Thomas Hobbes and the Ethics of Freedom
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 54 (5):541 - 563 (2011)
Abstract
Abstract Freedom in the sense of free will is a multiway power to do any one of a number of things, leaving it up to us which one of a range of options by way of action we perform. What are the ethical implications of our possession of such a power? The paper examines the pre-Hobbesian scholastic view of writers such as Peter Lombard and Francisco Suárez: freedom as a multiway power is linked to the right to liberty understood as a right to exercise that power, and to liberation as a desirable goal involving the perfection of that power. Freedom as a power, liberty as a right, and liberation as a desirable goal, are all linked within this scholastic view to a distinctive theory of law as constituting, in its primary form of natural law, the normative recognition of human freedom. Hobbes's denial of the very existence of freedom as a power led him to a radical revision both of the theory of law and of the relation of law to liberty. Law and liberty were no longer harmonious phenomena, but were left in essential conflict. One legacy of Hobbes is the attempt to base a theory of law and liberty not on freedom as a multiway power, but on rationality. Instead of an ethics of freedom, we have an ethics of reason as involving autonomy. The paper expresses some scepticism about the prospects for such an appeal to reason as a replacement for multiway freedomAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1080/0020174x.2011.608886
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Citations of this work
Anne Conway and Henry More on Freedom.Jonathan Head - 2019 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (5):631-648.
The Hopefull Leviathan: Hope, Deliberation and the Commonwealth.Christopher Bobier - 2021 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (3):455-480.
Kant on the spontaneous power of the mind.John J. Callanan - 2017 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (3):565-588.
Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes. [REVIEW]James Griffith - 2013 - Bulletin Hobbes, Archives de Philosophie 25:354-355.
References found in this work
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.John Locke - 1689 - London, England: Oxford University Press.
Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars.John McDowell - 2009 - Harvard University Press.
An Essay concerning human understanding.J. E. Creighton - 1895 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 39 (2):335-339.