Spark Notes of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes PDF

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Lecturer: Ben Saunders...

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SparkNotes of Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes Table of Contents Context of Hobbes and Leviathan............................................................................1 Overall Summary of Leviathan..................................................................................4 Book I...........................................................................................................................6 Chapters 1-3......................................................................................................................6 Chapters 4-5......................................................................................................................8 Chapters 6-9 (IMPORTANT)............................................................................................11 Chapter 10-13..................................................................................................................14 Commentary of Book 1: Chapter 10-13.........................................................................17 Chapter 14-16..................................................................................................................18

Book II........................................................................................................................21 Chapter 17-19 (IMPORTANT)..........................................................................................21 Commentary for Chapter 17-19.....................................................................................23 Chapters 20-24................................................................................................................24 Chapters 25-31................................................................................................................27

Book III.......................................................................................................................30 Book IV......................................................................................................................33 Glossary....................................................................................................................36

Context of Hobbes and Leviathan Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury was a man who lived with fear. In his autobiography, Hobbes recounted that on the day of his birth in 1588, his mother learned that the Spanish Armada had set sail to attack England. This news so terrified Hobbes's mother that she went into labor prematurely, and thus, writes Hobbes, "fear and I were born twins together." Fear is a significant theme in Hobbes's writing, structuring both his written accounts of his life and the Hobbesian philosophical system. Leviathan, Hobbes's most important work and one of the most influential philosophical texts produced during the seventeenth century, was written partly as a response to the fear Hobbes experienced during the political

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ turmoil of the English Civil Wars. In the 1640s, it was clear to Hobbes that Parliament was going to turn against King Charles I, so he fled to France for eleven years, terrified that, as a Royalist, he would be persecuted for his support of the king. Hobbes composed Leviathan while in France, brilliantly articulating the philosophy of political and natural science that he had been developing since the 1630s. Hobbes's masterwork was finally published in 1651, two years after Parliament ordered the beheading of Charles I and took over administration of the English nation in the name of the Commonwealth. Leviathan's argument for the necessity of absolute sovereignty emerged in the politically unstable years after the Civil Wars, and its publication coincided with that of many Republican treatises seeking to justify the regicide (killing of the king) to the rest of Europe (John Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates is a famous example of these regicide tracts). Not only was the political argument of Leviathan controversial at the time of its publication, but the philosophical method employed by Hobbes to make his claims also scandalized many of his contemporaries--even those writers, such as Robert Filmer (the author of the Royalist tract Patriarcha), who otherwise supported Hobbes's claims for absolute sovereignty. Hobbes's materialist philosophy was based upon a mechanistic view of the universe, holding that all phenomena were explainable purely in terms of matter and motion, and rejecting concepts such as incorporeal spirits or disembodied souls. Consequently, many critics labeled Hobbes an atheist (although he was not, in the strict sense). Associated with both atheism and the many deliberately terrifying images of Leviathan, Hobbes became known as the "Monster of Malmsbury" and the "Bug-bear of the Nation." In 1666, Hobbes's books were burned at Oxford (where Hobbes had graduated from Magdalen College in 1608), and the resulting conflagration was even blamed in Parliament for having started the Great Fire of London. The chaotic atmosphere of England in the aftermath of the Civil Wars ensured that Hobbes's daring propositions met with a lively reaction. Hobbes knew that Leviathan would be controversial, for not only did the text advocate restoration of monarchy when the English republic was at its

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ strongest (Oliver Cromwell was not instituted as Lord High Protector until 1653, and the Restoration of Charles II did not occur until 1660), but Hobbes's book also challenged the very basis of philosophical and political knowledge. Hobbes claimed that traditional philosophy had never arrived at irrefutable conclusions, that it had instead offered only useless sophistries and insubstantial rhetoric; he thus called for a reform of philosophy that would enable secure truth--claims with which everyone could agree. Consequently, Hobbesian philosophy would prevent disagreements about the fundamental aspects of human nature, society, and proper government. Furthermore, because Hobbes believed that civil war resulted from disagreements in the philosophical foundations of political knowledge, his plan for a reformed philosophy to end divisiveness would also end the conditions of war. For Hobbes, civil war was the ultimate terror, the definition of fear itself. He thus wanted to reform philosophy in order to reform the nation and thereby vanquish fear. Earlier in the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon--for whom Hobbes had served as secretary in his youth--had also proposed a reform of philosophy, a reform he called the "Great Instauration." Bacon's program was an inductive philosophy based upon the observation of natural facts ("inductive" reasoning derives general principles from particular instances or facts); the experimental manipulation of nature of Bacon's scheme was very influential for the development of the historical period commonly called the Scientific Revolution, and also formed the backbone of the English Royal Society. Like Hobbes's, Bacon's system rejected traditional philosophical knowledge as untrustworthy, instead embracing nature as the only sure basis for all claims for truth. But Hobbes argued that the experimentalist program was also unsuccessful in providing secure, indisputable knowledge. Hobbes therefore rejected the Baconian system and argued vehemently against it. Hobbes's own deductive scientific philosophy was not experimental--in "deductive" reasoning, a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises, rather than being inferred from instances of these premises--but Hobbes maintained that it provided

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ better understanding of the universe and society than both traditional philosophy and experimental science. Leviathan attempted to create controversy in politics and in science, radically challenging both contemporary government and philosophy itself; yet, despite its very invocation of controversy, Leviathan sought ultimately to annihilate controversy for good. Hobbes's philosophical method claimed to provide indisputable conclusions, and its depiction of the Leviathan of society suggested that the Hobbesian method could put an end to controversy, war, and fear. Hobbes's philosophy was highly influential in certain sectors (Hobbesism was a fashionable intellectual position well into the eighteenth century). However, Hobbes, who died in 1679, never lived to see his work achieve the widespread and totalizing effects for which he had hoped. Excluded from the Royal Society for his anti-experimentalist stance and derided by many contemporaries as an immoral monster, Hobbes neither transformed the nation nor reformed philosophy as he had envisioned. Nonetheless, Hobbes has had a lasting influence in the history of Western philosophy, as he is credited with inaugurating political science; his crowning achievement, Leviathan is still recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of the history of ideas. Written during a moment in English history when the political structure, social structure, and methods of science were all in flux and open to manipulation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world.

Overall Summary of Leviathan Leviathan rigorously argues that civil peace and social unity are best achieved by the establishment of a commonwealth through social contract. Hobbes's ideal commonwealth is ruled by a sovereign power responsible for protecting the security of the commonwealth and granted absolute authority to ensure the common defense. In his introduction, Hobbes describes this commonwealth as an "artificial person" and as a body politic that mimics the human body. The frontispiece to the first edition

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ of Leviathan, which Hobbes helped design, portrays the commonwealth as a gigantic human form built out of the bodies of its citizens, the sovereign as its head. Hobbes calls this figure the "Leviathan," a word derived from the Hebrew for "sea monster" and the name of a monstrous sea creature appearing in the Bible; the image constitutes the definitive metaphor for Hobbes's perfect government. His text attempts to prove the necessity of the Leviathan for preserving peace and preventing civil war. Leviathan is divided into four books: "Of Man," "Of Common-wealth," "Of a Christian Common-wealth," and "Of the Kingdome of Darknesse." Book I contains the philosophical framework for the entire text, while the remaining books simply extend and elaborate the arguments presented in the initial chapters. Consequently, Book I is given the most attention in the detailed summaries that follow. Hobbes begins his text by considering the elementary motions of matter, arguing that every aspect of human nature can be deduced from materialist principles. Hobbes depicts the natural condition of mankind--known as the state of nature--as inherently violent and awash with fear. The state of nature is the "war of every man against every man," in which people constantly seek to destroy one another. This state is so horrible that human beings naturally seek peace, and the best way to achieve peace is to construct the Leviathan through social contract. Book II details the process of erecting the Leviathan, outlines the rights of sovereigns and subjects, and imagines the legislative and civil mechanics of the commonwealth. Book III concerns the compatibility of Christian doctrine with Hobbesian philosophy and the religious system of the Leviathan. Book IV engages in debunking false religious beliefs and arguing that the political implementation of the Leviathanic state is necessary to achieve a secure Christian commonwealth. Hobbes's philosophical method in Leviathan is modeled after a geometric proof, founded upon first principles and established definitions, and in which each step of argument makes conclusions based upon the previous step. Hobbes decided to create a philosophical method similar to the geometric proof after meeting Galileo on his extended travels in Europe

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ during the 1630s. Observing that the conclusions derived by geometry are indisputable because each of constituent steps is indisputable in itself, Hobbes attempted to work out a similarly irrefutable philosophy in his writing of Leviathan.

Book I Chapters 1-3 The first three chapters of Leviathan concern the mechanics of the human mind, covering the topics of sense, imagination, and the train of thought. Hobbes argues that our knowledge of the world originates from "external bodies" pressing against our sensory apparatus. Envisioning the universe as a plenum constituted solely of matter, Hobbes depicts objects continually bumping against each other and describes the passage of motion from one material body to the next. This elementary motion of the universe eventually transfers to the surface of the human body, where nerves and membranes of the eyes, nose, ears, tongue, and skin are physically moved, in turn relaying their acquired motions on to the brain. "Sense," then, is the action of external bodies colliding with our sensitive organs. Matter cannot move itself, Hobbes declares (in challenge to the philosophy of

vitalism,

which

maintained

that

matter

was

self-motivated).

Consequently, "when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion" unless acted upon by another body. Hobbes deduces that this continuance of motion is responsible for the transformation of sense into thoughts or "imagination," for when an external body presses against the human sense apparatus and sets off a series of new motions, these motions will perpetuate until they meet a hindrance. The duration of sensory motion after the fact is called "decaying sense," which becomes Hobbes's definition of imagination. To illustrate, Hobbes suggests that the persistence of a vision after the eyes have been closed indicates that the ocular sensory apparatus is still in motion; this motion is no longer immediate sensation, but imagination. Such imagination, over time, is the same as "memory." Memory of things sensed from the outside world is defined as "experience," while sensation of internal movements of the human body is

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ called a "dream" when one is asleep, or a "vision" or "apparition" when one is awake. "Understanding" is a particular form of imagination, defined as the idea produced by the physical sensation of words or visible signs. A complex variety of understanding is the "train of thoughts" or "mental discourse," in which the succession of one imagination upon another, one internal sensation provoking the next one, initiates the process of thinking. There are two possible trains of thoughts: the "unguided" train, in which mental discourse wanders in no particular direction, as in dreams; and the "regulated" train, in which the thinker directs mental discourse in a specific direction. By tracing the transfer of motion from external matter to the human body, Hobbes has deduced a mechanism of the human mind-namely, the passage from sense to thought to train of thoughts--in which sensory experience of the world is funneled into regulated and directed thinking. Building upon this foundation, Hobbes next considers the logical developments of directed thought: language, reason, and science. Hobbes's assertion of a plenum is his response to a years-long philosophical debate against vacuism, or the theory that the universe is largely devoid of matter. Still, though Hobbes claims (as we will see in the next section) that philosophical truth must be deduced from shared definitions, he does not here indicate that his own fundamental first principle of the plenum is generally accepted or agreed upon; Hobbes acts as his own arbitrator and judge of first principles. His philosophical project manages to remain logically consistent only by recursively validating these first principles in later chapters. To dispute the truth value of Hobbes's unspoken claim that nature is a plenum is not necessarily to dispute the entire edifice that is Leviathan, for Hobbes argues from common experience at several points. However, so tightly structured is the text, with one step leading to the next step, with one layer founding the succeeding layer, that--as with a house of cards--tearing out the bottom tier would threaten to topple the upper stories.

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ Chapters 4-5 Speech was invented, according to Hobbes, for the purpose of putting mental discourse into verbal discourse. There are two benefits gained by this transformation of the mental into the verbal: First, words register a train of thoughts by giving name to the thoughts' conclusions, which can then be remembered without having to reconstruct the train of thoughts continually; second, mental discourse can thus be communicated to other people. Hobbes identifies four uses of speech: 1) To record knowledge gained of things, which is the acquisition of Arts; 2) To communicate this knowledge to others, which is Counseling or Teaching; 3) To communicate intentions and desires to others and elicit their help; and 4) To entertain ourselves by playing with words. Hobbes also identifies four abuses of speech: 1) Inconstant signification, in which we carelessly let the meanings of words shift; 2) Metaphorical language, in which we use certain words to mean other words in order to deceive; 3) Lies; and 4) Language employed to injure other people. Speech

is

defined

in

Hobbes's

terms

as

"consisting

of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion." Truth and falsehood, which cannot exist outside of speech, are consequent upon the nature of the connection made between names. Truth "consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations," and thus to speak truly--in other words, to speak philosophically--one must use the precise and proper meanings of names. But Hobbes recognizes that we must have some foundational reference for determining whether a meaning is proper and suggests that, following the geometric method, true speech begin by gaining general acceptance of the definitions of its terms. He writes, "In Geometry (which is the onely Science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow upon mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call Definitions; and place them at the beginning of their reckoning."

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/leviathan/ Hobbes believes that geometry is a venerable model for a philosophical language because geometry finds its stability in defined terms that everyone has agreed to recognize; therefore, geometric arguments are indisputable. It follows, then, that once philosophical definitions, or first principles, are established, true conclusions can be made by building logically upon prior claims. It is society that determines these first principles of philosophical discourse and true speech, but Hobbes is still faced with the problem of how to achieve social consent for the meanings of words. Because our experience of the world is mediated by our sensation of it, reality, or objective nature, does not necessarily provide universally satisfying definitions by itself. Hobbes writes, "For though the nature of that we conceive, be the same; yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of body, and prejudices of opinion, gives everything a tincture of our different passions. And therefore in reasoning, a man must take heed of words; which besides the signification of what we imagine their nature, have a signification also of the nature, disposition, and interest of the speaker." Hobbes suggests that the observation of nature and the sensation of the material world is always affected by the individual character of the observer, and therefore experience of natural phenomena and the perception of reality do not constitute an adequate basis upon which to ...