Reference to the Logike is to page. Publication data on Ramus's and related works are given in Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory.

iSHowell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 179-89, notes these special emphases in Macllmaine's translation.



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These three laws or three documents have important implications for rhetoric, explicit in Ramus's Dialectique and, to a lesser degree, in Macllmaine's Logike. The law of justice points to the tendency of rhetoric to overlap with other arts. Macllmaine explains:

Is he not worthie to be mocked of all men, that purposethe to wryte of Crammer, and in euery other chapiter mynglethe somthing of Logicke, and some thing of Rethoricke: and contrarie when he purposethe to write of Logicke dothe speake of Grammer and of Rethoricke (4).

Consequently, Ramus assigns to logic those parts of rhetoric most closely associated with it, that is, invention and judgment or disposition, and he leaves to rhetoric only elocution and pronunciation. Of rhetoric he writes in the Dialectique, with his customary scorn:

And in brief all the tropes and figures of elocution, all the graces of action, which make up the whole of Rhetoric, true and distinct from Dialectic, serve no other purpose than to lead this vexatious and mulish auditor . . and have been studied on no other account than that of the failings and perversities of this very one . . . (134, 152).

The law of verity also affects rhetoric since for Aristotle rhetoric is concerned not with truth but with probability, not with science but with opinion. Ramus explains in the Dialectique:

But because of these two species, Aristotle wished to make two Logics, one for science, and the other for opinion; in which (saving the honor of so great a master) he has very greatly erred. For . . . the art of knowing, that IS to say. Dialectic or Logic, is one and the same doctrine in respect to perceiving all things . . . (3, 62).

The document of verity further justifies the removal of any vestige of logic from rhetoric since there is no need for a logic of opinion separate from the logic of science. Finally, the law of wisdom justifies the removal of judgment or disposition from rhetoric since disposition includes method, and one method serves all arts, including grammar and logic and also poetry, oratory, and history. Macllmaine explains Ramus's method in the language of the law of wisdom:

The methode is a disposition by the which amonge many propositions of one sorte, and by their disposition knowen, that thing which is absolutely most cleare is first placed, and secondly that which is next-and therfore it contynually procedethe from the most generali to the speciali and singuler (54).




The Ramist method, in parallel with the invention of printing, encouraged the reduction of thought to spatial models, not the least influential of the Ramist reforms.^' As for the parts of an oration, or disposition as Aristotle conceives of it. Ramus writes in the Dialectique that "such exordiums and perorations are not at all necessary to teach well the good auditor who on his own loves and demands the truth" (131, 151).

Beginning in the early seventeenth century, however, proponents of Aristotle and of the classical tradition initiated a counterreform against Ramism in an effort to preserve what they regarded as essential features of Aristotle's Rhetoric and of the classical tradition as a whole. This counterreform again resists simple characterization. It was in part a simple reversion to Aristotle and to classical rhetoric but also in part, and especially in England, an attempt at compromise or accommodation with Ramism.^o Insofar as the counterreform affected Hobbes, its most important figures were probably the Dutch Aristotelian Gerhard Johannes Vossius and the Englishman Thomas Farnaby. Vossius was clearly the most important Aristotelian of the early seventeenth century while Farnaby was a disciple of Vossius and the most successful representative of the counterreform in England.^^

Vossius' massive statement of opposition to Ramus was published in numerous editions throughout the seventeenth century, including a third edition, Gommentariorum Rhetoricorum, sive Orator-ium Libri Sex (1630), published not long before Hobbes dictated his Latin brief.̂ ^ Vossius' opposition to the Ramist reforms centers in precisely those reforms for which the three laws or three documents provide both rationale and justification. Vossius follows Aristotle when he defines rhetoric as that "Faculty of seeing in each instance what is likely to lead to being persuaded" (I, i, ii) and so signals his retreat from the Ramist reforms. Vossius defies the Ramist law of justice when upon Aristotle's authority he advocates a complete rhetoric in

"Ong, Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 307-18. But Yates, pp. 233-34, suggests that the Ramist epitomes are actually a transfer of visually ordered and schematized layouts from manuscripts to printed books.

^CNadeau, pp. 4-5; and Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 318-26. ^'Miller, pp. 313-22; and Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 321-23. 22Gerhard Johannes Vbssius, Gommentariorum Rhetoricorum, sive Oratorium Libri

Sex, Scriptor Reprints (1630; rpt. Kronberg Ts.: Scriptor, 1974). Reference is to book, chapter, and part. Publication data on Vossius' works are given in Dr. C. S. M. Rademaker ss, cc, Gerardus Joannes Vossius, Zwolse Reeks van Taal-en Letterkundige Shidies, Nr. 21 (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, 1967), pp. 275-93.



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four parts: invention, disposition, elocution, and pronunciation. Memory, which Cicero had included as the fifth part of rhetoric, Vossius identifies as a distinct art: "Therefore, even though the Orator speaks from memory, nevertheless both Aristotle and other ancient Rhetoricians rightly pass over memory in silence" (I, i, iii). Thus Vossius' commentary includes six books, two on invention, one on disposition, two on elocution (the tropes and schemes), and one on pronunciation. Again, Vossius defies the Ramist law of verity when he advocates a logic of probability, including not only logos but also ethos and pathos, which in the Ramist logic and rhetoric had simply disappeared. In fact, Vossius distinguishes two logics of probability, both distinct from the logic of science. He insists that invention is either dialectical or rhetorical, in conformity with Aristotle and in opposition to Ramus: "For Dialectical Invention . . . is universal, in that it points out any probable arguments; oratorical invention is particular, in that it provides only persuasive arguments" (I, ii, i), that is, only those probable arguments that happen also to be persuasive. Vossius further distinguishes two kinds of argument as components of rhetorical invention, the artificial and inartificial arguments, and he distinguishes three kinds of artificial argument—ethos, pathos, and logos—which by a strict interpretation he identifies with the manners, passions, and reasons, also called 'arguments. ' In his treatment of logos in the first two books of his commentary, Vossius follows the content and organization of Aristotle's Rhetoric, though in greater detail. In his treatment of ethos and pathos, Vossius makes a covert allusion to Ramus, whom he blames for the disappearance of ethos and pathos from rhetoric. The import of the Ramist reforms, as Vossius describes them, is to assign the study of the passions to physics and to ethics. But the passions merit a place also in rhetoric:

For in Physics one is concerned about the passions because they fall to a certain species of natural body, that is, animal; in Ethics one treats of them because the work of virtue is to moderate the passions; finally, in Rhetoric he [Aristotle] has taught of them because the work of the orator is to move the passions in auditors. Therefore, he considers not indeed all the passions in Rhetoric, but, the others having been passed over, he explains only those that relate to being persuaded (II, i, i).

In his treatment of ethos and pathos in the second book of his commentary, Vossius again follows the content and organization of Aristotle's Rhetoric, again in greater detail. Finally, Vossius defies the Ramist law of wisdom when he reverts to disposition as Aristotle conceives of it and as it is developed in the later classical sources, that




is, the six parts of an oration: exordium, narration, proposition, confirmation, confutation, and epilogue. Aristotle, of course, recognizes only two, or at most four, of the six parts. Thus Vossius in his treatment of disposition departs from the content and organization of Aristotle's Rhetoric, as he does also in the succeeding books of his commentary, while he retains the greater detail characteristic of the earlier books.

Farnaby's Index Rhetoricus (1625) was published with an appendix of oratorical formulas, or illustrative quotations (1633), in about the same year that Hobbes dictated his Latin brief.̂ ^ Thereafter, the volume, with the appendix, was regularly reprinted throughout the seventeenth century. The index itself is a far smaller volume than Vossius' massive commentary. Nevertheless, Farnaby follows Vossius in opposition to Ramus and so becomes if not the first then in any event the most successful representative of the counterreform in England. Farnaby's definition of rhetoric emphasizes the persuasive power of rhetoric and so suggests his sympathy with Vossius and his opposition to the Ramist reforms: "Rhetoric is the ability to talk well on any subject and to persuade in an agreeable manner" (1, 16). Farnaby follows Vossius (and Aristotle) and rejects Ramus when he advocates a complete rhetoric in four parts: invention, disposition, elocution, and pronunciation.^^ Again, Farnaby follows Vossius (and Aristotle) rather than Ramus when he advocates a probable logic: "Invention is the composing of arguments which are well-suited to winning assent. An argument is a probability invented to win belief" (3, 18). Farnaby further distinguishes artificial and inartificial arguments and, as kinds of artificial arguments, logos, pathos, and ethos— arguments from belief, from the emotions or feeUngs, and from the manners, including the virtues. Finally, Farnaby adopts the six parts of an oration, in conformity with the later classical sources and with Vossius. Farnaby's treatment of invention, though not of disposition, is in effect an outline of Aristotle's Rhetoric. In some formal respects

23Thomas Farnaby, Index Rhetoricus, English Linguistics, 1500-1800, No. 240 (1625; rpt. Menston, Eng.: Scolar, 1970); and Nadeau. Translations are from Nadeau. Reference is to pages in the 1633 edition and Nadeau's translation, respectively. Publication data are given in Nadeau, pp. 5-8; and Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, p. 321. Nadeau, pp. 114-68, reviews the sources of the Index Rhetoricus and cites Vossius as the dominant influence.

2«HowelI, Logic and Rhetoric in England, pp. 322-23, reads the Index Rhetoricus as a Ciceronian rhetoric that shows a Ramist influence in relegating memory to logic, therefore leaving four parts.



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Farnaby follows Ramus rather than either his classical sources or Vossius. In an attempt at compromise or accommodation with Ramism, Farnaby outlines his rhetoric in loose conformity with the Ramist method, in reduced form, and complete with spatial models.

III.

Hobbes may or may not have had a direct knowledge of either Vossius or Farnaby. However, Hobbes certainly had a fondness for Aristotle's Rhetoric. He had learned early of the low regard that European intellectuals had for scholastic logic, but while he himself developed a strong disdain for Aristotle, he never lost his fondness for the Rhetoric. Aubrey records Hobbes's observation that 'Aristotle was the worst Teacher that ever was, the worst Politician and Ethick—a Countrey-fellow that could live in the World would be as good: but his Rhetorique and Discourse of Animals was rare" (158). As an accomplished Greek translator, Hobbes had a direct knowledge of Aristotle. But he nevertheless read his Aristotle from the perspective of the early seventeenth century. The now standard interpretation places Hobbes's brief of the Rhetoric, titled The Whole Art of Rhetoric in the 1681 reprint, in the historical context of Ramism.^^ However, The Whole Art of Rhetoric was actually written in the historical context not of Ramism but of the counterreform against Ramism that dates from the first decade of the seventeenth century and reaches fruition in England in the 1620s and 1630s.26 Hobbes's The Whole Art of Rhetoric shows evidence of Ramist influences but so also do other rhetorics of the counterreform, which was, especially in England, not simply a reversion to classical rhetoric but an attempt at compromise or accommodation. On the crucial points at issue between Ramus and the counterreformers, Hobbes took the side of the counterreformers.

First, The Whole Art of Rhetoric is a complete rhetoric in four parts: invention, elocution, disposition, and pronunciation. Hobbes gives to pronunciation only passing attention, in conformity with Aristotle. He approaches invention by way of his definition of rhetoric as "that

"Ong, "Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric," pp. 265-69; and Seifert, pp. 102-27. Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory, pp. 511-12, 521, characterizes Hobbes's brief as semi-Ramist, or syncretist in some degree. Seifert, pp. 128-45, also reads Leviathan as Ramist.

^'Sandford, pp. 522-23.




faculty, by which we understand what will serve our turn concerning any subject to win belief in the hearer" (E.W., VI, 424). Of things that beget belief, some require art, or invention, and some do not. Belief that proceeds from invention is of three kinds "partly from the behaviour of the speaker, partly from the passions of the hearer; but especially from the proofs of what we allege" (E.W., VI,424-25). Thus in conformity with Aristotle and the counterreformers Hobbes includes ethos and pathos as well as logos as kinds of rhetorical invention. His review of the kinds of rhetorical invention follows Aristotle's Rhetoric in content and organization and includes, among the passions of the hearer, fear, of which he makes special use in Leviathan. Hobbes's outline of a complete rhetoric in four parts and of an art of rhetorical invention, complete in its three kinds, explains and perhaps justifies the 1681 title: The Whole Art of Rhetoric. Thus the author of a preface to the reader prefixed to the 1681 edition alludes to Hobbes's review of "common places of probability, and knowledge in the manners and passions of mankind" (E.W., VI, 421) as means of effecting belief.

Second, as that same preface to the reader suggests. The Whole Art of Rhetoric derives its proofs from probability, not from truth. Hobbes appears in sympathy with Ramus when he observes that a logician would make the best rhetorician and when, like Ramus, he assigns the proofs to logic: "For all syllogisms and inferences belong properly to logic, whether they infer truth or probability" (E.W., VI, 424). However, Hobbes simply follows Aristotle's Rhetoric, which likewise states that dialectic is concerned with every kind of proof and that "one who divines well in regard to the truth will also be able to divine well in regard to probabilities" (I, i, 1355all). Hobbes again appears in sympathy with Ramus when he draws a distinction between scientific and rhetorical syllogisms: "Besides, ordinarily those that are judges, are neither patient, nor capable of long scientifical proofs drawn from the principles through many syllogisms; and therefore had need to be instructed by the rhetorical and shorter way" (E.W., VI, 424). This interpretation of the rhetorical syllogism poses some difficulties since Hobbes does not explain what he means by the rhetorical and shorter way. His interpretation of the rhetorical syllogism as a "shorter way" accords with Aristotle's Rhetoric (I, ii, 1357al2-13) but conveys a suggestion also of the Ramist misinterpretation of the rhetorical syllogism as a syllogism in which some part is missing—the syllogism that Macllmaine in the Logike



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calls "a mutilet Sillogisme, or (Entymema)" (46).̂ ^ However, and more to the point, Hobbes again accords with Aristotle's Rhetoric, which likewise associates the rhetorical syllogism with probable rather than scientific proofs. Hobbes acknowledges a logic of probabilities, and he associates the rhetorical syllogism with probable rather than scientific proofs, in conformity with Aristotle and in direct opposition to Ramus.

Third, The Whole Art of Rhetoric reviews the parts of an oration, not the six parts as in the later classical sources but Aristotle's four parts, which Hobbes calls the proem, the proposition or narration, the proofs, and the epilogue. Thus Hobbes defies in turn each of the three laws or documents that provided the rationale and justification for the Ramist reforms. On the crucial points at issue. The Whole Art of Rhetoric is Aristotelian and counterreformist, not Ramist. In certain formal respects, however. The Whole Art of Rhetoric reflects the Ramist reforms in that Hobbes presents his rhetoric in reduced form and even creates a kind of spatial model with sequences of short paragraphs, often of one phrase or one sentence each, and with enumerated lists. Like others of the counterreformers, such as Farn'aby, he adopts the Ramist method in an attempt at compromise or accommodation. In this last respect, Hobbes's brief of Aristotle's Rhetoric merits its 1637 title: A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique.

IV.

Hobbes's knowledge of and fondness for Aristotle's Rhetoric clash with his interests in the philosophy of science and in political science.28 In his attempts to establish a philosophy of science as a basis for his political science, Hobbes rejects rhetoric as a metaphorical use of words suited to the passions in favor of an appeal to reason

^'Ong, "Hobbes and Talon's Ramist Rhetoric," pp. 266-68, characterizes Hobbes's interpretation of the rhetorical syllogism as Ramist. Elsewhere, Ong, Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, pp. 186-87, notes that the Ramist misinterpretation of the rhetorical syllogism as a mutilated syllogism was commonplace in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

28Reik, pp. 19-112, traces the development and interrelationship of humanism and science in Hobbes's works. Professor Victoria Kahn has drawn my attention to some problems in this interrelationship; her unpublished paper, " 'Artificiall Chains': The Rhetoric of the Leviathan," addresses these problems but reaches conclusions different from my own.




and science. In the early works, he defines the problem of rhetoric as the opposition between truth and eloquence, between reason and the passions.^^ The problem arises in Hobbes's essay, "Of the Life and History of Thucydides" (his introduction to The History of the Grecian War), where Hobbes distinguishes between truth and elocution. The truth of Thucydides' history has never been doubted, Hobbes observes, while its elocution is acclaimed by greater authorities than Hobbes himself. Elocution consists of delivery and style, and he notes that the style of the history is acclaimed by Plutarch: "Thucydides aimeth always at this; to make his auditor a spectator, and to cast his reader into the same passions that they were in that were beholders" (E.W., VIII, xxii). Similarly in The Elements of Law, Hobbes distinguishes between reason and persuasion and associates the latter with an appeal to the passions. In the dedicatory epistle, he distinguishes between reason and passion, which he associates with mathematical learning and dogmatical learning, truth, on the one hand, and controversies and dispute, on the other. He promises to establish the foundation of his science in such principles of reason as passion will not mistrust and to write "more with logic than with rhetoric" ("The Epistle Dedicatory," xvii). Later in the same work, he distinguishes similarly between teaching, which he also calls ratiocination or science, and persuasion, which he equates with an appeal to the passions. Teaching begins "at something from experience, then . . . begetteth the like evidence in the hearer" (1,13, 2) while persuasion is "INSTIGATION and APPEASING, by which we increase or diminish one another 's passions" (I, 13, 7). Again in De Give, Hobbes distinguishes between wisdom and eloquence, and he rejects eloquence as the metaphorical use of words suited to the passions. He distinguishes eloquence joined with wisdom from eloquence alone:

The one is an elegant and clear expression of the conceptions of the mind; and riseth partly from the contemplation of the things themselves, partly from an understanding of words taken in their own proper and definite signification. The other is a commotion of the passions of the mind, such as are hope, fear, anger, pity; and derives from a metaphorical use of words fitted to the passions (E.W., II, 161-62).

2'Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Elsa M. Sinclair (1936; rpt. 1952; rpt. Chicago: Phoenix-Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 30-43, establishes Aristotle's Rhetoric as the most important source of Hobbes's treatment of the passions, Hinnant, pp. 54-56,107-11, traces Hobbes's treatment of the passions in The Elements of Law and Leviathan and cites the numerous Renaissance treatises on the passions as other possible sources.



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The one Hobbes associates with logic, the other with rhetoric: "That forms a speech from true principles; this from opinions already received, what nature soever they are of. The art of that is logic, of this rhetoric; the end of that is truth, of this victory" (E.W., II, 162).

In Leviathan, Hobbes effects a tenuous reconciliation between the divergent and conflicting attitudes toward rhetoric and science evident in his early works. On the one hand, he rejects the metaphorical use of words as unsuited to reason and science; on the other hand, he accepts and makes use of an appeal to the passions as the starting point and foundation of this, his most mature work of political science. In effect, he acknowledges that not every appeal to the passions need arise from a metaphorical use of words. Thus he rejects one kind of appeal to the passions, that associated with the metaphorical use of words, in the service of victory, while he accepts another, that associated with reason and science, in the service of truth.

Hobbes's acceptance of rhetoric, or at least one kind of rhetoric, in the context of a work of political science may have historical and certainly has theoretical foundations. Historically, Hobbes worked out his theory in an atmosphere of open and bitter hostility. King, Church, and Parliament had been at odds for decades, particularly since the ascension of the Stuarts. By 1642, the English Civil War had begun, and in 1649 Charles I was executed. Parliament, Protector, Army would rule until the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Hobbes had been born one of twins, "both me and fear together" (L.W., I, Ixxxvi), and with the onset of the English Civil War he left for France, "the first of all that fled, and there continued eleven years, to his damage some thousands of pounds deep" (E.W., IV, 414). In France, he wrote Leviathan, with its appeal to the passions, which he must have regarded as an appropriate response to an audience whose passions already were aroused to open and bitter hostility. Theoretically, Hobbes could justify an appeal to the passions in the cause of truth, particularly if that truth is difficult to accept. His theory is worked out in the text of Leviathan and justified in explicit terms at the end of the work.

In the text of Leviathan, Hobbes again rejects the metaphorical use of words as an obstacle to reason and science while at the same time he appeals to the passions, especially fear, as the starting point and foundation of his mature political science. Again, he draws upon Aristotle's Rhetoric as he had drawn upon it also in The Elements of Law and in De Give. According to one interpretation, the Rhetoric




provides the moral basis of Hobbes's political science.^o However, as Hobbes himself indicates in his early works, an appeal to the passions is a rhetorical rather than an ethical appeal. Moreover, it is a rhetorical appeal in the sense in which rhetoric was understood by Aristotle, by the counterreformers, and by Hobbes himself. In Leviathan, Hobbes draws especially upon the Aristotelian and counterreformist ideal of rhetorical invention, which he equates with his analytical and synthetic method. Thereby he violates the famous three laws of Ramism even as he generates a rhetorical method that is neither (wholly) Aristotelian, nor Ramist, nor counterreformist but a unique though only modestly successful response to an England torn by civil strife.

Hobbes's appeal to the passions is the starting point and foundation of his rhetorical method. So Hobbes indicates in his introduction to Leviathan, where he makes what heretofore in his works of political science would have seemed a contradiction—an appeal to the passions in the name of wisdom. He begins in introspection. There is a saying "that wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men" (E.W., III, x-xi). But Hobbes prefers another saying, "nosce teipsum, read thyself" (E.W., III, xi), hence his introspection:

. . . for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself, and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c. and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions (E.W., III, xi).

By thus reading his own thoughts and passions, Hobbes seeks to achieve agreement with his readers: " . . . when I have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration" (E.W., III, xii). Hobbes's appeal to the passions is fundamental to his rhetorical method—though his introspective approach to his own passions is the source of considerable difficulty in that method since he assumes that the fear he finds in himself will be equally present in all other men as well.

Hobbes's rhetorical method is thus an equation of his method of analysis and synthesis with the Aristotelian and counterreformist

3»Strauss, pp. 30-43, 130-36, 148-50.



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ideal of a complete art of rhetorical invention, encompassing logos, ethos, and pathos—reason and the virtues, passions, and manners of men. As Hobbes adopts (and adapts) the method of analysis and synthesis, so he violates the Ramist law of wisdom, which justifies the exclusive use of the Ramist method. The method of analysis and synthesis as Hobbes describes it in his later De Corpore is a logical method suited to philosophical inquiry. It is, as he acknowledges in his dedicatory epistle, the method developed by Galileo and other Aristotelians at Padua.^i As philosophy is the knowledge of effects through their causes and of causes through their effects, so the method of analysis and synthesis is the method of searching for and of demonstrating causes and effects. The search for causes and effects is both analytical (resolutive) and synthetical (compositive) and is also called the method of invention. Demonstration is wholly synthetical (and syllogistic) and is also called teaching. Such in brief is the method of analysis and synthesis as Hobbes describes it in De Corpore. In the earlier Leviathan, he describes the same method but does not use the name. The method of reason, also called science, is the equivalent of the method of analysis and synthesis:

By this it appears that reason is not, as sense and memory, born with us; nor gotten by experience only, as prudence is; but attained by industry; first in apt imposing of names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly method in proceeding from the elements, which are names, to assertions made by connexion of one of them to another; and so to syllogisms, which are the connexions of one assertion to another, till we come to a knowledge of all the consequences of names appertaining to the subject in hand; and that is it, men call SCIENCE (E.W., 111, 35).

Science, which Hobbes also calls philosophy, is the knowledge of causes and effects, arrived at by imposition of names and good and orderly method:

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another: by which, out of that we can presently do, we know how to do something else when we will, or the like another time; because when we see how any thing comes about, upon what causes, and by

3iDevelopments at Padua are described in John Hermann Randall, Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science, Saggi e Testi, 1 (Padova: Antenore, 1961), pp. 13-68. The importance and influence of Hobbes's method are described in Mintz, pp. 149-52; M. M. Goldsmith, Hobbes's Science of Politics (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1966), p. 242; and Hinnant, pp. 156-57.




what manner; when the like causes come into our power, we see how to make it produce the like effects (E.W., III, 35).

Given the importance of names in the method of reason or science, in his Leviathan Hobbes rejects the metaphorical use of words—"the use of metaphors, tropes, and other rhetorical figures, instead of words proper" (E.W., III, 34)—as he does also in his earlier works of political science.

The method of analysis and synthesis, in Leviathan called the method of reason or science, Hobbes equates with rhetorical invention. Insofar as Hobbes accepts invention as a part of rhetoric and identifies rhetorical invention as the method of reason or science, so he violates the Ramist law of justice (and also Aristotle's own practice). He does so in the interest of his persuasive purpose: to restore peace to an England torn by civil strife. Rhetorical invention as it was understood by Aristotle, by the counterreformers, and by Hobbes himself encompasses three kinds of proof: logos, ethos, and pathos. Ethos and especially pathos are fundamental to Hobbes's rhetorical method, as he himself indicates in his introduction. As parts of rhetorical invention, ethos and pathos include those virtues, passions, and manners that conduce to persuasion. Therefore, Hobbes provides a review of the virtues, passions, and manners in several chapters in the first part of Leviathan. His review is detailed beyond his immediate needs and apparently draws upon sources other than the Rhetoric. The sixth, eighth, and eleventh chapters list and define passions, intellectual virtues, and manners, respectively, while the tenth, thirteenth, and the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters treat particular manners, particular passions, and the laws of nature, also called moral virtues, respectively. The passions listed in Leviathan include (among the virtues listed in the Rhetoric) magnanimity, fortitude, and liberality. The manners include nobility, riches, and power but not the manners of youth, of old men, and of middle-aged men (which Aristotle lists first among the manners). The intellectual virtues include prudence (which Aristotle also lists among the intellectual virtues) and also wit, fancy, judgment, discretion, and the like while the moral virtues are simply another name for the laws of nature. The review of the virtues, passions, and manners in Leviathan, at least in its broad outline, conforms to the review of the virtues, passions, and manners in Aristotle's Rhetoric and in Hobbes's The Whole Art of Rhetoric. One need not press the point about influence too far. That Hobbes makes use of Aristotle's Rhetoric is obvious enough. That he makes of the Rhetoric a rhetorical rather than an ethical argument




is apparent from the broad outline of his review of the virtues, passions, and manners in Leviathan; from his appeal to the passions in the introduction to Leviathan; from his association of rhetoric wi th an appeal to the passions in his earlier works, including both the earlier works of political science and The Whole Art of Rhetoric; and, finally, from the context of the counterreform, which, in the person of Vossius particularly, objected to the relegation of the passions to physics and to ethics in the Ramist reform.

Among the virtues, passions, and manners reviewed in the first part of Leviathan, Hobbes gives special emphasis to fear, the starting point and foundation of his effort to establish the sovereign authority and so to restore peace. In The Whole Art of Rhetoric, he defines fear as "a trouble or vexation of the mind, arising from the apprehension of an evil at hand, which may hurt or destroy" (E.W., VI, 456-57), and in the sixth chapter of Leviathan he similarly defines fear as Aversion, with the opinion of HURT from the object" (E.W., III, 43). In the tenth chapter he paints a vivid portrait of the principal object of fear, that is, war, "where every man is enemy to every m a n " (E.W., III, 113):

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (E.W., III, 113).

Nowhere else in Leviathan is the nature of Hobbes's appeal to the passions more apparent than in these famous (and infamous) lines. The description of the state of nature in terms such as Hobbes uses was virtually a commonplace in the period, as can be seen in Shakespeare's similar description in The Tempest (II, i, 142-51) and Montaigne's in "Of the Caniballes" (Essays, I, 30).32 The difference is one of attitude, Hobbes's gloomy portrait contrasting sharply with the light and humorous tone of Shakespeare's description and with Montaigne's naive optimism. Thus does Hobbes by introspection

32The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Irving Ribner and George Lyman Kittredge (New York: Wiley, 1971), p. 1567; and Montaigne's Essays, trans. John Florio, 3 vols., Everyman's Library, No. 440 (New York: Dutton, 1910), p. 220.




derive his appeal to fear of the state of nature, the war of every man against every man. Upon the efficacy of that appeal depends his argument from reason. His affirmation of the sovereign authority follows closely upon his appeal to fear:

The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement (E.W., 111, 116).

Reason suggests Hobbes's nineteen articles of peace (also called laws of nature or moral virtues). From the first two of these, "to seek peace, and follow it" and "by all means we can, to defend ourselves" (E.W., III, 117), Hobbes derives his definition of commonwealth in the second part of Leviathan:

... the commonwealth . . . is one person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual convenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence (E.W., III, 158).

And from his definition of commonwealth he derives his definition of the sovereign as "he that carrieth this person" (E.W., III, 158). Hobbes's rhetorical method shows how reason suggests the nineteen laws of nature or moral virtues and the definition of sovereignity derived from them.

Logos constitutes the argument from reason in Hobbes's rhetorical method. As Hobbes adapts reason to his persuasive purpose, so he violates the Ramist law of verity. As part of rhetorical invention, logos includes those probable reasons or arguments that conduce to persuasion. In accordance with his persuasive purpose, Hobbes provides a rhetorical interpretation of the method of analysis and synthesis, of reason or science. First, he renders the method of reason or science subject to debate among men. In the fifth chapter of Leviathan, he acknowledges the relative uncertainty in science. Science is "Certain, when he that pertendeth the science of any thing, can teach the same; that is to say, demonstrate the truth thereof perspicuously to another; uncertain, when only some particular events answer to his pretence. . " (E.W., III, 37). Science is certain, that is, when it is persuasive. But science is not always certain. Therefore, Hobbes provides a means of resolving controversy in cases of uncertainty. That means is recourse to the sovereign power, whose authority Hobbes seeks to establish in the interest of securing peace. Earlier in the same chapter he draws upon a passage from Aristotle's



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Rhetoric to explain the subordination of reason to the sovereign authority. Reason is but a reckoning, that is, the adding and subtracting of general names agreed upon—also called syllogism. But reason is not always right reason, any more than arithmetic is an infallible art. Therefore, even when a great many men have approved an account, there may still be controversy:

And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up, for right reason, the reason of some arbitrator, or judge, to whose sentence they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right reason constituted by nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever (E.W., III, 31).

The reference to an arbitrator or judge parallels a passage in Aristotle's Rhetoric (I, xiii, 1374bl8-19), which Hobbes in The Whole Art of Rhetoric paraphrases as follows: 'And to submit rather to the sentence of a judge, than of the sword. And to the sentence of an arbitrator, rather than of a judge" (E.W., VI, 446). In the context of Leviathan, the arbitrator or judge is, of course, Hobbes's sovereign authority or the ministers of sovereign authority. Thus, by a circular argument, Hobbes's reason that is subject to debate among men presupposes the acceptance of that same sovereign power whose authority it seeks to establish. Hobbes's argument from reason rests upon its starting point and foundation, the appeal to fear that justifies acceptance of the sovereign authority.

Second, Hobbes adapts the method of reason or science in accord with his interpretation of the rhetorical syllogism, the "shorter way" described in The Whole Art of Rhetoric. The shorter way is the abbreviated syllogism (which Macllmaine calls a mutilated syllogism); one instance of this type is the ostensive enthymeme, which Hobbes describes and illustrates in The Whole Art of Rhetoric and makes use of in Leviathan.'^'^ One kind of ostensive enthymeme is from contraries, thus: "// intemperance be hurtful, temperance is profitable: and if intemperance be not hurtful, neither is temperance profitable" (E.W., VI, 478). Hobbes uses the ostensive enthymeme from contraries in Leviathan to demonstrate the consequences of disobedience (civil war) or obedience (peace) to the law. If war is perpetual fear, then peace is the absence of perpetual fear. Therefore, such is

33Seifert, pp. 142-43, notes Hobbes's use of the ostensive enthymeme from contraries in Leviathan.




Hobbes's first law of nature, men should seek peace. Therefore, they should accept the sovereign authority. Another kind of ostensive enthymeme is from definition, thus: "A spirit is either God, or the creature of God; and therefore he denies not that there is a God, that confesses there are spirits" (E.W., VI, 479). The crucial issue for Hobbes is not whether or not men will obey the law (he assumes, or at least hopes, that fear will provide sufficient motivation) but rather whom will men obey: the Church or the civil authority?34 Thus, having affirmed the sovereign authority in the first two parts of Leviathan, he writes again as much (the third and fourth parts) to establish that the sovereign authority cannot be the Church. His argument is an ostensive enthymeme from definition. The kingdom of God is either a heavenly kingdom or a civil kingdom. Common opinion holds that the kingdom of God is a heavenly kingdom. However, the kingdom of God was formerly the kingdom of Israel, a civil kingdom established by covenant. Jesus came to restore the kingdom of Israel interrupted by the election of Saul. But Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world. Therefore, until he comes again to restore the new Israel, the new heaven and the new earth, Jesus does not rule the civil kingdom. Therefore, the civil authority, not the Church, should rule the civil kingdom, the kingdom of God. So Hobbes argues by rhetorical syllogisms subject to debate among men. However, as these rhetorical syllogisms rest upon reason subject to debate among men, so reason subject to debate among men rests in turn upon prior acceptance of the sovereign authority. In the last analysis, Hobbes's argument from reason rests upon its starting point and foundation— its appeal to the passions, especially fear: "For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration" (E.W., III, xii).

In the development of his rhetorical method, Hobbes violates the three laws of Ramism. He violates the law of justice when he admits invention—logos, ethos, and pathos—as part of rhetoric and when he equates rhetorical invention with his method of analysis and synthesis, reason or science. He violates the law of verity when he renders reason or science subject to debate among men and so adapts it to his persuasive purpose. And he violates the law of wisdom when he adopts the method of analysis and synthesis, reason or science, in preference to the Ramist method. He makes one concession to the

3*John Dewey, "The Motivation of Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in Thomas Hobbes in His Time, pp. 8-30.




Ramist method, however, even as the counterreformers had done. He presents his review of the virtues, passions, and manners in the same sequences of short phrases or sentences that he had used in The Whole Art of Rhetoric, and he adopts a spatial model in his review of the several subjects of knowledge in the n in th chapter of Leviathan, where he provides a table of sciences presented in order from the most general to the special and singular. In this compromise or accommodation with Ramism, he accords with the counterreformers.

In a larger and more positive sense also, Hobbes accords with Aristotle and with the counterreformers. In his acceptance of rhetorical invention, he preserves, as the Ramists had not, the traditional association of rhetoric with other intellectual disciplines. At the end of Leviathan, Hobbes justifies in explicit terms his rhetorical method, by which he reconciles reason and the passions, sdence and rhetoric. Significantly, his justification rests upon the recognition that his political science is a moral not a natural science. He acknowledges that reason and eloquence may well stand together in the moral sciences, ethics and civil philosophy:

So also reason, and eloquence, though not perhaps in the natural sciences, yet, in the moral, may stand very well together. For wheresoever there is place for adorning and preferring of error, there is much more place for adorning and preferring of truth, if they have it to adorn (E.W., III, 702).

Without doubt, Hobbes believed that he had truth to adorn. By the time that he wrote Leviathan, he had also come to realize that some truths are more difficult to adorn than others. As he turns from political science to natural science, from Leviathan to De Corpore, he is able to leave behind him the task of adorning the truth. Thus he concludes Leviathan:

And in this hope I return to my interrupted speculation of bodies natural; wherein, if God give me health to finish it, I hope the novelty will as much please, as in the doctrine of this artificial body it useth to offend. For such truth, as opposeth no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome (E.W., 111, 714).

In sum, Hobbes's rhetorical method defies strict classification as Aristotelian, Ramist, anti-Ramist, or counterreformist. It is a composite of materials, adapted to problems immediately at hand, both historical and theoretical. The historical problem resolved itself in time. The theoretical problem Hobbes resolves in his tenuous recon-




ciliation between the divergent and conflicting claims of rhetoric and science, which he joins, though uneasily, in his rhetorical method. That his method was not entirely successful may be attributed less to the failure of the method itself than to his starting point and foundation, his reading of the passions of men by introspection. Hobbes read fear in himself and supposed that other men would do likewise. His reading of his own passions provoked the universal disdain of his critics, who were appalled by what they saw as his affront to human dignity.35 Insofar as Hobbes's rhetorical method joins logos with ethos and pathos, it admits the possibility of a reconciliation between rhetoric and science, especially political science. Insofar as it permits pathos to triumph over ethos and logos, however, it shatters that possibility.

Despite the limits of its success and influence, Hobbes's rhetorical method has the merit that it preserves much that is of permanent value in the art of rhetoric. The legacy of Ramism, by one account, is but a litany of ills and a pervasive gloom.^s The merit of Hobbes's rhetorical method (and an account thereof) is its reaffirmation that the strength and vitality of rhetoric lie in its traditional association with other intellectual disciplines through its appeal to logos, ethos, and pathos—Hobbes's "reason subject to debate among men" and the virtues, passions, and manners of men.

Whatever the limits of Hobbes's rhetoric and of his rhetorical method, not the least of which is his own gloomy view of human nature, his rhetorical method has at least the merit that it reaffirms (in opposition to some of the dominant intellectual currents of the early seventeenth century) that a rhetoric devoid of appeal both to reason and to the virtues, passions, and manners of men is no rhetoric at all.

35Bowle, pp. 193-95; and Mintz, pp. 154-55. 36Corcoran, pp. 181-208.



aristotelian and ramist rhetoric in thomas hobbes'sleviathan: pathos versus ethos and logos

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