In this paper, I will introduce the notions of crucial argument and crucial evidence in the philosophy of intellectual history (broadly construed, including the history of political thought). I will use these concepts and take sides in an important controversy in Hobbes studies, namely whether Hobbes holds a prudential or a deontological theory of contractual obligation. Though there is textual evidence for both readings, I will argue that there is especially relevant evidence – crucial evidence – for interpreting Hobbes’s account in a deontological fashion.
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See e.g. W. V. Quine, “On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World,” Erkenntnis, 9 (1975) for a classic account.
Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics. Volume I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 67–72. Admittedly, Skinner is mainly concerned with coherence across whole œuvres, i.e., series of texts written by the same author. But his denouncement of the mythology of coherence also seems to involve a stronger thesis regarding coherence within single texts. See S. Syrjämäki, “Mark Bevir on Skinner and the ‘Myth of Coherence,’ ” Intellectual History Review, 21 (2011), 17, 21–22 and L. Venezia, “El cumplimiento de la obligación de obediencia al Leviatán: Hobbes, Skinner y la ‘mitología de la coherencia,’ ” Revista de Estudios Políticos, 149 (2010), 156 n. 10.
Venezia, “El cumplimiento de la obligación de obediencia al Leviatán,” 160–167.
See e.g. I. Lakatos, “The Role of Experiments in Science,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part A, 4 (1974), 309. Robert Hooke coined the term experimentum crucis in his Micrographia of 1665. Issac Newton was the first natural philosopher who claimed having performed a crucial experiment in his studies on the nature of light of 1666–1672 that were publicly announced in the early 1670s. See S. Schaffer, “Glass Works: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment,” in The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 71–79 for a detailed account.
Blau, “History of Political Thought as a Social Science,” 7–8.
Blau, “History of Political Thought as a Social Science,” 15–16.
H. L. A. Hart, “Commands and Authoritative Legal Reasons,” in Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 255, J. Finnis, Natural Laws and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 308, J. Raz, “Promises and Obligations,” in P. M. S. Hacker and J. Raz (eds.), Law, Morality and Society: Essays in Honour of H. L. A. Hart, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 221–223, 227–228 and Practical Reason and Norms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 39, 190. For the record, they all analyze promises instead of contracts. I think the same analysis applies in both cases.
J. Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 56, emphasis in the original.
Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, 139. For the record, Hampton’s conflation of genuine moral duty with fear of threats of punishment is wrong. The two are analytically distinct notions. In fact, the latter should be understood along prudential lines.
Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, 142; see 138–147 for Hampton’s full analysis of self-interested agreements.
See also D. Baumgold, “Subjects and Soldiers: Hobbes on Military Service,” History of Political Thought, 4 (1983), 59–62 and S. Sreedhar, Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 38–40, 84–87 for further analysis of contracts signed by soldiers.
C. Finkelstein, “A Puzzle about Hobbes on Self-Defense,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 82 (2001), 345–348 introduces the toxin puzzle to analyze Hobbes’s argument for the right of self-defense in civil society. I decided to use it to analyze the promise to the thief after reading her analysis, although her conclusions are very different from my own.
See B. Gert, “Hobbes and Psychological Egoism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 28 (1967), 505–507, “Introduction,” in T. Hobbes, Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive), B. Gert (ed.) (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 5–7 and Hobbes: Prince of Peace (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 35–38. The claim that Hobbes’s account only involves tautological egoism is well-established. For instance, M. Murphy writes that Gert’s point that Hobbes is merely committed to tautological egoism is “near-conclusive” (“Hobbes and the Evil of Death,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 82 (2000), 36). Referring to Gert’s account, S. A. Lloyd also claims that “recent studies have decisively shown that Hobbes’s texts do not support this attribution of psychological egoism” (Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 117–118; see also 78–85, 242–243 and Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 324 n. 7).
See e.g. R. Rhodes, “Hobbes’s unReasonable Fool,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, XXX (1992), 95–97, M. Harvey, “Moral Justification in Hobbes,” Hobbes Studies, XII (1999), 48, “A Defense of Hobbes’s ‘Just Man,’ ” Hobbes Studies, XV (2002), 84–85, “Hobbes and the Value of Justice,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, XLII (2004), 448, “Teasing a Limited Deontological Theory of Morals out of Hobbes,” The Philosophical Forum, XXXV (2004), 43, Lloyd, Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, 296–297 and D. van Mill, Liberty, Rationality, and Agency in Hobbes’s Leviathan, 132.
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In this paper, I will introduce the notions of crucial argument and crucial evidence in the philosophy of intellectual history (broadly construed, including the history of political thought). I will use these concepts and take sides in an important controversy in Hobbes studies, namely whether Hobbes holds a prudential or a deontological theory of contractual obligation. Though there is textual evidence for both readings, I will argue that there is especially relevant evidence – crucial evidence – for interpreting Hobbes’s account in a deontological fashion.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 394 | 25 | 3 |
Full Text Views | 146 | 3 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 66 | 7 | 3 |