The Normative Structure of Natural Law in Hobbes’s Leviathan.

In Chapters XIV and XV of Leviathan, Hobbes deduces nineteen laws of nature from the necessity of self-preservation. The first two—to seek peace, and to be willing to lay down one’s natural right—are straightforwardly conducive to survival, as Hobbes argues in detail. But the later laws govern conduct much further removed from that foundation, requiring, for instance, gratitude to our benefactors and the allocation of unshareable goods by primogeniture. This distance gives rise to what I call prudential skepticism: the worry that following such laws unconditionally might impede, rather than promote, one’s survival.

Hobbes offers two responses. First, the laws always bind in foro interno, in desire, but bind in foro externo, in action, only where a sovereign enforces general compliance. In the state of nature, natural laws require only “a desire that they should take place”, so when acting on a law would make us prey to our enemies, we are not obligated to sacrifice ourselves. Second, in his reply to the Foole, who denies that reason requires him to keep covenants when he knows breaking them would benefit him, Hobbes argues that it is irrational to make one’s non-compliance known, since one will be cast out of society. On this reply, it is the appearance of being a law-breaker, rather than the law-breaking itself, that is irrational. A consequence of this reply, however, is that in the very unlikely event that being thought to be a Foole is prudentially rational, the obligation flips, and one ought to appear a Foole.

But how do these responses interact? More specifically, given some law whose content is “You must φ”, what precisely is required of us under both qualifications? I argue that the requirement has a Foole-first structure. One is required, whether or not there is a sovereign, to maintain the appearance of having (1) an unconditional desire to φ, and (2) a counterfactual disposition to φ if a sovereign were present.

Some formalism may make things clearer. The first qualification alone (the in foro interno/externo clause) requires one to ife(φ): if there is a sovereign, φ and desire to φ; otherwise, desire to φ. The second alone requires one to foole(φ): do not act so as to cause others to believe that you believe that you have no reason to φ, unless doing so would be prudentially beneficial. We must therefore decide between ife(foole(φ)) and foole(ife(φ)). On the ife-first interpretation, ife(foole(φ)), someone in the state of nature need only desire to keep up appearances, while someone in the commonwealth must actually keep up appearances. On the Foole-first interpretation, foole(ife(φ)), one must (nearly) always keep up an appearance that convinces others of the following: that one will desire compliance always and act in compliance if there is a sovereign.

For concreteness’s sake, suppose farmer Smith has a covenant with farmer Jones: first they plow Smith’s field, then Jones’s. There is no sovereign. Smith reasons that if he is seen to keep covenants, others will take him as a mark, so he blows Jones off. Since there is no sovereign, his desire to keep up appearances is enough for ife-first; but he has not kept up the appearance Foole-first requires. If we all behaved like Smith, it is unclear how we would ever emerge from the state of nature. Foole-first instead requires us to signal that we desire to keep our covenants and would keep them were there a sovereign, which conduces to actually establishing one. Since Hobbes describes that transition as not merely possible but actual, Foole-first is the more consistent reading.

The same structure explains why Hobbes proposes that natural laws bind us in desire at all. For Hobbes, a desire is an endeavor, a small internal motion towards its object. If such a desire were all the law required, an amoralist could comply by desiring at some point to comply, and after that do whatever he wants. But natural law cannot consist only in perfunctory box-ticking. Bare desires cannot ground cooperation either. They are far too small to be observed by others who consider covenanting with us. What the laws govern is the appearance of desire, which others can discern from our actions and speech, and which can secure the mutual trust necessary to exit the state of war.

One might object that Foole-first commits Hobbes to rule-worship, since it seems to require us to keep up appearances even when doing so does not serve self-preservation. But the requirement is unconditional only with respect to whether or not there is a sovereign. In foole(ife(φ)), the outer requirement not to appear a Foole carries its own exception: we need not keep up appearances where being thought a Foole would be prudentially beneficial. Since that exception takes the outer scope, it qualifies everything inside it, so the whole requirement applies only where it is not better to defect. When defecting would indeed be advantageous, we should jettison the appearances and simply defect. A perfectly omniscient agent might rationally defect. But for actual, epistemically limited human beings, being thought a Foole is almost sure to lead to exclusion from society, exclusion from the benefits of peace, and ultimately destruction. So in practice, Foole-first demands a rigid, near-universal adherence to the appearance of desiring compliance.

I do not contend that Hobbes would have put things this way, only that this is the most plausible and natural development of his view. It is also more charitable to Hobbes: it vindicates his response to prudential skepticism without attributing to him an implausible commitment to rule-worship or a weak argument aimed only at the Silent Foole.

Written for Kinch Hoekstra’s seminar on Leviathan at UC Berkeley.

Questions, objections, or a better example? Write to me: patrick.pan@patrickpan.com.