{"id":62377,"date":"2023-07-30T01:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T05:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=62377"},"modified":"2023-07-29T09:28:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-29T13:28:08","slug":"qotd-thomas-hobbes-and-leviathan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/07\/30\/qotd-thomas-hobbes-and-leviathan\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>… I’m not trying to cast Thomas Hobbes, of all people, as some kind of proto-Libertarian. The point is, for Hobbes, physical security<\/em> was the overriding, indeed obsessive, concern. Indeed, Hobbes went so far as to make his peace with Oliver Cromwell, for two reasons: First, his own physical safety was threatened in his Parisian exile (a religious thing, irrelevant). Second, and most importantly, Cromwell was<\/em> the Leviathan. The Civil Wars didn’t turn out quite like Hobbes thought they would, but regardless, Cromwell’s was the actually existing government. It really did have the power, and when you boil it down, whether the actually existing ruler is a Prince or a Leviathan or something else, might makes right<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One last point before we close: As we’ve noted here probably ad nauseam<\/em>, modern English is far less Latinate than the idiom of Hobbes’s day. Hobbes translated Leviathan<\/em> into Latin himself, and while I’m not going to cite it (not least because I myself don’t read Latin), it’s crucial to note that, for the speakers of Hobbes’s brand of English, “right” is a direction<\/em> \u2013 the opposite of left.<\/p>\n

I’m oversimplifying for clarity, because it’s crucial that we get this \u2013 when the Barons at Runnymede, Thomas Hobbes, hell, even Thomas Jefferson talked about “rights”, they might’ve used the English word, but they were thinking in Latin<\/em>. They meant ius<\/em> \u2013 as in, ius gentium<\/em> (the right of peoples, “international law”), ius civile<\/em> (“civil law”, originally the laws of the City of Rome itself), etc. Thus, if Hobbes had said “might makes right” \u2013 which he actually did say, or damn close, Leviathan<\/em>, passim<\/em> \u2013 he would’ve meant something like “might makes ius<\/em>“. Might legitimates, in other words \u2013 the actually existing power is legitimate, because<\/em> it exists.<\/p>\n

We Postmoderns, who speak only English, get confused by the many contradictory senses of “right”. The phrase “might makes right” horrifies us (at least, when a Republican is president) because we take it to mean “might makes correct<\/em>” \u2013 that any action of the government at all<\/em> is legally, ethically, morally ok, simply because the government did it. Even Machiavelli, who truly did believe that might makes ius<\/em>, would laugh at this \u2013 or, I should say, especially<\/em> Machiavelli, as he explicitly urges his Prince, who by definition has ius<\/em>, to horribly immoral, unethical, “illegal” (in the “law of nations” sense) behavior.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s clarify: Might legitimates<\/em>. That doesn’t roll off the tongue like the other phrase, but it avoids a lot of confusion.<\/p>\n

Severian, “Hobbes (II)”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2020-12-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… I’m not trying to cast Thomas Hobbes, of all people, as some kind of proto-Libertarian. The point is, for Hobbes, physical security was the overriding, indeed obsessive, concern. Indeed, Hobbes went so far as to make his peace with Oliver Cromwell, for two reasons: First, his own physical safety was threatened in his Parisian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,84,7,9,41],"tags":[650,570,400,1318,1414,217,1462,1405],"class_list":["post-62377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-government","category-history","category-law","category-quotations","tag-civilwar","tag-england","tag-language","tag-niccolomachiavelli","tag-olivercromwell","tag-rights","tag-severian","tag-thomashobbes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ge5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62377"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83907,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62377\/revisions\/83907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}