[pasquino] hobbes foole

© 2001 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

406 PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

406

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001) 406–419 0279–0750/00/0100–0000© 2001 University of Southern California and Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Published by

Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

HOBBES, RELIGION,AND RATIONAL

CHOICE: HOBBES’STWO LEVIATHANS

AND THE FOOL

PASQUALE PASQUINO

Abstract: Some recent interpreters of Hobbes have deployed techniques ofgame theory in the service of showing that cooperation in the Hobbesianstate of nature is possible. I argue against this strategy in two ways. First, Ishow that Hobbes did not intend the state of nature as a starting point of thetheory from which the possibility of exit must be explained, but rather as arhetorically useful depiction of the consequences of wrongful understandingsof men’s civil and religious duties. Secondly, I show that the game theoretictechniques of these interpreters can be used in a new way to demonstrateboth the inherent tendency toward civil war in existing Christian states, andthe superior stability of the Hobbesian political order.

to my friend Jean Hampton, in memoriam

“Peace at home may then be expected durable, when the common people shall be made tosee the benefit they shall receive by their obedience and adhaesion to their own Sovereign,and the harm they must suffer by taking part with them, who by promises of reformation,or change of government deceive them. And this is properly to be done by divines, andfrom arguments not only from reason, but also from the Holy Scripture”

Th. Hobbes, A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of theCommon Laws of England, London, Printed for William Crooke 1681*

The state of nature1 (“the condition of mere nature”) in Hobbes’s politicaltheory is at the same time a counter-factual, an exemplum, in the mediaevalsense of this word, and a possible destination. I will comment upon this,but it is worth stressing from the beginning that it is in no way either anhistorical or a logical starting point. Recently that Hobbesian concept

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HOBBES, RELIGION, AND RATIONAL CHOICE 407

has been considered in terms of game theory. Independently of its disput-able historical accuracy, that approach has the merit of showing that the“natural condition of mankind” is presented by Hobbes as, so to speak,a sub-optimal Nash equilibrium:2 permanent distrust is, in fact, morerational in that condition than cooperation; in his language the war of allagainst all is more rational than peace and political order. Permanentand generalized distrust is the true nature of this condition in whichhuman life is qualified as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.3

Because the state of nature corresponds to a Prisoner Dilemma matrixthere is no way out of it.

A body of recent literature (D. Gauthier,4 J. Hampton,5 G. Kavka6)has tried to show that some form of cooperation is possible in the state ofnature. For my part, I believe that, notwithstanding some ambiguities inthe English Leviathan, there is no possibility of successfully ascribing thisposition to Hobbes, and that is what I shall now argue.

First and simply from an analytical point of view, trust “can be onlythe fruit of past experience”.7 Elsewhere8 I have argued that in the stateof nature individuals are not able to collect stable information aboutothers, hence it can be described as a condition of epistemic opacitywhich destroys the preconditions of any rational trust. Now, it is exactlythis possibility of trust through experience that is denied to human beingsin the state of nature according to Hobbes; since in it “duration andrecognition of individual identities are excluded”.9 The clearest text sup-porting this interpretation can be found in the first version of Hobbes’spolitical theory the Elements of Law, a small work that circulated as amanuscript at the very beginning of the 1640’s. Here (I.14), he claims thatthe “perpetual diffidence” among human beings depends essentially onthe impossibility of establishing objective standards10 of the “greatness ofthe danger” represented by the other.

In the words of Leviathan: “If a covenant11 be made wherein neither ofthe parties perform presently, but trust one another, in the condition ofmere nature (which is a condition of war of every man against everyman) upon any reasonable suspicion it is void” (EL., Curley, ch. 14, p. 84,italics mine); so that there is neither a good reason to keep the promisenor any obligation to respect it. To make sense of this bold claim we haveto remember that the state of nature is a peculiar situation in which trustis impossible (i.e. irrational) and any covenant void.12 Hobbes adds, indeed,in the same passage, to contrast that condition with the one of civilsociety: “but if there be a common power set over them both [the partiesto a covenant], with right and force sufficient to compel performance, it[the covenant of mutual trust] is not void” (ivi).13

Notwithstanding that, a considerable amount of intellectual energy hasbeen devoted to finding a possible solution to a question which manyHobbes’s interpreters consider crucial: “how people can escape [italics mine]

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the state of nature and enter civil society”.14 A goal of this paper is toshow that the “equilibrium” of the state of nature is not really a problemfor Hobbes’s political theory, since the question is not to try to figure outhow to escape it, but simply to understand that the concept is used rhetor-ically, in order to change the mind of those involved in religious civil war.

A passage in chapter 15 of Leviathan, where Hobbes speaks of theLaws of Nature, seems to give a possible solution to the question posed,by Hampton, among others. In his answer to the “fool” who is supposedto claim that “there is no such a thing as justice”, Hobbes replies in theEnglish Leviathan:

For the question is not of promises mutual, where there is no security of performance oneither side (as when there is no civil power erected over the parties promising [i.e., in thestate of nature]), for such promises are no covenants, but either where one of the parties hasperformed already, or where there is a power to make him perform, there is the questionwhether it be against reason [italics mine], that is, against the benefit of the other to performor not. And I say it is not against reason. (EL., Curley, ch. 15, p. 91).

This text, although not perfectly clear,15 seems nevertheless to open thepossibility of cooperation in the absence of any political authority, since“it is rational to keep contracts in the state of nature if one party hasalready performed [italics mine]”.16

I’ve never been persuaded by that interpretation since it seems to con-tradict Hobbes’s general argument that allows us to present the state ofnature as a sort of Nash equilibrium.17 Needless to say, I was very pleasedwhen I discovered that the second edition of Leviathan, published inLatin in 1668, has a different and unambiguous text.

Although nowadays we usually read the first edition of Hobbes’s majorwork published in English in 1651, it would be more appropriate to readthe second one, since a noteworthy fact we must take into account is thatHobbes devotedly worked on that version for many years.18 The lan-guage of the academic community in the 17th century was, indeed, not atall English but Latin, so that if the first version of Leviathan was a bookpublished in the context of the civil war for a limited public—the oneable to read English—the Latin version is the text that Hobbes workedout in order to address the communitas doctorum, also not only an inter-national scholarly public but all of posterity. Thomas Hobbes could notforesee that the marginal language of a Western European island, parti-ally as the consequence and unexpected effect of the religious civil warthat took people out of Great Britain, would become a few centuriesafterwards the lingua franca of the international academic community.Had he been aware of that, he would certainly have spent his time rewritinga second English edition. But Hobbes was a true humanist19 and he prob-ably believed that Latin would have been forever the language of thecommunitas doctorum. As we know now he was wrong. That prevents

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most of the best American Hobbes specialists from reading the finalversion of the Leviathan. Which for our quotation matters. Indeed, theLatin version, translated into English, looks like this:

For the question is not of promises mutual in the natural condition of men, where there isno compelling power; for thus those promises would not be covenants. But if there is acompelling power and if the one party has performed his promise [italics mine], the question isthen whether the one who deceives does so with reason and in accordance with his owngood. I say he acts against reason and imprudently.20

In his Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, G. Kavka devoted a longsection to “Cooperation and the Fool”, to reach the conclusion that “Weare led by various different paths, then, to the possibility of rationalcooperation in the state of nature” (p. 156).21 Rather than discuss Kavka’sinterpretation based on the English text, I will present here Hobbes’srevised argument as it is spelled out in the Latin version.

At the beginning of Chapter 15 Hobbes presents the third law of nature,justice, “which is this that men perform their covenants made” (EL., p. 89)[Praestanda esse pacta]. He adds, moreover, that the essence of justiceconsists in keeping covenants only if they are valid, as they are when thecommonwealth has been established; it follows from this considerationthat commonwealth, justice and property are born at the same time.22 Atthat point the “fool” [insipiens] enters the argument. He says, as doesCarneades and French neo-skeptical moral philosophy,23 that there is nojustice and that each one alone must take care of his self-preservation.24

The fool says too—and Hobbes is anxious to rebut his claim25—that it ispossible to get salvation by disobeying the political authority.26 “Unjustviolence” indeed can occur only within the commonwealth, since we haveseen that outside the “civitas”, according to Hobbes, there cannot be anyactual injustice. And we will see that the only “unjust violence” whichmay be wrongly believed to lead to the kingdom of God (to salvation) isrebellion against the law of, let us say, a Catholic sovereign if the subjectis, for instance, a Calvinist—and so actually the reason of most of thedisruptive violence in Europe during Hobbes’s life.

In answering the fool, Hobbes is not trying to answer the question ofthe possibility of cooperation in the state of nature but to show that “ifthere is a compelling power and if the one party has performed his pro-mise” it is against reason and against prudence to disobey the positivelaws. Saying that, Hobbes is not yet discussing the main argument of thefool, that is, that disobedience can grant eternal life—that question is thecentral issue of the third and fourth parts of the Leviathan. In the firsttwo parts of the work the point is to show, independently of any religiousbelief, that it is rational to obey a political authority since it is the onlyway to guarantee the citizens’ self-preservation. And indeed injustice,meaning disobedience, is imprudent and irrational for two reasons:

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For first, in a state anyone who does what, as far as can be foreseen and understood byreason, tends to his own destruction [for instance, to disobey the positive/civil laws], eventhough something unforeseen happens which makes the outcome fortunate, has neverthe-less acted imprudently, because what happens is unforeseen.27

The second reason is that no society can accept someone who, like thefool, says he will break covenants.28 So, either he has to hope he will beaccepted because of the ignorance of the others, which again is imprud-ent, or else, and more likely, he will be driven out of the society and willdie [ejectus peribit], since outside the commonwealth he will be in thestate of nature “where each one is an enemy to each one and no one canlive securely”; unless he finds new allies and establishes a new society. Butthis seems not possible, for the same reasons which caused him to bedriven out of the first society: if he is still insipiens he will continue tomaintain that he shall not keep covenants!

Since no cooperation ( justice, in Hobbes’s language) is possible start-ing from the state of nature, we can try to make sense of that conceptconsidering it not as “an origin but a possible destination of society”,in the words of R. Hardin.29 This point was made quite forcefully byF. Maitland,30 and was put forward for the first time in the 17th centuryby the most popular and authoritative champion of the natural law theory.

The dimension of the Hobbesian concept of the state of nature, which Isuggest calling ‘rhetorical’ (from a logical point of view counter-factual),quite clearly appears indeed in a smaller work by Samuel Pufendorf, whohas dwelt most on Hobbes, De statu hominum naturali (1675), a workwhich is not well-known but deserves to be quoted at length:

Furthermore, a consideration of the natural state of individuals and its misery is very usefulfor making citizens love and devote themselves completely to the civil state’s preservation,and also for making them endure gladly the burdens necessary for the maintenance ofstates. For these burdens are but a very small portion of the evils that would have attendeda life without civil bounds, immersion in which would have been far more miserable thanwhat seems to be the harshest existence in a state. One who has never thought about themisery of the natural state bears the burdens which rulers impose on citizens with ill will,as if they were superfluous and contrived either to annoy the people or merely to nourishthe rulers’ ambition and extravagance. In contrast, someone who has correctly estimated thematter admits that it is no more suitable to complain about such burdens than about theprice of clothes or shoes by which the body is protected against severe weather and injuries.

Indeed, one who has reflected thoroughly upon this natural state will bear more patientlythe unreasonable inconveniences that he sometimes experiences at the hands of rulers. Forthese are in fact rarities in the civil state, and counterbalanced by the occurrence of betterthings. But in the natural state one could expect equivalent or worse evils not only on adaily basis, but also without end and measure. Moreover, a judicious citizen will by nomeans attribute those inconveniences to the character of the civil state as such and betherefore more discontented with it; rather, he will acknowledge the general imperfection ofhuman affairs. For although states were specially devised against the evils that threaten one

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person from another [italics mine]—an end necessarily requiring other people’s involvement—it was not possible to take precautions so precise as to prevent the emanation of an occasionalevil from those very persons to whom we subjected ourselves in order to avert human evils.

Also, one who has thoroughly weighed these things puts up willingly with any inconven-iences of his status and is not inclined to revolt against the government. This is especiallyso because such changes are almost always followed by other men rather than by otherpractices, and because most changes in a commonwealth occur through civil wars, whichare deservedly held to be among the gravest civil evils (§. 24).31

If Pufendorf is right, as I firmly believe, the “equilibrium” of the stateof nature is not a problem for Hobbes’s political theory, since the ques-tion is not of showing how to exit from it, but rather of how to makesense of that concept. My own view is that this is a concept used by theauthor with a rhetorical function ad deterrendum, as in the medievaltradition of the exempla—the short stories told by preaching friars toChristian believers in order to induce a certain type of behavior by thedreadful description of the consequences of their misdeeds.32

Just as did the state of nature, the Hobbesian commonwealth too seemsunder the standard game theoretic interpretation to take the form of anequilibrium.

Here the existence of Leviathan changes the payoffs of the matrix. The“fool” is punished for his defection from promises, and cooperation seemsto be a rational behavior and a stable condition. One has then to ask whythe generalized condition of distrust, the state of nature, can emerge outof that equilibrium. In other words, why is social collapse and the disorderof civil war a possible destination? If order/cooperation and reciprocaltrust inside the political community with a common power is a Nashequilibrium for rational actors, why should Hobbes worry about disorderand disruptive conflicts and care about the means of keeping peace in thecommonwealth? There are many possible answers to that question, butgenerally they imply an element of irrationality in human behavior (pas-sions, shortsightedness, etc.).

3,3 2,1

1,2 0,0

c

nc

A

c ncB

non cooperationis punished bythe Leviathan

Nash equilibrium& Pareto optimum:Commonwealth

state of nature

Figure 1. Hobbes’s commonwealth

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o = to obeyp = to protect

Lc = Lutheran citizenCs = Catholic sovereign

Figure 2. The reason for conflict in the Civitas

Quite recently Hobbes’s scholars33 have drawn our attention to thethird and fourth part of the Leviathan, which are usually disregarded bypeople interested in game theory (like Gauthier, Hampton, Kavka). Myclaim is that there is no reason for this disregard, neither for Hobbes’sreaders nor for game theorists. First, since Hobbes wrote Chapters XXXI–XLVII (pp. 233–484 in Curley’s edition), we cannot simply skip them. Orwe need to make sense of the surprising allegation that we do not reallycare about Hobbes’s theory, but just about what we may achieve using ormanipulating it. Second, and more important, the religious civil wars werethe central preoccupation of Hobbes political theory, a point that every-body, among the game-theoretic interpreters, seems ready to accept with-out drawing any consequence from it. To which complaisance I objectthat if we do not take Hobbes’s concern for religious civil war into accountmany aspects of Hobbes’s political theory become meaningless or evenpreposterous (that is for instance the case for his theory of absolute, ormore precisely, undivided sovereign power).

The reasons of instability of the commonwealth and the looming threat ofa collapse in the state of nature are spelled out clearly in the following text:

The most frequent pretext of sedition and civil war, in Christian commonwealths, had along time proceeded from a difficulty, not yet sufficiently resolved, of obeying at once bothGod and man, then when their commandments are [the Latin says “seem to be”] onecontrary to the other. It is manifest enough that when a man receiveth two contrary com-mands, and knows that one is from God’s, he ought to obey that and not the other, thoughit be the command even of his lawful sovereign (whether a monarch or a sovereign assembly).(EL., ch. 43, pp. 397–98).34

Here the real civil war and not the hypothetical war of anyone againstanyone takes on the disruptive face of the state of nature.

This can be presented in the form of a matrix:

1,2 0,3

3,0 2,1

o

no

Lc

p npCs

Nash equilibriumPareto optimumreligious war

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To understand the payoffs of the matrix one has to take into accountthat protection for the sovereign is a cost and that citizens take intoaccount both the interest of the living self (protection) and of the deadself (salvation).

In (o,p) the Lutheran citizen obeys the positive laws and the Catholicsovereign protects the citizen’s life; (o,p) seems to be the figure of politicalorder, but Lc will nonetheless get damnation—or at least so he firmlybelieves. In support of this, consider that Hobbes acknowledges that

The maintenance of civil society depending on justice, and justice on the power of life anddeath (and other less rewards and punishments) residing in them that have the sovereigntyof the commonwealth, it is impossible a commonwealth should stand where any other thanthe sovereign hath the power of giving greater rewards than life, and of inflicting greaterpunishments than death. Now seeing eternal life is a greater reward than the life present,and eternal torment a greater punishment than the death of nature, it is a thing worthy to bewell considered [ . . . ] for what offenses, and against whom committed, men are to beeternally tormented; and for what actions they are to obtain eternal life. (EL. ch. 37, p. 301).

Concerning the other cells consider:(o, np) the L citizen obeys and the CS sovereign does not protect him, soLc will get damnation and absence of protection in this life.In these first two cases the Cs is the sovereign, since oboedientia facitimperantem (Spinoza).(no, p) the L citizen gets salvation and protection of his life.(no, np) the L citizen does not get protection for his life but avoids seconddeath.

And although in metaphorical speech a calamitous life everlasting [in Hell] may be called aneverlasting death, yet it cannot well be understood of a second death (EL., ch. 37, p. 309)

In these last two cases the Cs is not recognized as sovereign.The matrix shows that subjects affirming a different religious view than

that ordered by the sovereign will find it rational, once their beliefs abouttheir eternal prospects are taken into account, to disobey and resist thesovereign, issuing in an equilibrium of religious warfare. The payoffsrepresent consideration of the interest of the “dead self” of subjects—which is perfectly rational for religious persons.35

Jon Elster brought to my attention that Lutherans might or even shoulddisagree, since they take self-interested considerations and eternal life tobe mutually exclusive. One has to remember however that Hobbes wasan Anglican,36 and so as holding theological beliefs very similar to thoseof Catholics on this point, and further that Lutheranism and notablyCalvinism were often his polemical targets.37

To come now back to my starting point, I believe that the entireHobbesian political theory aims to justify the existence of a sovereignState as the only possibility for guaranteeing a social condition in which

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trust among individuals is rational and to avoid the generalized distrustwhich will inevitably appear in its absence. Coordination is possible onlyin the form of obedience to a de facto power.38 It involves, in the historicalcontext considered by Hobbes, a substantial transformation in the religi-ous beliefs of Christian zealots of different sects. Which is the object ofthe discussion in the third and fourth parts of Leviathan and a reason tosupport, according to Hobbes, a strong central political power able toenforce some form of religious toleration.

Consider Figure 3.

3,3 2,3

1,0 0,0

o

no

Ch c

p npCh s

peace &salvation:commonwealth

religious civilwar

Figure 3. The Hobbesian political order

(o, p) the Christian citizen obeys the civil laws and gets peaceand salvation, and the sovereign is recognized

(o, np) the Ch citizen obeys without getting protection, he getsnonetheless salvation and the sovereign enjoys recognition(no, p) the Ch citizen does not obey and even though he is

protected in his life he will be punished by God after his death(no, np) the Ch citizen (a Calvinist) and the Anglican sovereignfight each other: the true instantiation of the state of nature.39

In the last part of a previous article,40 I tried to show that Hobbes wascommitted from his first attempt to lay down his political theory, theElements of Law, to a major rhetorical venture. The goal of his enterprisewas to modify the payoffs of the “religious civil war” game, that is tomodify the preferences of citizens by modifying their religious beliefs. Hisargument in favor of a minimalist Christian religion compatible withobedience to the civil laws is restated in chapter 43 of Leviathan:

All that is N salvation is contained in two virtues: faith in Christ, and obedienceto laws (EL., p. 398).But if a Christian king, who holds the foundation, that Jesus is the Christ, deduces certaindoctrines ineptly from that foundation, and commands them to be taught and held, hiscommand is to be obeyed. For he can be obeyed without danger to the soul [italics mine].Moreover, no one can rightly judge in a question concerning his own civil obedience. Forno one can judge concerning the doctrines of the faith except the church, i.e., except the onewho bears the person of the church, i.e., except the king, if he is a Christian (LL, see Curley’sed., p. 409, fn. 25).

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It is this message that Hobbes wanted to convey in order to promotepeace and order in a society deeply divided by religious fanaticism. Un-fortunately his message still has something to teach us at the beginning ofthe third millennium.

CNRS, Paris and NYU School of Law

NOTES

* I quote the text edited by J. Cropsey (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press 1997),p. 57.

1 See, P. Pasquino, “Thomas Hobbes. La condition naturelle de l’humanité” in RevueFrançaise de Science Politique; 44, n° 2, April 1994, pp. 294–307.

2 I think a caveat has to be spelled out here: this mathematical language is slightlypompous and should be avoided in this context, since it doesn’t possess more than an analo-gical meaning. I decided nonetheless to use it in order to convey synthetically my point thatthe state of nature cannot be a starting point. Actually, it is more sensible to claim withCarl Schmitt that “The starting point of Hobbes’s construction of the state is fear of thestate of nature” (Leviathan in der Staatslehere des Thomas Hobbes [1938], English translation,Westport, Connecticut-London, Greenwood Press 1996, p. 31).

3 Leviathan, ed.. by E. Curley (Indianapolis, Hackett 1994), ch. 13, p. 76, (quoted hereafteras EL.).

4 The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1969).5 Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1986).6 Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press 1986).7 A. Pizzorno, “On the individualistic theory of social order”, in P. Bourdieu and James

Coleman (eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder, Westview Press 1991),p. 213.

8 In the article cited in fn. 1.9 See fn. 7.

10 Meaning here: common to the two partners. More generally, Hobbes describes peoplein the state of nature as excessively partial to themselves.

11 In Hobbes’s language a “covenant” is a special type of contract, one which implies thedimension of time:“one of the contractors may deliver the thing contracted for on his part, and leave the otherto perform his part at some determinate time after (and in the meantime be trusted); andthen the contract on his part is called PACT, or COVENANT; or both parts may contractnow, to perform hereafter, in which cases he that is to perform in time to come, beingtrusted, his performance is called keeping the promise, or faith, and the failing of performance(if it be voluntary) violation of faith” (EL., ch. 14, p. 82).

12 In the Elements of Law [1640], XI. 9, Hobbes gives the following definition of trust anddistrust:“TRUST is a passion proceeding from whom we expect or hope for good, so free fromdoubt that upon the same we pursue no other way. And DISTRUST, or diffidence, is doubtthat maketh him endeavour to provide himself by other means”; notice he said before:“Absolute privation of hope is despair, a degree whereof is diffidence”.

13 See also: “But in a civil estate, where there is a power set up to constrain those thatwould otherwise violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable; and for that cause, hewhich by the covenant is to perform first is obliged so to do” (EL. p. 85).

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14 This is the question asked for instance by Jean Hampton in her seminal book, Hobbesand the Social Contract Tradition, p. 132; here she claims that if Hobbes is unable to give ananswer to that question “his argument collapses”.

15 R. Tuck in his article on “Hobbes’s moral philosophy” (Cambridge Companion toHobbes, ed. by T. Sorell, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1996, p. 193) writes: “itmust be admitted that this passage [ . . . ] is notoriously obscure”.

16 Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, p. 65. I have to stress that thisidea of possible cooperation in the state of nature is just Hampton’s interpretation of thetext quoted above from the English Leviathan. Her understanding of Hobbes is much moreprofound and subtle and it is not the object of this paper to offer a full appraisal of it.

17

In Hobbes’s state of nature, non-cooperation is the equilibrium state because each personfinds it rational to renege on promises rather than to keep them. The crossed arrows showthat it is not possible (rational) for the actors to leave the bottom left square to move up toa Pareto superior square.

18 That Hobbes devoted much effort to the Latin translation of his book is what we cansee, for instance, from the letter his publisher Pieter Blaeu sent him from Amsterdam at theend of November 1667: “Je vous diray au Second lieu que suis biën aise d’entendre quevous avez desia achevé les deux tiers du livre que vous sçavez, et que vous travaillez tous lesJours deux heures avec esperance de l’achever avec l’aide de Dieu devant Pasque” (in Th.Hobbes, The Correspondence, ed. by Noel Malcolm, vol. II, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1994,p. 693; Malcolm’s English translation [p. 695] says: “let me say that I am very happy to hearthat you have already completed two-thirds of that book (you know which [the Leviathan] ),and that you are working on it for two hours every day, and hoping to finish it, with God’shelp, by Easter”).

19 He translated Aristotle, Thucydides and Homer; in his Verse Autobiography (in OperaLatina, vol. I, p. lxxxv) he wrote: “Did learn to speak four languages, to write // And readthem too, which was my sole delight” (I have reasons to believe that the fourth languagenext to Greek, Latin and English was Italian — although it is not impossible to claim thatit was Hebrew, or that he did not count English; in fact, one of Hobbes’s tasks in the serviceof the Cavendish family was to translate the correspondence with the Venetian friar FulgenzioMicanzio, friend and personal assistant of Paolo Sarpi. See N. Malcolm, “A summary bio-graphy of Hobbes”, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, pp. 17–19, who claims that

3,3 1,4

4,1 2,2

c

nc

A

c ncB

c,c is thePareto optimum

Nash equilibriumstate of naturedominant strategy

Figure 4. Hobbes’s state of nature

(c, c) A and B cooperate(c, nc) A cooperates, but B does not keep the promise(nc, c) B cooperates, but A does not keep the promise

(nc, nc) A and B do not cooperate

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“During their stay in Venice in the winter of 1614–15 they both [Hobbes and WilliamCavendish] learned Italian”. Only later on did Hobbes learn French).

20 Unfortunately the Latin Leviathan, the final version of Hobbes’s political theory hasnever been translated into English. But most of the modifications made by Hobbes in theLatin Leviathan are now available in the footnotes to the English text edited by Edwin Curley(T. Hobbes, Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, Indianapolis /Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1994; the quote above is at p. 91, fn. 5). TheLatin text says: “Quaestio enim non est de Promissis mutuis in conditione hominum naturaliubi nulla est Potentia cogens; nam sic Promissa illa pacta non essent; sed existente Potentia,quae cogat, et [sic! not or as in English] alter promissum praestiterit, ibi quaestio est, an is,qui fallit cum Ratione, et ad bonum proprium congruenter fallat. Ego vero contra rationem,et imprudenter facere dico” (Latin Leviathan, Amsterdam, 1668, in Opera Latina, ed. byMolesworth, vol. III, p. 113; hereafter LL.).

21 See pp. 137–156. Kavka was nonetheless aware that there are problems with hisinterpretation—problems almost inescapable, I claim, if we stick to the English version ofHobbes’s major work. He writes, for instance: “One difficulty with Hobbes’s reply to theFool, as so far interpreted, is that it assumes that viability of defense cooperatives in thestate of nature. If one is to count nonmembership in defense cooperatives as a substantialcost of reneging on a state-of-nature agreement, it must be that such structures exist and arestable enough [italics mine] that a person could reasonably hope to join one and gainsubstantial benefits from it if he does not renege on the agreement” (pp. 140–141).

22 “Justitiae autem essentia consistit in praestatione pactorum, quae tunc valida esseincipiunt, quando constituta est civitas; itaque civitas, proprietas bonorum, et justitia simulnata sunt” (LL., p. 112).

23 On Montaigne, Charron and the natural law criticism of the neo-skeptical philosophy,see A. M. Battista, Alle origini del pensiero politico libertino (Milano, Giuffrè 1989 [2d edition]),and R. Tuck, “Grotius, Carneades and Hobbes”, Grotiana, New Series, Vol.4, 1983, pp. 43–62. On insipiens (the fool) and Carneades Hobbes’s source is likely Cicero quoted byLactantius, Divinae Institutiones, Migne, vol. VI, pp. 595–96.

24 “Dixit insipiens, ‘Non est justitia; conservationis suae singuli et soli curam gerunt’ ”(LL., p. 112).

25 “Verumtamen ratiocinatio haec, utcumque speciosa, falsa est”! (ibid., p. 113).26 This seems to me the essential meaning of the generally uncommented words:

“ ‘Regnum,’ inquit ‘Dei acquiritur violentia. Quid si ab homine acquiri possit per violentiaminjustam, anne contra rectam rationem esset, cum impossibile esset ut inde ullum sibi malum,sed summum bonum sequeretur’?” (ibid., pp. 112–13; the English text is, as often, less clear(to me): “The kingdom of God is gotten by violence; but what if it could be gotten by unjustviolence? were it against reason so to get it [= salvation, i.e. eternal life], when it is impossibleto receive hurt by it” (EL., p. 90).

27 EL., p. 91, fn. 6; LL., 113: “Primo enim in civitate, si quis id faciat, quod, quantumprospici et ratione intelligi potest, ad suam ipsius tendit destructionem, quamquam impro-visum aliquod accidat quod eventum felicem efficiat, factum nihilominus fuisse imprudenter,quia improvisum”.

28 Kavka seems to get almost the same conclusion when he writes (p. 141): “Hobbes maybe viewed as pointing out that founders, or preserving members [italics mine], of a common-wealth will not accept unreliable parties, such as offensive violators of agreements, asmembers. [ . . . ] agreement violators are [ . . . ] risking their chances of permanent escape fromthe state of nature via the only effective mechanism thereof, membership in a commonwealth”.Nonetheless Kavka’s language shows that he was thinking in the contractarian perspectiveof the possibility of escaping the state of nature, a perspective I’m trying to reverse here.

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29 “Hobbesian political order”, in Political Theory, 19, 1991, pp. 156–180 (p. 166).30 In a remarkable book on the concept of liberty (A Historical Sketch of Liberty and

Equality as Ideals of English Political Philosophy from the Time of Hobbes to the Time ofColeridge. Submitted as a dissertation for a Fellowship at Trinity College [Cambridge] andprivately printed in 1875; I quote from The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland ed.by H.A.L. Fisher, vol. I, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1911, p. 1 ss.) he wrote:“If I understand Hobbes aright, he meant that the mere fact of the existence of a governmentmust be taken as conclusive evidence of the consent to it of all those who enjoy its protection”(p. 92). This interpretation has been called the theory of de facto power.

31 I use the English translation by Michael Seidler (Samuel Pufendorf ’s on the Natural Stateof Men, Lewinston, The Edwin Mellen Press 1990, pp. 134–135). See the useful IntroductoryEssay of this book.

32 On the medieval exempla, see J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press 1984).

33 D. Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press1986) and, more compellingly, S. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cam-bridge, Cambridge University Press 1992).

34 Already in 1641, in a letter to the earl of Devonshire, Hobbes wrote: “the disputebetween the spiritual and the civil power has of late, more than anything in the world, beenthe cause of civil wars in all places of Christendom” (quoted by F.D. Weil, “The stranger,prudence and trust in Hobbes”, Theory and Society, vol. 15, 1987, pp. 759–88 [772–73] ). Aboutthe civil war as example of the state of nature, see EL., ch. 13, p. 77: “It may peradventurebe thought, there was never such a time nor condition of war as this [ . . . ] Howsoever, itmay be perceived what manner of life there would be where there where no common powerto fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under peaceful governmentuse to degenerate into, in a civil war [italics mine]”.

35 That Hobbes used to equate long-term self-interest with salvation (eternal life) can beseen from this observation by A.P. Martinich in The Two Gods of Leviathan, (Cambridge,Cambridge University Press 1992) p. 117: “All Christians have the responsibility to safe-guard their own souls in this world in order to be with God in the next. This was Hobbes’sview. When Bramhall denied that Saint Paul or Moses acted in his own self-interest; Hobbesreplied that both of those holy men “died for a good to themselves, which was eternal life“(English Works, vol. 4, p. 378)”!

36 In his Prose Autobiography (Opera Latina, vol. I, pp. xiii–xxi), we read the followingstory:“[In 1647] when he was confined in bed, gravely ill, in Saint Germain [en Laye], near Paris,Mersenne [a very good friend of his, and a father of the Franciscan order of the Minims]came to him, called by some common friend, so that his friend would not suffer deathoutside the Roman Church. Seated by the bedside, he began with consolations, and thenexpanded for a while on the Roman Church’s power to remit sins. To which [Hobbes]replied: ‘Father, I have debated all these things with myself some while ago now. To debatethe same things now will be tiresome. You have more pleasant things you can tell me. Whendid you last see Gassendi?’. Hearing this, Mersenne changed the subject. A few days later,Dr. John Cosins, afterward Bishop of Durham, approached him and offered to pray withhim God. Hobbes thanked him and said: ‘Yes, if you take the lead in prayers according tothe rite of our [Anglican] Church.’ This was a great sign of reverence for Episcopal dis-cipline” (OL, I, pp. xvi; see C., pp. lxiv–lxv).

37 See the chapter 29 of Leviathan (Of the things that weaken or tend to the dissolution ofa commonwealth) where Hobbes lists some Calvinist principles among the doctrines “repugn-ant to civil society”: “That every private man is judge of good and evil actions”; “whatsoever

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a man does against his conscience is sin” [= Calvin, Institutio Christianae Religionis, II, ii,22, and II, viii, 1], (EL., p. 212).

38 The same point is made by R. Hardin: “maintenance of an extant government may,after all, be [I do believe actually is] the principal concern of Hobbes and the central focusof most of his argument” (“Hobbesian political order”, quoted, p. 166). As Spinoza observedthe obedience itself is the true origin of political power (oboedientia facit imperantem); thistakes care of the objection that Hobbes would have “to explain the origin of the resourcesneeded [by the State] for setting up a penal apparatus” (Pizzorno, “On the individualistictheory of social order”, quoted above, fn. 7, p. 212).

39 In chapter 43 of Leviathan, Hobbes goes beyond the doctrine he expounded in theElements of Law, claiming that obedience is due even to a sovereign which is ‘infidel’ (nonChristian): “And when the sovereign is an infidel, every one of his own subjects that resistethhim sinneth against the laws of God”! (EL., p. 410).

40 “Political theory, order and threat”, Nomos, XXVIII, (Political Order), 1996; seepp. 28–32.

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[pasquino] hobbes foole

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