[1]
Michael Oakeshott, May 24
th
, 1963Political Theory, 29.6, 834-
36, 2001. “Letter on Hobbes.”
These are reflections offered on an inquiry made concerning material found in Oakeshott’s
Rationalism in Politics and other Essays.
1.
Deatha.
I take it we agree that
death itself is not the significant thing in Hobbes’s argument.
Each of us has certain expectations about remaining alive and an untimely death (onebefore the normal span of life is complete) is one that human beings are naturallyaverse from, but that is not the real point.The point is being killed: or at any rate that is where we begin.It is not being killed in any manner (struck by lightning or buried in an earthquake); itis only being killed by someone else. Why is it this and not other ways of being killedthat are relevant? What does being killed by someone else signify?It signifies failure in the race for precedence which constitutes human life
—
failure,not in competition with the natural world, but in competition with other humanbeings. This I take to be the central point; and this is what is meant by shamefuldeath. To be killed by someone else is shameful or dishonorable because it signifiesthat inferiority vis-à-vis other people which is the center of all human
aversion
.In other words, desire is directed, not toward survival, but towards being
first
(andthus being honored and meriting honor); and aversion is directed towards beingdishonored. This is what it is to be human rather than animal.Thus, being killed by another is the limiting case. There are many conditions short of this to which one may be averse
—indeed, all conditions in which one’s inferiority is
demonstrated and one suffers the dishonor which is the consequence of inferiority
—
but death is, so to speak, the paradigm case.b.
All of this needs modification. For what one wishes to avoid is not merely beingkilled by another, or being in some lesser way dishonored or shamed in humanintercourse, but
fear
of this condition. What one wishes to reach is a condition inwhich one no longer has even to fear being dishonored. This is a very large demand;it is the demand for a settled condition of life in which dishonor is unlikely, sounlikely that it may cease to be a disturbing consideration. On my reading of it, thisentails a condition of life in which the characteristic of being a race for precedence is,if not abolished, then very greatly reduced. The
civitas
is this condition.2.
FearFear is a passion. So long as it remains a passion it may be the cause of all sorts of conduct which may or may not promote peace. If, in competition with others, I am fearfulof being worsted I may retreat into a world of vainglory in which I have wonderfuldreams of being top-dog which satisfy me so long as they last. These, no doubt, willcontribute to peace, though they will not give me any notable protection. On the otherhand, fear of being worsted may lead me to murder.As I see it, fear (that is fear of being worsted, and perhaps killed) becomes a notablecontributor to peace when, by some subtle transformation which Hobbes does not explain
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