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University of Arkansas Press
Hobbes on 'Good'
Author(s): MARTIN A. BERTMAN
Source: The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 2 (SUMMER, 1975), pp. 59-74
Published by: University of Arkansas Press
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Hobbes on 'Good'
MARTIN A. BERTMAN
SUNY at Potsdam
Thou didst create night and I made the lamp,

Thou didst create clay and I made the cup,
Thou didst create the deserts, mountains
and forests,
I produced the orchards, gardens, and groves;
It is I who turned stone into a mirror,
And it is I who turn poison into an antidote.
-Mohammed Iqbal
This paper intends to show the centrality of Hobbes's complex notion
of good for his claim to be the founder of a science of politics. As is the
way with difficult philosophical notions, Hobbes's view of good has
been criticized from standpoints that do not consider its full complex-
ity. Hobbes's conception must be discussed, if it is discussed fairly, by
giving attentive consideration to his theory of science and to his theory
of language.
First, a brief exegesis of Hobbes's notion of good is provided. F. C.
McNeilly's criticism that Hobbes's views on politics has little relation-
ship to his materialism will be considered. Disagreeing with McNeilly's
argument, my reasons for holding that Hobbes's materialism and,
more generally, his view of science, is most important for understand-
ing his politics will be elaborated. Next, Richard Peters' ordinary
language criticism of Hobbes's use of moral language is considered.
My disagreement with Peters is elaborated by showing what Hobbes
considered the proper scientific use of moral language. Finally, the
implications of Hobbes's position are suggested through sketching the
kind of humanism that I believe him to hold.
I.
For Hobbes, the proper signification of 'gooď differs when it is

considered within the context of prudence or experience and when it
is considered within the context of a science of politics. The touch-
stone of the notion, in both cases, is the satisfaction of desires (or the
59
most pressing desire); however, the condition of prudential actions,
either in a state of nature or in matters not regulated by law in the
commonwealth, is unencumbered by moral considerations of obliga-
tion and justice.
Where the civil laws speak the moral signification of 'good' has been
decided. For the realm of action, it is synonymous with 'justice/ Justice
can only exist within the state. The civil laws which express it thereby
mark the obligations of a citizenry. Only by this condition do public
standards of evaluation exist to mark just behavior. Where a private
standard of judgment exists- in the state of nature and in matters not
regulated by law in civil society- men use 'good' merely in terms of
their own, often opposing, interests. Such a signification of the term is,
not moral (but we may call it normative ) .
Although the primary moral signification of 'good' is synonymous
with 'justice', there is a secondary moral signification.1 It relates not to
action but to the intention for peace; it is not synonymous with
'justice'. A man who desires peace, even when he cannot act on the
desire, is properly called a good man. He is led, whenever possible, to
foster and maintain the commonwealth. Unlike the state of nature, the
civil condition secures the citizen a respite from "the war of everyone
against everyone." Protected by the sovereign's sword, here he can act
morally for peace.
Because Hobbes takes men to be antisocial, i.e., to have desires
which, if all were fulfilled, per impossible , would not bring peace, it is
not the secondary, moral significance of 'good' but the normative sig-
nificance that is applicable to the creating of civil government. It is in
the interest of an individual to emerge from the terrifying condition of
the state of nature, to give up liberty and take on its opposite, the yoke
of obligation. This is a prudential choice bringing men to civil society
which Hobbes hopes to strengthen and enlighten by a science of poli-
tics. To choose to return to the state of nature is to choose the condition
of anarchy; when a number of persons turn against the sovereign, the
only standard for law, this is called revolution.
Confusedly, it has been objected that Hobbes's "laws of nature"
speak against my thesis, the view that he considered just or moral ac-
tions to be only performable in civil society. Recently, Howard War-
render,2 extending and refurbishing a thesis published by A. E. Taylor,3
has convinced many students of Hobbes that "natural law" suggests
"the obligation of the citizen to obey the civil law is a type of obligation
that is essentially independent of the fi at of the civil sovereign. This
view implies . . . men have moral obligations in Hobbes' State of
Nature."4
60
Warrender writes "civil sovereign" in order to distinguish "that
mortal God" from the immortal one who has created the laws of
nature. This is misleading; Hobbes says of the laws of nature that they
are more properly called "theorems of nature," because (with the
exception of the ancient children of Israel) men have not covenanted
with God. These theorems of nature, then, are properly taken to ex-
press the fact, granted Hobbes's harsh view of human nature, that it is
in an individual's interest to seek the peace only obtainable in civil
society. This is a normative matter, not a moral one, a preference, not
an obligation. Only when men contract to have a civil sovereign does
the charity- not the duty, per impossible- oí acting for peace in a state
of nature become an obligation under the direction of the sovereign's
will.
To elaborate the point, consider the following question: "Can men,
whether it be from honor or charity or something else, act justly or
morally in a state of nature?" Hobbes's answer:
To this war of every man, against every man, this also is consequent;
that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice
and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common
power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud,
are in war the two cardinal virtues.5
This answer, emphasizing the logic of the term 'peace' and its opposite
term 'war, makes 'justice' inapplicable to acts in a state of nature.
Whether from a charitable or an honorable disposition, the desire for
peace does not imply the ability to achieve peace. To desire peace in the
state of nature, a condition of war, does not mean that acts done from
this peaceful intention have the force or that they can be in fact con-
sidered as if men were already in the condition of peace, i.e., in the
commonwealth. Teace' simply means the condition where just actions
are possible; 'war' means the opposite condition, where just acts are
not possible.
Experience and logic together give force to the argument: the indi-
vidual who attempts to act in conformity to the conditions of peace,
while in the state of nature, acts suicidally or, at the least, against his
interests, for there can be no realistic expectation of similar treatment
from others. Because peace is for the very sake of self-preservation, and
our interests demand life, such an individual acts absurdly. Hobbes
might be criticized for holding that the state of nature is a condition of
war, but this is a different matter. Hobbes's logic is correct and, if we
do accept the state of nature to be a condition of war and that
'commonwealth' signifies the opposite condition, then the argument is
61
incisive. Consequently, the laws of nature are properly to be considered
prudential and not moral guides until they are expressed in the par-
ticulars of the civil law; i.e., they only exist for moral action through
and in conformity with the laws promulgated by the civil sovereign.
Confusion arises because of the complexity of the normative use of
'good- "The common name for all things desired, in so far as they are
desired, is good"- and its basis in private judgment. With the excep-
tion of self-preservation, the very reason of the contract, it also effec-
tively rests with the sovereign whose will, the public standard of the
civil law, replaces the private will. The going from nature to civil
society, by art for the sake of nature, simultaneously expresses the
desire for self-preservation and creates the condition necessary for it,
the commonwealth. In civil society, the normative (private) good and
the moral (public) good coincide, as much as is possible.
II.
The normative signification of 'good' relates to Hobbes's physical

and psychological theories. His materialistic ontology, in which these
theories are embedded, provides force and completion to the moral
signification, to his discussion of the political dimension. To many
recent writers, however, "Hobbes' materialism is thought a very dis-
pensable part of his argument."6 F. C. McNeilly, in defending this
thesis, considers the following passage in Hobbes:
And because the constitution of a man's body is in constant muta-

tion, it is impossible that all the same things should always cause in
him the same appetites, and aversions: much less can all men con-
sent, in the desire of almost any one and the same object. But what-
ever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he
for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion,
evil ; and of his contempt vile and inconsiderable . For these words of
good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used in relation to the person
that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor
any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of
the objects themselves; but from the person of the man, where there
is no commonwealth; or in a commonwealth, from the person that
representeth it
McNeilly,8 questioning it on three counts, consider

inappropriate physical arguments about the nature of t
preceding Hobbes's comments on good and evil: ( i )
is correct in believing that the nature of man's desires
bodily factors, the 'continual mutation' of his body
62
sarily involve any mutation in his desires . . . the functioning of the
body." (2) "It is an unnecessary argument, because quite indepen-
dently of any materialistic hypothesis one might expect that as a
person lives through different situations and came to acquire and
develop new beliefs, his pattern of desires would change also and not
always resemble those of other people whose experience is different."
(3) "When Hobbes later discusses the point in more detail he men-
tions a number of sources of the differences in desires and evaluations,
and specifies 'different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men', but
he does not as much as mention bodily mutation."
McNeilly is insensitive to the important distinction Hobbes makes
between passions and their objects. In the Introduction to the Levia-
than, Hobbes asks the sovereign to "read mankind in himself, not this
or that particular man." The introspective method discovers what
passions there are and their nature, it does not discover, per impossible ,
all desires, the objects of the passions. McNeilly's first consideration
conflates the distinction. Hobbes refers to the objects of desire chang-
ing with the mutation of the body- as they obviously do, if we con-
sider man from infancy to old age- but not the function or structure
of the passions. (It may be noted, however, that an empirical assump-
tion by Hobbes, which is questionable, although McNeilly does not
raise it, is that the differences between one human body and another
do not change the nature of the passions.) Hobbes's introspective
method rests on this assumption; corroboratively, he supplies a defense
of this assumption or, perhaps better, hypothesis, on evidence from
molar behavior; e.g., the passion of fear greatly guides behavior for
even in the commonwealth men lock their chests.
McNeilly's second criticism also misfires. He contends that the
materialistic explanation is merely an additional and unnecessary argu-
ment for making the point that there are different desires among men.
Even if it is an additional argument that does not speak against it. If
McNeilly takes unnecessary argument merely in this sense, he has made
a trivial point. But, if he takes it that a materialistic explanation has no
force or that it is unnecessary for Hobbes's general philosophical posi-
tion, he is simply wrong. Hobbes finds it necessary to explain why, de-
spite differences of experience and, consequently, different objects of
desire, the introspective method provides knowledge of the passions of
all mankind. Hobbes, a mechanistic philosopher, demands a mechan-
istic basis for the reliability of his introspective method, as well as for
other matters, e.g., the employment and function of language. In other
words, the mechanistic explanation is basal and the thrust is toward
system. It is hard to overlook this thrust, as McNeilly seems to have
63
done, no matter how dissatisfied one may be with Hobbes's specific
explanations.
McNeilly's third objection is a somewhat trivial extension of his
second and, also, it conflates Hobbes's distinction between the pas-
sions and the objects of the passions. As mentioned, the passions are
always the same, although the objects of the passions, say of ambition,
changes with education, custom, circumstance, and so on. It is precisely
in an examination of the passions that Hobbes's physiological theory
gives force to the normative characterization of 'gooď. Although intro-
spection provides sufficiently practicable knowledge of the passions,
and may be the only as well as the best method to obtain such knowl-
edge, the materialism of Hobbes's physiological and physical theories
completes the introspective knowledge by putting it in a context of
natural processes.
Hobbes does not distinguish between philosophy and science.
Whichever word we use, the signification is of a methodical, that is,
rational process dealing with the generation of a subject matter from
definitions or "primary propositions." Hobbes provides three divisions
of generated subject matters: geometry, natural philosophy, and civil
philosophy. All deal with bodies in motion, the central notion of his
mechanism, but, as we can readily understand, what is considered to be
body and motion changes radically with the subject matter. Of geome-
try, Hobbes says, "it is the only science that hath pleased God hitherto
to bestow on mankind."9 He claims to have founded a science of
politics or "civil philosophy" on the same sure footing as geometry
because it is also constructed, although it deals with different motions,
by definitions derived from facts of human nature, discovered by intro-
spection. On the other hand, natural philosophy or physics, which
includes physiology, whose causes cannot be ascertained solely by our
own power, must be posited by a conjecture from externally observed
effects or appearances.
Consequently, although the nature of our passions, known through
introspection, are sufficient for the primary propositions of civil
philosophy, knowledge of man as a physical system is the task of
physiological physics. In contradistinction to McNeilly, this enterprise
completes an understanding of man and performs the important
epistemic task of corroborating knowledge of the passions from
introspection.
Hobbes's physiological theory underscores the private character of
the normative significance of the term 'gooď. The physiological theory
considers the "natural man": "Natural man is man considered as if he
were simply an animal."10 The heart is the seat of vital motion. When
64
the individual's vital motion is enhanced he feels pleasure. When it is
impeded, he feels pain. The objects associated with feelings of pleasure
and pain are called 'good' and 'bad' respectively. Continued and en-
chanced vital motion or well being is both the necessary and sufficient
condition for action or, as Hobbes would say, cause for action. Vital
motion is the basis of voluntary motion. Hobbes considers voluntary
motion a species of vital motion. An external object triggers a pleasur-
able or a painful sensation and sets into effect an endeavor or motion
outward in response to the sensation. The voluntary motion reacts
toward the stimulus with the aim of continuing pleasure or of shorten-
ing pain. Those voluntary actions that are the result of deliberation are
the more complex manifestations of a pleasure-seeking principle. Con-
trary endeavors or motions enter into the organism's reaction to stimuli:
the motions of the mind may work against one another, "phantasms"
of past experience may conflict with present desires and their future
consequences.
These small beginnings of motion, within the body of man, before

they begin in walking, speaking, striking, and other visible actions,
are commonly called ENDEAVOUR. This endeavour, when it is
toward something which causes it, is called APPETITE, or
DESIRE
generally called AVERSION.11
Man as a "natural body" is considered to measure

bad subjectively or privately. His own organic need
for normative, although not moral language: "The
motion of the blood, perpetually circulating in vein
The external object enhancing this motion is called
individuals, because of their physical structure or stag
have different repertoires of behavior. The human
limited repertoire, whereas the mature human be
extended by memory and experience. It is by "phantas
ing past "experiments," that he imagines future con
this process anticipates possible pleasure and pain, t
tive consideration for action, we need the term 'd
per se, are immediate reactions of the organism, th
havior of the embryo. Desire for the desirable, so to s
guides the mature man. The word 'desirable' is esp
for anticipated pleasure. It is most appropriate for
whose desires work through the distances of time
of possible circumstances. This consideration, in co
McNeilly's view, links Hobbes's physiological expl
65
psychology with his ethics and politics; it concludes that man as a
"natural body" must bring the achievement of his desires into the
sphere of that condition he calls the "body politic."
For man is not just a natural body , but also a part of the state, or [as
I put it] of the body politic ; for that reason he had to be considered
as both man and citizen, that is, the first principles of physics had to
be conjoined with those of politics, the most difficult with the
easiest.13
Hobbes can treat the normative as the basis for the moral, but sep-
arate from it, by rejecting the traditional understanding of the will as a
peculiarly rational appetite. He views it as appetite without any quali-
fication: " voluntas ipsa est appetitus ." The human will, in this respect,
is on a par with that of other animals. As to its result, although not in
its function, the reasonable can be identified with an appropriate pro-
cess of deliberation where "will is the last appetite in deliberating."14
Appetite has been defined in mechanistic terms: recall, "the endeavour
or internal beginning of animal motion, which when the object de-
lighteth, is called APPETITE." An impulsion of nature "like a stone
falling downwards," makes a human being seek self-preservation; also,
pleasure.
This, of course, does not preclude the possibility of a breakdown in
the individual's apparatus for selecting, due either to ignorance or to
error. A dysfunction of the process of deliberation means a choice of
the apparent good rather than the real good. The "rational will" or
proper deliberation is, then, not different from any animal's will in
respect to liberty: for 'liberty' merely signifies the capacity to obtain
what one desires and not necessarily its human qualification, the
desirable. The application of the 'rational' to 'will' indicates that de-
liberation has proceeded in respect to a certain passional structure and
kinds of experience and knowledge had only by human beings. Conse-
quently, action resulting from "rational will" or deliberation must
enhance vital motion, granted the well functioning of the process: its
freedom from ignorance and physical derangement.15
III.
A popular contemporary criticism of Hobbes's 'good' by Richard

Peters objects to Hobbes's slighting ordinary language usage: "Hobbes'
analysis omits the normative force of the term. To say that peace is
good implies not just that it has qualities in virtue of which it is desired;
it is to insist that it has qualities in virtue of which it ought to be de-
sired and promoted. 'Gooď has an impersonal commendatory force
66
about it which is lacking in words like 'nice' and 'attractive', that are
used for purely private preferences."16
Against Peters' view, that "the commendatory attitude of the
speaker is part of the analysis of 'good', not his actual desires" is
Hobbes's insistence that 'good' refers only to the object of desire. The
mechanistically oriented physiological considerations which Hobbes
provides compete with Peters' approach. For Hobbes, physiology is an
aspect of physics. The normative use of 'good' in physiological theory
is different, although basic to the moral signification applicable in the
commonwealth.
Hobbes is able to use 'good' within the context of physiological
theory, e.g., "It is good for each individual to preserve itself." This is
a normative statement; yet, it lacks moral force or commendatory in-
tention. Contrary to Peters, the is-ought distinction is not in force in
this normative, although nonmoral sense of 'good', since its significance
in a statement about a specific individual rests on an accounting of his
functioning qua normative rendition. Considering man, outside of his
relation to the conditions of the state, we merely have a physiological
explanation of behavior that accounts not only for a particular indi-
vidual's desires but, also, for what is desirable. Normatively, as far as
the functioning of man for physiological theory, the is-ought cannot
be dirempted, the ought is not a moral ought; it is the ideal model of
physiological functioning.
Peters' au courant and pedestrian objection from ordinary language
misses the most subtle move in Hobbes's position. The commendatory
force of the name exists, but only when 'good' is used within the con-
text of public objectification and authorization of the civil laws. The
civil laws are the public objectification of the sovereign's desires; the
state provides the condition where it is possible for the private desires
of an individual to be transformed into a public standard for action.
This is 'good' signifying just acts and extended, less strictly, to acts of
charity, which, although not formally determined by the civil law,
nevertheless are encouraged by the condition of civil laws. Excepting
the abstract use of 'good' for theoretical discussions, the moral use of
'good' replaces the relativism and subjectivity of private judgment with
a public credential. The law-ordered good of justice relates to ap-
propriate physiological functioning by aiding man to avoid the desired
when it is not desirable.
As for natural goodness and evilness, that also is but goodness and
evilness of actions; as some herbs are good because they nourish,
others evil because they poison us. . . . It is the law from whence
proceeds the difference between the moral and the natural goodness;
67
so that it is well enough said by him [Bramhall] that "moral good-
ness is the conformity of action with right reason"; and better said
than meant; for this right reason , which is the law, is no otherwise
certainly right than by our making it so by our approbation of it and
voluntary subjection to it.17
The moral good, Hobbes argues, fulfills the natural good for man.
Submission to the state provides order and limit to man's desires. With-
out these, as in the state of nature, destruction and meanness of life is
almost assured. In obedience to the state, and in acting for its preser-
vation, there is both a moral and a normative or natural good- a moral
good simply because moral goodness is only defined through the will
of the sovereign as civil law. And, there is a normative or natural good
because the preservation of the commonwealth with its great benefits
to its citizens offsets any particular harm or incommodiousness it
causes. Hobbes continues the above passage:
For the law-makers are men, and may err, and think that law, which
they make, is for the good of the people sometimes when it is not.
And yet the actions of subjects, if they be conformable to the law,
are morally good, and yet cease not to be naturally good; and the
praise of them passeth to the Author of nature, as well as any other
good whatsoever. From whence it appears what moral praise is not
from the good use of liberty, but from obedience to the laws; nor
moral dispraise from the bad use of liberty, but from disobedience to
the laws.18
Peters does not consider 'normative' in any other sense than the
ethical and, therefore, misses Hobbes's plausible descriptive use of the
term. Peters proceeds to accuse Hobbes of committing the "naturalistic
fallacy," that is, of making an ought from an is . Consider the following
example of Peters' criticism:
Hobbes' analysis omits the normative force of the term. To say that
peace is good implies not just that it has qualities in virtue of which
it is desired; it is to insist that it has qualities in virtue of which it
ought to be desired and promoted.19
Peters has not grasped Hobbes's dual signification of 'good' as norma-

tive and as moral. Peace, indeed, is an "is-consideration" or, as we have
used the term, normative; it is a condition necessary to obtain the
desirable. It is, therefore, something of an "ideal experiment" term.20
Like the central concepts of seventeenth-century physics, it suggests
the functioning of a system prior to the introduction of variables, and,
also, the central theoretical notion to which one relates variables. Of
68
course, the striving for peace, the desirable, brings men into the condi-
tion of commonwealth where moral language is legitimated.
More elaborately, the reply to Peters' accusation that Hobbes com-
mitted what Hume chastises takes the following argument: a descrip-
tive theory about human functioning, or, for that matter, of some
particular organ or, even, the behavior depending on that organ, need
not lack normative force by being factual. 'Normative' signifying a
proper function or standard is implicit in the concept of theory itself.
Without descriptive standards we cannot be scientific. Science for
Hobbes is the consequences of names and, consequently, his great care
in defining crucial terms; in other words, names must be dealt with
very carefully because they are not the result of scientific knowledge but
the cause of it. In Hobbes's theory of language, names provide the
form into which perceptions must be cast: "By the advantage of names
it is that we are capable of science, which beasts for want of them, are
not; nor man without the use of them."21 Peters has imputed a care-
lessness to Hobbes because he has read him with a more experience
oriented view of science. This is, indeed, easy to do, but inimical to
understanding the systemic cogency of Hobbes's views. Consider the
nominalistically linguistic rather than experience oriented view of
science in the following:
Science is understood as being concerned with theorems, that is,

with the truth of general propositions, that is, with the truth of con-
sequences. Indeed when one is dealing with the truth of fact it is not
properly called science , but simply knowledge 22
Hobbes's science is nominalistically oriented to language. Science

works within assigned meanings-". . . true and false are attributes of
speech, not of things; and, where there is no speech there is no truth
and no falsehood."23 Science is the process of deduction, from names
or the signification of words- The above quote is followed by,
And, therefore, when the discourse is put into speech and begins
with the definitions of words, and proceeds by the connexion of the
same into general affirmations, and of these again into syllogisms;
the end of the last sum is called the conclusion; and the thought of
the mind by it signified, is that conditional knowledge, or knowl-
edge of the consequence of words, which is commonly called
SCIENCE.24
On the one hand, all facts, internal or external events (movements

of matter) can be treated normatively, that is, all phenomenal events
can be treated scientifically; and, norms, per se, are intrinsically ex-
pressed by definitions underpinning any particular theory. Theory is
69
an "authority" for the collection of "facts/' practicable for any interest
where proper signification is possible. Normative or theoretical con-
sideration of man's moral behavior is appropriate. A physiological
theory of human functioning may surely include political behavior as
behavior within its domain of interest.
Moral language, itself, also demands a science. This is provided by
the science of politics or "civil philosophy." Civil philosophy is norma-
tive in that by the signification of names and their consequences, we
are able to describe the commonwealth and matters pertaining to it in
theoretical terms. Of the greatest importance for understanding
Hobbes is to recognize that it is not civil philosophy which applies
significance to moral terms, rather, as normative, it gives the reasons
for the applicability of such terms. It is the civil laws and the civil laws
alone that provide moral significance to 'good' and its linguistic
confreres.25
We return, then, to Peters' criticism of Hobbes's putative confusion
or conflation of a descriptive signification of 'peace' with a moral
signification. We are in a position now to understand that Hobbes, in
considering peace to be universally good and the commonwealth to be
good as the means to obtain peace, uses 'peace' in a descriptive sense.
(I have called this a normative signification, which is more precise
than "descriptive" but it is confusing to use "normative" here because
Peters, seemingly finding the term inapplicable to a description of
natural conditions or events, as I do not, taking it to have the meaning
that I give to 'moral'.) Peace, itself, is not a moral good; rather, it is the
condition in which the moral good can (and must) arise and for whose
sake the morally good is done. The commonwealth is also not a moral
good, although similarly, its existence logically demands civil laws
which, in turn, give significance to 'mine' and 'thine'- morality. The
moral good defined by a commonwealth's civil laws, although not uni-
versal for all mankind, is absolute within the state. The moral signifi-
cance of 'good' is thus not peace, the condition of civil law or common-
wealth, but the content of a commonwealth's civil laws. It is to be
noted that since the moral good follows the dictates of the civil laws,
moral action is never problematical: law cannot contradict itself or
lack clarity and, logically, remain in force.
For sin is the consequence of the natural express will, not of the
political, which is artificial.26
But when we speak of the laws , the word sin is taken in a more strict
sense, and signifies not everything done against right reason, but that
only which is blameable ; and therefore it is called malum culpae , the
70
evil of fault .... Forasmuch therefore as in so great a diversity of
censurers, what is by reason blameable is not to be measured by the
reason of one man more than another, because of the equality of
human nature; and there are no other reasons in being, but only
those of particular men and that of the city : it follows, that the city
is to determine what with reason is culpable. So as a fault , that is to
say, a sin , is that which a man does, omits, or wills, against the reason
of the city 9 that is contrary to the laws.27
Finally, politics and ethics (that is, the sciences of just and unjust ),
equity and inequity can be demonstrated a priori ; because we our-
selves make the principles- that is, the causes of justice (namely
laws and covenants)- whereby it is known what justice and equity ,
and their opposites injustice and inequity , are. For before covenants
and laws were drawn up, neither justice nor injustice, nor public
good nor public evil, was natural among men any more than it is
among beasts.28
IV.
It is the artifacted good, most conspicuously the commonwealth,

that distinguishes man from the beasts.29 Through his capacity as
homo faber can man realize the desirable, rather than the merely de-
sired. Hobbes's mechanistic world-view and also his fear-inspiring
picture of the state of nature work is in the service of a humanism. His
mature work is a deep justification of this humanism which supports
the arts and sciences and advises that human experience be elevated by
science for rational maturity.
Hobbes is not Utopian. The passions of men do not change in a state
of nature, they remain antisocial, and no education can take the place
of restraints: of negative sanctions. There is no ideal commonwealth
where some "incommodiousness" does not exist; and, given human
nature, there is no social condition where men will not seek power, act
vaingloriously, and, in ignorance of their best interest, not break the
law. Directing himself against a liberal politics, Hobbes counsels cen-
sureship in religion and in the university. He advocates centralizing all
authority in the sovereign, whose will, the civil laws, provides the signi-
fication of moral language, the morally appropriate.
For all that, Hobbes is a humanist. It is man who is the artificer of
his own morality; it is not religious or metaphysical obscurantism
which should lead mankind; instead, man's own interests, guided by
science, make for the best. Man cultivates the arts and sciences for his
enjoyment and his prosperity; he uses nature, including his own, to
protect himself and to please himself. For Hobbes, 'gooď receives, and
can only receive, an objective moral meaning in the commonwealth,
71
that is, through man's fabrication. The private, and, consequently, the
morally arbitrary condition of "natural man" is overcome through
man's natural necessity to construct the sovereign, the "artificial man,"
to which his desires and destiny is bound and because of whom justice
occurs. Homo faber is triumphant: exeundum est e statu naturae.
NOTES
i. Cf. De Homine, XIII, viii, 9: "Whence it is understood that they, who

consider men by themselves and as though they existed outside of civil society, can
have no moral science because they lack any certain standard against which virtue
and vice can be judged and defined. . . . Therefore a common standard for virtue
and vice doth not appear except in civil life; this standard cannot, for this reason,
be other than the laws of each state; for natural law, when the state is constituted
becomes part of civil law .... Although it is true that certain actions may be just
in one state, and unjust in another, nevertheless, justice (that is, not to violate the
laws) is and shall be everywhere the same. Moreover, that moral virtue, that is
different in different states, that we can truly measure by civil laws, is justice and
equity; that moral virtue which we measure purely by natural laws is only charity."
2. Howard Warrender, A Political Philosophy of Hobbes : His Theory of Obli-
gation (London: Oxford University Press, 1957) .
3. A.E. Taylor, "The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes," Philosophy 13 (1938), pp.
406-24.
4. Warrender, p. 50.
5. Leviathan, p. 83. (Oakshott edition)
6. F.C. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1968).
7. Leviathan , p. 32.
8. McNeilly, pp. 119-21.
9. Leviathan , pp. 23-24.
10. De Homine , X, 3.
11. Leviathan , p. 31. Cf. A Short Tract, Appendix A, Conci. 10: Appetite, as
a power, is a passive power in the Animal Spirits, to be moved towards the object
that moveth them."
12. English Works, I, (De Corpore), p. 407. Although lengthy, the entire
passage is important enough to quote: "But if vital motion be helped by the motion
made by sense, then the parts of the organ [the Heart] will be disposed to guide the
spirits in such manner as conduceth most to the preservation and augmentation of
the motion. And in animal motion this is the very first endeavour, and found even
in the embryo; which while it is in the womb moveth its limbs with voluntary
motion, for the avoiding of whatever troubleth it, or for the pursuing of what
pleaseth it. And this first endeavour, when it tends toward such things as are
known by experience to be pleasant, is called appetite , that is, an approaching; and
when it shuns what is troublesome, aversion, or flying from it. And little infants, at
the beginning and as soon as they are born, have appetite to very few things, as also
they avoid very few, by reason of their want of experience and memory; and there-
fore they have not so great a variety of animal motion as we see in those that are
more grown. For it is not possible, without such knowledge as is derived from
sense, that is, without experience, to know what will prove pleasant and hurtful;
only there is some place for conjecture from the looks or aspects of things. And
72
hence it is, that though they do not know what may do them good and harm, yet
sometimes they approach and sometimes retire from the same thing, as their doubt
prompts them. But afterwards, by accustoming themselves little by little, they
come to know readily what is to be pursued and what is to be avoided; and also to
have a ready use of their nerves and other organs, in the pursuing and avoiding of
good and bad."
13. De Homine, "Dedication," para. 2.
14. Leviathan , p. 38; De Homine , XI, 2. Cf. E. W., IV, p. 247: "The last
dictate of the judgment, concerning the good and the bad, that may follow on any
action, is not properly the whole cause, but the last part of it, and yet may be said
to produce the effect necessarily, in such manner as the last feather may be said to
break a horse's back when there were so many laid on before as there wanted but to
do it. . . . The will itself, and each propension of a man during his deliberation, is
as much necessitated and depends on a sufficient cause as anything else whatsoever."
15. The similarity to Aristotle is striking and interesting, since Hobbes defined
himself against the Scholastic tradition, though he was in debt to the Paduan and
Oxford Aristoteleans. Hobbes shares with Aristotle the following tenets: ( 1 ) hedon-
ism (cf. Ethics , 1104a); (2) pleasure is unimpeded activity (Cf. Ethics, VII,
passim): (3) proper choice combine reason and desire: " orektikos nous " or
"orexis dianoiatikd ' ( Ethics 1139a ff). This similarity must be qualified by a shift
in framework; at a decisive point Hobbes disagrees with Aristotle. Aristotle sayss,
"True action cannot be ascribed to any inanimate substance, nor to any animate
being except man" (Magna Mordia , I, xi, 1). Unlike Aristotle, Hobbes makes no
ultimate physical distinction between behavior and action, between animal and
man. Man, in fact, does not have the ability to act or to cause movement different
than other bodies in motion, animate and inanimate. The ability to reason, to
desire the desirable, a capacity admitted to belong solely to man, is also explained on
the basis of efficient causality. All things in the world react to forces (or stimuli)
outside themselves. Their material structures, as patient, and the external move-
ment of bodies, as agent, are inseparable for generating change of any sort: "Noth-
ing taketh beginning from itself, but from the action of some other immediate
agent without itself. . . . Therefore, when first a man hath an appetite or will to
something, to which immediately before he hath not appetite nor will, the cause
of this will, is not the will itself, but something not in his own disposing." (E. W.,
IV, p. 247)
16. Richard Peters, Hobbes (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 152.
17. E. W., V, ( Liberty , Necessity , and Chance), pp. 192-03.
18. Ibid., p. 193.
19. Peters, p. 152.
20. See my "Hobbes: Philosophy and Method," Scientia , LXVII, Vol. 108
(1973). pp- 769-80-
21. Elements, I, v, 2.
22. E. W., I, (De Corpore), p. 16.
23. Leviathan, p. 40.
24. Ibid.
25. The nominalism is carried into commonwealth by the contract that pro-
vides the sovereign with the power to act in the name or impersonate the con-
tractors, thereby, the sovereign provides the significance of moral terms (as well as
terms relating to honor since he "is the fount of honor"). Cf. E. W., I, (De
Corpore) , p. 56: ". . . names have their constitution, not from the species of things
73
but from the will and consent of men. And hence it comes to passs, that men
pronounce falsely, by their own negligence, in departing from such appelations of
things agreed upon
26. E.W., II (DeCive), p. 102.

27. Ibid., pp. 195-97.
28. De Homine, X, v.
29. Cf. Raymond Polin, "Force and Its Political Use in Hobbes," Philosophical
Forum, 18 (1972), 284: "Alone among all living creatures, man can use nature
and simultaneously its laws and necessities in order to satisfy his desires. And he
can use his natural mechanism with cunning or clumsiness, according to calcula-
tions which may be correct or incorrect. Man is even constrained to use nature; he
cannot help not using nature and limit himself, like an animal, to merely following
nature's dictates."
74

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University of Arkansas Press

Thou didst create night and I made the lamp,

For Hobbes, the proper signification of 'gooď differs when it is

The normative signification of 'good' relates to Hobbes's physical

And because the constitution of a man's body is in constant muta-

McNeilly,8 questioning it on three counts, consider

These small beginnings of motion, within the body of man, before

generally called AVERSION.11

Man as a "natural body" is considered to measure

A popular contemporary criticism of Hobbes's 'good' by Richard

Peters has not grasped Hobbes's dual signification of 'good' as norma-

Science is understood as being concerned with theorems, that is,

Hobbes's science is nominalistically oriented to language. Science

On the one hand, all facts, internal or external events (movements

It is the artifacted good, most conspicuously the commonwealth,

i. Cf. De Homine, XIII, viii, 9: "Whence it is understood that they, who

26. E.W., II (DeCive), p. 102.

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