Science and Moral Skepticism in Hobbes

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Science and Moral Skepticism in HobbesAuthor(s): Sam BlackSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 173-207Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231980 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY 173 Volume 27, Number 2, June 1997, pp. 173-207

Science and Moral Skepticism in Hobbes1

SAM BLACK Simon Fraser University Burnaby, BC Canada V5A1S6

Here lyes that mighty Man of Sense Who, full of years, departed hence, To teach the other world Intelligence, This was the prodigious Man, who vanquish'd Pope and Puritan, By the Magic of Leviathan. Had he not Controversy wanted, His deeper Thoughts had not been scanted; Therefore good Spirits him transplant: Wise as he was, he could not tell Whether he went to Heaven or Hell.

Beyond the Tenth Sphere, if there be a wide place, He'll prove by his Art there's no infinite space: And all good Angels may thank him, for that He has prov'd they are something, tho men know not what.

Hobbes's Epitaph (Anon 1680)2

There are two discernible orientations in the interpretation of Hobbes's ethical theory. On one view, Hobbes's moral philosophy is relatively

1 I would like to thank Marie McGinn, Roger Woolhouse, David Fate Norton, Ed Hundert, Peter Nicholson, Sue James, Quentin Skinner, an anonymous reviewer from this journal, and especially Karen Pilkington. I also wish to thank James Tully and the McGill University department of philosophy for making the University library available to me. During some the time I spent thinking about this essay I was the recipient of a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada post-doctoral fellowship for which I am very grateful.

2 Manuscript. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Library, Harvard University



174 Sam Black

freestanding, and virtually independent from his views on science and the philosophy of nature. According to the second view, Hobbes's moral theory is intimately connected to his ideas about science and nature. The former thesis has two versions. Some commentators claim that it reflects Hobbes's own assessment of his moral theory. Others concede that, while Hobbes did intend for there to be a connection between his natural philosophy and his civil philosophy, he was mistaken about their inter- dependence. It is alleged, however, that this oversight is unimportant, because the warrant for 'Hobbes-style' ethics does not depend in any significant way on 'Hobbes-style' metaphysics.3 In this essay, I will restrict my attention to the first version of the independence thesis, the thesis about Hobbes's intentions.

Intuitively speaking, the main hurdle which the independence view confronts involves reconciling the very considerable energies Hobbes devotes to his natural philosophy, with the assertion that he regarded the ideas developed therein as being of no major consequence for his moral theory. Various strategies have been adopted for coping with this apparent oddity. By way of prefatory remarks it may be useful briefly to survey some of these.

The most uncompromising stance is found in those commentators who interpret Hobbes as a deontological moral theorist. On reading Warrender and Taylor, it may come as a surprise that Hobbes actually has a philosophy of nature.4 Among those autonomists who acknowledge the difficulty of reconciling the bulk of Hobbes's writings, the issue is at other times addressed by claiming that a dramatic transition occurs in Hobbes's career. In this vein, Leo Strauss maintains that Hobbes formulates his views on ethics during an early humanist period, which is only later superseded by an interest in science.5 Still more recently, it

3 For the latter view, see Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Prince- ton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1986), ch. 1.

4 See A.E. Taylor, 'The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes/ in K.C. Brown, ed., Hobbes Studies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1965) 35-56, and Howard Warrender, The Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1957). I am indebted to David Fate Norton for conversation on this point. It is tempting to view the deontological interpretation as a manifestation of the ethical intuitionism popular in Britain three generations ago. British intuitionism provided a ready-made excuse for neglecting any connection between the philosophy of nature and moral theory, and may have encouraged the mistaken impression that Hobbes was equally indifferent to reconciling moral

experience with naturalism.

5 See Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, E. Sinclair, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1952), 29, 129, 137.



Science and Moral Skepticism in Hobbes 175

has been argued that no recognizable standard of scientific knowledge is consistently applied by Hobbes in the ethical domain. This ostensibly reflects the fact that Hobbes later came to intend his ethics as a form of rhetoric. As such, he self-consciously repudiates the model of scientific knowledge for ethics.6

All of these readings are, I believe, almost certainly mistaken. For it is scarcely possible to make sense of Hobbes's moral theory when it is viewed independently from his natural philosophy. My aim in this essay is therefore to elucidate the connection between science and ethics in Hobbes's philosophy. In a nutshell, the argument goes as follows. Hob- bes's project in moral philosophy is devoted to showing how natural law can be reduced to the directives of instrumental reason. This project is motivated by his doubts about alternative forms of moral justification, particularly the forms employed by the Aristotelians. My first thesis is that these doubts about morality, as well as the arguments which Hobbes uses to silence these same reservations, are very much indebted to his philosophy of nature. The source of this debt is twofold. Hobbes is attracted to the New Science because it sketches the physical mechanisms which help to explain why the parties to intractable moral disagreements persist in thinking that their opinions are correct. Hobbes also believes that natural philosophy (like mathematics) exemplifies the deductive structure for justification which Hobbes favors for ethics. My second thesis is that despite the connection between Hobbes's ethics and his philosophy of nature, his doubts about classical moral theory cannot be ascribed to metaphysical naturalism and the related notion that there may be no room for moral values in the world of science. Rather, his doubts about the moral theories of the ancients originate in venerable forms of skepticism which predate the New Science.

I begin by elucidating the influence of classical moral skepticism on Hobbes (sect. I). I then explain why Hobbes is a skeptic about the moral philosophy of the ancients, particularly the assumption that there is a universal or absolute human good (sect. II), and proceed to illustrate the ways in which he draws upon the New Science to buttress the plausibil- ity of classical skepticism (sect. III). Turning next to the constructive side of Hobbes's moral theory, I investigate how the laws of nature which he defends are intended to satisfy the standards for scientific knowledge proper. I also investigate why that attempt fails (sects. IV, V). As will be

6 This thesis is defended by Tom Sorell, /rThe Science in Hobbes's Politics, in Perspec- tives on Thomas Hobbes, G.A.J. Rogers and Alan Ryan, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press

1988) 67-80; and David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1986).



176 Sam Black

apparent, therefore, the focus of this essay is largely exegetical. My aim is to understand Hobbes's intentions, rather than tidying up his arguments by inserting premises that he would have found repugnant. In the final section (VI), I explain why a truer understanding of the origins of early modern moral skepticism help us to better understand what the task of moral philosophy should be at present.

I Hobbes's Place in A Skeptical Tradition

During the early modern period, moral theory comes under assault from what may be described as epistemically motivated forms of skepticism. It is characteristic of these views that they do not reject moral knowledge on the basis of some antecedent metaphysical conception of what the world is like. Rather, they challenge it on the basis of apparently endemic defects in the methods used for acquiring or justifying ethical knowledge. One influential source for this skepticism lay in the rediscovered texts of Sextus Empiricus, published in 1562, and widely available thereafter. There can be no doubt that Hobbes was familiar with the arguments of the Pyrrhonians.7 In the first sentences of his 'Review and Conclusion' of Leviathan he writes:

From the contriety of some of the Naturall Faculties of the Mind, one to another, as also of one Passion to another, and from their reference to Conversation, there has been an argument taken, to inferre an impossibility that any man should be

sufficiently disposed to all sorts of Civill duty. The severity of judgment, they say, makes men Censorious, and unapt to pardon the Errors and Infirmaties of other men: and on the other side, Celerity of Fancy, makes the thoughts lesse steddy than is necessary, to discern exactly between Right and Wrong.

He characterizes this mistaken view further:

7 Some have wished to deny any classical skeptical influence on Hobbes. See Richard

Popkin, 'Hobbes and Skepticism/ in L.J. Thro, ed., History of Philosophy in the Making: A Symposium of Essays to Honor Professor James D. Collins on his 65th Birthday (Washington, DC: University Press of America 1982) 133-49; and Perez Zagorin, 'Hobbes on Our Mind/ Journal of the History of Ideas 51, 2 (1990) 317-35, at 321. In contrast to Popkin's essay, which is explicitly concerned to deny the influence of

Pyrrhonian skepticism on Hobbes, Zagorin seems to be claiming that no form of classical skepticism influenced Hobbes. He does not, at any rate, differentiate between the forms of traditional skepticism which had been revived during the

early modern period.




And to consider the contrariety of mens Opinions, and Manners in generall, It is

they say, impossible to enterain a constant Civill Amity with all those whom the Businesse of the world constrains us to converse....8

Here Hobbes is alluding to the well-known arguments of the Pyrrhoni- ans. For these skeptics begin by cataloging instances where people differ in their manners, opinions, and desires: the contriety of the passions, as Hobbes terms it. The skeptics then argue that any criterion used to resolve these differences is bound to be arbitrary. This is because our moral judgments do not provide access to the intrinsic features or nature of their object. Rather, those judgments reflect the subjective commitments of particular communities and individuals. As Hobbes's close friend Pierre Gassendi summarizes the tenth mode of Pyrrhonian skepticism: 'since contradictory ideas win men's allegiance and please them, the only conclusion is that the most that can be said is what appears good, decent, just, and beneficial to each man, but not that it is that way by its very nature and according to itself.'9 We can call this the skeptical argument from biased criteria, or simply the argument from bias. The argument raises general doubts about the justification for holding that any particular criterion can be used to settle what counts as a true moral judgment.

In response to this problem of biased criteria the skeptics recommend that people ought to suspend their judgments over matters of right and wrong. They add that persons whose faculties of judgment are thus

disengaged will as a matter of course be led to defer to the laws of the land. But according to Hobbes, the skeptics are wrong. They are wrong, first, because people influenced by the skeptical doctrines do not, as a matter of fact, defer to custom. Instead, as the passage from the Review and Conclusion makes clear, they often proceed to call their civil duties

8 Leviathan, 483. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations to works other than Leviathan refer to the Molesworth edition of The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (Scientia Aalen

reprint 1962).

9 The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, Craig B. Brush, ed. and trans. (New York and London: Johnson Reprint 1972), 312. For Sextus' formulation of the Tenth Mode, see Sextus Empiricus: Scepticism, Man, & God, P.P. Hallie, ed., S.G. Etheridge, trans.

(Indiana: Hackett 1985) 69-72. A variation is presented by Michel de Montaigne, whose writings exerted an early influence on Gassendi, as Barry Brundel relates in Pierre Gassendi: From Aristotelianism to a New Natural Philosophy (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel 1987), 15. Compare Michel de Montaigne, An Apology for Raymond Sebond, M.A. Screech, trans. (London: Penguin 1987), 161.

10 Sextus Empiricus, in P.P. Hallie, ed., S.G. Etheridge, trans., Sextus Empiricus: Scepti- cism, Man, & God (Indianapolis: Hackett 1985), 42-3, 69, 72, 143-6



178 Sam Black

into doubt. Consequently, the practical effect of moral skepticism is not to buttress civil order but to undermine it. Second, the skeptics are mistaken for being skeptics. They fail to see that certain political duties are inescapable for any association of rational individuals.11

How, then, does Hobbes go on to deal with the skeptic's charge of bias? It is useful to interpret his strategy as offering a reforming definition of the concept 'good/ along with other fundamental evaluative terms. A reforming definition takes as its point of departure some concept which is widely entrenched in our discourse. In providing a definition, however, it does not try to emulate our current linguistic usage or summarize current meanings. Rather, it aims to show how a particular concept would be employed if we were sufficiently clear-sighted or reflective in our judgments. A reforming definition is therefore normative, stipulating new ways for using a concept. But these stipulations are not simply arbitrary. They are answerable to demands for justification.12

More specifically, Hobbes's method of reforming our conception of the good can be characterized as a form of non-hegemonic naturalism.13 We begin an investigation of moral concepts by taking widely acknow- ledged phenomena as our starting point. We then consider whether there are any physical mechanisms which may enhance our understanding of

11 Pyrrhonism was not the only form of epistemological skepticism that worried Hobbes. Quentin Skinner provides a masterful account of a form of skepticism that is derived from purely rhetorical sources. He convincingly argues that Hobbes was concerned to address this skepticism. See his 'Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality/ Proceedings of the British Academy 76 1-61. See, further, his Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996). Hobbes was also acquainted with Carneades' refutation of natural law, and sprinkles his text with numerous references to Cicero, who may have been Hobbes's source for the doctrines of the New Academy. In Leviathan, he alludes to the famous incident wherein Carneades defended the law of nature before a Roman audience, only to publicly refute those same arguments the following day. See Leviathan, R. Tuck, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), 460. The incident is described in Cicero's On The Commonwealth, Book 3. On the general importance of Pyrrhonian skepticism for Hobbes's philosophy, I am very much indebted to Richard Tuck's incisive discussion. See his 'The "Modern" Theory of Natural Law/ in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Mod- ern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987) 99-119; Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989); and Philosophy and Government (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press 1993).

12 On reforming definitions see R.B. Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979), ch. 1, and Peter Railton, 'Naturalism and Prescriptivity/ Social Philosophy and Policy 7 (1989) 151-74.

13 I borrow the term from Railton, 159-60.




these commonplace observations. On this view, the outlook of science obtains its foothold in practical affairs, including ethics, because it usefully illuminates or systematizes intuitions which have a prior and well-established place in our thinking. Science illuminates by laying bare the mechanisms which explain the phenomena that interest us. Hobbes, as I shall explain, is a non-hegemonic naturalist in this sense. He does not treat the vocabulary of science as an a priori test for what is real. Rather, part of what initially attracts him to materialism is that physical explanations help to confirm the skeptic's verdict against the moral philosophy of the ancients: namely, these explanations help to show why disagreement about final ends is bound to be a permanent feature of the human condition.14 In other words, Hobbes is not a moral skeptic because he is a metaphysical naturalist. Rather, like many other humanists of the period, he is familiar with ancient skepticism and already dubious of classical moralizing. He is predisposed to accept the doctrines of the New Science because these doctrines usefully account for the phenomena of recalcitrant moral disagreement.

I shall return to the non-hegemonic features of Hobbes's naturalism below (sect. III). But first, it will be useful to have a clear statement of the sort of reforming definitions Hobbes favors:

Aristotle, and other Heathen Philosophers define Good, and Evill, by the Appetite of men; and well enough, as long as we consider them governed every one by his own Law: For in the condition of men that have no other Law but their own Appetites, there can be no generall Rule of Good, and Evill Actions. But in a Common-wealth this measure is false: Not the Appetite of Private men, but the Law, which is the Will and Appetite of the State is the measure. And yet is this Doctrine still practised; and men judge the Goodnesse, or Wickedness of their own, and of other mens actions, and the actions of the Common-wealth it selfe, by their own Passions.... And this private measure of Good, is a Doctrine, not onely Vain, but Pernicious to the Publique State. (Leviathan, 469)

In circumstances where people lack a powerful sovereign, or find themselves in a state of nature, the criteria for determining good and evil are necessarily biased and partial. Hobbes maintains that in this context - where we are considering what we can call good in a natural state - the most perspicacious view of ethical discourse is non-cognitive. Standards of good and evil ultimately are determined according to the subjective attitudes of each individual. 'Men judge Goodness by their own pas-

14 I shall assume for current purposes that metaphysical naturalism and materialism are connected. But in other contexts, if for example we were considering the status of mathematical entities, this assumption would merit serious scrutiny.



180 Sam Black

sions/ as he phrases it, in these non-political contexts. Since these evaluative standards respond to differences of temperament and other morally irrelevant 'measures/ the skeptic's arguments against the ancients are vindicated. All discourse about the good life in our natural state is shot through with bias and partiality. So in maintaining that Aristotle and other heathens are correct in defining natural good according to the appetites of individuals, Hobbes is handing them no compliment.

In a political context, by contrast, the concepts of good and evil can be given determinate meaning, and linked to a viewpoint that is suitably impartial to qualify as objective. In the civil condition, the good is not defined in relation to a substantive property, but in a purely procedural fashion: good and evil are identified according to the will of the sovereign. By 'procedural/ I mean that there is no natural or metaphysical property - the performance of their natural functions, or the production of pleasure, for example - which underlies talk of peoples's good in their civil condition, as the ancients supposed. There is, by extension, no comprehensive set of ends which can possibly serve as the essential goal of political association. Nonetheless, on this reforming definition the cognitive aspirations of moral discourse are vindicated against the moral skeptics, because there is some fact of the matter regarding the choice of a political constitution. The laws of nature, which bind all rational persons, instruct us to covenant with a sovereign. The sovereign's will can then serve as an objective and impartial criterion for determining the meaning of good and evil.

II Hobbes's Theory of Value

We can begin by considering the destructive side of this proposed reformed definition of the good. Why does Hobbes believe that all discourse about final ends is biased? Here, my thesis is that Hobbes takes this conclusion over from the classical skeptics, making use of many of their arguments, and simply reinforces their observations by showing how the skeptics's evidence can be explained quite naturally from within the framework of the New Science. But by way of preliminaries, we shall need briefly to examine Hobbes's theory of value. As I shall explain, this theory is best interpreted as a relational rather than absolutist account of the good; and it is a deliberative rather than purely subjective conception.

Consider Hobbes's famous contention that 'whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good' (Leviathan, 39). This is often taken to suggest a radical form of moral skepticism. But what exactly is Hobbes being skeptical about? The argument can be analyzed with the aid of two conceptual axis, one




ranging from the relational to the absolute, the other which runs from the subjective to the objective.

First, Hobbes is putting forward a relational theory of the good, or more exactly, an epistemically relational theory of goodness. On a relational theory, all things acquire their worth in connection with the purposes of some morally significant entity. In answer to the question, 'what is good?' the relational theory directs us to consider what is good from some particular vantage point(s). This perspectival analysis contrasts with absolutist conceptions of goodness - such as those conceptions which were favored by the ancients - holding that the suitable ends for all human beings can be identified according to a single perspective. This perspective was generally identified with the order of nature. The ancients often then joined this commitment to absolutism with monism. They held that there is one final end which all human beings ought to pursue.

It needs to be emphasized that in presenting a relational theory Hob- bes is advancing an epistemological rather than an ontological or metaphysical claim. The relevant point of contrast for his theory does not lie with the conception of value espoused, for example, by G.E. Moore. According to Moore, goodness is held to be a property that exists independently from all human interests, in much the way that the mass or velocity of an object is an intrinsic property of objects.15 Hobbes is not making an ontological claim when he argues that good is relational. He is putting forward an epistemic claim. Hobbes is presenting an argument about how goodness is known or discovered, maintaining that the criteria which do get accepted for establishing whether something is good are ultimately connected to the desires of separate persons. Our judgments about which things are good are really judgments about the contents of our desires. But with regard to the ultimate metaphysical character of goodness, Hobbes believes that we simply lack access to the intrinsic natures of the objects in question. We are in no position to evaluate the metaphysical nature of goodness. This verdict of inscruta- bility is in keeping with Gassendi's presentation of the Tenth mode (and will become clearer in Hobbes's discussion of God in sect. III).

It should also be understood that in making a connection between goodness and desire, Hobbes is not putting forward a semantic thesis about how the term 'good' is used in ordinary language. One particularly strong interpretation of Hobbes's theory of value maintains that in his

15 G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992 [1922]), 40-1



182 Sam Black

view each individual assigns the term 'good' to objects and states of affairs according solely to whether that individual happens to desire the object in question.

If this were Hobbes's view it would indeed be an extraordinarily implausible one. There are a variety of sources people habitually rely on in making assessments of goodness: by reading Consumer Reports, by asking friends, by studying the chemical properties of objects, or simply by absorbing those standards from their culture at large. When people talk about good and evil, they rarely lapse into an idiolect of their own devising. There are intersubjective, more or less constant standards, which frequently regulate the use of evaluative labels.

Although Hobbes is sometimes lumbered with the preceding bad argument I believe that his point is more subtle.16 Hobbes is not claiming in a descriptive mode that it is a feature of our language that the term 'good' always means something radically different when employed by alternate speakers. Rather, in keeping with the Pyrrhonians, he is making an assertion about the criteria that are ultimately used to determine which standards for good or evil get embraced at an intersubjective level. Hobbes's thesis is that when intersubjective conventions conflict, there is no impartial or mutually acceptable way - in the state of nature at any rate - to resolve these disagreements. Nothing that is accessible to us in the nature objects themselves which could settle these disputes.

To illustrate the conceptual point, all the members of our community can use the term good to describe a particular tenor, a new building, or a white winter. Even those individuals who are indifferent to opera, architecture, or the cold could possess a social mastery of the concept 'good' in the relevant contexts. (Standing around the water cooler trying to impress their colleagues, they could say 'Great building' - using 'great' in its attributive sense - or 'Great weather' - appealing to a non-attributive sense of 'great' - at all the appropriate conversational moments.) Hobbes does not wish to deny that there can be considerable overlap in the uses of the terms 'good' and 'evil' within a community. He clearly believes that intersubjective conventions often do get established with respect to the meaning of these evaluative terms. This is

16 This mistaken criticism of Hobbes is made by David Gauthier who charges that 'Hobbes is wrong to suppose that such words as "good" are used in relation to the user; [and that] indeed, our typical evaluative terms presuppose a common standpoint which may or may not be shared by the evaluator/ See his Morals By Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986), 53.




manifest in his complaint about those persons who lack philosophical method, and who consequently

name things, not according to their true and generally agreed upon names, but call right and wrong, good and bad, according to their passions, or according to the authorities of such as they admire, as Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, and others of like authority, who have given the names of right and wrong, as their passions have dictated; or have followed the authority of other men, as we do theirs.17

People do, as a matter of fact, frequently come to rely on intersubjective conventions, or customs and example, when making value judgments. Hobbes's point is that the standards which do come to enjoy this intersubjective validity are themselves arbitrary. They reflect the a blind submission to authority - an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Seneca, or some other misguided ancient - though it may only be in the event of a dispute that the subjective origins of these criteria make themselves felt. For in the event of disagreement, it becomes manifest that in determining the nature of goodness, each appeals to his passions or desires. This thesis about the lack of principled criteria for resolving disagreements about value is compatible with the notion that conventions get established in societies for determining what things are good.

In this vein, consider further a passage from his mature work De Hotnine (1658):

There can be a common good, and it can rightly be said of something, it is commonly a good, that is, useful to many, or good for the state. At times one can also talk of good for everyone, like health: but this way of speaking is relative; therefore one cannot speak of something as being simply good; since whatsoever is good, is good for someone or other.18

Here Hobbes is suggesting that many persons can have a stake in a single public good, such as political order. He is also claiming that there may be overlap in what people value as private individuals, as in the case of health. In both of these instances, an intersubjective standard often emerges regarding how the term 'good' is normally used within that community. But despite this overlap, things are

17 De Corpore Politico, 211. Compare 'Want of Science ... disposeth, or rather con- straineth a man to rely on the advise, and authority of others.... Ignorance of the causes, and originall constitution of Right, Equity, Law, and Justice, disposeth a man to make Custome and Example the rule of his actions' (Leviathan, 73).

18 Man and Citizen, Bernard Gert, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett 1991), 47. 1 refer henceforth to the first of these selections as De Homine.



184 Sam Black

deemed valuable because they are good for someone or other. The relational conception of good is a reflective assessment of the authority of various criteria for identifying goods. The relational conception does not purport to describe how evaluative terms actually function in ordinary language.

How subjective, then, is this relational theory of value? According to the most extreme interpretation, Hobbes intends to identify a person's good with that individual's actual desires. This means that individuals can never be wrong in their prudential decisions, since the test for those choices is conformity with their existing desire. Nor should they be exposed to criticism for those wants.19 What Hobbes actually believes, however, is something quite different. He maintains that various cognitive and conative defects can distort an individual's desires or choices. Various 'pertubations,' as he terms these defects, can obstruct right reasoning by militating 'against the real good and in favor of the apparent and most immediate good, [the latter of] which turns out frequently to be evil when everything associated with it hath been considered' (De Homine, 55). Some of these failures of reason stem from mistaken beliefs about relations of cause and effect. Other pertubations arise as a result of powerful emotions - such as excessive self-esteem, a desire for glory, and other affective states - all of which may 'impede reason' (De Homine, 58, 60). But the most important source of defects in practical deliberation is ignorance of genuine moral science. This exposes people as prey to eloquence, rhetoric, and other abuses of language which draw them into error (see De Corpore Politico, 210-11).

For this reason, Hobbes's relational theory of the good is best regarded as a deliberative conception, rather than a purely subjective account. It is a variant of an ideal agent theory. On this view, a person's good G consists in what that particular individual would desire or value under conditions C governed by cognitive and conative norms N. An ideal agent theory of this sort is familiar in the contemporary context in the guise of theories which identify a person's good with what that individual would desire under a very stringent epistemic norm: a condition where that individual possesses full or complete information. Hobbes does not subscribe to a full information version of ideal agent-theory. Indeed, there is no evidence he believes that there exists some single set of epistemic norms which an ideal deliberator must satisfy. He simply provides examples of

19 Those who have interpreted Hobbes as an extreme form of subjectivist - one who holds that all appraisals of people's desires are inappropriate - include Peter Railton. See his Tacts and Values/ Philosophical Topics 14, 2 (1986) 5-31, at 11.




ways that actual persons can be led to make bad choices. His considered view is that diverse epistemic shortcomings may create cleavages between a person's actual desires and their good.20

In summary, the reformed definition of natural good that Hobbes presents captures the Pyrrhonian skeptic's antipathy towards classical ethics. Instead, Hobbes defends a relational and deliberative conception of natural good. The theory is relational because it postulates a necessary epistemic connection between goodness and the pro-attitudes of persons. When Hobbes writes therefore that 'there is no such Finis ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest Good), as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall philosophers' (Leviathan, 70), he should be interpreted as holding that there is no alternative form of access to the nature of goodness, apart from biased and partial perspectives. His theory of the good is deliberative because it identifies a particular person's good with the desires of an idealized version of that individual. What Hobbes must then contend with is the observation that our usual moral discourse is not skeptical or deflationary in this way. For people do often argue about final human ends as if there was some absolute and non-relational truth about the matter. So given the fact that our everyday discourse is saturated with these cognitivist and absolutist assumptions about final ends, we must return to the question of what exactly moti- vates the reforming definition of the good which Hobbes favors.

Ill How the New Science (But Not Physicalism) Supports the Old Skeptics

One way in which the Pyrrhonians had traditionally advanced their case was by compiling evidence of the diversity of moral opinions. They drew attention to the widespread variations in the laws and customs of different communities, as well as the more rarefied disagreements among philosophers. Hobbes frequently appeals to these skeptical commonplaces. For example, he is fond of reminding his audience that there is no opinion so absurd 'that the old philosophers have not some of them maintained [it].'21 What he contributes to the traditional skeptic's argu-

20 The fact that Hobbes does not incorporate a full-information criterion, and addition- ally considers the impact of intervening affective states lends, in my view, credibility to his account the good. I consider some of the problems arising from full-information theories of value in greater detail in 'Reason Within the Limits of Value/ forthcoming.

21 This is a view he attributes to Cicero. See Leviathan, 34, 461.



186 Sam Black

ment is an explanation that purports to shed light on the phenomena the skeptics exploit. Hobbes's strategy is to relate these phenomena to the sorts of explanations favored by proponents of the New Science. More specifically, Hobbes believes that the New Science strengthens the skeptic's position in two ways. First, it sheds light on why there is a widespread illusion that discourse about people's natural good is somehow non-relational. Second, the New Science suggests how judgments about the good reflect factors which are partial and subjective. We may call the first the argument from illusion, the second the argument from constitutive bias. These considerations are intended to vindicate the idea, suggested by the fact of ethical diversity, that a reflective individual will adopt a non-cognitive stance towards the discourse of natural goods. It is absolutely essential to grasp, however, that these arguments for moral skepticism do not arise out of any commitment to physicalism or some other form of hegemonic metaphysical naturalism.

The linkage between naturalism and moral skepticism in Hobbes lies in a theory of explanation which Hobbes shares with other enthusiasts for the New Science. A unifying feature of this loosely knit seventeenth- century intellectual movement lay in a commitment to a novel standard for the explanation of physical phenomena. This epistemic revolution was meant to banish the peculiarities of Aristotelian physics and metaphysics, as they were then understood.22 One of the features of the Aristotelian account, which these theorists found particularly objectionable, was its reliance on substantial forms. The explanation of an object's color, its being white for example, would standardly consist on this view in the fact that the object possesses the form of whiteness.23 Here, whiteness was conceived as a real, non-corporeal entity separable and distinct from the object in question. According to progressive seventeenth-century opinion, this amounted to no explanation at all, however, since the alleged cause of the phenomena - the substantial form of whiteness - was inherently resistant to investigation.24

22 For good recent accounts of the transition from Aristotelian to seventeenth-century metaphysics, see Peter Alexander, Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press 1985), ch. 2, and Roger Woolhouse, The Concept of Substance in The Seventeenth Century: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz (London: Routledge 1993), ch.l.

23 The example is Robert Boyle's. See /rThe Origins of Forms and Qualities According to Corpuscular Philosophy/ in Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle, M.A. Stewart, ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1979), 15-16.

24 For Hobbes's critique of substantial forms, see Leviathan, 14, and ch. 46.




The preferred alternative consisted of explaining physical events in terms of the action or motion of corporeal substance. This meant that acceptable explanations would refer to simple or elementary bodies. This conception of a proper explanation is exemplified in Hobbes's theory of perception. In this vein, Hobbes's early account of color appeals to the idea that, 'clean and polite bodies, and such as have not any particular motion internal to alter it, we call light/ in contrast to the 'reflection from uneven, rough, and coarse bodies, or such as are affected with internal motion of their own that may alter it, then we call it colour/25 Early Enlightenment authors differ in their accounts of the properties of corporeal substance and the mechanisms that must feature in suitable explanations. What we find among the critics of scholasticism, however, is general agreement over the features of an acceptable explanation. An ideal explanation is characterized by a prohibition on the appeal to essentially non-investigable entities, and the related belief that events should be accounted for through the identification of underlying physical processes.26

This theory of explanation was shared by other members of the Paris Circle, who consequently held that perceptible qualities must be accounted for in terms of the effects of matter in motion. Where Hobbes differs from others, such as Gassendi (and Epicurus), is in arguing that

perceptible qualities are unreal and exist only as phenomenal states in the head: although, we persist in accepting the illusion that these qualities are in the world.27 He introduces a physical mechanism to account for

25 Human Nature, 7. Hobbes later settles on the notion that the simple bodies, which feature in adequate explanations, possess the properties of rest or motion, magni- tude, and figure (The Elements of Philosophy, 404).

26 Hobbes's adversary Robert Boyle offers a clear statement of this new standard for an explanation: 'I do not remember that either Aristotle himself ... or any of his followers, has given a solid and intelligible solution of any one phenomenon of nature by the help of substantial forms ... [since] to explicate a phenomenon being to deduce it from something else in nature more known to us than the thing to be

explained by it, [then] how can the employing of incomprehensible (or at least

uncomprehended) substantial forms help us to explain intelligibly this or that

particular phenomenon?' ('The Origins of Forms and Qualities According to Cor-

puscular Philosophy/ 67).

27 Gassendi appears to hold a theory according to which perceptible qualities have an existence which is not exclusively phenomenal. They exist in the world, but are

composites of more basic atomic configurations. But on this point there seems to be some deliberate fudging on Gassendi's part. On the one hand, the notion that colors exist in the world as real accidents, and not simply as dispositions, conforms to the

Epicurean account, which Gassendi did much to revive. On the other hand, he



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this illusion. According to Hobbes, when a visual stimulus encounters the optic nerve some physical body is directed to the brain. The brain then redirects that body to the optic nerve, where it 'rebounds.' It is this activity of rebounding off the optic nerve which creates the illusion that color and other perceptible qualities are properties outside of the brain and in the world at large (see Human Nature, 6-8). This explanation of visual perception later gets slightly amended when Hobbes saddles the heart with the crucial function of creating illusions by rebounding motions from the optic nerve to the brain.28

The origins of the passions are also accorded a place in this very same mechanism. And Hobbes makes a point of drawing our attention to the fact that his analysis of the passions in chapter VII of Human Nature (his first philosophical work, published in 1640, but composed earlier), is fully continuous with his analysis of perception as presented in chapter II of Human Nature. This same insistence on the use of a single and unified explanatory framework in natural and moral philosophy later recurs in Leviathan (1651) which opens in chapter I with a discussion of the metaphysics of the New Science, and the theory of perception described above. These essentials are then carefully reiterated in chapter VI, where

lumps Epicurus and Democritus together on the crucial question of whether colors

really exist in the world as something more than phenomenal entities, thus over-

looking the fact that the ancient atomists were actually at odds on precisely this matter. See The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, 431. For more on the differences between the ancient atomists, see A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic

Philosophers, Vol. 1, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987), 34-7. (For the reference to the ancients' debate I am indebted to Marie McGinn.) Similarly, the

analogies Gassendi supplies - for example, comparing a single object's changing qualitative attributes with a human whose identity persists despite the fact that he has adopted different positions - tend to support the idea that perceptible qualities are a real, and not simply a dispositional feature of the world (432). They are real in the same way that being seated or standing is a genuine quality of a person. But this must be offset against Gassendi's description of the way that 'the barbs of the

corpuscles turn outward and when they strike the senses, they smart and produce in them the sensation, or quality, that we call heat,' which suggests the dispositional view (429). This confusion may be deliberate, if Brundel is correct in holding that Gassendi systematically attempted to efface the differences between Aristotelian- ism and the Atomists. See Brundel, Pierre Gassendi: From Aristotelianism to a New Natural Philosophy, 57.

28 See Leviathan, 13-14. This particular explanation may have originated with Hobbes, if William Lucy, Bishop of St. Davids is to be trusted. Lucy writes, 'Why he should so insist upon this strange, and, until by him, unheard of rebound, I cannot imagine; he gives no reason for it, nor doe I think the subject is capable of any...' (William Lucy, Observations, Censures and Confutation of the Notorious Errors in Mr Hobbes His Leviathan [London: 1663], 22).




Hobbes first discusses the passions. Hobbes argues that the motions, which result from displacements in the world, do not simply stop in the head, but continue onwards to the heart. The heart is in motion in its own right, and the local motions redirected from the brain, which favor the heart's existing motions, cause sensations of pleasure. Alternatively, those motions originating in the brain, which hinder the heart's natural motion, create sensations of pain (Human Nature, 31).

Hobbes concedes that it is not generally apparent to common-sense or to philosophers that the passions originate in quite this way.29 He nonetheless insists upon this mechanistic account of the origin of the passions. His insistence, quite clearly, is motivated by his belief that there must be some unified explanation for the widespread illusion that goodness is an intrinsic rather than relational property of objects. Hobbes's account of the passions is intended to show how that illusion, regarding the passions and their objects is, similar to the mistaken belief that perceptible qualities are intrinsic features of their objects.

This illusion-creating mechanism, housed inside each of us, can then provide a naturalistic explanation for the prevailing view that goods somehow exist in the world apart from us: guiding us from without, as it were, and commanding our allegiance independently from our attitudes. The explanation of how this illusion occurs lends support to the relational theory of value. But these considerations are still insufficient to warrant Hobbes's skeptical conclusions about absolute or ultimate human ends. For one could concede that values are simply dispositional properties - with powers to affect persons in a regular way under certain prescribed conditions - while still holding that all disagreement about goods would disappear if people were placed under these ideal conditions. We could still salvage an absolutist theory of the good by asserting that under appropriate counterfactual conditions, all persons would converge in desiring certain goods. Judgments about any particular individual's good could then be vindicated against this absolute standard. Or according to another variation, evidence of the desires of the class of competent judges could furnish us with a criterion for determining the good of each individual.

Hobbes, however, anticipates something like this objection to his skepticism about values. He therefore emphasizes that the causes of diversity in the passions are beyond any hope of melioration. In considering the causes of this constitutive disagreement, Hobbes explains that he

29 One problem with the scholastics is that they do not acknowledge the fact that the

language of desire is in principle reducible to states of local motion within a person. See Leviathan, 38.



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will forgo appealing to disputes whose cause can be attributed to 'sick- ness and such accidental distempers' (Human Nature, 54). (Appeals to the testimony of the sick and the insane were a familiar stock in trade among the Pyrrhonians.) Hobbes writes on the further sources of disagreement that, first, 'while every man differeth from another in constitution, they differ also from one another concerning the common distinction of good and evil' (Human Nature, 32). So, ubiquitous physical differences can account for evaluative disagreements between persons. In this vein, Hobbes is willing to put forward quite specific hypotheses concerning how matters of individual constitution affect the passions. He ventures, for example, that a sensual nature (which he associates with a dull intellect) 'hath its beginning from a grossness and difficulty of the motion of the spirit about the heart' (Human Nature, 55).

Second, in addition to their direct effect over the passions, differences of body indirectly influence the desires of each person. This is because differences of physical constitution are responsible for creating various intellectual characteristics over time.30 A particular physical constitution helps to determine the robustness of an individual's passions. On Hob- bes's view, the presence of great passions is also a necessary ingredient in the cultivation of intelligence and judgment. 'The Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies,' as he colorfully puts it, 'to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired' (Leviathan, 53). From which it follows, that present differences of intellect can themselves be traced to past differences in physical constitution. These acquired intellectual differences then compound disagreements over the objects of desire that arise from diverse physical constitutions.

Third, having proposed a physical explanation for widespread variations in the objects of the passions, Hobbes supplements it with certain more purely sociological considerations. He adds that differences of desire can also be ascribed to the effects of education and prejudice (Leviathan, 31). From Hobbes's standpoint, the latter are likely to be as enduring as differences in our physical natures. For he is writing at a time when universal education had no foreseeable role in English life. Since these differences in education were apt to persist, it will follow,

30 He writes, 'that which helpeth and furthereth vital constitution in one, and is therefore delightful, hindereth it and croseth it in another, and therefore causeth

grief. The difference therefore of wits hath its original from the different passions, and from the ends to which the appetite leadeth them' (Human Nature, 54).




Hobbes believes, that disagreements in the objects of the passions will prove equally durable.

There is a further source of constitutive disagreement about ends which Hobbes emphasizes. This pertains to his belief that human beings are material bodies in motion. From this premise, he thinks it follows that human agents must perpetually desire novel experiences. As such, they cannot remain satisfied with any particular end so long as they live, and must consequently reject any end as being final (see Leviathan, 70). I shall have more to say about this odd claim in sect. IV.

The intent of these arguments is unmistakable. They represent an all out assault on the notion that the pursuit of this or that particular end ought to regulate all rational persons. It is not surprising, then, that Hobbes enthusiastically reproduces arguments lifted from the ancient skeptics:

And divers men, differ not onely in their Judgement, on the sense of what is pleasant, and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight; but also of what is comfortable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of common life. Nay, the same man, in divers times, differs from himselfe; and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.... 1

Notice here that Hobbes refers in the same breath to the phenomena of individual perceptual relativity - what a particular individual's senses find pleasant - and the relativity of evaluative judgments that pertain to common or intersubjective standards - what judgments reason makes regarding the actions of common life. For he clearly believes that the New Science can provide a unified explanation for the disagreements which the skeptics had traditionally exploited. The perceptual and evaluative disagreements can both be accounted for by a physical mechanism. But judgments about the highest good may be in worse shape than judgments about perceptible qualities. For in the ethical case, conflicts of judgment are grounded in enduring features of the human condition: differences in our bodies, our intellects, our cultures, and our education.

31 Leviathan, 110-11. See also Philosophical Rudiments, 47, and De Corpore Politico, 110.

Compare this to a representative passage from Sextus: 'Old men, for example, may think the air is cold, but the same air seems mild to those who are in the prime of life. The same colour appears dim to older persons but full to those in their prime.... From this it follows that differences of age also can cause the sense-impressions to be different where the external objects are the same' (Sextus Empiricus: Scepticism, Man, & God, 60).



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These clear and insistent reverberations of ancient skepticism should then put to rest the anachronistic idea that Hobbes rejects classical ethics on the grounds that it appeals to entities that are 'queer' from a naturalistic standpoint, or that there is no 'room for moral facts in the world of science.'32 This is especially apparent when Hobbes proceeds to explicate his relational theory of the good as it applies to God:

Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, good.... Nor is there any such thing as absolute goodness, considered without relation: For even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his

goodness to us. (Human Nature, 32. Compare 64)

Hobbes point is clearly not to deny that there is a God, let alone that there is no God because there is no room for God in the world depicted by the New Science. He is rather making the epistemic argument: that we can know nothing of God's intrinsic features. For God is inscrutable. The evaluative attributes that we project onto God are consequently assigned in relation to our needs and wants. Yet as he indicates in the passage above, the case of God is simply one application of the relational theory of the good.

Hobbes's moral skepticism is driven by identical epistemic considerations. Moral skepticism does not issue from the premise that the language of physics is the test for what is real. Rather, as is suggested by the writer of Hobbes's epitaph (final line), it is connected to the unknowable character of things in their nature. Hobbes's theory of the good is epistemically relational, but metaphysically agnostic. Thus, in compos- ing an extensive critique of Hobbes's ethics, Clarendon writes that he will not consider Hobbes's metaphysics since these notions bear neither on the peace of the state or on religion.33 The separation of Hobbes's

32 The queer entities formulation is J.L. Mackie's, and is one of the five grounds he

presents in arguing for an error theory of value. See his Ethics: Inventing Right and

Wrong (Middlesex: Penguin 1977), ch. 1. The second formulation is Jonathan Dancy's. See his 'Intuitionism/ in Peter Singer, ed., A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991) 411-19, at 413. Unlike Mackie, Dancy does not believe that

finding room for these moral facts poses an insurmountable obstacle.

33 Edward Earl of Clarendon, A Brief View and Survey of the Leviathan 2nd ed. (London: 1676), 12. Clarendon's remark is significant. He had been acquainted with Hobbes since the 1620s when the two were part of the circle meeting at Lord Falkland's residence at Great Tew. Clarendon would be in an authoritative position to determine the extent to which Hobbes's views on natural philosophy contributed to his normative ideas. I therefore side with those commentators who reject the thesis that Hobbes was an atheist. See A.P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), 1, 33, 189; and Johann Sommerville, Thomas




ontological commitments and his ethics seems to have been accepted by his contemporary critics.

For Hobbes, then, the scientific outlook gains a hold in ethics partly because the theoretical picture which science offers happens to coincide with the findings of common-sense. Like the traditional skeptics, Hobbes is impressed by the fact that widespread disagreement over final ends had persisted, despite 2000 years of moral philosophy. The New Science is congenial to ethics, because it sheds light on the sources of this disagreement. It further helps to explain the overbearing insolence and bloodshed that often accompany moral convictions. For despite the evident partiality of their judgments, people are nonetheless apt to believe that their views conform to the true nature of things, and consequently willing to employ force against their intellectual opponents. In short, an awareness of the New Science does not induce a new form of moral skepticism in Hobbes. Rather, by supplying mechanisms which account for the depth of moral controversy it serves to consolidate and vindicate the standard skeptical arguments that are well-summarized in Gassendi's gloss of the Tenth Mode.

IV Certain and Less Certain Scientific Knowledge Versus Mere Opinion

The destructive side of Hobbes's enterprise, as we have seen, involves undermining the cognitive aspirations of classical moral discourse. It does so by rejecting the notion that we can reliably identify final ends in nature. Hobbes couples this skepticism with the pragmatic claim that private appeals to the nature of good and evil are ultimately a recipe for calamity. Relying on the promptings of intuition, conscience, and old- style moral philosophy is an invitation to civil war. What delivers people from the destructive errors of common-sense and tainted philosophical authority on his account is, of course, the creation of an absolute sovereign. The sovereign's will constitutes the criterion for the settling of moral disagreements. Once this criterion has effectively been installed within a polity individuals ought to suspend their private judgments

Hobbes (New York: St. Martin's 1992), 137-8. If Hobbes was indeed an atheist it seems unlikely that he should have been driven to that position on the basis of any particular metaphysical assumptions. For Hobbes himself points out (in reply to

John Wallis) that Tertullian's rejection of incorporeal substance did nothing to

compromise his belief in God. See Tracts of Thomas Hobbes Printed for William Crooke

(London: 1681), 37.



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regarding the nature of good and evil (just as the Pyrrhonians had suggested). Hobbes does not argue that there is reason to believe that the sovereign's rulings will approximate some higher standard of truth or objectivity - for there is no such standard to which we have access - but he insists that the general rules, which dispose us to covenant with the sovereign, are objective. They are objective in the sense that they conform to the standards of good science.

This account is, I hope, reasonably familiar. I therefore wish to examine these claims with the particular aim of determining exactly why Hobbes believes that he is the first to have an adequate reply to the moral skeptics. In this vein, I shall need to elucidate his general distinction between science and mere opinion, before showing how that distinction is applied by Hobbes to moral theory.

TThe standard textbook account may encourage the notion that for Hobbes all problems of knowledge are to be settled through the arbitrary imposition of definitions.34 By extension, it may be thought that the laws of nature are nothing but arbitrary definitions. This is very far from the truth. For Hobbes does not generally believe that names can be imposed without constraint in this way. In the case of natural philosophy, the assigning of names to entities whose material nature cannot be investi- gated - such as separate essences or incorporeal substance - is what Hobbes calls absurdity.35 Similarly, there are constraints on what can serve as a viable procedure in the defining of moral terms. The sovereign does, for Hobbes, ultimately determine what constitutes good and evil in a political context. But the sovereign's authority must itself be shown to derive from the will of his subjects. Put another way, Hobbes does not aim to resolve the problem of moral skepticism by simply stipulating that the sovereign possesses the absolute authority to decide the meaning of moral terms. As a rejoinder to skepticism, this would be fairly anemic. It would fail to explain why anyone should defer to the authority of an absolute sovereign in the first place. Instead, he offers reforming definitions for basic moral terms: ones that people can subscribe to upon critical reflection. It is absolutely essential for Hobbes's enterprise that all persons can be presented with a clear reason for covenanting with the sovereign, a ground these individuals would embrace if they were sufficiently clear-sighted about their affairs. In this vein, his aim is to

34 See, for instance, W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy: Hobbes To Hume (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich 1962), 134.

35 See, for instance, Leviathan, 30, and ch. 46.




show that there is no viable alternative other than to accept the sovereign's will as final.

Now the argument holding that there is no viable alternative to an absolute sovereign must make certain assumptions about human behavior and human interests. Hobbes freely admits this. For he concedes that his argument for the authority of the sovereign rests upon 'two maxims of human nature': 'the concupiscible part, which desires to appropriate to itself the use of those things in which all others have a joint interest; the other proceeding from the rational, which teaches every man to fly from a contra-natural dissolution, as the greatest mischief that can arrive to nature' (De Cive, 93). Because people are naturally acquisitive, they compete over the same resources and come into conflict. But because they wish above all to survive, they fear death and value peace. The sovereign's authority is justified because it alone can ensure this peace.

This appeal to human nature raises, however, what is an obvious difficulty. For Hobbes has already told us that the good is relational, and that persons are naturally constituted in such a way that there is little overlap in the ends which they value. Why then assume that the fear of death represents an overriding and universal human commitment? By extension, someone who did not assign priority to that aim would have apparent grounds for complaining of bias. They could urge that Hob- bes's civil science is no less arbitrary than the despised ethics of the ancients. In order to alleviate the impression of dogmatism, we require an account of the warrant for relying on the assumption that all persons assign overriding importance to avoiding death.

The general reply that Hobbes would urge is that there is good reason for supposing that his psychological maxims are indeed universal. These reasons are twofold. First, the relevant maxims are consistent with observations of widespread human behavior. Second, these behavioral regularities are also consistent with and can be accounted for by an underlying physical mechanism. In brief, Hobbes believes that his theory of human nature is both faithful to common-sense, while also being demonstrable from a more basic science of bodies.

With respect to the link to commonplace observation, Hobbes maintains that his maxim of acquisitiveness is very nearly a platitude. 'Let him therefore consider with himselfe,' Hobbes writes, 'when taking a journey, he armes himselfe, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his dores; when even in the house he locks his chests' (Leviathan, 89). He also believes that introspective experience provides reliable grounds for affirming that all people share certain basic ends in common:



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But to teach us, that for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself, and con- sidereth what he doth, when he thinks, opine, reason, hope,feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men... not the similitude of the objects of the Passions, which are the things desired, feared, hoped, &c: for these the constitution inidviduall, and particular education do so vary.... (Leviathan, 10)

Here Hobbes distinguishes between the generic passions - the similitude of the passions in all men - and the specific objects of the passions. The latter differ between persons. But the former are universal. Intro- spection can furnish some fairly reliable beliefs about these generic desires. For there is no reason to assume, he suggests, that the passions we discover in ourselves are utterly dissimilar from those that exist in others. So if introspection reveals that we are averse to death - and Hobbes believes that this is indeed what introspection reveals - then we have reason to trust the inference that all people are equally averse to death.

But the appeal to observation is not the only warrant for Hobbes's theory of human nature. Hobbes also suggests that these observations are supported by a science which reveals the causal connection between these facts about motivation and a more basic physical mechanism. Is he then insinuating that moral philosophy is only objective when it is supported by the relevant psychophysical laws? Hobbes believes, to be sure, that his psychological maxims can be derived in the appropriate way from first philosophy. But even Hobbes is forced to admit that not all moral inquirers may be capable of following this stupendous feat.

The view on which Hobbes settles, therefore, is that moral philosophy can lay claim to obectivity in the absence of psychophysical laws, but the degree of (psychological) certainty which attaches to the ensuing moral arguments must suffer as a result. The story is a complicated one. But its general outlines are made reasonably clear in a crucial and often misinterpreted passage in the Elements of Philosophy, a work published after Leviathan:

Civil and moral philosophy do not so adhere to one another, but that they may be severed. For the causes of the motions of the mind are known, not only by ratiocination, but also by the experience of every man that takes the pains to observe those motions within himself. And, therefore, not only they that have attained the knowledge of the passions and pertubations of the mind, by the synthetical method, and from the very first principles of philosophy, may by proceeding in the same way, come to the causes and necessity of constituting commonwealths ... but even they also that have not learned the first part of philosophy, namely geometry and physics, may notwithstanding, attain the principles of civil philosophy, by the analytical method ... [those who make use of the analytical method] may at last come to this, that the appetites of men and the passions of their minds are such, that, unless




they be restrained by some power, they will always be making war upon one another; which may be known to be so by any man's experience, that will but examine his own mind. (The Elements of Philosophy VI, 7 [my emphasis in part])

Hobbes begins here by distinguishing civil and moral philosophy. The contrast does not concern their content or conclusions, but deals with their epistemic starting points. Civil philosophy is a demonstrable science proper, on a par with the science of bodies, and the science of human nature or psychology. This is suggested by the division of the Latin work corresponding to the Elements of Philosophy into De Corpore, De Homine, and De Cive, the last of which deals with what Hobbes here calls civil philosophy. Like these other certain sciences, civil science demonstrates it conclusions from first causes of matter in motion. Hobbes refers to this as the synthetic method. By contrast, what Hobbes here calls moral philosophy is more akin to a phenomenological method. Moral philosophy does not begin from a point outside the passions, in order to derive psychological maxims from our nature as matter in motion. Rather, it starts out by appealing to commonplace observations about the passions (including introspection) treating these as basic data, and concludes with an examination of the ensuing consequences for viable political institutions. Hobbes calls this method analytic. The two methods, the synthetic and the analytic, offer parallel procedures for arriving at ethical knowledge. Inquiries using these methods can also be presumed to converge on the same conclusions with respect to the laws of nature. The principal distinction between the methods follows from the fact that the synthetic method is more certain because it provides a physical explanation for the contents of the passions. In the case of the analytic method by contrast, one relies as it were, on 'the experience of every man' to yield these psychological maxims. But both methods generate scientific knowledge proper. They are scientific in the sense that each furnishes ethical knowledge by deriving that knowledge from generalizations about human nature.36

36 Hobbes is sometimes misinterpreted here in ways that distort his views. J.W.N. Watkins, for instance, claims that for Hobbes's politics is grounded on motions that are localized in the individual parts of civil society; and while outsiders cannot observe them, each individual can observe them in himself/ On this basis, Watkins concludes that Hobbes's method of civil science is indebted to 'Harvey's notion of

biological principles' rather than 'Galileo's notion of mechanical principles.' Wat- kins does not spell out exactly what that contrast might amount to. But the very idea, that Hobbes envisages a choice between the two methods, is misguided. When Hobbes discusses the acquisition of knowledge through introspection (what 'each individual can observe in himself'), he clearly intends this procedure to parallel the



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I am suggesting, then, that the mature Hobbes envisaged a difference between a science of ethics - embracing both civil science and moral philosophy - and mere opinion, rhetoric, and the like on the other. And indeed, this is just the sort of distinction that we find in Leviathan. There, Hobbes first marks off science from prudence. Prudence involves learn- ing from experience, thereby furnishing the power to anticipate the future on the basis of the past. Science, by contrast, involves being able to derive or infer effects from their causes. The difference between prudence and science is exemplified by the difference, Hobbes tells us, between an experienced gunner's knack for hitting a target, and hitting that same target through use of the science of ballistics. From a pragmatic standpoint they may be equally successful. But science and prudence are different in kind.37 Hobbes then distinguishes between types of scientific knowledge.

The signes of Science, are some, certain and infallible; some uncertain. Certain, when he that pretendeth the Science of any thing, can teach the same; that is to say, demonstrate the truth thereof perspicuously to another: Uncertain, when onely some particular events answer to his pretence, and upon many occasions prove so as he sayes they must. Signes of prudence are all uncertain; because to observe by experience, and remember all circumstances that may alter the sucesse, is impossible. (Leviathan, 37 [my emphasis])

All science is characterized by a pattern of explanation and prediction according to which events are derived from causal generalizations. This is what distinguishes science from prudence. But some science is certain - by which he means psychologically certain - while other scientific knowledge shares the uncertainty of prudential knowledge.

Part of what accounts for the uncertainty within science are gaps in our understanding of the relevant physical mechanisms. Where our grasp of these mechanisms is lacking, we are entitled to hold various hypotheses if their predictions are frequently borne out. The example of moral theory is a case in point. Instead of deriving the passions from the

derivation of knowledge from the mechanical interaction of bodies in motion. As the tone of the passage makes clear - 'not only by ratiocination, but also by the experience of every man' - the aim of the argument is to defend the legitimacy of appealing to observational commonplaces or induction in support of his conclusions. For Watkin's views see Hobbes' s System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson Univer- sity Press 1965), 64f.

37 Leviathan, 36-7. In Leviathan, Hobbes seems to suggest that prudence does not constitute knowledge, while in Human Nature, prudence is described as a different kind of knowledge, while still being separate from mere opinion and rhetoric (28-9).




first philosophy of bodies in motion, moral philosophy may rely on induction to confirm its premises. In virtue of this reliance on inductive procedures, however, moral philosophy constitutes a species of uncertain science. It is uncertain in the sense that its conclusions lack the compelling force of truths which are deduced from indubitable premises. Uncertain science nonetheless represents an advance over opinion in virtue of being demonstrable. Those who possess only uncertain science in support of their ethical beliefs have a right to hold those beliefs in greater esteem than moralists who have appealed merely to rhetoric, opinion, and authority.

In summarizing Hobbes's views on scientific knowledge, therefore, it is clear that he (like Locke) identifies true knowledge with the paradigm of mathematical demonstration. Furthermore, he maintains that, in principle, moral arguments can satisfy this standard. On this conception, objective moral truths can and must be shown to follow in a deductive fashion from more basic causes. But Hobbes was compelled to admit that these demonstrations may in practice prove difficult to come by: at least where ordinary citizens are concerned. Hobbes's response to this difficulty is to carve out a respectable role for observation in moral argument, while insisting that the resulting ethical truths, although held with less than perfect certainty, nonetheless provide an adequate reply to the arguments of the skeptics.38

V Knowing About The Fear of Death

With this discussion of Hobbes's general account of scientific knowledge behind us, we can reconsider the objection that arose in section IV. An apologist for the ancients could complain that there is no epistemic difference between postulating that the fear of death is the dominant human passion and adopting some rival teleological account. Further-

38 Although Hobbes associates uncertain science with the use of inductive procedures, he does not advocate arriving at these psychological hypotheses through the conducting of experiments. Rather, like Descartes, he regards observation as a possible way of confirming hypotheses that have been arrived at through a priori methods. Observation or experimentation need not be used, in Hobbes's view, to generate hypotheses. At most, observation helps to confirm the assumptions that reason discovers on its own. See the discussion of these issues as they pertain to Hobbes's contemporaries in Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seven-

teenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1983), 27-8, 44-5. For more on Locke, see my Toleration and the Skeptical Inquirer in Locke/ forthcoming.



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more, the assertion seems to be false. The Republican political tradition - as currently embodied in the New Hampshire license plaque 'Live Free Or Die' - offers what is apparently a standing rebuke to Hobbes's theory of human nature.

Now given what Hobbes has said with respect to the method of civil science, one would expect some well-worked-out explanation regarding how the claim that the fear of death is the dominant and universal passion follows from our material constitution. One would also anticipate some description of the physical mechanism which predispose us to value avoiding death above all else. But these expectations are largely frustrated. Hobbes nowhere deals in an explicit way with the sort of objections we are now considering.

One can nonetheless foresee the way his reply would go. Hobbes, I think, would invoke two related arguments. The first argument attempts to sketch the relation between the fear of death and our material constitution. The second appeals to the deliberative account of the good that he holds and which was described in section II. Here are the relevant passages invoking the first argument:

Nor can a man any more live, whose Desires are at an end, than he, whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continuall progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later. The cause whereof is, That the object of mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure for ever, the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions, and inclinations of all men, tend, not onely to the

procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life.... So that in the first place, I

put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restless desire of Power after power that ceaseth only in death. (Leviathan, 70)

And

There is no such thing as perpetuall Tranquility of mind, while we live here; because Life it selfe is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense.39

39 Leviathan, 46. Compare Human Nature, 33; and De Homine, 48-9: 'The greatest of

goods for each is his own preservation. For nature is so arranged that all desire good for themselves. Insofar as it is within their capacities, it is necessary to desire life, health, and further, insofar as it can be done, security of future time. On the other hand, though death is the greatest of all evils (especially when accompanied by torture), the pains of life can be so great that, unless their quick end is foreseen, they may lead men to number death among goods/




In interpreting these passages, I am simply going to reject the possi- bility that Hobbes regards the aversion to death as being more like a Kantian duty of reason, than a description of general psychological propensities.40 The argument can then be glossed as follows:

(1) Our nature as a collection of material bodies in motion necessarily causes us to have desires for future states of affairs.

(2) All persons have a present and overriding generic desire to achieve the satisfaction of their future desires, independently of the latter's content.

(3) Continuity of motion is a necessary condition for the satisfaction of these future desires.

(4) Death brings motion to an end.

(5) Therefore, all persons can be presumed to regard the avoidance of death as the overriding aim of political life.

The initial formulation of the argument is defective at (2). For as was mentioned above, there are obvious counter-instances where individuals do not attach overriding weight to the securing of their future desires, but willingly place their lives at risk. Hobbes would then supplement the argument, I believe, by suggesting that these counter-instances are only apparent exceptions to rule. They originate in what he terms 'pertubations' of the mind. For as we have already seen, Hobbes believes that identifiable cognitive and conative shortcomings can obstruct proper judgment. Once these pertubations are eliminated, however, agents are presumed revert to their default psychological dispositions in the form of the two maxims of human nature: they desire to compete over scarce resources, and fear for their destruction above all else.

Hobbes did, I think, have something like this view in mind. For he clearly believes that those Republicans, whose politics result in turbu- lence and bloodshed, advance their demands on the basis of a mistaken conception of freedom (Leviathan, ch. 21). Their ideals reflect a false dogma, one which no reflective person could submit to. In the same vein,

40 The crucial passage for rejecting the Kantian interpretation is De Homine, 55f ., where it is clear that the pertubations which make certain aims unreasonable do so only in the sense of tempting us away from our considered desires. That is to say, we have reason to follow our actual desires, except when those desires are corrupted by pertubations. There is no independent categorical imperative which competes with these hypothetical imperatives. For the contrary view, see Bernard Gert's introduc- tion to Bernard Gert, ed., Man and Citizen (Indianapolis: Hackett 1991).



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Hobbes maintains that getting drunk is contrary to the laws of nature. It is contrary to those laws because it places people in an intemperate state in which they are apt to overlook their real interests (Leviathan, 109). When persons are intoxicated their grasp over their real desires is tenuous. So this 'argument from pertubations' - as we might call it - leads to the amending of (2) with (2)*:

(2)* All persons who have deliberated under appropriate epistemic conditions are presumed to have a present, and overriding generic desire to achieve the satisfaction of their future desires.

From which it can be made to follow (with a bit of extra work) that:

(5) Therefore, all persons can be presumed to regard the avoidance of death as the overriding aim of political life.

On this revised interpretation, the premise holding that the fear of death is the dominant passion - which serves in turn as the basis for Hobbes's political philosophy - has a rather involved justification. The fear of death is held to be a psychological disposition which becomes manifest when agents deliberate under appropriate, and possibly counterfactual conditions. The existence of this disposition is supported by the presence of both an identifiable physical mechanism - the fact that human beings are in a constant state of motion - as well as commonplace psychological observation, or the 'experience of everyman.'

This offers, I think, the most charitable interpretation of Hobbes's foundations for moral science which is compatible with the textual evidence. Yet there is reason to believe that the argument falls short: and must inevitably fall short. Here is why. It is sensible to believe, with Hobbes, that no person or animal is indifferent to the painful destruction of their bodies. (The explanation lies in the evolved configuration of their nervous systems, however, rather than in the intention of sustaining their natural motion as Hobbes would have it.) But it is equally significant that human beings possess cognitive capabilities which vastly exceed the capacities possessed by other species. These abilities often make human agents susceptible to various ideals, and intellectual commitments. In order for Hobbes's argument to go through, he would need to show that on all occasions where these intellectual concerns trump our acquisitiveness or fear of death, the result can plausibly be ascribed to some perverting error of deliberation. Yet we have no compelling grounds for endorsing this assertion. There is no reason to believe that political demands, which are addressed to the securing of these intellectual goods even at risk to our survival - demands which range from various civil freedoms, to the preservation of culture - are somehow artificial. Any attempt to paint them in that light inevitably fails. It fails because the




enhanced cognitive capacities, which make these intellectual goods attractive, are every much a part of our physical nature as the material concerns for acquisition and survival which Hobbes singles out.

In sum, the positive side of Hobbes's moral project involves demon- strating that it is the sovereign's prerogative to define the standards of good and evil. In advancing that claim, Hobbes relies on certain maxims of human nature. The warrant for holding these maxims is twofold: they accord with experience, and there is a presumption that they can ultimately be derived from the science of bodies. This manner of deriving moral conclusions from a science of human nature conforms to Hobbes's characterization of scientific method. But the demonstration fails because a materialist theory of mind gives no support whatsoever to the assumption that peoples's most basic interests are exhausted by a concern for material goods. One consequence is that a contracting individual may reasonably prefer more participatory political institutions than an absolute sovereign offers, even when those democratic institutions are accompanied by a marginally higher risk of death. By extension, the mere fact that a political system is maximally preservative of life does not exempt it from all other demands for accountability.

VI On the Misuse of History

It will now be evident why I think the current view holding that Hobbes came to intend his ethics as a Venture in rhetoric' is deeply misguided.41 Part of the evidence that is marshaled in support of the rhetorical interpretation pertains to those instances in Leviathan where Hobbes indicates that persons who mistrust his claims about human psychology can have the same confirmed through experience. This appeal to the experience of each person agrees entirely, however, with Hobbes's general account of justification in moral science. The psychological maxims he describes are clearly meant to be consistent with commonplace observations. His point is merely that the (psychological) certainty with which one holds a moral theory is enhanced when these observations can also be shown to follow from physical mechanisms or causes which are well understood. The appeal to observational evidence therefore signals no retreat whatsoever from the conspicuous claim that civil philosophy is

41 As Tom Sorell maintains in "The Science in Hobbes's Politics/ 76. As I understand Sorell, this is not merely a de facto appraisal of the epistemic status of Hobbes's theory, but also a characterization of Hobbes's intentions. See, by the same author, 'Hobbes's Persuasive Civil Science/ The Philosophical Quarterly 40, 3 (1990) 342-51.



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a science proper, one whose epistemic status differs in kind from the claims of prudence, let alone mere rhetoric.

What is especially objectionable about the rhetorical interpretation, however, is that it hopelessly muddles up the connection between ethics, science and skepticism in the early modern period. Hobbes (but not only Hobbes) is obsessed by the revival of ancient philosophical skepticism, and is appalled by its political consequences. (Although he likes the skeptics well enough to incorporate their arguments against the Aris- totelians.) This preoccupation with classical skepticism simply drops out of the picture if we assume that he presents his civil philosophy as a Venture in rhetoric/ Our understanding of the past is damaged. But this distortion of intellectual history also has the potential to deform moral philosophy in the present.

Consider the current theoretical orientation that we may refer to as revisionist moral realism. Proponents of this view generally begin by making the historical claim that modern moral skepticism evolved in response to metaphysical naturalism. On this view, moral skepticism only gains hold in the early modern period, when intellectuals succumb to a philistine scientism.42 Proponents of the revisionist view then advance a variety of reasons which purport to explain why this thralldom to science should be ended. The basic idea is that natural science should not be permitted to tell us what is real. (Since many different strategies have been invoked to undermine the metaphysical authority of science, I shall not attempt to summarize this step of the argument.) Ending the

42 The impact of metaphysical naturalism on ethics is what Hilary Putnam mistakenly refers to as the classical or traditional source of moral skepticism. See his Realism With A Human Face (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1990), ch. 9; and The

Many Faces of Realism (La Salle, IL: Open Court 1987), ch. 1. Compare: /rThe [current] model for all explanation and understanding is the natural science that emerges out of the seventeenth-century revolution. But this offers us a neutral universe; it has no place for intrinsic worth or goals that make a claim on us ... [this naturalism induces] a quasi-despairing acquiescence in subjectivism. The link between naturalism and subjectivism is even clearer from another angle. The seventeenth-century scientific revolution destroyed the Platonic- Aristotelian conception of the universe as the instantiation of Forms, which defined the standards by which things were to be judged. The only plausible alternative construal of such standards in naturalistic

thought was as projections of subjects' (Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1995], 38. See also Taylor's The Sources

of the Sel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1989), 56-8; and John McDow- ell, 'Virtue and Reason,' The Monist 62, 3 (1979) 331-50 (see 346 for more on the impact of 'philistine science' on ethics). See further his 'Values and Secondary Qualities' in

Morality and Objectivity, and Ted Honderich (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1985), 110-29.




dominance of science is then supposed to have a liberating effect on aspiring moralizers: they should no longer feel inhibited by the alleged metaphysical queerness of ethical values. They ought in consequence to shy away no longer from claims to moral authority and knowledge.

One troubling aspect of this revisionist program lies in its strong communitarian overtones. The revisionists hold, roughly speaking, that moral controversies ought to be resolved by appealing to the standards of reason that prevail in our community. Those standards can, of course, be subjected to critical scrutiny. The moralizing individual need not feel constrained by every hide bound, collective prejudice. But these philosophers encourage us to coerce and censure others, provided that we are satisfied that our judgments accord with the corrected standards of our moral community. An important feature of these revisionists is that they are unconcerned to address the change that 'our' moral standards are ethnocentric.43

Whether moral philosophy should be constrained by metaphysical naturalism is not something I here wish to assess. Rather, it is the move which links a revised metaphysical outlook to a communitarian moral

epistemology that this chapter in the intellectual history of the early enlightenment is concerned. It is clear that the historical narrative which accompanies the arguments of revisionist moral realists is mistaken: very serious and widespread doubts about the objectivity of ethics had arisen in the early modern period well in advance of any commitment to the metaphysical doctrines associated with the New Science. Even in

43 The following passages contain communitarian overtones: '[Liberal advocates of

equality] should drop the distinction between rational judgment and cultural bias ... we are going to have to work out the limits [of our ethical precepts] case by case,

by hunch or by conversational compromise ... liberals should take with full serious- ness the fact that the ideals of procedural justice and human equality are parochial, recent, eccentric cultural developments, and then recognize that this does not mean

they are any less worth fighting for' (Richard Rorty, Objectivism, Relativism, and Truth [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], 207-8, with slight emendations). For another view which explicitly defends relativism in the test for values, see David

Wiggins, Needs, Values, and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell 1987), essay V. Compare Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face, 178; see also 139. Compare Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, 64-73, where he maintains that we are entitled to believe in the

obectivity of whatever moral goods (or hypergoods as he calls them) allow us to make sense of our particular attitudes as a moral community. We are furthermore entitled to construe these goods as being objective in an absolute, rather than

culturally relative sense. A view that is similar to Taylor's has been put forward

recently by Elizabeth Anderson in her Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993), ch. 5. Compare John McDowell, Truth and

Projection in Ethics (Kansas: University of Kansas Press 1987), 9.



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the case of Hobbes - and Hobbes is usually singled out as the original philistine, the first who is alleged to have argued that naturalism is incompatible with eudaimonistic ethics - the story is false.

The realization which ought to follow is that moral skepticism has an origin, as well as an appeal, which remains independent from any particular philosophical outlook. Its foothold in the human condition is a natural development. The skeptic's sting has always lain in the awareness of fair-minded and equitable persons that there are a wealth of potentially viable political communities, whose favored life-styles and ideals differ extensively from our own. In the case of the Pyrrhonians, acquaintance with this diversity gave rise to the sensible worry that even our most reasonable ethical assumptions are partial and parochial. This may be no reason for us to give up the moral standards of our community (or communities) entirely. As the Pyrrhonians also recognized, deliber- ately giving up one's ethical standards wholescale is itself a stance that has ethical repercussions. But when we come to apply those ideals to others who manifestly do not accept them, even after hearing our reasons, we must often proceed with a bad conscience. The sense of being conflicted, the skeptic urges, should be inescapable.

These anxieties are an old story. But having misdiagnosed the origins of modern moral skepticism, the revisionist realists do not proceed to address these anxieties, so much as recommend that we adopt a different attitude towards them, with philosophers now goading us to call the outcome of our speculations 'moral truths.' It is pointless to resolve the issues that arise by spilling ink over the correct meaning of terms such as 'moral realism' or 'ethical cognitivism.' It suffices to say that many current conceptions of realism simply ignore doubts about moral knowledge that arise quite naturally, in the absence of any special metaphysical axes to grind. Those moralists who instruct us to censure and coerce other human beings solely because it seems correct by our lights to do so, simply fail to take seriously perennial doubts about the basis for our moral authority. A sense of conflict that is both genuine and reasonable is treated as an idle bit of moral squeamishness.

An adequate elucidation of Hobbes's intentions should serve notice that these revisionists have made things too easy on themselves. The suggestion that our moral tradition inherits honorific authority by default - because we may now have some reasons to doubt the sover- eignty of the worldview offered by physics - involves a strange leap of faith. Clearly, that moral authority must first be earned. For Hobbes, earning this authority required showing why all persons, in virtue of their generic concerns and propensity for self-interested behavior, have reason to adopt certain moral standards. I do not believe that Hobbes's emphasis on self-interested reason furnishes the only alternative to moral skepticism. But some explanation, regarding why certain moral




norms are truly inescapable for any flourishing human community, seems to constitute a basic prerequisite for laying to rest a lingering sense of bad faith. Naturalism may or may not be defective. But whatever defects it is ultimately assumed to possess, we must remind ourselves that moral doubters have always exceeded in their numbers the sporadic individuals made anxious by the prospect that science leaves no room for values in the world.

Received: February, 1993 Revised: February, 1996



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Science and Moral Skepticism in Hobbes