Obligation and Advantage in Hobbes' Leviathan
- Obligation and Advantage in Hobbes' Leviathan1
In this essay, I examine two claims Hobbes makes about obligation in Leviathan:
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1. that obligation and 'prudence' (or advantage) are conceptually separate;
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2. that fulfilling one's obligations is to one's advantage.
My thesis is that Hobbes seeks to reconcile these apparently conflicting claims by arguing that obligation and advantage are empirically identical. He does so, I hold (in contrast to many of his interpreters), without 'reducing' obligation to advantage. That is, he does not hold that people should only keep covenants if doing so is in their self-interest.
In section I, I analyse the temporal structure of covenants and distinguish the decision to enter (or not to enter) a covenant from the decision to break or keep a covenant one has already entered. In section II, I examine Hobbes' fool. Hobbes tries to refute the fool by putting [End Page 433] him right about that which conduces to his 'conservation, and contentment.' But Hobbes' argument does not bring out the true difference between Hobbes and the fool: obligations, Hobbes holds, are created by the words of contracting but the fool does not accept the obligatory force of words. Hobbes' reply to the fool raises the question whether Hobbes thinks that an individual can be obliged to perform a deed which is not to her advantage. In answering this question, I distinguish two types of covenant. The first consists of those which Hobbes describes as 'alwayes voyd' which I analyse in section III. These are covenants the execution of which would be foreseeably ruinous to the covenantor. The second type of covenant involves deeds which, at the time of covenanting, the individual expects to be to her advantage. Of this latter type of covenant, the following question arises: If, because of unforeseen circumstances at the time of covenanting, executing a covenant would transpire to be disadvantageous to the covenantor, would Hobbes nevertheless hold individuals to be obliged to perform the deed in question? In section IV, I tentatively suggest that his answer would be 'yes.' I write 'tentatively' because Hobbes does not discuss such an example. I explain why this might be in section V, in which I also ask whether Hobbes addresses 'silent fools,' i.e. those who break covenants in the hope of not being detected. Although he may be held to address silent fools, Hobbes does not offer a convincing argument against their maxim of action.
I To Enter or not to Enter: Covenants and Obligation
Hobbes suggests that obligations are self-imposed: 'there being no Obligation on any man, which ariseth not from some Act of his own.'2 Yet he discusses obligations which do not answer to this description: he holds that 'benefits oblige' without indicating that he who receives benefit has obliged himself to give anything in return (Lev XI, 162 [48]);3 and certain 'natural obligations' do not arise from 'agreement' and are therefore [End Page 434] not self-imposed.4 Murphy describes such obligations as 'deviant' relative to self-imposed obligations and, given the emphasis which Hobbes gives self-imposed obligation, it is on these which I focus.5 One type of self-imposed obligation is the covenant.
Covenants will seldom be made in the condition of nature:6 'If a Covenant be made, wherein neither of the parties performe presently, but trust one another; in the condition of meer nature … upon any reasonable suspition, it is Voyd: … For he that performeth first, has no assurance the other will performe after' (Lev XIV, 196 [68]). If a covenant is to be made void, the fear of person A, who is to perform first, that B will not perform, must arise after they make the covenant; if the suspicion were present before covenanting, it should suffice to prevent A from entering the covenant (Lev XIV, 196-7 [68]). The following 'time-line' depicts the situation: the parties to the covenant, A and B, enter the covenant at time t0; A is to perform his deed at time t2, B hers at t3; at time t1, A receives a sign which, he thinks, indicates that B will...
