Strauss and Watkins on Hobbes' Political Philosophy: A Review

204 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
determinism. <strong>Watkins</strong> turns immediately to politics <strong>and</strong> draws the
inference—drawn by Hobbes—that a person who cannot move his
body in accord with internal endeavour is not free. A person
who—out of consideration for something external—has a different
endeavour than he would otherwise have is free. Thus, the person
who obeys a comm<strong>and</strong> for fear of what will happen if he does not,
does so freely.
<strong>Watkins</strong> looks at the implications for the theory of punishment
which may be drawn from Hobbes’s mechanical conception of liber-
ty (135-137). First, <strong>Watkins</strong> notes approvingly Hobbes’s answer to
the charge that a purely utilitarian theory of punishment justifies
“framing” <strong>and</strong> “punishing” publicly an innocent party as a warning
to others. Such would not be punishment by definition because
“punishment” is only for those who have broken the law <strong>and</strong> not for
the innocent. Second, <strong>Watkins</strong> notes Hobbes’s answer to the charge
that, in establishing a sovereign authority men have acted contrary
to their natures by giving to the sovereign the authority to kill them.
<strong>Watkins</strong> says the subject has not given away the right of self-defense
nor has the sovereign received any right to bear arms against his sub-
jects. Each subject still possesses his own original right to preserve
himself although he has renounced the right to assist others in self-
defense against the sovereign <strong>and</strong> has agreed to aid the sovereign in
the exercise of the sovereign’s natural right against transgressors of
the sovereign’s law (136).
Hobbes’s theory of justice was implied by his theory of language.
Chapter VIII, “Language,” is the last of the sections where
<strong>Watkins</strong> attempts to show the systematic coherence of Hobbes’s
ideas. <strong>Watkins</strong> argues that Hobbes created a “nominalist theory of
the state.” He proposes that, on Hobbes’s theory, the aggregation of
men moves from the moral vacuum of the resolved state of nature of
composed political/moral order only when: (a) each man gives the
use of his name to the sovereign; (b) the sovereign creates “good”
<strong>and</strong> “evil” by giving those names to things <strong>and</strong> acts; <strong>and</strong> (c) the
sovereign causes men to obey his comm<strong>and</strong>s for fear of his punish-
ment. <strong>Watkins</strong> explains Hobbes’s complex theory of mark-sign-
name-thing semantic relations <strong>and</strong> calls Hobbes’s theory of the
meaning of words a “Humpty Dumpty” theory (144). <strong>Watkins</strong> asks
if Hobbes’s theory of the truth of propositions is also a Humpty