1 On the concept of ‘revolution’ in this context, see Pocock, J., Politics, language and time: essays on political thought and history (New York, 1973). p. 3.
2 Skinner, Q., ‘Hobbes's Leviathan’, Historical Journal, VII, 2 (1976), 333.
3 Skinner, Q., ‘The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation’, in Cranston, and Peters, , Hobbes and Rousseau (New York, 1972), p. 141. Skinner does not explain what is involved in the distinction between ‘deontological’ and ‘rationalist-utilitarian’ but it seems clear that he takes them to be mutually exclusive.
4 Ibid. pp. 116–17 (emphasis added).
6 Tuck, R., Natural rights theories: their origin and development, (Cambridge, 1979), p. 102.
7 Skinner, ‘Context’, p. 131.
9 Ascham, Anthony, A discourse: wherein it is examined what is particularly lawful during the confusions and revolutions of governments (London 1648), preface.
17 Skinner, ‘Context’, p. 131.
18 Ascham, Discourse, p. 98.
19 Skinner, ‘Context’, p. 131.
20 Ascham, Discourse, p. 23.
25 Ibid. p. 108. This would seem to allow much greater scope for resisting sovereign authority than in the case of Hobbes.
27 Ibid. p. 110. Ascham's providentialism is contradictory. We should obey all governments that come to power because power indicates divine favour. At the same time the exercise of power may be lawfully shaken off if it is ‘against nature and our consents’.
32 Ibid. p. 121; see Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (New York, 1962), pp. 507–8 for explicit rejection of jus zealotarum.
33 Tuck, , Natural rights, pp. 121–3.
34 Nedham, Marchamont, The case of the commonwealth of England (London, 1650).
42 Skinner, , ‘Context’, p. 135.
43 Nedham, , Case of the commonwealth, p. 103.
45 Skinner, , ‘The ideological context of Hobbes's political thought’, Historical Journal, IX, 3 (1966), 292.
46 Selden, John, Table talk (London, 1689), p. 30.
47 A possible exception is Wren's, MatthewMonarchy asserted of 1659. But even if we take Wren to be the only true Hobbist with the correct line on Hobbes – we are then faced with the problem of the other so-called Hobbists. If ‘history’ gives us conflicting evidence with regard to interpretation – we must in the end rely on our own interpretation.
48 Osborne, Francis, A persuasive to a mutual compliance (Oxford, 1652 [1651 ?]) p. 10.
52 Warren, Albertus, Eight reasons categorical (London, 1653), p. 5.
55 Warren, Albertus, The royalist reformed (London, 1650), p. 26.
58 Hawke, Michael, The grounds of the laws of England (London, 1657), dedication.
59 Hawke, Michael, Killing is murder and no murder (London, 1657), p. 7.
63 Hawke, Michael, The right of dominion (London, 1655), p. 22.
68 White, Thomas, The grounds of obedience and government (no place of publication given, 165[9]), p. 44.
73 Hall, John, Of obedience and government (London, 1654), preface.
77 Heydon, John, The idea of the law (London, 1660), p. 124.
80 Philodemius, Euctatus, The original and end of civil power (London, 1649), p. 15. Packer, J. W. (The transformation of Anglicanism, Manchester, 1969, p. 178) suggests that Philodemius is the pseudonym for Anthony Ascham although, despite a search for which I am grateful, he has been unable to locate the evidence for this suggestion; nor have I.
82 Skinner, , ‘Context’, p. 138.
83 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 82.
84 Selden, , Table talk, p. 41.
85 Although the Tew writers didn't publish until the 1640s and so could have been influenced by Hobbes, Selden's published work predates that of Hobbes. Strictly speaking, the discussion of influence remains – as in most cases – speculative; we don't know much of what Hobbes was thinking prior to 1628. People can be influential without ever publishing at all.
86 Tuck, Natural rights, ch. 5.
87 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 120.
88 H., Warrender, The political theory of Hobbes: his theory of obligation, (Oxford, 1957), pp. 93–5.
89 Tuck is misleading to suggest that Warrender found the basis of natural law in God's will; this is but one of the possibilities Warrender entertains as the ultimate ground of obligation. See Warrender, , The political theory of Hobbes, p. 11 and ch. 13.
90 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 131.
94 I think Tuck is wrong to suggest that Hobbes's natural laws ‘depend for their recognition’ on historically acquired experience of natural punishment. Hobbes's treatment of natural punishi ments is particularly puzzling because he elsewhere asserts that experience concludes nothing with I any certainty. But experience cannot transform a ‘consequence’ into a ‘punishment’. Unless men I ‘believe there is a God that…propounded rewards and punishments’ (Leviathan, p. 262) there can be no natural law. It is faith and not experience that transforms a consequence into a punishment.
95 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 127. It's not clear how the ‘overall structure’ of Hobbes's argument r or its possible coincidence with Selden's is affected by Tuck's isolation of an apparently separate theory of obligation in Hobbes based upon the principle of non-contradiction (Tuck, pp. 127–8). This latter view was first put forward by A. E. Taylor (‘The ethical doctrine of Hobbes’ in Brown, K. C, Hobbes studies (Oxford, 1965) pp. 37–8), who saw in Hobbes an anticipation for Kant. But the case is not convincing. Hobbes may note that breaking a promise or covenant entails a contradiction but he does not explicitly say that the obligation to keep promises arises because of the contradiction that would be entailed in breaking them. (See de Cive, 1, 16, 2 and Leviathan, p. 105). Hobbes distinguishes two kinds of obligation: (1) that which arises artificially among men when a right has been transferred, and (2) a natural obligation that arises between God and man because of God's omnipotence. There are no natural obligations among men because they are approximately equal in power. If we ask – what is an obligation? – Hobbes would give us what in his view is the proper definition – the definition about which men would agree. If we ask – why should we comply with our obligation? – we invite the tautology that obligations are obligatory. In another sense, however, the practice of abiding by obligations is rational (in situations of security) since it accords with the ‘reason of [one's] preservation’ (Leviathan p. 115). Only a fool could expect to break faith and get away with it. The policy of acting in accord with reason (understood as conducing to preservation) and therefore abiding by artificial obligations which arise when rights are transferred is itself a natural obligation which is granted ‘to those…whose power is irresistible’ (Leviathan, p. 263). That which reason suggests is believed to be that which an omnipotent God commands.
96 Tuck, , Natural rights, p. 127.
98 Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 509.
101 Hobbes, . The English works of Thomas Hobbes, ed., Molesworth, (London, 1889), 1. (Emphasis in original.)
103 Hobbes, , de Cive, E. W. II, vi.
104 Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 124.
105 Ibid. p. 262. The brevity of this account conceals several problems. In what sense does omnipotence generate an obligation? Is there a distinction to be drawn between being obliged to God's laws of nature and fearing the consequences that follow from disobeying them? What is entailed in an obligation in foro interno? What does Hobbes mean by ‘being tied to an obligation?’ What follows from Hobbes's suggestion that in civil society natural laws become coextensive with civil laws? Unfortunately, these and other matters cannot be dealt with here.
106 Dowling, R. E., review of Warrender's The political philosophy of Hobbes, Australasian Journal of Politics, 1958, p. 226.
107 Mintz, S. I., The hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962), p. 35.
108 Gierke, O. von, Natural law and the theory of society (Cambridge, 1934), p. 97.
109 Oakeshott, M.Rationalism in politics (London, 1962), p. 283.
110 Hobbes is not a wolf in sheep's clothing although he may be a wolf in wolf's clothing. By announcing his departures from earlier theorists and proclaiming his novelties of method and argument he can hardly be said to be engaged in concealment. His treatment of the role of God is discussed below.
111 McNeilly, F. S., The anatomy of Leviathan (London, 1968), p. 22.
112 Watkins, J. W. N., Hobbes's system of ideas (London, 1965), p.p. 98–9.
113 Hooker, R., Works, ed., Keble, , rev. Church and Paget, 7th edition (Oxford, 1889), 1, 334.
114 Ibid. 1, 227; see also 1, 223.
115 See Lagarde, G., Recherches sur l'esprit politique de la réforme (Paris, 1926), p. 25.
116 Suarez, F., Selections for three works, in Classics of International Law, Oxford 1927), vol. 20, p. 197.
117 Perhaps because of this famous passage scholars disagree about Grotius's position in the history of political thought. D'Entrèves, sees him as the beginning of ‘rationalist’ hence secular modern natural law (Natural law, 2nd edition (London, 1970), p. 55). Pollock, (postscript to SirMaine, H., Ancient law, (London 1930), p. 120) and Rommen, (The natural law, trans. Hanley, T. (St. Louis, 1949), p. 70) emphasize links to earlier Scholastic thought as does Chroust, A. H. (‘Hugo Grotius and the Scholastic natural law tradition’, The New Scholasticism, XVII, 1943, p. 125). The latter explains this passage as a rationalist rebuke of voluntarism and nominalism while Rommen (p. 72) sees Grotius as an exponent of voluntarism.
118 This issue is perceptively treated in Largarde, , Recherches, p. 25. See also McNeill, J. T., ‘Natural law in the teaching of the reformers’, The Journal of Religion, XXVI (1946), 177–8; Allen, J. W., ‘The political conceptions of Luther’, in Tudor Studies, ed., Seton-Watson, (London, 1924), p. 101.
119 Lagarde, , Recherches, p. 25.
120 Peters, R., Hobbes, 2nd edition (Harmondsworth, 1967) p. 245.
121 Filmer, R., Observations concerning the original of government (London, 1651), p. 3. (emphasis added).
122 Chroust, , ‘Hugo Grotius’, p. 114.
123 d'Entrèves, , Natural law, p. 77.
124 No case is made here to establish links between Suarez and Hobbes. Hobbes had, of course, read at least some of Suarez's work and described it as ‘amongst the many sorts of madness’. England generally was also familiar with him since James I publicly burnt his treatise Defensio Fidei in front of St Paul's church in London. See Scott's, J. B. introduction to Suarez, , Selections, in Classics, XX, 20a.
125 Suarez, , Selections, pp. 178–9.
128 Ibid. p. 186 (emphasis added). One is uncertain as to how literally the metaphor of internal inscription should be taken.
129 Plamenatz, J., Man and society (London, 1964), 1, 123.
130 Suarez, , Selections, p. 188.
133 Ibid. p. 190. Note the similarity with Grotius's position some three centuries later.
134 Locke, Second treatise, ch. 2, par. 5: ‘if I cannot but wish to receive good…how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men, being of one and the same nature?…from which relation of equality…what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no man is ignorant.’
135 Munz, P., The place of Hooker in the history of thought (London, 1962), p. 46.
136 Gierke, , Political theories of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1927), p. 80–90; Natural law, p. 40; see also Rommen, , The natural law, p. 75.
137 Some commentators have seen in this an Italian connexion but Letwin, S. R. pointedly and, I think, correctly notes that ‘Hobbes did not need Padua to teach him this commonplace’ – ‘Hobbes and Christianity’, Daedalus, winter, 1976, p. 10.
138 Compare, for example, Hobbes, , E. W. I, p. 81: the synthetical procedure consists ‘of the order of speech which begins from primary or most universal propositions, which are manifest of themselves, and proceeds by a perpetual composition of propositions into syllogisms, till at last the learner understand the truth of the conclusion sought after’ with Aquinas, , Selected political writings, ed., d' Entrèves, (Oxford, 1948), p. 123: ‘reason proceeds from general principles (which are manifest and indemonstrable) to matters of detail’. Note what appears to be the philosophically realist assumptions of both.
139 Aristotle, , Politics, Bk. 1, ch. I, 1252a.
140 Hobbes, , E.W. VII, 3–4; 184.
141 Hobbes, , E.W. I, 81; see also E.W. I, 84.
142 Hobbes, , E.W. VII, 460.
143 Consider the following passage from Hobbes's objection to Descartes: ‘reason gives us no conclusion about the nature of things, but only about the terms that designate them, whether, indeed or not there is a convention (arbitrarily made about their meanings) according to which we join these names together.’ in Descartes, , Meditations, in The philosophical works, ed., Haldane, and Ross, (Cambridge, 1911), II, 62.
144 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 35.
145 Aquinas, , Selected political writings, p. 123.
146 Rational action teleologically appropriate is sometimes referred to as the doctrine of naturalis inclinatio. See Armstrong, R. A., Primary and secondary precepts in Thomistic natural law teaching (The Hague, 1966), pp. 41–2 and Maritain, J., The range of reason (London, 1953), pp. 26–9.
147 See Leviathan, p. 40: ‘…the names of virtues and vices…can never by true ground of any ratiocination’.
148 Aquinas, , Selected political writings, p. 125.
149 Hobbes, , Leviathan, p. 115.
152 This is the point of Rommen's, The natural law.
