Strauss and Watkins on Hobbes' Political Philosophy: A Review

STRAUSS AND WATKINS ON HOBBES 201
in society will have the same reasons to obey as a believer <strong>and</strong> the
sovereign will be unable to punish his unbelief. <strong>Watkins</strong> argues that
Hobbes drew both these inferences in Leviathan. <strong>Watkins</strong> draws the
chapter to a close by concluding that the Taylor/Warrender thesis
errs because Hobbes’s theory of motives <strong>and</strong> natural law obligation
are consecutive stages in the same theoretical structure.
Hobbes’s theory of the motivations underlying the state was implied
by his theory of human nature.
In Chapter VI, “Human Nature,” <strong>Watkins</strong> sets out to show that
Hobbes’s theory of human nature combined two basic components:
(1) a set of “truisms” derived from observation of the self or others;
<strong>and</strong> (2) psychological principles derived from Hobbes’s materialistic
metaphysics combined with some of Harvey’s biological principles.
<strong>Watkins</strong> begins with an explanation of the logical tests Hobbes’s
theory of human nature had to pass in order to provide a solid
footing for civil philosophy. First, Hobbes needed to be able to infer
how men would behave when dissociated from one another. This
was, of course, a necessity <strong>and</strong> a problem for Hobbes since he had no
actual evidence of how men would behave under such cir-
cumstances, <strong>and</strong> since he stressed the privacy of motives <strong>and</strong>
thoughts. <strong>Watkins</strong> says Hobbes dealt with these problems by means
of a psychological theory of human nature. Second, Hobbes needed
to be able to deduce from human nature a state of nature bad
enough that all men would leave it for life under settled authority,
but he also needed to stop short of making men incapable of living
under authority.
Having set forth the problem, <strong>Watkins</strong> argues that Hobbes sur-
mounted it by theorizing that “the mind is body-dependent <strong>and</strong> the
body is heart-centered” (103). <strong>Watkins</strong> argues that this view of
human nature supported principles of uniformity <strong>and</strong> ego-
centricity. These principles are—in <strong>Watkins</strong>’s terminology—
“metaphysical” but yield certain predictions. These predictions
create both the need <strong>and</strong> possibility of leaving the state of nature to
live under authority.
The uniformity of men is based on the fact that all human bodies
are fundamentally similar to one another <strong>and</strong> to engines (104).
Moreover, the uniformity principle occupies “a privileged,
regulative status” (106) so that data which appear to contradict the
principle must be conformed to the principle, rather than the other