Studies in Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy

Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation

David Johnston

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691219325
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

The description for this book, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation, will be forthcoming.

CHAPTER ONE

Historiography and Rhetoric

HOBBES AND THE RHETORICAL TRADITION

HOBBES’S TRANSLATION of Thucydides, which he completed in 1628 at the age of forty, is conventionally regarded as the product of an early, humanistic period of his life. As such, it is argued, this translation is to be sharply distinguished from the works of his later, philosophical period. Even those interpreters who claim to discern some of the substance of his later views on moral and political subjects in Hobbes’s introduction to this work agree that from a methodological standpoint, at least, the scientific and philosophical products of his later years are utterly different from the small literary output of his humanistic period. This interpretation, while not simply false, is extremely misleading, and has on occasion induced its defenders to distort Hobbes’s thinking in curious ways.

Consider the following line of argument. In the introduction to his translation, Hobbes advocates a very particular and restricted conception of the scope of historical writing. The historian should confine himself simply to the narration of events, using observable actions as his basic data. He should not waste words by speculating about motives, since these are by nature unknowable. As Hobbes himself puts it, “the inward motive ... is but conjectural.” But since he believed motives to be the causes of human actions, their exclusion from history amounts to an acknowledgment that history cannot teach us about causation. This limitation, we are told, explains why Hobbes later came to identify history with “prudence” as opposed to “science.” Causation, in his view, is the principal or sole concern of science. There can therefore be no common ground between this early conception of history as mere narrative and Hobbes’s later idea of philosophy or science.¹

This argument drastically oversimplifies Hobbes’s historiographical views. Hobbes did argue that an element of conjecture is always involved in the interpretation of motives. But his conclusion was that historians should be cautious and shrewd in attributing motives to historical actors, not that they should be barred from doing so altogether. Hence he says that in some histories

there be subtle conjectures at the secret aims and inward cogitations of such as fall under their pen; which is also none of the least virtues in a history, where conjecture is thoroughly grounded, not forced to serve the purpose of the writer in adorning his style, or manifesting his subtlety in conjecturing. But these conjectures cannot often be certain, unless withal so evident, that the narration itself may be sufficient to suggest the same also to the reader.²

This argument is a counsel of caution as well as a reproach to historians who invent interpretations of men’s thoughts and motives out of whole cloth. It is similar in kind to Hobbes’s criticism of cartographers who adorn their maps with imaginary islands and coastlines.³ But it is also a commendation of historians whose conjectures about the secret thoughts and aims of men are thoroughly grounded. Hobbes is as far from wishing to bar all consideration of motives from history as he is from desiring to eliminate all islands and coastlines from maps.

Indeed, the quality that makes Thucydides such an outstanding historian—‘‘in whom . . . the faculty of writing history is at the highest,” Hobbes says—is his extraordinary shrewdness as an interpreter of the thoughts and motives of other men. His acuity as an observer and analyst of the human character is so great as to make him occasionally appear obscure. But

the obscurity that is, proceedeth from the profoundness of the sentences; containing contemplations of those human passions, which either dissembled or not commonly discoursed of, do yet carry the greatest sway with men. . . .

As Hobbes puts it simply in his letter of dedication, “No man better discerned of men.”⁴

Hobbes is also absolutely clear that one of the principal aims of historical writing should be to lay bare the causes of events. This understanding emerges most emphatically in the course of his defense of Thucydides against the charges of a critic, Dionysius Halicarnassius. Dionysius objected to several aspects of Thucydides’ history, including the order of his presentation, which Hobbes calls his “method.” The basis of some of these objections was his view that Thucydides should have been more careful in his history to enhance the glory of Athens. In choosing the points at which to begin and end his history, in reporting the blunt language of the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue, and in a variety of other decisions, Thucydides had actually harmed the reputation of his city.

Hobbes attacks these objections as utterly inconsistent with the true purposes of history. Dionysius seeks to “delight more the ear with fabulous narrations, than satisfy the mind with truth’’; he “makes the scope of history, not profit by writing truth, but delight of the hearer, as if it were a song.’’ Truth, and especially true causes, should be the historian’s overriding concern, regardless of whether their revelation might tend to blemish the image of one’s own city. Thus “it was the duty of him that had undertaken to write the history of the Peloponnesian war, to begin his narration no further off than at the causes of the same, whether the Grecians were then in good or in evil estate.’’ Furthermore, the presentation of these causes should be carefully designed to reveal their true comparative importance. Thus Thucydides was right, in spite of Dionysius’ perverse objections, to begin his explanation by stating the pretexts upon which the war was begun, only afterward going on to explain “the true and inward motive of the same.’’ For on the one hand pretexts, however slight, are always necessary to the instigation of war; while on the other, their comparative insignificance should be demonstrated by distinguishing them from underlying causes.⁵

It is therefore impossible to concur with the view that the break between Hobbes’s early conception of history and his later idea of philosophy or science occurred over the issue of causation, if it occurred at all. Hobbes was already deeply concerned about causation in 1628. Far from considering causal explanation beyond the scope of history, he actually viewed the construction of such explanations as the principal duty of any historian. He did not assume that this duty could always be fulfilled easily. One of the hardest of all the historian’s tasks is to reconstruct the thoughts and motives of his protagonists. No human being has direct access to the thoughts and motives of any other, and these are thus easily disguised. But this difficulty merely tells us what quality should be most highly prized in an historian. Above all else, an historian should be a shrewd observer and judge of human nature.

The view that the issue of causation was central to Hobbes’s break with his own early, humanistic outlook is not the only interpretation of this alleged event. Perhaps the most famous account of it, and certainly the most subtle and interesting interpretation of Hobbes’s writings on Thucydides, occurs in Leo Strauss’s well-known book on Hobbes. His argument runs along the following lines. The introduction to Hobbes’s translation of Thucydides rests upon the assumption that history is an adequate source of political knowledge. As his thinking developed, however, Hobbes began to distinguish between what is and what should be, between fact and right. As this development proceeded, history lost its special significance for him. The reduced standing of history in his thinking is evident in Leviathan in his emphasis on the problematic nature of all historical knowledge, an emphasis that undermines his original assumption about the adequacy of historical knowledge. Hobbes’s thinking continued to develop in this same direction even after he had finished Leviathan. Ultimately he came to blur the distinction between history, conceived as a serious search for truth, and poetry or fiction. This lack of interest in the distinction between history and fiction as articulated in Hobbes’s De Homine of 1658 is the “most precise expression’’ of his “turning away from history.’’⁶

This argument contains an important element of truth, but that truth must be disentangled from some serious distortions. In the first place, the suggestion that Hobbes came progressively to consider historical knowledge problematic is an error. Strauss cites the following passage from Leviathan in evidence:

For he that hath seen by what courses and degrees, a flourishing State hath first come into civil warre, and then to ruine; upon the sights of the ruines of any other State, will guesse, the like warre, and the like courses have been there also. But this conjecture, has the same incertainty almost with the conjecture of the Future; both being grounded onely upon Experience.⁷

This passage certainly suggests that historical knowledge can be problematic, but it does so in a way that is entirely consistent with the views Hobbes had already expressed in 1628. Even then, as we have seen, he had argued that historians must build their accounts of events partly by a process of conjecture, even when trying to explain contemporary events. The Leviathan passage refers to the situation of an observer attempting to reconstruct distant historical events by examining artifacts, not that of an historian seeking to explain events he has observed personally. It is neither surprising nor very significant that Hobbes considered the knowledge attainable by such an observer less reliable and more conjectural than that of an historian like Thucydides. There is thus no reason to believe that he ever came to view historical knowledge in general as more conjectural than he had already considered it in 1628. And it is worth noticing that when he came to write his own history of the English civil war, although he re-emphasized the difficulty of interpreting men’s motives at several points, he never regarded his own account of the causes of the war—an event at which he, like Thucydides in the Peloponnesian War, had been close at hand—as the slightest bit infected with uncertainty.⁸

The notion that Hobbes demonstrates his rejection of history as a source of political knowledge by blurring the distinction between history and fiction must also be corrected, for fiction had played an important role in his original conception of historiography. One of the practices in Thucydides’ history he commends is the use of fictitious speeches or “deliberative orations' to convey the “grounds and motives” of actions to the reader.⁹ Because thoughts and motives are inaccessible to direct observation, they must be explained by some device apart from the simple narration of events. And since our knowledge of these thoughts and motives is always to some extent conjectural, any device used to explain them will necessarily involve a certain element of contrivance or fiction, as do the Thucydidean speeches. It is arguable, in fact, that Hobbes considered the invention of fictions essential to any genuinely causal understanding of historical events, since he regarded thoughts and motives as decisive elements of causation in human affairs.¹⁰ At the very least it is clear that he saw no conflict between the use of fiction for such purposes and the requirements of historical truth.

Nor did Hobbes actually blur the distinction between history and poetry or fiction in his later writings. One of the pieces of evidence cited to support this view is the preface to Hobbes’s translation of Homer, a work he completed near the end of his life. An heroic poem, as Hobbes describes it, is very similar to and may sometimes even be a sort of history, since its aim is to raise admiration for great deeds and men, who may be historical figures. But it is far from true to say that he does not even distinguish history from poetry in this preface, for he compares these two arts at more than one point, sometimes to distinguish between them, sometimes to establish a point they share in common.¹¹ History may even be written in verse, in which case the two arts are combined; but the fact that Hobbes approved the combination does not show that he failed to distinguish them.

The other piece of evidence cited to support this view is particularly interesting. It is a passage from the De Homine of 1658 in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Moral
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• A Note on References
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Historiography and Rhetoric: Hobbes And The Rhetorical Tradition
• Chapter 2: The Elements of Law: Reason Versus Rhetoric
• Chapter 3: Rhetoric Rediscovered: From Dry Discourse To Speaking Picture
• Chapter 4: The Portrait of Man: Reason Versus Superstition
• Chapter 5: Theory and Transformation: The Politics Of Enlightenment
• Chapter 6: The Disenchanted World: The Mechanical Materialist
• Chapter 7: Scriptures and Sovereigns: The Subordination Of Prophecy
• Chapter 8: Sovereignty at the Crossroads: The Present In Historical Perspective
• Epilogue
• Select Bibliography
• Index