Barry Stocker

Department of Philosophy
Boğaziçi University
JF 509
barry.stocker@bogazici.edu.tr

INTRODUCTION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY

PHIL 112
SPRING 2025

WEEK THREE NOTES

HOBBES, THOMAS
LEVIATHAN (PART I: OF MAN)
[LONDON, ENGLAND. 1651]
(Edited by Edwin Curley, Hackett Publishing (Indianapolis IN, 1994).)
CHAPTERS I TO IX

THOMAS HOBBES
1588 (Malmesbury, England)-1679 (Derbyshire, England)
Hobbes was the son of a curate (the assistant to a Church of England priest who led a
disreputable life) and disappeared from his life in 1604. His uncle Francis therefore played
a large role in supporting his education and left property to Thomas after his death.
Hobbes was born in the year that the Spanish Armada (a large naval eet carrying an
invasion army) threatened to invade England. It was defeated at sea and was dispersed
by winds. Hobbes was happy to link his birth with this event, claiming he was born with a
twin, which was fear. He also liked to emphasise that he was from Malmesbury in the
county of Wiltshire, which is in the southwest of England. He was proud of its central role
in Anglo-Saxon history (that is the history of England after the end of Roman rule and
before the Norman Invasion of 1066), as a political and religious centre. It has a particular
link with King Athelstan, the rst native king to rule over all of England (also receiving
tribute from Scotland and Wales). As a result Hobbes is sometimes known as the Man
from Malmesbury, or Mr Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury or the Monster of Malmesbury.

People then studied at university at a much younger age than is now normal and Hobbes
was already a University of Oxford student when his father disappeared. After graduation
Hobbes began a connection with the Cavendishes, a grand aristocratic family. He died at
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the family seat of Hardwick Hall, a sixteenth century building of architectural distinction,
which is still standing. His connection with the Cavendishes included a large amount of
tutoring their children taking them to Europe.

This is a period in which universities were not hospitable to teaching or scholarship which
departed from strict adherence to state religion and the Medieval philosophical tradition
which was the core of Christian philosophical tradition. It is often referred to as
Scholasticism, and Hobbes like others of the time uses the related term the Schools.
Scholasticism contained a very large element of commentary on Plato and even more on
Aristotle. Hobbes was very critical of the legacy of Plato and Aristotle , and what he
claimed was an abstract and obscure elaboration of this legacy in the Scholastics.
Hobbes was living through the end of the Scholastic tradition and mentions the most
prominent late Scholastic Francisco Suaréz in a very negative way. Hobbes was not
unusual amongst 17th and 18th century philosophers in making a living for at least part of
their lives from aristocratic patronage. Other examples include John Locke, David Hume
and Adam Smith.

Taking aristocratic boys on a tour of Europe provided an opportunity to make contact

with thinkers abroad. Hobbes took advantage of this, meeting scholars and thinkers
including Descartes. They seem to have had a respectful but uneasy relationship, taking
very di erent philosophical positions. Hobbes contributed a critical essay to the the rst
edition of Descartes’ Mediations which included a number of critical essays and
Descartes’ replies.

Hobbes was also in uenced by working with a major British philosopher, Francis Bacon
(15h61-1626). Bacon was a philosopher, scientist and essayist. He also had a legal and
political career which took him to the top of both elds. He had been a Member of
Parliament and later held the o ce of Lord Chancellor which meant he was the head of
the legal system in England, chaired the House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament)
and was a major adviser to the monarch. Hobbes was presumably in uence by both the
more philosophical-scienti c and legal-political side of Bacon’s work, though he worked
with him on the legal side. Bacon is considered a founder of modern ideas of scienti c
method, including the importance of direct observation of nature and the use of
experiments. As a legal and political thinker, he supported a strong state with an absolute
monarch at the centre.
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Hobbes’ ideas t with both sides of Bacon. He is best known as a political thinker, with
reference to Leviathan, particularly the end of Part I and the whole of Part II (parts III and
IV deal with Christianity and its relation to the state). This was preceded by Elements of
Law and De Cive. He was also a philosopher concerned with nature, human perception,
knowledge and science, as can be seen in Leviathan Part I. Other work of this kind can be
found in De Homine and De Corpore. He also wrote a history of the Civl War, Behometh.

The English Civil War is also known as the English Civil Wars and the Wars of the Three
Kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland), because it was a series of wars across the
three kingdoms united under the English monarchy. As the English Civil war, it started in
1642 and ended in 1653. As the War of the Three Kingdoms it started in 1639, with a war
in Scotland. The central issue was the relative power of Parliament (at that time an
assembly of the aristocracy, lesser landowners, merchants and the independently
wealthy) and the Monarchy. Parliamentary armies won the war, the king was deposed and
then executed. There was some support for a more democratic form of government, but
the landowning classes remained dominant. A Commonwealth (republic) was proclaimed
in which Parliament was the source of all power in 1649. The commander of the
Parliamentary armies, Oliver Cromwell, became Lord Protector (a semi-monarchical role)
in 1653 making the Commonwealth rather less republican. The system did not survive the
death of Cromwell in 1658 and the monarchy was restored in 1660.

Hobbes’ relation to these political events were complicated. He was close to the royal
family and strong stable monarchy was his favoured form of government. However, once
the royal family was deposed Hobbes’ political philosophy led him to accept the
legitimacy of those best place to maintain order in England, that is the leaders of the
Commonwealth. This caused di culties with supporters of the monarchy in Paris, where
Hobbes himself had gone into exile. He returned to England as a loyal citizen of the
Commonwealth. After the fall of the Commonwealth, he had good relations with the king,
though he also experienced some di culties in publication and expressing his ideas from
the king and the state church, which suspected him of heresy. He de ned himself as a
Christian, but some of what the wrote suggests that he did not support any kind of
church government independent of the state and was against any role for the
supernatural in the universe, which might be di cult to reconcile with some parts of the
Bible and any belief in God. He had a materialist view of nature in which there are only
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physical causes and an empiricist philosophy which regarded the senses as the only real
source of ideas in the mind and knowledge of any kind.

His study of humanity as part of nature included an interest in language and imagination,
which extended to a theory of how humans need a contract or covenant in order to form
governments and live securely. Within this framework, Hobbes built up a very in uential
theory of law and politics. He is usually regarded as the rst gure in a ‘social contract’
view of political philosophy, which includes seventeenth and eighteenth century thinkers
such as John Locke (1632-1704), Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778). More recent contract theorists include John Rawls (1921-2002)
and Robert Nozick (1938-2002).

As a philosopher of knowledge and nature, he is usually thought of as following on from

Francis Bacon as an empiricist, in a British tradition which also includes the later
philosophers Locke, George Berkeley (1685-1753) and David Hume (1711-1776). Despite
his di culties, Hobbes was able to live the latter part of his life in peace. He returned to
the translation of Ancient Greek classics. His rst publication was a translation of
Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War (a work of political thought as well as history) and later in
his life he translated the two epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

LEVIATHAN
PART I
OF MAN
Single thoughts are a representation or appearance of a quality or accident outside us of
an object outside us usually known as a body. This object has impacts on the eyes and
other organs o the senses which produce appearances in the mind. Everything in the
mind is derived from sense (what comes from the senses). Sense contains what comes
from the counter-pressure of the inner organs to what comes through the senses from
outside. This is a seeming or fancy of objects outside ourselves. The image or fancy
inside us is di erent from the external body.

Hobbes opposes his view to that of the Schools (Scholastic philosophers) derived from
Aristotle (in De Anima/On the Mind) according to which objects send us species, as
audible species, visible species and so on, which is an apparition or a seeming. He
accuses philosophers of using insigni cant speech, that is speech which has no reference
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to any sense or object. This is an empiricist approach to meaning in Hobbes. All language
must refer in some ways too what is in our senses.

Hobbes mocks Aristotelian ideas of motion in which an object towards its natural place.
Hobbes refers to the New Science of the 17th century, most famously in Galileo,
according to which motion continues for ever in the same direction unless it is impeded.
We sense an object and it remains in our imagination/fancy after we sense it, so it remains
as decaying sense in our waking conciseness and in our dreams. Our imagination of the
objects of sense of the past weakens as other things enter our imagination. This fading
imagination is memory. We have simple imagination of single objects and complex
imagination when we imagine ourselves as someone. My dreams seem as real to me
when I am dreaming as waking consciousness. However, when I am awake dream seem
absurd and my waking state never seems absurd in my dreams, which makes it likely that
waking consciousness is where I am am aware of reality.

Imagination that comes from words and signs is understanding. We share this kşind of
understanding with animals. Human understanding is di erent in the role of conceptions
and thoughts stimulated by negations, a rmations and other aspects of language.

A train of imagination is a necessary sequence of thoughts, which is always necessary in

the mind. There are two kinds: 1. Unguided, without design, where thoughts are not
guided by a unifying passion, but are a sequence of random thoughts, such random
thoughts to follow each other for some reason in each individual case, but there is uni ed
chain of causes towards one end; 2. Regulated by some design or passion which gives es
them unity and direction. The greatness of the end impresses our mind and keeps our
ideas focused.

There are two kinds of train of regulated thought: 1. We seek the means or cause of an
e ect in a train of thought, this applies to humans and animals; 2. We seeks there
greatest possible e ects of the thing we seek, which is a purely human activity.
Where the mind is governed by design, is seeking cause of a present or past e ect, or it
is seeking the e ects of present or past cause. Sometimes the mind seeks what it has
lost is remembrance (memory).
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Someone’s thoughts may go all over a particular object, where it seeks something.
Foresight, prudence, providence and wisdom are names for remembering patterns of
cause and e ect from memory. This however relies on thoughts of the future which are
inevitably ctions of the mind and are speculative. It is what distinguishes humans from
animals. Hobbes’ examples in this discussion are the likelihood that a criminal will o end
again and the causes of a civil war, so we are already looking forward to Hobbes’ legal
and political philosophy.

The faculties above are the complete faculties of the human mind. They can be improved
by speech (language) and by method but we cannot add to them. We can only imagine
what is nite. We cannot imagine what is in nite. The name God does not as part of
conceiving God but as a way of honouring God. This may be a reply to Descartes’
argument that the idea of the in nite leads us to God’s perfection.

Letters of the alphabet enable us to prolong memories of the past and unify humanity.
Speech is the greatest of other inventions. It is made up of names and connections
between names. Speech enables us to register our thoughts, remember them, and join
thoughts between individuals for mutual bene t. This enables there to be community and
peace between humans separating us from the lives of wolves, bears and lions which lack
such community and cooperation. Again Hobbes’s legal and political philosophy appears.
Names are rstly marks of our thoughts for memory. Secondly they are signs for
communicating thoughts between individuals. Speech enables us acquire ‘arts’ (areas of
knowledge and skill) through knowledge of causes and e ects. They can also be used for
playing with words as entertainment and ornaments. There are four abuses of speech:
self deception when we use words mistakenly, deception of others through metaphorical
use of words, deception through falsely declaiming words to represent our will, causing
mental pain.

There are proper or singular names which pick out individuals and there are common or
universal names for grouping particular things which share some quality. One name can
stand for a group of words. Hobbes’ example is that just stands for someone whose
actions obey the laws of the country. Again his legal and political philosophy appears.
Names enable us to have universal rules so that what is true here and now can be true of
all times and places. Names are necessary for numbers and numbers bars are necessary
for arithmetic, geometry and science, which advance human welfare. There is only truth
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and falsehood where there are names, because truth/falsity refers to a relation between
words and things. Without words we have only error, not falsity. For nding truth we need
to use names precisely and correctly. Geometry is a particularly pyre example of this.

There are four kinds of naming: qualities of matter (which do not presume particular
objects), names which distinguish bodies (qualities of particular objects), names of
fancies (qualities we perceive), names of di erent kinds of name. Other kinds of names
have no meaning are particularly used in the metaphysics of Scholastics. Here Hobbes
anticipates the views of radical 20th century empiricists, like the Logical Positivists. We
will see an example of this when we look at the rst paper by Carnap. Understanding is
conception caused by speech. Some words are in uenced by the individual passions so
that di erent individuals give them di erent meanings. This applies to words used in
reference to virtues and vices. Moral theory appears now, referring to Hobbes’ claim that
as human views of virtue and vice di er, a superior body, a state is necessary to settle
disputes between individuals.

Reasoning uses addition and subtraction of words. This applies to duties in politics and
right or wrong in law. Hobbes here suggests that there can be a kind of arithmetical
exactness in political and legal matters. Even şf reason has something arithmetical about
it, for Hobbes it is disturbed by individual error and competition between individuals in
error demanding to impose their own understanding. A higher referee is necessary to
decide on these matters. Hobbes’ view of the necessity of the state is beginning to
appear here. Words are abused when we attribute de nitions and qualities that belong to
one thing to another, as when we think qualities of external bodies are qualities of our
senses, or we think a general type has the qualities of an individual particular so that we
think generalities exist like physical objects, or we confuse de nitions of an object with
the object, or we give reality to the metaphorical use of words.

Imagination is the beginning of voluntary motion as it guides our actions. Like animals we
have a succession of appetites, aversions, hopes and fears. We share this with animals.
Like animals we deliberate on the basis of these passions. The deliberations ends in a an
act of will, a voluntary act. There is no such thing as tranquillity of mind as the succession
of passions in our mind never ends. In this way, Hobbes suggests that humans are
restless, always driven by new desires. This is again pert of his legal and political
philosophy.
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No discourse guided by the desire for knowledge can end, because there is no absolute
knowledge of fact. This is now opinion arises. Hobbes particularly applies this to areas
where there is no deductive reasoning or clear de nition. In these cases opinion may
become xed so that ,individuals regard it as matter of inner conscience which they must
defend. This expresses in belief and faith where opinion comes from what we hear or
read. It must rest on faith our belief. So in religion what does not come from God directly,
if God is not directly commanding us, then our opinions are a matter of belief and faith in
humans who passed on their claims. This seems rather close to saying that there might
be no divine foundation to religion, since we might question how many people even
belşeve they have been commanded by God and then question further how well
grounded such a claim is. It certainly seems to remove authority from churches and even
the Bible. Hobbes denies any atheistical or sceptical intentions in religion, but the
possibilities of interpreted him as irreligious explain why he was often accused of heresy
and atheism. From the point of view of Hobbes’ political philosophy, this uncertainty in
religion is why the state must be superior to all churches and never subordinate to
religion.

Hobbes enters into a long discussion of how we have extreme failures of judgement
because of intellectual error or physical disturbance. At the extreme this is madness,
which has been mistaken for demonic possession. Hobbes questions anything in the
Bible and religious tradition which seems to accept the idea of demonic possession. He
argues that there can onşy be madness. The Bible is to teach us about he kingdom of
heaven and has no authority in other areas of knowledge. This are radical views of the
time. They suggest Hobbes might be more sceptical about religion that he will directly
admit. In any case, it connects with his political and legal philosophy, according to which
as individual reason is awed and may even be a ected by madness, while religious
views are equally fallible, the state should be strong enough to rise above individual and
religious errors.

Knowledge of fact is grouped together as history. There is natural history for facts about
nature and civil history for facts about human community, where human will operates.
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READINGS ON HOBBES

CONSULT THESE WHEN PREPARING YOUR ESSAYS

Tuck, Richard. Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Finn, Stephen J. Hobbes: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum Press, 2007.
Martinich, A.P. Hobbes. New York NY: Routledge, 2007.

Springborg, Patricia (editor). The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Lloyd, S.A. (editor). The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Adams, Marcus P. (editor). A Companion to Hobbes. Hoboken NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2021.