progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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4.1.3 Hobbes and Politics
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
Skinner makes some telling comments regarding Hobbes overall views on politics 57 . For
example he states: "Politics, we are being reminded, is pre-eminently the arena in which
fortune holds sway" He then continues with the statement: "Hobbes is one of the earliest
English philosophers to write in a similar way (as to Aristotle) of "politics" as the art of
governing cities." For England and the King, fortune did not swing his way when
beheaded. Hobbes was in many ways revolting against the republican trends of the mob,
the execution of a king, with no justification.
Skinner details the concept of liberty in the act of living in a real city 58 . Skinner states a
telling statement: "For Hobbes, accordingly, the puzzle remains; what can it possibly
mean when someone claims to be a free man while living under a monarch, in which the
fullest rights of sovereignty will inevitably be held by the king himself." 59 This is the
quandary of Hobbes. Rather than rejecting the king outright, he struggles to justify liberty
on the one hand and the almost divine right of the King. Skinner works elegantly through
that tension. Hobbes should have pursued the concept of a free man, in the face or a King
or in the face of any ruling body out to delimit that freedom. For Hobbes, the world was
still at best a mercantile environment and free men were non-existent since no matter who
you were you owed your loyalty to the crown. Your business was at the pleasure of the
crown, and your efforts were naught if the crown was displeased. The mercantile world
of the seventeenth century was the last breath of a world before it was unleashed and
understood a century later by Adam Smith. Thus the Hobbesian view of man was still
man bound in a royal corset, his movements limited, is actions anything but free, and his
very existence dependent upon the crown. The revolution had not yet settled in.
Skinner deals with liberty in the context of Hobbes in the Leviathan 60 . he details Hobbes
as follows defining liberty; "Liberty or freedom, signifieth (properly) the absence of
Opposition (by Opposition I mean the Impediments of motion; and may be applied no less
in Irrational and Inanimate creatures..." 61
The last is the culmination of freedom as per Hobbes, the ability of water to flow
unstopped down a brook, no more no less 62.
57 Skinner, Hobbes, on p. 48.
58 Skinner, Hobbes, Chapter 3.
59 Skinner, Hobbes, on p 79.
60 Skinner, Hobbes, In Chapter 5.
61 Skinner, Hobbes, On p 127.
62 Skinner, Hobbes, Chapter 6 takes this and carries it through a discussion of liberty and political obligation and
finally Chapter 7 moves through the present.
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