Hobbes & the Modern Anxiety

If there is anything that is unambiguously modern in modern political philosophy specifically or modern thought in general, it is a reject of ancient thought.  What was it that the moderns rejected?  All ancient thought was in the widest sense theological.  Including in the term ancient both the classical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (along with the pre-Socratics and the post-Socratic philosophers) as well as both pagan and Biblical theism, all the ancients recognized some authority that was higher than man.  Even the Epicureans, who thought that the gods took no interest in human affairs and so did not bother to legislate for human beings, thought that wisdom amounted to accepting the place of man in the natural order.  Plato and Aristotle regarded nature as an authority. 

Machiavelli’s thought is founded on a rejection of higher authority.  Neither God nor nature provides guidance or salvation.  We are on our own and must make out way by our own will and resources.  Hobbes political thought, despite his necessary concessions to Christian theology, is grounded in that same foundation.  This is most apparent in The Leviathan, his magnum opus. 

Perhaps the most striking feature of that work is the introduction of early modern science at the beginning.  Hobbes gives us a thoroughly mechanical account of the human being, body and soul as so many machines, and an account of the commonwealth.  Here is the opening paragraph:

NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people's safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.

Two things occur to me here.  One is that Hobbes regards the regime as an altogether artificial creation, as much as any automata.  Think of a player piano.  This sets him apart from the Socratics who took the political community as a natural growth resulting from man’s nature as a political animal.  More on that later. 

The other is that Hobbes work mirrors Socrates’ strategy in the Republic.  It is frequently forgotten that the political theory developed in that work is secondary to its moral psychology.  Socrates builds a regime in speech in order to model the human soul, so that he can defend justice against the challenge posed by his spirited interlocutors.  Plato’s soul is tripartite: intelligence rules (or ought to rule) the passions and the passions rule (or ought to rule) the appetites.  The three parts of his regime: philosopher kings, guardians, and producers, correspond to the parts of the soul. 

In the passage above we can see that Hobbes adopts the same strategy.  The human being is a natural machine consisting of a number of mechanical parts.  The regime is an artificial machine consisting of roughly the same set of parts.  The difference is that Plato’s soul is based on the classical understand of nature.  Natural wholes are primary in that account.  The parts of things are derivative from the wholes of which they are parts.  For Hobbes, apparently, the parts are primary and the wholes are derivative from the mechanisms that coalesce into them. 

This raises a profound problem for Hobbes and for the moderns generally that did not bother the Socratics.  This is noted by Leo Strauss in the introduction to Hobbes’ Political Philosophy. 

Hobbes tried to base his political philosophy on modern natural science.  The temptation to take this way could hardly be resisted.  As traditional moral and political philosophy was, to some extent, based on traditional metaphysics, it seemed necessary, when traditional metaphysics were replaced by modern natural science, to base the new moral and political philosophy on the new science. 

Attempts of this kind could never succeed: traditional metaphysics were, to use the language of Hobbes’ successors, ‘anthropomorphistic’ and, therefore, a proper basis for a philosophy of things human; modern natural science, on the other hand, which tried to interpret nature by renouncing all ‘anthropomorphisms’, all conceptions of purpose and perfection, could, therefore, to say the least, contribute nothing to the understanding of things human, to the foundation of morals and politics. 

Yes.  Human beings are creatures with purpose.  We care, each of us, about ourselves and others.  We can live better or worse lives and what is better or worse suggests the possibility of perfection.  We are wholes which can flourish or decay and die.  If modern science indeed requires the rejection of all anthropomorphisms, then indeed it can have nothing to say about the moral and political things.  It drives a wedge between the human being and all other things, leaving the former as strangers estranged from the world they live in. 

I think that this is the root of the anxieties expressed by critics of scientism.  The fear is that when the light of science is brought to bear on love, literature, art, etc., that it will extinguish the human being in those things.  I think that this fear is mistaken because the early modern view of modern science, the one in which Hobbes was situated, is wrong.  Some things can be explained in purely mechanistic terms.  Biology cannot.  Purpose is not uniquely human.  A spider, crawling across the kitchen floor, is up to something.  A vine crawling up a stone wall is, in a metaphysical sense, trying to get somewhere. 

If to have purpose is anthropomorphic, then living organisms are metaphysically, robustly anthropomorphic.  When science turns its attention to organisms, it is not the latter that are reduced; it is the former that is enlarged.  The same is true when scientific methods are applied to the foundations and origins of human morality and political life, to love, literature, and art. 

Hobbes believed that human beings were by nature solitary animals.  Hobbes was wrong.  Classical philosophy did not drive a wedge between human nature and nature in general, as Hobbes was forced to do.  Classical philosophy was closer to the truth, as the modern biosocial sciences are discovering. 

Machiavelli & Moses

The second question Ms. Flint presents is this:

If we are really looking at natural selection, I still maintain that the signals had the opposite effect – at least for the Jews. Over and over, their devotion to their rituals leads others to persecute them. The Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, the Germans. The signals they sent through sacrifice and circumcision were disadvantages in terms of survival. The Jews did have other, less painful traditions and traits that would have made them attractive partners for trade and commerce - Reading and writing, for instance, but these things would not send the signals of adherence to God’s laws that you spoke of earlier.

The question here is whether costly religious rituals like circumcision and other examples of sacrifices have a social function.  I am persuaded by costly signaling theory that they do. 

Most human beings (like our cousins, the chimpanzees) require the protection of a group to have a chance to survive and mate at all, let alone to do so in some measure of comfort and security.  For most males in either species, across long periods of time, this meant staying within the group in which they were born.  Conversion was not an option.  The survival of the group, then, was a paramount problem that had to be constantly solved. 

Human beings are extraordinarily capable of cooperation, something that explains the success of our species.  That means that individuals within the group must be able to trust one another.  This is one of the primary drivers of the evolution of morality. 

What we do know from looking at existing human societies as well as records of earlier ones is that costly signaling is one of the mechanisms that support group cohesion.  Yes, as Ms. Flint points out, what binds one group together may well make enemies of other groups.  That is precisely the point.  Solidarity with is both necessary and possible because it is solidarity against. 

The dress and language of Hutterites keeps that population of Anabaptists distinct from the surround population, as the aversion to technology does for the Amish.  These costly rituals certainly do arouse the ire of the larger, stronger peoples among which they dwell.  Is it not obvious that it is also essential to their survival as a group?  Yes, the Jews might have reduced the friction between themselves and the Greeks, Romans, Germans, etc., by dropping circumcision, the dietary laws, ritual prayers, etc.  In every generation, some Jews made that choice.  We cannot say what happened to them for they ceased to be Jews.  The Jews are still in Hebron because some Jews in every generation stubbornly refused to assimilate.  It seems to me obvious that the cost of their rituals is the key factor in their survival. 

I think that the general point is evident in the Biblical text and here I return to Machiavelli.  He pointed out in The Prince that it is possible to look at Moses as a political leader with the same problems and the same solutions as other founding fathers.  Somewhere in The Discourses he directs our attention to a famous scene in Exodus. 

This scene is presented in that great film, The Ten Commandments.  Charlton Heston in his robes and magnificent beard comes down from the mountain with God’s tablets, only to find that his people have gone funny.  In anger he hurls the tablets to the ground.  They break and God’s lightening comes out, burning the lewd revels with a fiery wrath. 

That’s not how it happens in Exodus 32.25. 

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. ²⁶ So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.

²⁷ Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” ²⁸ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. ²⁹ Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

It wasn’t God’s fire, precisely, that allowed Moses to regain control of his people.  It was iron in the hands of the sons of Levi.  Moses restored order by ordering the death of three thousand of his own people! 

Why did this work?  It put the fear of God into the hearts of everyone who survived the slaughter and it bound the Levites to Moses.  After all, if his leadership fails, their asses are oatmeal.  Lots of folks will remember and want revenge.  So we see that costly signaling can be costly indeed and that it not only makes enemies of other people but can also involve terrible costs within the group. 

It did work.  Moses maintained control and the Levites went on to become the priestly class.  Think about that and look at a picture of Machiavelli. 

I hold that this story is very true.  It has astonishing and multidimensional depth.  Its roots are deep in both secular and religious history.  It has roots also in biological history.  Human beings are more than animals precisely because we are at least animals.  Religion and the sacrifices it always entails would not be ubiquitous among human beings if it had not solid biological foundations. 

Can Nature Calculate?

Philosophy was born in dialogue and perhaps consists in nothing more, even if that dialogue is sometimes internal.  I am very grateful to Miranda Flint for engaging me in these posts.  In the comments to the last post, Ms. Flint poses two significant questions. 

I’m not sure I agree with your suggestion that participating in rituals like sacrifice and circumcision is a calculated risk - calculated by natural selection. I think that these things contradict each other. If we are dealing with natural selection, then there is no calculation. By definition, calculation is “to determine or ascertain by mathematical methods” or to “determine by reasoning, common sense, or practical experience”. I don’t think nature does these things. A god or a man might.

When I said that costly signaling involves a calculated risk, I only meant to indicate that there are both costs and benefits involved and that it makes sense as a strategy only if the latter outweigh the former. 

However, I think Ms. Flint is rather stingy her extension of calculation.  I can determine the proper output of my furnace by mathematical methods but so can my thermostat.  Surely we must add calculators and other machines to the list of beings capable of calculation.  What about nature?  Allow me to suggest a thought problem.

What if you had the power to modify the design of a certain creature on a certain island, let’s say it’s a bird.  Your goal is to preserve the species.  You design the birds to feed on seeds, which are abundant.  As the seeds are very small and must be frequently picked out of rocks and crevices, you give the birds beaks shaped like tweezers: long and thin.  For a while you see that your design is good. 

Then the climate begins to change and with so does the vegetation (I haven’t granted you control over either).  You notice that the population of shrubs changes and seeds with large, thick shells begin to proliferate.  Your tweezer-beaked birds cannot crack them and their population plummets.  You calculate that what your birds need now are shorter, thicker beaks, like the blades on a pair of garden shears.  That does the trick, and your flock gradually recovers.  Such is what a calculating person, human or divine, might do to keep a population going across time.  Can nature do the same work as intentional calculation?

It manifestly does do so.  Darwin’s finches, as Peter and Rosemary Grant documented over several decades of study on one of the Galapagos Islands, require frequent adjustment.  Long periods of wet years followed by periods of dry years result in a fluctuation of beak design, as surely as if a calculating warden were constantly redesigning the birds.  As the foliage changes, the most adaptive beak design changes in response.  There is no reasonable doubt that this same force, natural selection, molds, maintains, and adjusts the traits of every living organism. 

Natural selection is not goal directed.  It is a mechanical process, just like my thermostat or the salt and water regulation in each cell of my body.  All of these things are, however, quite capable of calculation.  They are constantly calculating.  Good thing, that.  It makes it possible for creatures that do have goals, like birds and Baptists, to exist.  

I will address the second question in the next post.