Questions to Guide Your Reading

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Chapter 13

1. What, according to Hobbes, is man’s “natural condition”? 

2. There are two major objections that can be leveled against Hobbes’s description of man’s “natural condition” in this chapter.  The first is that human nature is not as naturally fierce as he suggests. The second is that there never was a time when there was “the war of all against all,” such as he describes.  Hobbes defends himself against both of these objections in turn.  How?

3. When men are in the state of the war of all against all, what follows about justice and injustice according to Hobbes?  What follows about property and ownership?

4. Having described “the ill condition in which man by mere Nature has been placed,” Hobbes suggests that there is a possibility of coming out of this state, partly due to the Passions, partly due to his Reason.  What are the Passions that entice men to Peace according to Hobbes?  And the precepts of Reason that direct men to peace, what does Hobbes call these?

Chapter 14

5. How does Hobbes define the “Right of Nature”? (which he associates with the Latin term Ius Naturale).  Compare Hobbes’s notion of ius with Thomas Aquinas’s use of that term.  How, then, does Hobbes’s notion of ius naturale differ from Thomas Aquinas’s use of that term?  How, for example, is Hobbes’s position similar to that of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias?  How is it different?

6. How does Hobbes define Liberty?  How does it differ from Augustine’s notion of “free will”?

7. How does Hobbes define a “Law of Nature” (Lex Naturalis)?

8. How does Hobbes describe thfe relationship between the Right of Nature and the Law of Nature?  How does Hobbes’s understanding on this score differ from that of, say, Aquinas?

9. What, according to Hobbes, is the “first and fundamental Law of Nature”?  What is its justification or cause?  What are the “two branches” of the first Law of Nature?

10. What according to Hobbes is the second Law of Nature?  How does it follow from the first Law of Nature?

11. In his analysis, Hobbes mentions what he calls the “Law of the Gospel.”  How does it fit into his system?

12. In this chapter, Hobbes discusses the origin of “duty,” of “obligation,” of that which we “ought” to do.  How does it come about?
 
13. Why for Hobbes is “injustice” a species of “absurdity”?

14. How does Hobbes define “Contract”?  How according to Hobbes are “Contracts” made?  Why are they made? 

Chapter 15

15. What according to Hobbes is the third Law of Nature?  How does it follow from the second?

16. Oddly, Hobbes described the origins of “Injustice” in the previous chapter (14), but he doesn’t get to the origin of “Justice” until this chapter (15).  Why?  What is the source for Hobbes of Justice and Injustice?  What is definition of “Injustice”?  What is necessary for there to be either Justice or Injustice, according to Hobbes?  Why is this so?

17. Why according to Hobbes is Rebellion contrary to Reason (and thus contrary to Justice)?  How does Hobbes’s discussion about why Rebellion is contrary to Reason help to confirm the third Law of Nature?

18. The third Law of Nature, says Hobbes, is the fountain and origin of “Justice.”  In what follows in Chapter 15, Hobbes will discuss, first, a series of distinctions important to understanding “justice,” and second, another series of “laws of nature.”  With regard to the first – the categories of Justice – Hobbes repeats a basic distinction, well-known to the tradition, between Commutative and Distributive Justice.  How are these two defined traditionally, and how does Hobbes define them?

19. What are Hobbes’s fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh laws of nature?  (NB: There are more, but they need not concern us for the present.)  How do all of these follow from Hobbes’s first three laws of nature?

Chapter 17

20. What according to Hobbes is the final end or purpose of men (who naturally love not only their own liberty, but even dominion over others) allowing themselves to be restrained such as they are in a Commonwealth? 

21. What does Hobbes say about the “Laws of Nature” (he means the third, fourth, fifth, and all the rest) “of themselves without the terrors of some Power to cause them to be observed”?  What according to Hobbes is the relationship between these Laws of Nature and our “natural passions”?

22. Hearkening back to a famous example given by Aristotle in the Ethics, Hobbes claims that, although bees and ants may live sociably with one another, human beings will not.  To support his claim, he adduces six arguments.  What are they?

23. Since humans will not live sociably one with another “naturally” (as do the bees and ants), what is necessary?

24. What, therefore, according to Hobbes, is the source or origin or cause of the Commonwealth?  Why does it arise?  How does it relate to the first three laws of nature?

25. How are Hobbes’s “laws of nature” different from those of Aquinas?  You should be able to answer (a) How are they different in terms of content, and (b) How they are different in terms of their source or cause or origin?