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THE GOD OF THOMAS HOBBES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2008

ALAN CROMARTIE
ALAN CROMARTIE*
Affiliation:
University of Reading
*
School of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AA[email protected]
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Abstract

Hobbes seems to have believed in ‘God’; he certainly disapproved of most ‘religion’, including virtually all forms of Christianity. This article disentangles the link between his ‘God’ and his ‘religion’; and in so doing illuminates what Stuart writers meant by ‘atheism’. Hobbes agreed with Sir Francis Bacon that ‘atheism’ was typically caused by bad religion (that is, by ‘superstitions’ designed to serve the interests of the clergy). The Hobbesian theory of language rules out the possibility of proving God's existence, but Hobbes seems to have believed in a Designer to whom a prudent man would offer worship. He also thought that commonwealths require revealed ‘religions’, which are shared systems of belief that rest on ‘faith’ in those who first proclaim them. Religions decay when ‘faith’ is undermined by the misconduct of ‘unpleasing priests’, especially if they enjoin ‘belief of contradictories’. Leviathan is anti-atheistic in seeking to undermine priestcraft and eliminate such flaws by reinterpretation of the Bible. Hobbes probably lacked ‘faith’. But he defended liturgy and ceremony even in the circumstances of the early 1650s; the religion that he favoured was a de-clericalized Anglicanism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 2008 , pp. 857 - 879
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Thomas Hobbes, Eight books of the Peloponnesian War written by Thucydides son of Olorus (London, 1629), sig. av.

2 David Laing, ed., The letters and journals of Robert Baillie A.M (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1841), ii, p. 388.

3 Pritchard, Alan, ‘The last days of Hobbes: evidence of the Wood manuscripts’, Bodleian Library Record, 10 (1980), p. 186Google Scholar. Joyner was a servant of Queen Henrietta Maria and subsequently of her adviser Walter Montagu (Oxford dictionary of national biography, s.v. ‘Joyner’); unfortunately, we do not know the date he first met Hobbes.

4 Thomas Hobbes, Seven philosophical problems and two propositions of geometry: with an apology for himself and his writings (London, 1682), sig. a3v. The Latin version committed to print is substantially the same: ‘Qualis autem eram in ipso mortis pene articulo, testem cito Reverendissimum virum Episcopum Dunelmensem’ (Problemata physica (London, 1662), sig. a8).

5 ‘De Potestate Ecclesiae Romanae peccata remittendi aliquantisper disseruit; cui ille, Mi Pater (inquit) haec omnia iamdudum mecum disputavi. Eadem disputare nunc molestum erit. Habes, quae dicas, amoeniora. Quando vidisti Gassendum? Quibus auditis, Mersennus Sermonem ad alia transtuli. Paucis post diebus accessit ad illum Dr Johannes Cosinus Episcopus (post) Dunelmensis, obtulitque se illi comprecatorem ad Deum. Cui ille cum gratias reddidisset, Ita (inquit) si precibus praeiveris, juxta ritum Ecclesiae nostrae. Magnum hoc erga Disciplinam Episcopalem signum erat reverentiae’ (Thomae Hobbes Angli Malmesburiensis philosophi vita (London, 1682), p. 9).

6 Before the wars, he had been briefly famous for the unwisely memorable remark that ‘King Charles is not supreme head of the Church of England next under Christ, nor has he any more power of excommunication than my man that rubs my horse's heels’ (Jeffrey Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 2005), p. 78).

7 Cosin's annotated copy of the second (1647) edition of De cive takes issue with some features of Hobbes's religion, but does not question its sincerity (Jon Parkin, Taming the Leviathan (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 62–3).

8 Contemporaries took it for granted that the occasion had involved confession (Andrew Clark, ed., Brief lives, chiefly of contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 & 1696 (2 vols., Oxford, 1898), i, p. 353; John Eachard, quoted in Parkin, Taming, p. 297).

9 F. E. Brightman, The English rite (2 vols., London, 1615), ii, pp. 827–9. There is no need for surprise that Hobbes accepted this somewhat clericalist formula – De cive goes out of its way to endorse specifically clerical power to ‘bind and loose’ (Thomas Hobbes, De cive: the Latin version, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford, 1983), chapter xvii, paragraph 25).

10 Noel Malcolm, ed., The correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (2 vols., Oxford, 1994), ii, p. 702.

11 Aubrey, Brief lives, i, pp. 357–8. Aubrey was interested in such stories. See his analogous account (also involving Hobbes) of Selden's deathbed (ibid., ii, p. 221).

12 For authoritative verdicts, see esp. Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, 2002), pp. 477–80; Parkin, Taming, pp. 133–4.

13 For gratuitous assertions of this doctrine, see Thomae Hobbesii Malmesburiensis vita (1679), p. 2, and Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 335, 347. Talk of subordination (as at p. 336) refers to his capacity as man.

14 ‘The elements of law, naturall and politique’, Part ii, chapter vi, paragraph 10 (British Library, Harleian MS (herafter Harl.) 4235, fo. 115); Leviathan, p. 404.

15 Francis Bacon, The essayes or counsels, civill and morall, ed. Michael Kiernan (Oxford, 1985), p. 51.

16 Francis Bacon, The essaies of Sr Francis Bacon Knight (London, 1612), pp. 93–4.

17 Ibid., p. 95. The sensitivity of these remarks is shown by a revision: the 1625 edition reads simply ‘the times enclined to Atheisme (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil Times’ (Kiernan edn, p. 54).

18 Bacon, Essaies (1612), pp. 95–6.

19 Bacon, Essayes (Kiernan edn), p. 55. His other addition asserted (with puritans in mind) that ‘there is a Superstition, in avoiding Superstition’, especially when ‘the People is the Reformer’ (ibid., pp. 55–6).

20 Ibid., pp. 51–2.

21 Ibid., pp. 52–3.

22 Ibid., p. 53.

23 On the alleged impossibility of a pure speculative atheism, see David Berman, A history of atheism in Britain: from Hobbes to Russell (London, 1988), esp. pp. 1–41.

24 Lisa T. Sarasohn, Gassendi's ethics: freedom in a mechanistic universe (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1996), pp. 59–60.

25 J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, eds., The works of Francis Bacon (7 vols., London, 1889), v, pp. 419–39. Spedding believed this essay dates from some time before 1605, but the reason he provided (iii, pp. 13–14) turns on a dubious argument from silence. The character of the argument is more important than its influence, but Hobbes may in fact have seen the manuscript before or after Bacon's death in 1626. The autograph (unprinted till 1651) passed into the possession of the English diplomat Sir William Boswell, who was ambassador at The Hague when Hobbes was an exile in Paris; the two men had a number of shared friends (Malcolm, ed., Correspondence of Hobbes, i, p. 128 and n).

26 Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, eds., Works of Bacon, v, p. 424.

27 Ibid., p. 425.

28 Ibid., p. 429.

29 Aubrey, Brief lives, i, pp. 70, 331.

30 ‘Si res corporeae et earum partes omnes conquiescerent, aut motu simili semper moverentur, sublatum iri rerum omnium discrimen, & (per consequens) omnem Sensionem; & propterea Causam omnium rerum quaerendam esse in diversitate Motuum’, (Hobbes, Vita, pp. 18–19).

31 See Karl Schuhmann, ‘Le Short Tract, première oeuvre philosophique de Hobbes’, in Schuhmann, Selected papers on Renaissance philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes, ed. Cees Leijenhorst and Piet Steinbakkers (Dordrecht, 2004), pp. 227–59, for an impressive and almost comprehensive list of parallels (including verbal echoes). But the manuscript is in the hand of Hobbes's friend Robert Payne and it has been ingeniously argued (Malcolm, Aspects, pp. 80–139) that Payne is the true author. For my own argument for Hobbes (and for the date of composition), see my forthcoming article ‘Early Hobbes: the 1630s’. From the present perspective, fortunately, the authorship question is fairly unimportant: the relevant material is clearly Hobbesian (even if the ideas were Payne's, they were soon afterwards absorbed into the Hobbesian system).

32 ‘Short tract’, Sect. 1, pr. 1 (Harl. 6796, fo. 297).

33 Ibid., 1, conc. 10 (Harl. 6796, fo. 299).

34 Ibid., 1, pr. 3 (Harl. 6796, fo. 297).

35 Ibid., 1, pr. 4 (Harl. 6796, fo. 297).

36 Ibid., 1, pr. 13 and 14 (Harl. 6796, fo. 297).

37 Ibid., 1, conc. 11 (Harl. 6796, fo. 299).

38 Ibid., 1, conc. 11, corollary (Harl. 6796, fo. 299).

39 Ibid., 3, conc. 6 (Harl. 6796, fo. 306v).

40 ‘Elements’, i i 8 (Harl. 4235, fo. 11v).

41 Ibid., i iii 1 (Harl. 4235, fo. 15).

42 Ibid., i iii 1 (Harl. 4235, fo. 15v).

43 Ibid., i v 2 (Harl. 4235, fo. 21).

44 Ibid., i v 8 7 (Harl. 4235, fos. 22v, 22).

45 Ibid., i v 9 (Harl. 4235, 22v).

46 MS has ‘Proposition’.

47 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i v 10 (Harl. 4235, fos. 22v–23).

48 Ibid., i i 8 (Harl. 4235, fo. 11v).

49 Thomas Hobbes, De corpore: elementorum philosophiae section prima, ed. Karl Schuhmann (Paris, 1999), pars i, caput ii, paragraph 14.

50 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i vi 3 (Harl. 4235, fo. 25).

51 Hobbes, De corpore, i i 8.

52 Thomas Hobbes, Critique du De mundo de Thomas White, eds. J. Jacquot and H. W. Jones (Paris, 1973), chapter xxvii, paragraphs 1 and 4.

53 Ibid., xxvii 1.

54 ‘Cum ergo philosophiae minime permissum sit de iis rebus aut statuere aut disputare quae captum humanum excedunt, omissa definitione entis quod non est imaginabile, et quod solet appellari substantia incorporea, definiemus ens imaginabile tantum’ (ibid., xxvii 1).

55 Thomas Hobbes, Libertie and necessitie (London, 1654), pp. 75–6. Schuhmann ignores this passage (no doubt because it refers to time, not space), but he notes the closer parallel at De corpore, viii 19 (Schuhmann, Selected papers, eds. Leijenhorst and Steinbakkers, p. 236).

56 Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, p. 76.

57 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i xi 1 (Harl. 4235, fo. 43v).

58 Ibid., i xi 2 (Harl. 4235, fo. 43v).

59 Ibid., i xi 2 (Harl. 4235, fos. 43v–44).

60 The principal difficulty for this view is a note that Hobbes appended in 1647 in which he states ‘that it can be known (sciri) by natural reason that God is (esse)’, and even that this knowledge of God's existence bears some analogy to mathematics (De cive, xiv 19n). It is relevant, however, that Hobbes was trying to defend himself against suspicions aroused by his contention that atheism is not, strictly speaking, a crime. De cive defines knowledge (xviii 4) in just the same way as The elements.

61 ‘Differentia magna est inter imaginari, hoc est, ideam aliquam habere, & mente concipere, hoc est, ratiocinando colligere rem aliquam esse, vel rem aliquam existere’ (Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes (11 vols., Paris, 1974–86)), vii, p. 178.

62 ‘Quid iam dicimus, si forte ratiocinatio nihil aliud sit quam copulatio & concathenatio nominum sive appellationum, per verbum hoc est? unde colligimus ratione nihil omnino de natura rerum, sed de earum appellationibus, nimirum, utrum copulemus rerum nomina secundum pacta (quae arbitrio nostro fecimus circa ipsarum significations) vel non. Si hoc sit, sicut esse potest, ratiocinatio dependebit a nominibus, nomina ab imaginatione, & imaginatio forte, sicut sentio, ab organorum corporeorum motu’ (ibid., p. 178).

63 ‘[N]ullam omnino ignis ideam, vel imaginem animo obversantem habet' (ibid., p. 180).

64 ‘Homo cognoscens debere esse causam aliquam suarum imaginum vel idearum, et causae illius aliam causam priorem, et sic continuo, deducitur tandem ad finem, sive suppositionem alicuius causae aeternae’ (ibid.).

65 Hobbes, Critique, xxviii 9, xxix 8; De corpore, iv xxvi 1.

66 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i vi 5–6 (Harl. 4235, fo. 26).

67 Hobbes, De corpore, iv xxv 1.

68 Hobbes, De cive, xvi 1.

69 ‘Si machinas omnes tum Generationis quam tum nutritionis satis perspexerint, nec tamen eas a mente aliqua conditas ordinatasque ad sua quasque officia viderint, ipsi profecto sine mente esse censendi sint’ (Thomas Hobbes, De homine (London, 1658), p. 4). This quotation and the next were brought to scholars' attention by Brown, K. C. in ‘Hobbes's grounds for a belief in a deity’, Philosophy, 37 (1962), pp. 336–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Thomas Hobbes, Decameron physiologicum (London, 1678), pp. 130–1.

71 David Hume, The natural history of religion and Dialogues concerning naural religion, eds. A. Wayne Colver and J. V. Price (Oxford, 1976), p. 260. The italics are Hume's.

72 The idea that God's existence is the ground of ‘obligation’ is actually incompatible with the plain sense of the Hobbesian text – De cive – that is usually cited to support it. De cive's account of the matter makes it absolutely clear that atheists are not ‘naturally obliged’: it is not the fact that God exists that grounds our obligations, but a fact about us: our ‘awareness’ (conscientia) of his power (Hobbes, De cive, xv 7).

73 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, ii ix, in chapter heading (Harl. 4235, fo. 133v); ii vii 8 (122).

74 Ibid., ii vi 2 (Harl. 4235, fo. 107v).

75 A word that Hobbes seems to have coined.

76 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i xviii 12 (Harl. 4235, fo. 74v).

77 Ibid., i xi 9 (Harl. 4235, fo. 47).

78 Ibid., ii vi 6 (Harl. 4235, fo. 109v). Hobbes originally wrote ‘a new sect the Socinians’ (Chatsworth MSS, Hobbes a2b, fo. 207). His uncharacteristic last-minute tinkering suggests the importance he attached to this apparently throwaway remark.

79 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i xi 12 (Harl. 4235, fo. 48).

80 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 252.

81 Hobbes, Vita, pp. 10–11. Aubrey's obscure remark that ‘he recieved the sacrament of Dr. Pierson’ (Aubrey, Brief lives, i, p. 353) was probably intended to corroborate this claim. For a good circumstantial case that Hobbes attended Pearson's church in 1652, see A. P. Martinich, ‘Thomas Hobbes's interregnum place of worship’, Notes and Queries, 252 (2007), pp. 433–7.

82 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i xi 3 (Harl. 4235, fo. 44).

83 Ibid., i xi 4 (Harl. 4235, fo. 44v).

84 Ibid., i xi 4 (Harl. 4235, fo. 44v).

85 Ibid., i xi 5 (Harl. 4235, fos. 44v–45).

86 Hobbes, Critique, xxviii 9, xxix 8.

87 Hobbes, De corpore, iv xxvi 1. Quoted from Thomas Hobbes, Elements of philosophy: the first section concerning body (London, 1656), a translation that was checked by Hobbes himself. The original reads: ‘Itaque ab hoc absurdo in aliud incident, coacti aeternitatem Nunc stans et numerorum infinitum numerum unitatem dicere, quod multo est absurdius. Cur enim aeternitas dicenda est Nunc stans potius quam Tunc stans? Erunt ergo vel multae aeternitates, vel nunc et tunc idem significabunt. Cum huiusmodi demonstratoribus alloglōssois nobis nulla iniri potest disputatio.’

88 Hobbes, De cive, xv 14. ‘Manifestum est attribuendam ei esse existentiam. Voluntas enim honorandi eum quem non putamus esse, nulla esse potest.’

89 Ibid., xv 14. ‘Qui ipsum mundum vel mundi animam (id est partem) dixerunt esse Deum, indigne de Deo loquutos esse. Non enim quicquam ei attribuunt, sed omnino esse negant; nam per nomen illud, Deus, intelligitur mundi causa; dicentes autem mundum esse Deum, dicunt nullam esse eius causam, hoc est, Deum non esse.’

90 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 250. Most ‘proofs’ that Hobbes was fully atheistic rely to some extent upon this passage. For a rigorous twentieth-century example, see Edwin Curley, ‘“I durst not write so boldly”, or How to read Hobbes's Theological-Political Treatise’, Daniela Bostrenghi, ed., Hobbes e Spinoza (Naples, 1992), pp. 497–513.

91 Hobbes, De cive, xv 14. ‘Unicum enim ratio dictat naturae significativum Dei nomen, exsistens, sive simpliciter, quod est, unumque relationis ad nos, nempe Deus, quo continetur & Rex, & Dominus, & Pater.’

92 Ibid., xvi 1.

93 Ibid., xvi 4. ‘Deum fuisse illum, cuius vocem & promissa audierat.’

94 Ibid., xvi 16.

95 Ibid., xviii 11.

96 Ibid., xvii 25 (baptism), 24 (ordination and consecration), 25 (binding and loosing).

97 Ibid., xvii 28. It is clear Hobbes did not personally accept this argument. See the exactly contemporary letter (23 July 1641) to the earl of Devonshire printed in Malcolm, ed., Correspondence of Hobbes, i, pp. 120–1.

98 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 75.

99 Ibid., p. 76.

100 Ibid., p. 74.

101 Ibid., p. 42.

102 Ibid., p. 76.

103 Ibid., p. 77.

104 Ibid., p. 79.

105 Ibid., p. 79.

106 Ibid., p. 82.

107 Ibid., p. 83.

108 Ibid., p. 84.

109 Ibid., p. 86. It is often supposed that Hobbes meant the Church of Scotland. But (i) Laudians as well as puritans were proud of their degree of ‘reformation’ (ii) the reference seems to be to past events (iii) as Tuck notes (p. 86n), the manuscript presented to Charles II adds ‘On whom men by common frailty are carried to execute their anger. They beare down not only religion wch they reduce to Private fancy but also the Civil government that would uphold it reducing it to the naturall Condition of Private force.’ This plainly refers to England (see Collins, Allegiance, pp. 145–6, for other anti-Independent gibes not found in the printed edition).

110 Ibid., p. 479.

111 Ibid., p. 252.

112 Ibid., pp. 252–3.

113 Ibid., p. 235.

114 Ibid., p. 237.

115 Ibid., p. 412.

116 Ibid., pp. 335, 347.

117 Ibid., p. 414.

118 Ibid., p. 366.

119 Ibid., p. 374.

120 Hobbes, De cive, xvi 12; Leviathan, p. 267 (italicized by Hobbes).

121 On this point, see Noel Malcolm's subtle discussion ‘Hobbes, Ezra, and the Bible’, in Malcolm, Aspects, esp. pp. 424–6.

122 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 298.

123 Ibid., p. 303.

124 Ibid., p. 301.

125 Ibid., p. 300.

126 Ibid., p. 305.

127 Ibid., p. 306.

128 Hobbes, ‘Elements’, i xi 5 (Harl. 4235, fo. 45).

129 Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 269–79.

130 Ibid., p. 315.

131 Ibid., p. 30.

132 ‘Negare Deum esse, vel affirmare Deum esse Corpus’ (Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Hobbes Malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae Latine scripsit, omnia (Amsterdam, 1668), p. 360).

133 Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 84.

134 Properly, Thomas Hobbes, An answer to a book published by Dr.Bramhall, late bishop of Derry; called The catching of the Leviathan (London, 1682). For the date, see Malcolm, ed., Correspondence of Hobbes, ii, p. 699 and n.

135 Hobbes, Answer to Bramhall, pp. 129–30.

136 Ibid., pp. 130, 131.