Philosophy 433 History of Ethics Darwall Winter 2004
HOBBES IV
I Obligation and
ought in Leviathan: the problem. As we began to see last time, there are two
strands of thought in Hobbes concerning why we should keep covenants:
A. An
obligation to keep covenant follows analytically from the definitions of
covenant, right, and obligation.
B. A
substantive law of nature, the 3rd, that men should
keep their covenants made.
C. Another reflection of the tension between
these two lines of thought, is that in the 2nd law of
nature, Hobbes talks as though the right of nature is something that can be “laid
down.” But how is the right of nature
something that can be laid down. If it’s normativity is a function of the ‘oughtness’ or ‘goodness’
of my self-preservation, how can I do anything (covenant) that would alter
that? How, then, could I “lay it down”?
II
A solution? The reply to the fool.
The key to understanding how Hobbes must be thinking here is contained
in his reply
to the “fool” in 15.4. The fool’s challenge is that “there is no
such thing as justice . . . that every man’s conservation and contentment,
being committed to his own care, there could be no reason, why every man might
not do what he thought conduced thereunto:
and therefore also to make, or not make; keep, or not keep covenants,
was not against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit.”
A. The fool’s position. The fool questions “whether injustice . . . may
not sometimes stand with that reason, which dictateth
to every man his own good.” Or, as the fool also puts it, “if it be not against reason, it is
not against justice; or else justice is not to be approved for good.”
B. The issue.
It is important to recognize the kind of case in question between Hobbes
and the fool:
“For the
question is not of promises mutual, where there is no security of performance
on either side; as when there is no civil power erected over the parties
promising; for such promises are no covenants:
but either where one of the parties has performed already; or where
there is a power to make him perform.” (15.5)
The case is
one where there is no question of whether the other person will perform. The question is whether, in such a situation,
one must do as one has promised.
Now the
fool’s position is that it can happen that it is sometimes not in one’s
interest to perform and that one should perform only when it is for one’s good. Notice that Hobbes does not disagree with the
fool that it can sometimes be against one’s interest to perform. Nonetheless, he holds that even in such cases
one should perform (unless, that is, it would directly endanger one’s life—see
Chapter 21).
C. Hobbes’s general position. A central point is that an action’s turning
out to benefit a person does “not make it reasonably or wisely done.” (15.5) Why not?
Because the actual consequences of the action are not necessarily
something a person can “recko[n] on,” that is, reason
on.
III.
Two interpretations of Hobbes’s specific position. Hobbes’s
position is that covenant is of such great importance from the standpoint of
self-preservation, both in the state of nature and in civil society, that it
never makes sense to violate it. But why?
In large
part, the answer has to do with the importance of establishing a reputation as
a covenant-keeper, in particular, as someone who holds that making of a
covenant is a sufficient reason for keeping it:
“he which declares he thinks it reason to deceive those that help him,
can in reason expect no other means of safety, than what can be had from his
own single power . . . [he] cannot be received into any society, that unite
themselves for peace and defence, but by the error of
them that receive him.” (15.5) This holds true both in the state of nature, where without
confederates a person must expect to die, and also once political society has been
established.
A. Expected good interpretation. Now the
importance of maintaining a reputation of covenant-keeping ups the ante in
favor of keeping covenant, but Hobbes doesn’t rest his case on the assumption
that this guarantees that it will always be most in a person’s interest to keep
covenant. He seems to admit that it may
sometimes not. But again, he urges that
what matters is not what the actual consequences turn out to be, but what the
person is in a position to “reckon on.”
A natural
conclusion, then, is that Hobbes thinks that what a person should do is not
necessarily what actually is for his greatest good, but what will maximize his
expectable good, where this is a function both of his interests and of his
beliefs of the probabilities of various outcomes (or of the probabilities that
would most reasonable given his evidence).
Then his position might be that while, as things turn out, it might
sometimes be most in a person’s interest to have broken covenant, this could
never maximizes his expected interest (or most reasonable expected interest).
B. Rule-egoist interpretation. Greg Kavka argues
that we should interpret Hobbes somewhat differently though. When the stakes are sufficiently high it may
not make sense to trust one’s own judgment.
Especially when the quality of evidence is low and things are
sufficiently uncertain, it may make more sense not to make decisions of this
sort on a case by case basis, but rather to adopt a general norm or rule: I will keep covenant, except when doing so
threatens my life. (Compare n-barrel
Russian Roulette for prizes, with sufficiently large n.) This may be especially true if the good one
wants to protect most is reputation and if others can have evidence of whether
your deliberative character. In such a
situation, the only reliable way of acquiring the reputation of being a
covenant-keeper might be to actually be a covenant-keeper, i.e., to be someone
who treats the third law of nature as a rule or norm she accepts, rather than
just as a rule of thumb in promoting her own interest and self-preservation.
IV.
Connecting ought and obligation with the rule-egoist
interpretation. Suppose that is
right. It will follow that when one
covenants, one will have done something that makes it the case that one should
not decide how to act with respect to it
(whether to keep it) by using one’s
own judgment of self-interest and self-preservation. But that means it will now be false that a
person may do whatever “in his own judgment, and reason, he shall conceive to
the aptest means” to self-preservation. In
this sense, then, by covenanting, he will have “laid down” the right of nature. And, therefore, in Hobbes’s technical sense,
he is no obligated. Voilà,
the two lines of thought coincide!
V. Can this fit
with projectivism about value? Good (ought
to be) vs. ought to do? A remaining
problem: how to put together norm-acceptance
with projectivism about value. Imagine a
case in which a person is convinced that he would do best to violate this
contract even though he believes it is also best for him to be someone who
inflexibly keeps covenant.
Questions: What is the relation between the question: What would be good to happen (or exist)? and What should I do?
Should a
projectivist hold that there are two different states that are projected in
these two different kinds of judgment, viz., good (ought
to be) vs. ought to do? Do these
respectively project desire and some other psychic state—e.g., Gibbard’s “acceptance
of a norm”?