Strauss and Watkins on Hobbes' Political Philosophy: A Review

STRAUSS AND WATKINS ON HOBBES 195
political authority—a sovereign—to whom each citizen would owe
a duty—supreme over all others—of strict obedience; (3) the argu-
ment must also prove that a duty is a duty because it had been com-
m<strong>and</strong>ed by such a sovereign.
Second, <strong>Watkins</strong> identifies the types of ideas which count as
evidence in his own argument. <strong>Watkins</strong> declares that he is going to
count as “philosophical”: (a) Hobbes’s epistemological ideas; <strong>and</strong> (b)
several of Hobbes’s cosmological ideas.
Third, <strong>Watkins</strong> explains the concepts of an “idea,” a “system of
ideas,” <strong>and</strong> “thinking.” He insists that these distinctions are impor-
tant because a philosopher’s ideas have an infinite number of possi-
ble implications <strong>and</strong> relations of which the philosopher can only
have thought a few.
Having established this logical point, <strong>Watkins</strong> observes that many
of Hobbes’s philosophical ideas have a second-order importance
which derives from their application to whole classes of other
statements rather than from their own content. <strong>Watkins</strong> suggests
that several Hobbes scholars have: (a) assumed that the relation be-
tween natural <strong>and</strong> civil philosophy would be a “simple linear con-
nection” of logical deduction; (b) identified Hobbes’s philosophy
with his scientific materialism; <strong>and</strong> (c) construed Hobbes as saying
his civil philosophy was unrelated to the other portions of his
philosophy. <strong>Watkins</strong> says these are common mistakes, declares his
intention to approach the first two problems from a different direc-
tion, <strong>and</strong> offers his proof that the third is a misunderst<strong>and</strong>ing.
Hobbes’s mature political theory did not perpetuate humanistic views
formed prior to his discovery of mechanical philosophy.
Chapter Two, “Early Political <strong>and</strong> Scientific Thinking” is devoted
to disproving George Croom Robertson’s discontinuity thesis that:
In truth, however, the whole of his political doctrine . . . has little appearance
of having been thought out from the fundamental principles of his philosophy.
. . . It doubtless had its main lines fixed when he was still a mere observer of
men <strong>and</strong> manners, <strong>and</strong> not yet a mechanical philosopher (27).
<strong>Watkins</strong> surveys the central ideas of Hobbes’s civil philosophy,
noting that Hobbes’s earliest published views are set forth in three
places: (1) the 1629 translation of the Thucydides History of the
Peloponessian War (“Thucydides”); (2) the 1630 “Short Tract On
First Principles” (“Tract”); <strong>and</strong> (3) The Elements of Law (1640;