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Are Hobbesian States as Passionate as Hobbesian Individuals?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2023

Jerónimo Rilla Open the ORCID record for Jerónimo Rilla [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This article deals with the possibility of ascribing passions to states in Thomas Hobbes's political theory. According to Hobbes, the condition of sovereign states vis-à-vis one another is comparable to that of individuals in the state of nature, namely, a state of war. Consequently, the three causes of war (competition, diffidence, and glory) identified in chapter 13 of Leviathan could also be relevant to interstate relations. Since these war triggers are mainly passions, one could presume that state action is motivated by passions as well. Some argue that it is just a figurative way of speaking. Others claim that the passions of war affect only sovereign rulers. I explore an alternative answer based on the ability of sovereigns to direct the preexisting passions of their people.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , Summer 2023 , pp. 285 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame

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Footnotes

My special thanks go to Ruth Abbey and four anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and their helpful criticism. I am also very grateful to Luciano Venezia, Gonzalo Bustamante, Leiser Madanes, Kajo Kubala, and the participants of the Princeton-Bucharest seminar and the Hobbes seminar at the University Adolfo Ibáñez for their insightful comments.

References

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2 Hobbes, Thomas, On the Citizen, ed. Tuck, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Henceforth DCv. The citation indicates chapter, paragraph number, and page number.

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27 Thomas Hobbes, Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Vita Carmine Expressa, in Opera Philosophica Quae Latine Scripsit, ed. William Molesworth, vol. 1 (London: Bohn, 1849), line 86, my translation and emphasis.

28 On the topic of negative association as key to the formation and maintenance of Hobbesian political corporations, see Evrigenis, Ioannis, Fear of Enemies and Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 126–28; Andrés Rosler, “El enemigo de la república,” in Elementos filosóficos: Del ciudadano, by Thomas Hobbes (Buenos Aires: Hydra, 2011), 42; and Christov, Before Anarchy, 73.

29 Ionut Untea, “External Authority or External Threat? Thomas Hobbes and the Politically Troubled Times of Early Modern England,” in The Representation of External Threats, ed. Eberhard Crailsheim and María Dolores Elizalde (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 230, regards the pope's intromissions and the creation of an internal Catholic enemy in this way.

30 As Lechner, Silviya, Hobbesian Internationalism: Anarchy, Authority and the Fate of Political Philosophy (Cham: Springer, 2019), 49–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, asserts: “Hobbes connects the premise of diffidence to a premise of incomplete knowledge. . . . Prior to interaction the identity of agents remains opaque.”

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32 Jakonen, Multitude, 96.

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35 There is no consensus on this issue. Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, 116, distinguishes “dominators,” or those “who possess . . . the desire of power over other people,” from “moderates,” whose “considerations of safety [are] their primary motives.” Pärtel Piirimäe, “The Explanation of Conflict in Hobbes's Leviathan,” TRAMES 10 (60/55) (2006): 7, and Ioannis Evrigenis, “The State of Nature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes, ed. Kinch Hoekstra and Aloysius Martinich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 230, understate this distinction.

36 Gauthier, Logic of Leviathan, 16.

37 This view was held to one extent or another by Hampton, Jean, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 38–39Google Scholar; Oakeshott, Michael, Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 127–28Google Scholar; Thivet, Delphine, “Thomas Hobbes: A Philosopher of War or Peace?,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16, no. 4 (2008): 714CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cooper, Julie, “Vainglory, Modesty, and Political Agency in the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes,” Review of Politics 72, no. 2 (2010): 248CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Thomas Hobbes, De Homine, in Opera Philosophica Quae Latine Scripsit, ed. William Molesworth, vol. 2 (London: Bohn, 1849), 11.6, 98. Henceforth DH.

39 On reputation as a positional good, see Barbara Carnevali, “Glory: La lutte pour la réputation dans le modèle hobbesien,” Communications, no. 93 (2013) : 54.

40 Slomp, Political Philosophy of Glory, 52, maintains that “for Hobbes, as for Thucydides, ambition and pride characterise not only the behaviour of single individuals, but also the actions of entire peoples and nations.”

41 Hobbes, Thomas, Behemoth, ed. Seaward, Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 253Google Scholar. Henceforth B.

42 As explained by Gerald Gaus, “Hobbes's Idea of Public Judgment: A Social Coordination Analysis,” http://www.gaus.biz/Gaus-HobbesJudgment.pdf, 18, in the context of a battle, the commander in chief should refrain from “making judgments that the subordinates consider fantastic.”

43 The concept of popularity is pejorative in the Elements (EL, 9.7, 175–76) and De Cive (DCv, 13.13, 149), where it is associated with subjects who, on account of their popularity, can form factions and rebel against the sovereign power.