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Why Ought One Obey God? Reflections on Hobbes and Locke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Gauthier
David Gauthier*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.

These words, from Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration, ring unconvincingly in our ears. They affirm that the bonds of human society hold only those who believe in God. This affirmation breaks into two propositions:

  • (i) the bonds of human society are promises, covenants, and oaths;

  • (ii) promises, covenants, and oaths hold only those who believe in God.

Much might be said about the first proposition, but not here. Whether it rings unconvincingly in our ears, surely the second does, and it is this which I shall address. The suppos1t1on that moral conventions depend on religious belief has become alien to our way of thinking. Modern moral philosophers do not meet it with vigorous denials or refutations; usually they ignore it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 425 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1977

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References

* An earlier draft of this paper was read to the Canadian Philosophical Association. I am grateful for comments received on that occasion.

1 The first proposition suggests a rather literal version of social contractarianism. Substituting hypothetical contractarianism, as defended by John Rawls, or as dissected in several of my recent papers, would not affect Locke's affirmation.

2 The phrase “modern moral philosophers” is intended to evoke Anscombe, G.E.M.'s paper, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy 33(1958), pp. 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Anscombe's discussion of the “law conception of ethics” and her suggestion that the status of the notion of “obligation” in recent moral thought is “the interesting one of the survival of a concept outside the framework of thought that made it a really intelligible one” are directly relevant to the underlying argument of the present enquiry .

3 Macpherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes toLocke, Oxford, 1967,Google Scholar is of course the classic statement of this view of Locke. According to Macpherson, Locke's achievement is that “he provides a positive moral basis for capitalist society” (p. 221). It is interesting to find that Macpherson is alive to complaints about ahistorical interpletations of Locke; he objects on this ground to those who read “modern liberal-democratic beliefs“ back into Locke.

4 Cox, Richard H. Locke on War and Peace, Oxford, 1960,Google Scholar offers the most extended statement of this view; see especially pp. 18–28,136-147. He is following in the footsteps of Strauss, Leo. See Natural Right and History, Chicago, 1953;Google Scholar a typical statement is: “It is on the basis of Hobbes's view of the law of nature that Locke opposes Hobbes's conclusions” (p. 231).

5 Locke MS., quoted by Dunn, John The Political Thought of john Locke, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 218–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Quotations from Hobbes's Leviathan are indicated by “L”, followed by the chapter number.

7 Warrender, Howard The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation, Oxford, 1957, p. 99.Google Scholar

8 Baier, Kurt The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics, Ithaca, 1956, pp. 306–315.Google Scholar

9 Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, 1974, p. 9.Google Scholar

10 Modern moral philosophers do not actually say that this is what they want. But I believe that it is illuminating to read them from this assumption. John Rawls erects the most impressive edifice.

11 Quotations from Locke's Essay concerning Human Understandingare indicated by “E”, followed by the book, chapter, and paragraph numbers.

12 Quotations from Locke's Two Treatises of Government are indicated by “1T” or “2T”, followed by the section number.

13 Essays on the Law of Nature VI: “Are men bound by the law of nature? Yes” The crux of Locke's argument is in this passage:

… we say that the law of nature is binding on all men primarily and of itself and by its intrinsic force, and we shall endeavour to prove this by the following arguments:

(1) Because this law contains all that is necessary to make a law binding. For God, the author of this law, has willed it to be the rule of our moral life, and He has made it sufficiently known, so that anyone can understand it who is willing to apply diligent study and to direct his mind to the knowledge of it. The result is that, since nothing else is required to impose an obligation but the authority and rightful power of the one who commands and the disclosure of his will, no one can doubt that the law of nature is binding on men.

For, in the first place, since God is supreme over everything and has such authority and power over us as we cannot exercise over ourselves, and since we owe our body, soul, and life?whatever we are, whatever we have, and even whatever we can be? to Him and to Him alone, it is proper that we should live according to the precept of His will. God has created us out of nothing and, if He pleases, will reduce us again to nothing: we are, therefore, subject to Him in perfect justice and by utmost necessity.

In the second place, this law is the will of this omnipotent lawmaker, known to us by the light and principles of nature; the knowledge of it can be concealed from no one unless he loves blindness and darkness and casts off nature in order that he may avoid his duty.

(Translated from the Latin by Leyden, Wolfgang von John Locke: Essays on the Law of Nature, Oxford, 1954, pp. 187, 189.Google Scholar)

14 Hobbes, De Corpore Politico, I.5.1.

15 Ibid., 1.5.12.

16 The Logic of Leviathan, Oxford, 1969, pp. 188–199.

17 Hobbes, De Cive, XV.7.

18 Essays on the Law of Nature I. Von Leyden, op. cit., p. 121.

19 Essays on the Law of Nature VIII: “Is every man's own interest the basis of the law of nature? No“

20 The Prisoner's Dilemma is by now well established in philosophical literature. For a very brief account, see my paper “Reason and Maximization”, this journal 4 (1975), p. 422.

21 “Morality and Advantage”, Philosophical Review 76(1967), pp. 461–464,466-470.

22 Hobbes is thus led to his discussion of “the Foole” (l. 15). See my account in The Logic of Leviathan, pp. 61–62, 76-98.

23 The most developed attack on the acceptablility of internal reasons is offered by Nagel, Thomas The Possibility of Altruism,Oxford, 1970.Google Scholar My terminology differs from Nagel's, but I think that my internal reasons are a subset of the reasons he classifies as subjective. Opposed to subjective reasons are objective ones, which, he concludes after an intricate argument, are :'the only acceptable reasons” (p. 96).

24 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b25ff.

25 Cf. Plato, Republic, 441e-442b.

26 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated Paton, H.J. The Moral Law, London, 1948, p. 80.Google Scholar

27 See Cox,Locke on War and Peace, pp. 164–171, 184-189, for an opposed interpretation of Locke, which would make pre-emptive violence justifiable for him as for Hobbes.