¹ Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, vol. 2, The English and Latin Texts (i), ed. Malcolm, Noel, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar, xi. 150. All citations to Leviathan are to Malcolm's edition and cited in the form volume:chapter. page.

² Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Hampton, Jean, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Kavka, Gregory S., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Gauthier, David P., The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Nagel, Thomas, “Hobbes's Concept of Obligation,” Philosophical Review 68, no. 1 (1959): 68–83 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Others have asserted that the right to self-preservation in Hobbes is far more robust than is generally afforded, and entails significant duties on the part of the sovereign. See Steinberger, Peter J., “Hobbesian Resistance,” American Journal of Political Science 46, no. 4 (2002): 856–65Google Scholar; Curran, Eleanor, Reclaiming the Rights of the Hobbesian Subject (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Google Scholar. Steinberger's argument regarding Hobbes's “prudential advice to the ruler” (857) has affinities with the argument that I will develop here. Although they speak to different questions, both arguments lend general support to the other.

³ Watkins, John W. N., Hobbes's System of Ideas (Aldershot: Gower, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁴ Taylor, A. E., “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes,” Philosophy 13, no. 52 (October 1938): 406–24Google Scholar; Warrender, Howard, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Martinich, Aloysius P., The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Zagorin, Perez, Hobbes and the Law of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

⁵ Warrender, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 6.

⁶ Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 114; Warrender, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 188–99; Bagby, Laurie M. Johnson, Thomas Hobbes: Turning Point for Honor (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 125–35Google Scholar.

⁷ Skinner, Quentin, “The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought,” Historical Journal 9, no. 3 (January 1966): 286–317 Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics: Hobbes and Civil Science, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, editorial introduction.

⁸ Hoekstra, Kinch, “The de Facto Turn in Hobbes's Political Philosophy,” in Leviathan after 350 Years, ed. Sorell, Tom and Foisneau, Luc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 72Google Scholar. For a more recent account of this debate, see Malcolm, Noel, Leviathan, vol. 1, Introduction, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 65–81 Google Scholar.

⁹ Hoekstra, “The de Facto Turn in Hobbes's Political Philosophy.” Hoekstra sets out a similar argument against John Deigh's argument for the independence of Hobbes's ethics and psychology in his “Hobbes on Law, Nature, and Reason,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 41, no. 1 (2003): 111–20Google Scholar. For an alternative explanation, see Baumgold, Deborah, “The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation,” Political Theory 36, no. 6 (2008): 827–55Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Leviathan, II:Epistle Dedicatory.

¹¹ II:xxxi. 574.

¹² II:Epistle Dedicatory.

¹³ II:xxxi. 574.

¹⁴ Hobbes is rarely considered a virtue theorist. Indeed, many hold that this is exactly what Hobbes was writing against. See, for example, Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes; Johnson Bagby, Thomas Hobbes; McClure, Christopher Scott, “War, Madness, and Death: The Paradox of Honor in Hobbes's Leviathan,” Journal of Politics 76, no. 1 (2014): 114–25Google Scholar. However, there is a strong case to be made that Hobbes was generally concerned with virtue. See Boonin-Vail, David, Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Ewin, R. E., Virtues and Rights: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991)Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11Google Scholar; on modesty, Cooper, Julie E., “Vainglory, Modesty, and Political Agency in the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes,” Review of Politics 72, no. 2 (2010): 241–69Google Scholar; on magnanimity, Corsa, Andrew J., “Thomas Hobbes: Magnanimity, Felicity, and Justice,” Hobbes Studies 26, no. 2 (January, 2013): 130–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gert, Bernard, “The Law of Nature as the Moral Law,” Hobbes Studies 1, no. 1 (1988): 26–44 Google Scholar; Gert, , Hobbes: Prince of Peace (Cambridge: Polity, 2010)Google Scholar. Boonin-Vail's is the most robust account of virtue ethics in Hobbes. It is curious that Boonin-Vail does not address the virtue of magnanimity and only fleetingly addresses the question of obligation, and that while Corsa does take up the question of magnanimity specifically, he does not mention sovereignty. These works generally concern the virtues of subjects, whereas my concern is the virtues of sovereigns specifically.

¹⁵ Hobbes's better-known version of the containment thesis is found later in Leviathan (II:xxvi. 418).

¹⁶ II:xii. 180.

¹⁷ Ibid. (italics added).

¹⁸ II:xii. 172.

¹⁹ II:xii. 182. There is clearly much more to say about the laws of nature in Hobbes. See, for example, Zagorin, Hobbes and the Law of Nature. But there is likewise much to be said on the limitations of the natural law interpretations; see Craig, Leon Harold, The Platonian Leviathan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

²⁰ I.e., purity, integrity, genuineness (an attribute of a person, not of a statement or expression) (OED, s.v. “sincerity”). Noted in II:180, editorial footnote am.

²¹ II:xii. 182.

²² Ibid. See also Tom Sorell, “The Burdensome Freedom of Sovereigns,” in Leviathan after 350 Years, ed. Sorell and Foisneau, 183–96.

²³ II:xii. 182. Cf. Nagel, “Hobbes's Concept of Obligation,” 81: “Not once in Leviathan does he appeal to concern for others as a motive, but always to self-interest.”

²⁴ On equity in Hobbes, see Zagorin, Hobbes and the Law of Nature, 84–98. Zagorin fails to note that the foundation of the commonwealth is based on the formalization of the iniquity, and more importantly that uncoerced equitable conduct is perhaps the most iniquitously distributed character trait of them all. Zagorin's admirable study also ends where many natural law arguments do, namely by presupposing an inherently motivational quality to reason to arrive at just conclusions without aid (ibid., 114). Hobbes may have held to such a motivational conception of reason in Elements and De Cive, though less so in Leviathan (see Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric). Note that this critique does not scuttle my argument, but simply means that equitable conduct is conditional on the charity (“free gift”) of sovereigns (or future sovereigns).

²⁵ II:xii. 182.

²⁶ As Gert writes, “although Hobbes talks about the laws of nature as prescribing the virtues, it is easier to think of them as proscribing the vices” (“Law of Nature as the Moral Law,” 43).

²⁷ Sharon Lloyd has argued that the idea of reciprocity contains the normative seed of obligation in Hobbes, and that it is ultimately encompassed in the positive laws, implying that the positive laws are always legitimate “even when we correctly believe them to command immoral actions. This is so because our paramount duty is to hold ourselves to the standards we think it reasonable to impose on others, and our shared basic interests preclude our allowing as reasonable that people should insist on their private judgments in such matters” (“Hobbes's Self-Effacing Natural Law Theory,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82, no. 3–4 [2001]: 286Google Scholar). My argument is largely in agreement with Lloyd's, save that I follow Hobbes in carving out an exception for eminent and magnanimous leaders.

²⁸ The major problem with the claim that God's power gives prepolitical normativity to the natural laws is that whatever God is in the world, it must be represented by an agent. See Abizadeh, Arash, “Representation of Hobbesian Sovereignty: Leviathan as Mythology,” in Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century, ed. Lloyd, S. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 113–54Google Scholar.

²⁹ II:xii. 182.

³⁰ II:vi. 86.

³¹ II:xii. 182.

³² On the fiction of the state, see Skinner, Quentin, “Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State,” Journal of Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1999): 1–29 Google Scholar.

³³ II:xxvii. 476.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ II:xii. 180.

³⁶ On this topic, see Martinich, Two Gods of Leviathan, 297–98; Lloyd, S. A., Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 283–87Google Scholar.

³⁷ Leviathan, vol. 3, The English and Latin Texts (ii), ed. Malcolm, Noel, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar, xlii. 784 (italics added).

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ See also Lloyd, “Hobbes's Self-Effacing Natural Law Theory,” 298–303.

⁴¹ III:xlv. 1034 (italics added).

⁴² II:Epistle Dedicatory. 4.

⁴³ II:xlv. 1038.

⁴⁴ Ibid. (italics added).

⁴⁵ II:xv. 224.

⁴⁶ II:xv. 222.

⁴⁷ II:xlv. 1038.

⁴⁸ III:xxxix. 734.

⁴⁹ III:xlii. 812.

⁵⁰ II:xlv. 1038.

⁵¹ III:xlv. 1038. For more on “Scandal given,” see III:1039, editorial footnote bn.

⁵² III:xlv. 1038.

⁵³ II:xv. 226–28.

⁵⁴ Ibid. (Latin edition).

⁵⁵ Ibid..

⁵⁶ III:xxxvi. 660. Or, as Hobbes writes elsewhere: “For they that see any strange, and unusuall ability, or defect in a mans mind; unlesse they see withall from what cause it may probably proceed, can hardly think it naturall; and if not naturall, they must needs thinke it supernaturall; and then what can it be, but that either God or the Divell is in him?” (II:viii. 118).

⁵⁷ III:xlv. 1038.

⁵⁸ II:vi. 86; xv. 242; III:xxxiv. 614; xlv. 1038. On the curious “fourness” of Leviathan, see Craig, The Platonian Leviathan, 340–46.

⁵⁹ II:xv. 242.

⁶⁰ III:xxxiv. 614 (margin heading).

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² II:xii. 180.

⁶³ II:xxv. 410, xxvi. 424, xxix. 516, xxx. 550.

⁶⁴ II:xxv. 410.

⁶⁵ II:xxvi. 424.

⁶⁶ Cf. Gert, “The Law of Nature as the Moral Law.”

⁶⁷ II:xxix. 516.

⁶⁸ II:xxx. 550. I omit the concluding phrase of this sentence (“but that they see him able absolutely to govern his own Family”) because it is misleading. Hobbes changed this in the Latin version of Leviathan, replacing this phrase (and the preceding and following phrases) with “to conciliate the citizens to him.”

⁶⁹ Cf. “Reputation of power, is Power; because it draweth with it the adhaerence of those that need protection… . So is Reputation of love of a mans Country, (called Popularity,) for the same Reason” (II:x. 132).

⁷⁰ II:xxx. 550.

⁷¹ II:xv. 242.

⁷² Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 55. For a more recent account of magnanimity in Hobbes, see Corsa, “Thomas Hobbes: Magnanimity, Felicity, and Justice.”

⁷³ Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 57.

⁷⁴ On magnanimity in Aristotle, see Hardie, W. F. R., “‘Magnanimity’ in Aristotle's Ethics,” Phronesis 23, no. 1 (1978): 63–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howland, Jacob, “Aristotle's Great-Souled Man,” Review of Politics 64, no. 1 (2002): 27–56 Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Crisp, Roger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1123bGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁶ Nic. Eth. 1123e.

⁷⁷ Nic. Eth. 1124b.

⁷⁸ II:vi. 86.

⁷⁹ II:x. 140.

⁸⁰ II:viii. 110.

⁸¹ Aristotle, , Politics, trans. Reeve, C. D. C. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998), 1284aGoogle Scholar.

⁸² Nic. Eth. 1106b. As Boonin-Vail has noted, this is not an entirely accurate account of the doctrine of the mean on Hobbes's part (Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue, 182).

⁸³ III:xlvi. 1074. See also Boonin-Vail, Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue, chap. 5.2.

⁸⁴ Pol. 1284 (italics added).

⁸⁵ The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Molesworth, William, vol. 6 (London: John Bohn, 1840), 219Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 219–20.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 220–21.

⁹⁰ II:xiv. 202.

⁹¹ Leo Strauss influentially asserted in Political Philosophy of Hobbes that this is the founding claim of liberalism.

⁹² II:xiv. 202.

⁹³ To which we could add that the criminal commits the crime, no matter the axe.

⁹⁴ Sreedhar, Susanne, Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 169Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Ibid.

⁹⁶ II:xxix.

⁹⁷ On the causes of war in Hobbes, see Abizadeh, Arash, “Hobbes on the Causes of War: A Disagreement Theory,” American Political Science Review 105, no. 2 (2011): 298–315 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁸ II:xxi. 338.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

¹⁰¹ III: Review and Conclusion. 1133.

¹⁰² II:xxi. 338–40. For an alternative account of war making in Hobbes, see Baumgold, Deborah, “Subjects and Soldiers: Hobbes on Military Service,” History of Political Thought 4, no. 1 (1983): 43–64 Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ II:xxviii. 490.

¹⁰⁴ Dyzenhaus, David comes to a similar conclusion in “Hobbes and the Legitimacy of Law,” Law and Philosophy 20, no. 5 (2001): 461–98Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Plato, , Apology, trans. Grube, G. M. A., in Plato: Complete Works, ed. Hutchinson, D. S. and Cooper, John M. (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997)Google Scholar, 32 a–d. For an outstanding account of the influence of Plato on Hobbes's thought in general, see Craig, The Platonian Leviathan.

¹⁰⁶ II:xxi. 338.

¹⁰⁷ Sullivan, Vickie B., Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 109Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ II:xxi. 338.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid.

¹¹⁰ Slomp, Gabriella, “The Liberal Slip of Thomas Hobbes's Authoritarian Pen,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 13, no. 2–3 (2010): 363Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ II:xxi. 338–40.

¹¹² Johnson Bagby, Thomas Hobbes, 129.

¹¹³ Cf. McClure, “War, Madness, and Death.”

¹¹⁴ III:Review and Conclusion. 1136.

¹¹⁵ It is worth flagging that there is also something askew with Hobbes's memorable critique of tyranny as being something akin to rabies, pointing again to a sort of bivocal irony which is quite in line with the argument I have set out. Hobbes compared republican “tyrannophobia” to the hydrophobia of rabid dogs, where the people—the corporate body of the state—reject that which they need (a strong monarchy). This is interesting, because hydrophobia is a symptom of rabies, and the disease is neurological.

¹¹⁶ II:xi. 158.

¹¹⁷ II:xlvi. 1090–98.

¹¹⁸ II:Introduction. 18.

¹¹⁹ II:xlvii. 1112–14.

¹²⁰ Ibid.

¹²¹ II:xxx. 544.

¹²² II:xxxi. 572.

¹²³ II:xv. 238.

¹²⁴ II:xxxi. 574.

¹²⁵ Hoekstra, “The de Facto Turn in Hobbes's Political Philosophy,” 72.

¹²⁶ II:xxxi. 574.

¹²⁷ II:xxix. 498.