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Rousseau on the state of nature

January 4, 2012 in Individual, Methodology, Nature, Rousseau | No comments

“I had a dismal Prospect of my Condition, for as I was not cast away upon that Island without being driven, as is said, by a violent Storm quite out of the Course of our intended Voyage, and a great Way, viz. some Hundreds of Leagues out of the ordinary Course of the Trade of Mankind, I had great Reason to consider it as a Determination of Heaven, that in this desolate Place, and in this desolate Manner I should end my Life; the Tears would run plentifully down my Face when I made these Reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with my self, Why Providence should thus compleatly ruine its Creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without Help abandon’d, so entirely depress’d, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a Life.”
D. Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, VI (1719)

Robinson Crusoe described the fable of a civilized man left in a desert island, far from all commodities and tools, -away from civilization-, having to develop, in his solitude, primitive modes of subsistence and technologies to assure his survival. Daniel Defoe’s book did not only propose a self-centred individual and the fundamental traits of the homo oeconomicus, -an accounting of utilities and preferences according to a scale of profitability. He incarnated the real story of a Scottish sailor, named Alexander Selkirk, who decided toleave the company with whom he was travelling and was abandoned on an island in the coast of nowadays Chile.

His adventures served as a mental experiment on the possibilities of a man procuring his subsistence with the sole fruit of nature and his labour, without any mediation, in the absence of social institutions. An individual left to his own devices on an island, isolated. Solitude became a central aspect of Rousseau’s life and work, amplifying the classical individual, providing with the possibility of criticizing the world of appearances, of stepping back from the societal ties to obtain a wider picture of human nature.

Crusoe’s example had to serve the purpose of educating an adolescent. It was the book that Émile had to be acquainted with in order to develop his capacities, it showed him all the abilities required to subsist on his own. “Le plus sûr moyen de s’élever au-dessus des préjugés et d’ordonner ses jugements sur les vrais rapports des choses, est de se mettre à la place d’un homme isolé, et de juger de tout comme cet homme en doit juger lui-même, eu égard de sa propre utilité.”(1) Utility had to be taught as the measure of one’s actions, it provided with an appropriate guide to one’s endeavours.

Robinson’s island took the legacy of utopian thought to which Rousseau somehow adhered. Unfortunately, the outcome of his constitutional project for the Corsicans had a similar result to Plato’s renovation plans for Syracuse. Jean-Jacques’ utopian project did not adhere yo a non-existing tópos but was related to a hypothetical time, to a golden age when men were naturally good. This conjectural recession in time implied not only a phylogenesis of society but also an ontogenesis of the individual. Not only did primitive virtues excel modern morals, also the development of man made explicit the close link with his immanent origin: nature. Once more no transcendental or external time was proposed, like in Christian accounts, but a mere recoil into a hypothesised past, into pre-civilization.

(1) Émile III [Seuil III, p. 130].

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Rousseau: a portrait

June 16, 2011 in Individual, Rousseau | No comments

George Romney - King Lear in the Tempest Tearing Off his Robes

“On voit, par cette formule, que l’acte d’association renferme un engangement réciproque du public avec les particuliers, et chaque individu, contractant pour ainsi dire avec lui-même, se trouve engagé sous un double rapport: savoir, comme membre du souverain, envers les particuliers, et comme membre de l’État envers le souverain.”
J.-J. Rousseau, Du Contrat Social ou Principes de droit politique, I, 7.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), republican Genevan,(1) musician, writer and philosopher, elaborated a political theory that inserted the individual and the sovereign in a certain relation of implication, preluding the Romantic efforts that forged the nation-state. A troubled mind,(2) as he described in his Confessions, the biography of a sensitive and obsessed character, he endured all sorts of struggles, -moral and social. Tortured by both his alleged friends as well as by his own sensibility, he appeared as the craftsman of the most perfect human achievement. A volonté générale composed the impossible pieces, the individual and a transcendental unity, the nation, into a coherent whole.

Being also a famed author, his literary success concurred with the end of his bonheur, of his precarious felicity that elapsed from a quest of happiness to a tumble and melancholic souvenir of a lost paradise.(3) Becoming à la mode, reclaimed at all the tables of Paris, he felt acclamation as a damnation.(4) Success became the turning point, the prospect of a new fall. This Protestant-flavoured scheme penetrated and converged with his theoretical work. Contentedness followed by downfall and exile recurred in several chapters of his life, composing the imprint of his ‘auroral’ thought, where beginnings (childhood, morning, state of nature…) became the renewed sources of happiness.

Individual, lover of his liberty, he felt an essential tension with most human beings, pointing out to his embedding in the orographic alterations suffered on which to roam and construct. This tended to accrue his fame of misanthrope.(5) And yet he aimed at the sincere hearts, at the purest natures, rather than at the corrupted magnates and intellectuals; he was inclined to the simple and authentic. Rousseau despised lie and treason above all. Sincerity was his most praised virtue; it was the wish for transparency in a being that could not surmount his opacity, -the slavery to his feelings-, the cause of both his greatest pleasures and misfortunes. His intensity, almost febrile, excessive, configures the portrait of a man unable to live with others but capable to trace the master lines of the common welfare, of unity among disparity, subduing the individual by becoming his own sovereign master.

Acquainted with the Enlightened philosophes and encyclopedists, D’Alambert, D’Holbach, Hume and Diderot, he could not foresee the falling apart of the Ancien Règime6 but stressed the terrible flaws of the actual society: “…je ne vis plus qu’erreur et folie dans la doctrine de nos sages, qu’oppression et misère dans notre ordre social.”(7) This critic stance, together with his preference for a juvenile, candid, past, influenced his analysis of a state of nature diametrically opposed to Hobbes, rearranged in relation to diverse elements.

His obsession and persecution mania debouched in isolation. Tacitly sentenced to a crime he had not the chance to defend himself of, Socrates of the opinion, -an opinion that ‘ruled the world’ according to the Enlightened adagio-, he saw himself as the martyr of an unpronounced judgment.(8) Judged without a trial, left to his deprecators and critics, he decided to escape.(9) The rest of his endeavor concentrated in opening himself barely naked in front of others to judge. Alone in his necessary banishment he was reduced due to his difference: “…je me trouvais seul au milieu de la multitude autant par mes idées que par mes sentiments.”(10) He was cast in uncertain times, into an ‘épidémie d’esprit’, an age in which self-love (amour de soi) took the shape of egoism (amour propre). Rousseau aimed at undoing this malaise presenting a new conception of nature, of man, and of society, forming a unity, not absent of contradiction, but still coherent.(11)

(1) “ De ces intéressantes lectures, des entretiens qu’elles occasionnaient entre mon père et moi, se forma cet esprit libre et républicain, cet caractère indomptable et fier, impatient de joug et de servitude qui m’a tourmenté tout le temps de ma vie dans les situations les moins propres à lui donner l’essor.” Confessions I, 3 [Seuil I, p. 123].
(2) In his early work he already recognized three obstacles in his personality to achieve the proper education of his pupil, his melancholy, timidity and indifference. Memoire présenté a M. de Mably sur l’éducation de M. son fils. In his latter work “…je naquis infirme et malade; je coûtai la vie a ma mère, et ma naissance fut le premier de mes malheurs, ” Confessions I, 3 in fine [Seuil I, p. 122].
(3) J. Starobinski, la Transparence et l’obstacle, Paris, 1978.
(4) “ Je sentis alors qu’il n’est pas toujours aussi aisé qu’on se l’imagine d’être pauvre et indépendant. Je voulais vivre de mon métier : le public ne le voulait pas. ” Confessions VIII [Seuil I, p. 262].
(5) “On verra plus d’une fois dans la suite les bizarres de cette disposition si misanthrope et si sombre en apparence, mais qui vient d’un cœur trop affectueux, ” Confessions I [Seuil I, p. 135].
(6) Nevertheless, speaking about Voltaire, he referred to him as a man that would ‘make revolution’ Confessions VIII [Seuil I, p. 274].
(7) Confessions IX, 7 [Seuil I, p. 282].
(8) “…une génération entière liguée contre un seul home… ” Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques I [Seuil III, p. 414].
(9) “J’ai préferé l’exil perpetual de ma patrie; j’ai renounce à tout, même à l’espérance, plutôt que d’exposer la tranquilité publique : j’ai mérité d’être cru sincère, lorsque je parle en sa faveur.” Lettres écrites de la Montagne VIII [Seuil III, p. 471].
(10) Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques I [Seuil I, p. 400].
(11) “J’ai écrit sur divers sujets, mais toujours dans le même principes ; toujours la même morale, la même croyance, les mêmes maximes et, si l’on veut, les mêmes opinions.” Lettre à Monseigneur de Beaumont, [Seuil I, p. 337]. Cf. R. Derathé, “L’unité de la pensée de Rousseau ” VV.AA., Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Neuchâtel, 1962, pp. 203-218.

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Hobbes’ simultaneous constitution of individual and sovereign

March 22, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Sovereignty | No comments

Velazquez The Forge of Vulcan

A double contract is issued, horizontal among individuals, and vertical with the sovereign, transforming the former into subject and citizen. Still the simple dissolution of one of the contract’s extremes did not imply the resolution of the other. The sovereign could not be deposed by the people, he remained absolute; the institution was irrevocable. The moment of the covenant was conceived subtly enough not to admit any real constitution of the aggregate of men as a persona, as an actual body, impeding the conformation of an incipient democracy. The transfer of rights had to be done en masse. The two axis were constituted simultaneously, the individuals (horizontal), and the sovereign (vertical). After the vertical institution the gathering of individuals disappeared and became a tumult, there was no constitutive body, no way back.

The individual was incarnated in relation to other men that did not belong any more to his kinship or family, to any common lord or fiefdom, but that agreed with each other, by means if their express will, for their personal interest as independent moral actors. The individual was created ex suppositio, tacitly, preceding the pattern of the sovereign’s institution.

The foundation of the state, apparently a simple device in the administration of power, entailed the causation of two personae, “and he that carrieth this person, is called SOVEREIGN, and said to have sovereign power; and every one besides, his SUBJECT.”(1) The institution of the state was the relational composition of a sovereign and a concrete socialized being that was subjected to this novel power and took part in the establishment of a new social arrangement where all men, independently from their rank, position, or wealth, recognized each other both as apt members and founders of a social agreement, of a commonwealth.

(1) Leviathan II, 17, 14.

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Hobbes on the pactum societatis

March 17, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Sovereignty | No comments

'Gaius Mucius Scaevola Confronting King Porsenna', oil on copper painting by Bernardo Cavallino

There appears to be an internal contradiction in the state of nature for everyone wanted the best for himself, but the aggregate state, a continuous and restless competition for everything, was not liveable for the individual.(1) The very logical outcome was incompatible with its premises, a reductio ad absurdum that makes it untenable and requires a solution. The way for an agreement is expedite, but still the ability to renounce to this intrinsic state of affairs, -which is rational according to its principles-, in order to achieve an optimal state, is not clear. How do people stop fulfilling their initial inclination for all things, to achieve a safer and more satisfactory setting? How is this short-sighted rationality exchanged by a state that is globally more rational but whose change is inconsistent with any local decision? For men still prefer present goods to future ones.(2) Only the commonwealth avoids mediate irrationality, -for no man desires war but their appetites are conflictive-, by reducing immediate rationality or penalizing it. A pact or convention institutes this postponement of satisfaction to attain a higher though immanent good.

By means of a pactum societatis the mutual agreement of the members in the state of nature is accomplished. They surrender partially their rights in order to achieve the foundation and institution of an external power, the political power is borne by the mutual acknowledgement of the desperate creatures in the state of nature. They do not only trade their rights vis-à-vis the instituted sovereign, they also yield a horizontal agreement among them, they are not simple desire-driven creatures, men, they recognize each other, overcoming their solipsist self-conception as individuals. This common understanding alters the comprehension of the other and of one-self, for instance equality is transmuted into proportionality.(3) Men are mutually obliged and recognize the value of the foundation in which they partake as atoms in a body. They constitute the body political but remain individuals, founders of the very conditions of their existence; aftermath of the circumvention of the state of nature. Man was naturally free, no self conception was needed; it was mediated by society.

(1) De Cive, I, 13.
(2) De Cive, III, 32.
(3) “…its necessary for the obtaining of the Peace, that they be esteemed as equal…” De Cive, III, 13. Another example concerns the economic burdens to be borne by the citizens according to their onus and benefits, thus proportional also “…equality of reason between the Burthens and the Benefits.” Ibid., XIII, 11. Note the relation between reason and proportion in the aforementioned sense of method both geometrical and cognitive.

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Hobbes depiction of man

March 10, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Ontology, Society | No comments

Rembrandt aged51

Hobbes thus depicted a novel foundation of man. A simple body, material, assembly of corpusculae that conveyed life in their movement; a man devoid of any quality, of any transcendental form. A man that has eluded all bounds to finality and achieved a new liberty, a rationality of the appetites, a relation of means to particular ends. A man that attains his experience from his representation of the world, personal and unique, private, -resting on his constitution and the precipitate of sensations. A man that does not cling to earlier natural incardination in social groups and that does not require from others, functioning in complete isolation of other mechanisms.

A man that is artificer of his conditions of existence, preservation and perseverance –conatus-, defined not in relation to the classical anthropos politikon zoon, but in absolute terms, independent of any claim about his existence and the values contained in it, modern man, without any epithet, -the individual. Will, as the outcome of the application of a calculus of drives, is thus interwoven in a model presupposing reason. Cogito comprised the standing towards one’s life, and thus already involved an intense sense of individuality in which the subject reflected on his condition. In this sense, it departed from the previously given, from the previous strata, containing a soul imposed externally and thus shaped by tradition, to become its own manufacturer. A self-conception is not just reshaped, it is adumbrated, forged. This self-conception is not only relating to man but stemming from him, affirming his subjectivity. Understanding thus took the protestant path and became mediated necessarily by self-understanding, coalescing with the novel imprint of natural philosophy that discerned individual existent bodily beings.

This test on the conditions of society draws the manner in which men would behave in the absence of a commonwealth. In the same vein as his theory of signs, Hobbes equated the state of nature to an arbitrary situation. The civil state, on the other hand, is conventional, it is established by the agreement of the individuals,(1) the self-conception that makes men apt to alienate their rights and to contract in their own interest.

(1) The difference between classical pagan authors and Hobbes is not the simple acknowledgement of its self-centred character, but its insertion in the constitution of the commonwealth rather than its repression. For Aristotle “love of self is a feeling implanted by nature and not given in vain, although selfishness is rightly censured,” Politics, II, V (1263a).

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Hobbes on man’s individual meanings

March 8, 2011 in Epistemology, Hobbes, Individual | No comments

Metsu, Gabriël - L'Apothicaire - c. 1651-1667

Hobbes’s negative conception of man in the hypothetical state of nature was a methodological assumption that regarded men as wrongdoers, but this mental experiment was only an extreme depiction of human nature, conveying a prudential maxim.(1) Human passions had to yield to the public sphere, granting their conditions of existence and redeeming the possibility of violence and death arising from the self-gain inherent to man. Passions also followed the physical model in which bodies act and are acted upon (pati), suffer the effect of another body. In chapter nine of De Corpore to every action there is an agent that produced an effect on a patient.

Having therefore thus arrived at two maximes of humane Nature, the one arising from the concupiscible part, which desires to appropriate to it selfe the use of those things in which all others have a joynt interest, the other proceeding from the rationall, which teaches every man to fly a contre-naturall Dissolution, as the greatest mischiefe that can arrive to Nature…(2)

Being self-centered, a balance between man’s tendencies and the avoidance of death was needed. In the preexisting substratum experience was mediated by the authority that set up the standard truth. Since the Reformation experience started becoming an individual marker, later experience was linked to one’s body and sensibility, being personal and different from other beings’. An example of the struggle of traditional doctrine to absorb different phenomena is transubstantiation, the conversion of wine in Christ’s blood, ‘passionately’ argued among schoolmen. This circumstance was interpreted as a change in substance rather than an accidental property acquired, but change in substance was impossible, for this was the substratum of change, hence it had to be a qualitative accident suffered. This convinced an advocate of the reduction of categories like Ockham to keep qualitative accidents alive. Hobbes adopted a different position, to him wine represented the body of Christ. Instead of a metaphysical assertion related to the existence of substances, he analyzed it from a subjective perspective: something representing something to somebody in semiotic terms. The sign is posited in its modern cadre, the separation of reality and language in two different series, -the premise of Locke’s autistic model of communication. The individual is the interpreter of nature for things do not possess a universal and evident meaning, they have to be filtered to acquire signification, meaning is individual-dependent.(3)

(1) “But this, that men are evil by nature, followes not from this principle; for though the wicked were fewer then the righteous, yet because we cannot distinguish them, there is a necessity of suspecting, heeding, anticipating, subjugating, selfe-defending, ever incident to the most honest, and fairest condition’d…” De Cive Preface to the Reader. In other places Hobbes states more clearly a more pessimistic and negative awareness of human nature, “…the parvity of humane disposition is manifest to all, and by experience too well known how little (removing the punishment) men are kept to their duties, through conscience of their promises.” De Cive, VI, 4. Hence follows, penalties are necessary for the sustenance of common life.

(2) De Cive, W. Devonshire.

(3) According to M. Esfeld there is no simple unity in Hobbes’s thought but a straight relation between his natural philosophy and his theory of knowledge and action, that debouches in a central modern concept: the subject. “Denn diese Subjektivität ist ein Selbstbild relativ auf eines als Objekt gedachte äußere Welt,” op. cit., p. 296

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Hobbes on the concept of ‘persona’

March 6, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual | No comments

Der Mann mit dem Goldhelm

Hobbes also put forward a theory of person that allowed him to divide inside the individual the figure of an actor and an author and also bind them through a theory of representation.(1) Hence a person could be analysed as two diverse instances that were not necessarily united. Aftermath of this notion was the existence of a representation dilemma: if somebody represents himself, there are two instances, a representing and a represented. But if there was a representing part this could not be simultaneously the represented one, for then representation would be spurious. Therefore the representation theory hinted at a conceptual split in the individual and a fake unity, an inner inconsistency, that overcame the solipsistic anarchy of the state of nature. Another characteristic of Hobbes’ individualism is the unnecessary compatibility between a just action and a just man. There could be just actions, but sill man could have an oderunt peccare.(2) Intention and action are not coincident and this created a ply on the mask of individual, a fold, and interiority that did not necessarily correspond with his activity. This was the counterpart of the division of actor and author.

From this a rationalist idea of man as a moral actor is envisaged, “…for sin followes errour, just as the Will doth the understanding…”(3) A person could only be ascertained by his action and a false conception or a mistaken appreciation harvested the seeds of wrong doing.(4) This was consistent with an intellectual vision of man in society for, “the source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions.”(5) This intellectual conception conveyed that every negative moral action was due either to a wrong understanding or to the unpredictable passions that supervened man. Thus a reasoning man, without any flax in the understanding, would not commit a crime, but rather due to the possibility of punishment, because of the existence of an external authority, than in order to comply with the inanimate laws, because the calculating reason that does not counsel crime.(6) Possible rewards or punishments guide man’s action, yet “…the laws of men, though they can punish the fruits of them, which are evil actions, they cannot pluck up the roots that are in the heart.”(7)

(1) “A PERSON, is he, whose words or actions are considered, either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, wether truly or by fiction.” Leviathan, I, 16, 1.
(2) Elements of Law II, 16, 5.
(3) De Cive, XIV, 16. Some authors highlight the importance of virtue to his thought, of character rather than action in which natural laws coherce internally, according to this interpretation, Hobbes attempted at building a science of virtue. Habits and dispositions, applicable to bodies, also convey the physical metaphor at ground of his construction of this science of virtue. Indeed the latter phase of Hobbes’s productive carreer, devouted to Homer’s translation, appears as coherent atempting at pinpointing the good and bad characters. “It becomes clear that Hobbes thought to popularize Homer for much the same reason he sought to popularize himself: He believed that reading good books could make good people.” Cf. D. Boonin-Vail, Thomas Hobbes and the science of virtue, Cambridge, 1994, p. 174. The classical texts that show Hobbes as a moralist and his political philosophy unrelated to his natural philosophy are L. Strauss, The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes; Its Basis and its Genesis, Oxford, 1936. A.E. Taylor, “The ethical doctrine of Hobbes ”, Philosophy, 13, 1938, pp. 406-24, and H.Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes. His Theory of Obligation, Oxford, 2000 (reprint, original 1957). All agree that Hobbes was a moralist rather than attempting to follow his scientific edifice as stated in the introduction to De Cive. They assume positivist conceptions of science, based on deducibility and reduction. Meawhile a cognitive-structuralist approach sees the interdependence of the elements, the common metaphors on which it rested, the central nodes in a plain of construction. “Das philosophische System von einer philosophia prima aus aufzubauen, in der die Prinzipien des Mechanismus als a priori gültig dargestellt werden, ist von Hobbes’ Anthropologie und seinem anthropologischen Ausgangspunkt her konsequent.” M. Esfeld, op. cit., p. 291.
(4) Another interesting word shift is the meaning of culpa and peccatum, originally related to original sin and Chrit’s crucifixion, and bestowed to the state by Hobbes “… the City is to determine what with reason is culpable: So as a fault, that is to say a SINNE, is that which a man do’s, omits, sayes, or wills, against the reason of the City, that is, contrary to the Lawes.” De Cive XIV, 17. From a moral-religious semantic field is moved into the political arena following his immanent move.
(5) Leviathan II, 30, 4.
(6) “A PERSON, is he, whose words or actions are considered, either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction.” Leviathan II, 30, 8. “Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws, is fear.” Ibid., 30, 19.
(7) A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, ( M. VI, p. 7). Cf. Elements of Law I, 19, 1.

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Hobbes on relativism

March 4, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Society | No comments

Adriaen van Ostade 003

Another seam exploited by Hobbes, based on the epistemological and physiological conception, was relativism. Relativism and individual value in comparison to the other taint and manufacture social value; in this sense, signs of honor in man specify man’s worth. Value is an effect of the new configuration of the social, it could only be attained in society.(1) Private evaluation is the end result of the liberty of interpretation of the Bible opened up by the Reformation.(2) This privacy also applied to moral judgment so that pleasure became the sense of good.(3)

Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, GOOD; and that EVIL which displeaseth him: insomuch that while every man differeth from other in constitution, they differ also one from another concerning the common distinction of good and evil. Nor is there any such thing as agathon aplox, that is to say, simply good. For even the goodness which we attribute to God Almighty, is his goodness to us.(4)

Relativism was defended in the appreciation of man, close to the sophist ideal ‘homo mensura‘. Men bare as sole yardstick their individual experience occasioned by the surrounding bodies on their corporal constitution, this produced a self-centeredness that relates their representations to themselves. “For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves…”(5) This applied not only to other bodies, but also to their appraisal of the rightfulness of actions, i.e. to moral judgment. There could not be any valid rule of thumb regarding what is good for this depended on separate individual ends, values are means to irreconcilable private goals. An important outcome of this attitude was the individual sense of moral words that trascended conventionalism, “…Good and Evil are names given to things to siginifie the inclination, or aversion of them by whom they were given.”(6) Moral terms depended on a physiological substratum that values actions according to the preservation and empowerment of man, stating a basic emotivism. Self-interest(7) prevents any certain knowledge to be acquired concerning these issues,

…the doctrine of right and wrong, is perpetually disputed, both by the pen and the sword: whereas the doctrine of lines, and figures, is not so; because men care not, in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no man’s ambition, profit or lust.(8)

(1) “The value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be give for the use of his power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependent on the need and judgment of another.” Leviathan I, 10, 16 “For let a man (as most men do,) rate themselves at the highest value they can; yet their true value is no more than it is esteemed by others,” Ibid.
(2) “And these were the enemies which arose against his Majesty from the private interpretation of the Scripture, exposed to every man’s scanning in his mother-tongue,” Behemoth I (M. VI, p.167)
(3) Leviathan I, 6, 11.
(4) Elements of Law I, 7, 3.
(5) Leviathan I, 2, 1.
(6) De Cive III, 31.
(7) Cf. Q. Skinner´s analysis of the idea of interest in the 1630s and 1640s in op. cit., pp. 426 ff. Especially interesting is Skinner’s explanation of Hobbes’s relapse into his Humanist ideals of rhetoric: “Hobbes’s first conclusion is thus that, faced with interest and ignorance, reason and science had little chance of being heard,” after the irrationality of war had imposed itself,” op. cit., p. 433.
(8) Leviathan I, 11, 21.

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Hobbes on the socialized individual

March 3, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Society | No comments

“Ea res libera dicitur quæ ex sola suæ naturæ necessitate existit et a se sola ad agendum determinatur. Necessaria autem vel potius coacta quæ ab alio determinatur ad existendum et operandum certa ac determinata ratione.”

B. Spinoza, Ethica, I, Definitio VII (1677)

Woman in Blue - Jan Vermeer van Delft

Descartes wanted to start philosophy anew by acceding to some fundamental and axiomatic truth. For Hobbes, on the other hand, rather than a general statement grounded on thinking as a presupposition of existence, it was the very concrete existence, and the assumption of that existence, what allowed us to alter, verify, and improve our knowledge.(1) Experience and reflection provided with the possibility of ascertaining both the external world and our own nature, producing a novel interpretation of man as individual, subject, and citizen. Hobbes and Descartes still concurred in their assumption of the rearrengement of elements that conformed the notion of individual, -the inability to conceive any action of a thing independently of its subject.(2) Activity stemmed from an intentional being, but this thinking substance was, according to Hobbes, corporeal.

Individuals were equal in nature before the constitution of a society. This organization implied a foundation, they acquired individual rights and duties; they were defined according to social rules. “The question who is the better man, has no place in the condition of mere nature; where (as has been shewn before,) all men are equal. The inequality that now is, has been introduced by the laws civil.”(3) The incorporation to society dislocated man’s natural character, -his comprehension within a previous strata-, as it bore a transition from a natural isolated being to the insertion of that very being in a group, -his socialization was juxtaposed to his natural state. After the institution of a sovereign men were conceived as citizens, sharing a self-constructed sphere of interaction. They were not just subjects,- mere objects of appropriation defined according to a hierocracy of power in the traditional sense of bounded, vassals-, but in a new configuration that equated subject to its ability to decide and act. The reformation of the general orography also comported a shift in the basic political concepts.

(1) “It is impossible to rectify so many errors of any one man, as must needs proceed from those causes, without beginning anew from the very first grounds of all our knowledge, sense; and, instead of books, reading over orderly one’s own conceptions: in which meaning I take nosce teipsum for a precept worthy the reputation it hath gotten,” Elements of Law I, 5, 14.
(2) Objectiones tertiae ad Cartesii Meditationes, objectio II.
(3) Leviathan, I, 15, 21.

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Hobbes and human nature at the origin of authority

March 1, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Society, Sovereignty | No comments

Steen Argument over a Card Game

To overcome this degraded situation, to attain preservation, subjection was required, the constitution of the subject by a self-interested alienation of his rights. Otherwise strife, envy, inequality and preeminence became omnipresent. Only the bonds of authority and submission can fasten the predatory and frightened man and constitute a living together.(1) The feebleness and incapacity of man to maintain his life in the state of nature could only be undone with the establishment of a vertical axe of power, -an institution-, rather than a mere multiplicity of interactions at a horizontal level, -a constitution. According to Hobbes, it was not the mere union de facto of men that accomplished the egress from the state of nature. The existence of an authority de iure became indispensable, a common power, a civil government able to assure the end of the “…miserable condition of war.”(2) A unity of will and power that defined the institution of a commonwealth.(3)

Moral philosophy could be rephrased by focusing on the human being stemming from the previous analysis of his insertion in nature: by the rearrangement of elements and the consequent erosion of the given plain of consistence. Firstly, as a body with faculties, then, as an individual excised from other equals, with no common values. Next, the necessity of subjection was to be depicted to attain a peaceful order. The institution of sovereignty was based on the constitution of the already given, already fashioned, self-interested individuals. Lastly, a state of society was achieved by this institution and from it loomed a socialized apt purveyor of laws: the citizen. Socialization required subjection departing from an analysis of man as an individual. Leibniz intended to attain a preestablished harmony because there was none, when the plane of construction already incorporated individuals that were not relating naturally, when they had already, at least conceptually, been torn from the existing social tissue and became object of knowledge and subjects. Hobbes’s solution instead resorted to obedience, to command, to force, to avoid the further disintegration and collision of the bristly monads.

(1) “…each man is an enemy to that other whom heneither obeys nor commads…” De Cive IX, 3.
(2) Leviathan, II, 1, 1.
(3) “…the multitude so united in one person, is called a COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense,” Leviathan, II, 1, 13.

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