Who was Thomas Hobbes and what was he afraid of?

The first of three Beyond the Text conversations on Thomas Hobbes. Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson begin with Hobbes’s life, the political upheaval around him, and the place of fear in his account of human beings. How did those experiences shape the argument for political authority?

Read alongside us:
John Aubrey, “Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury,” Brief Lives, vol. 1: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47787/47787-h/47787-h.htm
Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, Author’s Preface: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philosophicall_Rudiments_Concerning_Government_and_Society/Authors_Preface

Beyond the Text: https://beyondthetext.co.uk/

Transcript

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Welcome Back And New Format

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Beyond the Techs. Long awaited. Hello, Jack.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I know. I know. This is uh what a wonderful return. Hello Sam, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Very good, very good. How's the Dutch sister land?

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Oh uh splendid as ever. It uh it's amusing to me that so many of our podcasts uh occur with me in the Netherlands. People must wonder where I'm from.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

You have an affinity with it, but uh but no, it's wonderful that you're over there and studying and and you've you're in a library and you've got a copy of what with you?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

I've got Hob Leviason with me.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Isn't that lucky?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

I know, it's fortunate, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

What would I do without it?

SPEAKER_01 0:44

My guide for this evening and for life.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Exactly, exactly. You can't go you can't go far wrong. Um, so we're starting a new format that Jack and I have put together, which is these shorter form podcasts, um, which will essentially cover the core topics, giving you sort of a snapshot of the intellectual history, the philosophy, the theology of the topics that we cover within 15-minute chunks, but usually maybe around three episodes of 15 minutes. Um and we're going to be starting

Who Was Hobbes And Why Fear

SPEAKER_00 1:13

off this new series of the podcast with Thomas Hobbes and the first episode, which is who was Thomas Hobbes and what was he afraid of? Um, Jack, do you have any initial thoughts on Hobbes and and well, just his life and his upbringing and who he was?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, so this is my first time really studying Hobbes, his life, his work. And so I was um quite struck by a number of things. Um he comes from a fairly humble background. I call them a Yeoman, uh, which means uh like a free peasant, like a landed peasant, yeah. Um, relatively free of the feudal system. Uh, you can correct me on any details here, Samuel. Um he uh has a a gift for Greek and Latin prose translation. Uh from quite a young age, um, he really excelled in that, especially the Greek, uh, which he was most fond. And um at some point he gets to know uh Francis Bacon.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Um but maybe skipping a few a few years, but on on that point, I mean the the time span is amazing, isn't it, when you consider that he was born Elizabeth I and then he lives all the way through to Charles II, you know, in terms of the period of time that he's living through, it's immense to think that he was born during Still Tudor.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah, the the transition into the Stuart period, through the Civil War, during which he's in exile, I think. Um and then uh return the interregnum. Um the other end of the interregnum.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, I know it's astonishing. It really, really is. But no, you're completely right. I mean, it's a very humble background. He's born in Westport near Marmesbury on the 5th of April in 1588, which is funnily enough the year of the Spanish Armada. I don't know if you've read this, but it's said that Hobbes later associated his birth with his mother's fear of invasion, describing fear as this metaphorical twin.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yes, that's a very interesting uh detail because uh what he goes on to write about um uh essentially that that a man is in a state of war, perpetually with his fellow men, absent uh a governing body. That's the the the classic sort of hub that people are familiar with. And so you you can connect that um a little bit to his biography. Yeah. Um not only that he lived through the civil war and and lived with an exile, but also that um the the the period during which he's formed in his mother's womb is a time of great stress for her.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

I know, and I love that describing fear as his metaphorical twin. Now, obviously, that's sort of like a retrospective self-fashioning rather than a more sort of verifiable medical explanation, but it makes the biography appear to anticipate the philosophy. Um, I think it I think it it is quite funny. Um, and yeah, and then as we said, he lives through the reigns of Elizabeth I, James the First,

Oxford, Languages, And Patronage

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Charles the First, Charles II, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, that interregnum period that you're discussing, and then he dies on the 4th of December 1679, age 91. So nine years before there will then be the glorious revolution and another upheaval in English society. Um do you know much about his university life, Jack?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Um I I'm afraid I uh I do not. One of the details that really struck me was about his fondness of geometry, but I think that comes much later. He was already at the age of 40 when he suddenly had an encounter with Euclidean geometry, and this really impressed him.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Followed something he had studied before, but I don't want to get ahead of us.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

But you said he had a proficiency for Latin and Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

But I think that that also goes to his younger his younger years. Um he already started to translate things, I think, from the age of six.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yes, yeah. Well, he earns a place at Maudlin Hall in Oxford um as a result of his ability. And uh we don't know, but approximately 1602 or 1603, sorry, he started and then he studied for four or five years, depending on when when we don't know. Um, but graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in the February of 1608. So we know the time at which he was studying there, and immediately after leaving, and this is very common with figures from his time all the way up to figures that I study in the Enlightenment, he enters into a life of patronage. So he enters into this service of the Cavendish family. I don't know if you saw it.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

I was searching in the biography you sent me for this. I couldn't find the reference to the Cavendish family, so you'll have to have to enlighten me.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yes, of course. Well, um, as he was the tutor to the son William Cavendish, um, and the Cavendish Association lasted with interruptions for roughly 70 years. And patronage supplied access to his books, so like where you are now in uh in the library of a prestigious institute, um, aristocratic and political society, uh, European travel and the financial security required for sustained intellectual work. Um, so this kind of counters the point that he often gets painted with, which is that he's an isolated philosopher, that a lot of this fear, a lot of this anxiety is this kind of wizarded old British man who's sitting alone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Very interesting because in this same source, maybe you can remind me the author of this source, but it's a contemporary of Hobbes, or perhaps a generation later, compiles sources, and um he lists the personal characteristics of Hobbes, and he was a very amiable, sharp, um, witty, steady. Uh, he didn't really drink. And when he did drink, he he really drank, but he he generally didn't. I didn't get the impression reading the sort of list of personal characteristics that he was a particularly like oppressed man, the way you might think of someone like uh Schopenhauer as having a real rugged temperament.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

He wasn't an old miser miser, he wasn't an old grumpy, nasty.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

No, he carried himself very well despite this deep his perceptiveness with regard to human evil. But then again, when you read Leviathan, he's not particularly moralizing about um the the state of war, the the reasons for the strife and distrust between us. He's he seems to think it's pretty normal, it's pretty rational. Yes, he seems almost have a very sober look on life.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Yeah, it's descriptive, not prescriptive. He's not saying a moral sort of outline, he's just saying the way things are.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

He's quite coolly detached.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Which is, I think, a good counterbalance to the observation of the his his uh the twin as fit.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yes, yes, this is true. We're getting the balance there.

Travel, Geometry, And Thucydides

SPEAKER_00 8:09

But um, but also he travelled a lot, which is another thing you wouldn't necessarily think of a kind of isolated Englishman uh in the early 17th century. He travelled with William Cavendish, his QT, in Europe doing this kind of proto-grand tour between 1614 and 15, going to Venice. He travelled further in 34 to 36 and entered the intellectual world surrounding the Maran Muscène in Paris. Um the sort of scholars uh in Paris. Um and yes, Aubrey claimed that Hobbes met Galileo in Florence on these travels. Um, but Hobbes' own autobiographical writings do not ever mention this meeting. However, the point you're making about geometry, science, this general interest, there is a suggestion that he may have met Galileo on his Italian travels. Um surely he would have mentioned it if it had been so.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

I suspect so, and I I I I I think Euclidean geometry is very different to the uh had a very different significance and and meaning to to the to the science of Bacon and the astronomy of Galileo, um both of whom are introducing the dynamic principle to nature, which is which which Euclidean geometry doesn't really recognise, it deals with with static forms. Um and that's what impressed him so much. The the the um yeah, the the the what would you say, the how you can reduce um the world to to to these forms, rules, proportions?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Um and what about Thucydides? There's this a bit about Thucydides' rhetoric and collapse that in 1629 Hobb Hobbes published an English translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War, which I believe you're somewhat familiar with. I am, I am with this book. A very interesting book. Has that ever come up? Any sort of Hobbesian translation of it?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

No, I didn't know he had translated uh the Peloponnesian War. That's but that's remarkable.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah, um he offered a history of civil conflict, unstable assemblies, political ambition, uh demagoguery and rhetorical manipulation. Um and yeah, it also maybe a little pointer towards where we're going to be going later in these episodes. A certain concern with faction and rhetoric did not suddenly appear later in Teki in 1642, but he's starting to look at these ideas whilst he's doing his translations. So there's a little bit of it there. But before we get there, the crisis of 1640.

1640 Crisis And Exile To Paris

SPEAKER_00 10:54

So in 1640, Hobbes circulated the elements of law. Did you see this a little bit, Jack, in terms of yeah, yeah, uh an early statement of his political philosophy. Uh at the same time, the short parliament met in April 1640 for less than a month. England's defeat in the Second Bishop's War forced Charles I to summon the Long Parliament in November 1640. Within the first weeks of the Long Parliament, Hobbes left England, as you were saying, for Paris. He remained in exile for approximately ten years, refer returning in 1651. He was reacting to the prospect of political prosecution and the visible breakdown of authority before the first civil war, because there are multiple allegedly English civil wars, uh, began in 1642. The elements of law, his sort of uh provisional work, circulated in 1640, and De Kive was completed in 1641 and issued in 1642, while an expanded edition followed in 1647. The English De Kive and Leviathan appeared both in 1651. So, what did you sort of get from this point in his life and the the publication of De Kive, what he's thinking in the elements of law? Uh, what did you feel about Hobbes when you were approaching this jack?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Well, uh, the key phrase was sovereignty. Uh, this was the the word he fixated on, trying to show um how all the powers and rights uh ultimately invested in sovereignty. But what was so strange to me was how much controversy this this caused at the time, he seems to have um offended the king, even though it seems from his biography that he's much more in favour of the king and of the monarchy than he was of the um of the reformers. And yeah, in uh in the preface to De Cive, he writes very scathingly about the uh about the revolutionaries and uh and that's the way he's always framed as well.

Sovereignty And Political Backlash

SPEAKER_00 12:58

It's always that he would prefer the king to a parliament as much as he would accept the absolute authority of a king or a parliament. Ultimately, the king is the you know it's the frontist piece of Leviathan, it's the big figure looking over, built up by society. Um, so we can we get an indication there.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Mm-hmm. Indeed. And it's um it's interesting to sort of cross-reference that preface um with the uh the the period he he lives through. He speaks of having ample experience to treat of uh this this particular subject of uh how societies uh uh ought to be governed, um, referring to England as boiling hot with questions of rights to dominion and the obedience due uh from subjects. Uh the also the true forerunners of an approaching war. Um so he he he he feels like he's dealing with a particularly empirical uh reality, something that is just surrounding him. Uh, this is not a theoretical treatise in the strict sense, it it's an attempt to sort of distill what he's seen play out.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Yeah. Um and he and he's completely right to want authority and fear, because in terms of the scale of the crisis, um, estimates suggest that around a quarter of a million people died in Britain during the civil wars that there were, the initial one um that we were discussing just prior, and then the one that actually sort of forces Britain into a kind of protectorate and brings Cromwell as the lead figure. Um and the deaths in Ireland and Irish Catholics may have exceeded another quarter of a million, perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the Irish population. Um the estimates are debated, but they really do indicate, I think, the scale of the catastrophe that Hobbes was, well, at this point, observing as a potential and that became a reality. So he clearly was very insightful when it came to the need for a strong

Civil War Catastrophe And Authority

SPEAKER_00 15:12

authority to stop this kind of bloodshed occurring. Something which hadn't been seen before on that scale. There'd been the anarchy in sort of medieval England a long time back. But to see that happening, you know, these kind of things might happen between nations, but they don't happen in nations between the people.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, indeed. Um it's interesting to note that um he almost cut he effectively cut short this project because of the uh how how impressed the principles underlying what had happened were upon him. He originally was intended to work through um their volume on on cosmology, um, sort of cause and effect uh in in nature, in order to then work out the cause and effect in man, in you know, the anthropology, the passions and and reason and imagination. And finally a cause and effect of the uh of the state. You went straight to the state. Yeah. Um and so you have to sort of um work backwards a bit to see some of those underlying connections. They're still they're still quite traceable, in especially in um, I was reading chapter 21 this morning, um, on uh the natural rights on liberty. On liberty. Yes, and his understanding of liberty, um, sort of you can see the physical, the anthropological, and the uh sort of legal operating simultaneously. It's quite curious.

unknown 16:41

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Would would you say that he is simply a pessimist? Or would you put it differently? A pessimist you say he's a realist.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Oh, I think a realist is probably a bit more accurate, because I I don't it's that I guess he's very matter-of-fact about our um our what he calls the state of war, the this um which is already to draw a bit on the technical term they use it in Leviason, but they're just basically our condition of distrust towards one another, um, which which is the cause of of conflict and war and so forth. Um but he seems to be quite optimistic that a very straightforward solution can be reached. Simply, um more than this distrust, we

Realism, Covenants, And Peace

SPEAKER_01 17:28

have a fear of death and we have a desire for peace. And those two things kind of come together to um in persuading us to make covenants with one another.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Um it's interesting for someone as early as him that he's not kind of falling back. You could you could you could see how someone like him would just say, and this is because of something like particularly in the Christian sense, like universal wickedness. But he doesn't really he doesn't really say that that that that that that's there's no kind of massive party element, lump, lump of sin kind of element to it. It's as you say, structural, a state of a state of war is just nasty, brutish, and short, and that's the way the human condition is.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Yes, he treats it amorally, not immorally, amorally. He prescribes um a purely practical value, he justified that it makes complete sense in this paradigm that we act in this way, it's logical, it's even lawful. It's lawful according to our natural um condition, isolated from any higher form of union, which m leads him to emphasize that when we do come together in the Commonwealth, this is a real union, a real union. He really emphasizes this, it's metaphysical. Um a new law comes into effect which which c corresponds to something else in our nature, the which is the requirement to set aside our grievances and claims to particular rights for the sake of peace? That's also part of our nature. Um so, but but

Fear, Liberty, And The Commonwealth

SPEAKER_01 19:03

at every level it's it's it's rational for him. It makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

And would you say then that the the fear that he discusses, is that an oppressive force? Is that something which perhaps is a can be a good thing that it can be used by a sovereign to make sure that there is that cooperation, that metaphysical bond, the fear is a useful thing?

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yes, definitely. Um it it corresponds to uh this most basic, um, what he believes to be a most basic aspect of our experience, fear of death, fear of suffering, which would compel us to find um a more hospitable solution to existence. Um but it's also, I mean, he said explicitly he doesn't believe fear contradicts liberty. He thinks the two can coexist. I actually think he's trying to say something a bit stronger that maybe fear, law, necessity, moral necessity actually constitute freedom, but that's probably a more difficult discussion to have.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, so I guess not an extreme sort of private fear, because that could actually make you a radical, it could make you someone who acts out and but a level of sort of coercion ultimately submission of society into the covenant, into the social contract, uh makes society function much better. Um, which makes me think, did is it do you think it is the crisis that creates his philosophy? Do you think that is the sole reason for his philosophy? Was it the fear that was born with him in the womb, or was it was it just this crisis that uh that creates his philosophy? That's it's it's very hard to say. I I I Because you quoted you quoted that bit with you quoted the bit with boiling hot with disputes. Clearly it's on his mind. It draws short his writing.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

I think if something causes you to go into exile, it probably very much on your mind. And and yet the and yet it's not I I I think we carry an a like a public or cultural image of Hobbes as being a very dark, pessimistic figure, uh clamoring after some thoughts which will put an end to all our strife. That's not the impression I get, really. This feels very measured, very reasoned. There's an element of warning which is in the preface. Um but uh yeah, I I don't think he's riddled with fear. I think he's quite content with himself about what needs to change, and he lives long enough to see it change for the better. Yeah, the restoration of the rightful monarchy.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Well, that's true, and uh I think well everyone has reasons to want peace, but nobody can safely cooperate first unless others will also cooperate. So if insecurity is the problem, what must people surrender and what must they create to escape it? And I think this will be something, Jack, that we will address when we look at his texts in

What We Read Next

SPEAKER_00 22:10

part two and three. So I hope you've enjoyed Jack and I's brief summary of Hobbes' life, his upbringing, and the creation of the the boiling crucible that his work was being forged in. And we look forward to seeing you in the next episode for discussing his works. So thank you, Jack. Thank you, Sam. And we will see you next time.