Strauss and Watkins on Hobbes' Political Philosophy: A Review

192 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
or mature Hobbes. They will be disappointed to find that <strong>Strauss</strong>
deals with Hobbes’s texts only where he finds contradictions giving
clues to the deep structures of Hobbes’s thought. Moreover, <strong>Strauss</strong>
assumes that the contradictions in Hobbes’s texts are as obvious to
others as they are to him. <strong>Strauss</strong> gives little guidance to the prima
facie meaning of the texts.
Second, <strong>Strauss</strong>’s work rests on an assumption that Hobbes’s
political philosophy teaches—at least in part—a moral content of:
. . . natural ‘right’, i.e. . . . an absolutely justified subjective claim . . . [not]
purely natural inclinations or appetites . . . midway between strictly moral
principles (such as those of the traditional natural law) on the one h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong>
purely natural principles (such as pleasure, appetite or even utility) on the
other. ‘Right’, we may say, is a specifically juridical conception (viii).
The contradictions which <strong>Strauss</strong> finds in Hobbes’s writings are
based on the presence of these moral elements (viii-xi).
If one is interested in the motives of Hobbes, it is unnecessary to
embrace <strong>Strauss</strong>’s prima facie interpretation of Hobbes’s later texts,
since <strong>Strauss</strong> may have divined accurately the desires which im-
pelled Hobbes to choose this particular set of mechanical naturalistic
ideas.
As <strong>Strauss</strong> said in another context:
The truly exact historian will reconcile himself to the fact that there is a dif-
ference between winning an argument, or proving to practically everyone that
he is right, <strong>and</strong> underst<strong>and</strong>ing the thought of the great writers of the past. 5
If, however, it should turn out that Hobbes’s conception of
“right” is compatible with mechanical natural philosophy <strong>and</strong> is
reducible to the categories of purely natural principles, then much
of <strong>Strauss</strong>’s presupposed interpretation is erroneous <strong>and</strong> the evidence
for <strong>Strauss</strong>’s judgments about the significance of Hobbes evaporates.
Similarly, if the contradictions in Hobbes’s writings are explicable as
rhetorical appeals or as difficulties intrinsic to any attempt at the
political philosophy of mechanical naturalism, or as devices to
“code” his meaning, a different view of Hobbes will be required. In
this connection it is important to notice that the largest body of re-
cent scholarly literature on Hobbes has pursued a line of interpreta-
tion <strong>Strauss</strong> rejected, i.e., relatively consistent utilitarian
5. <strong>Strauss</strong>, PAW, 30.