Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

GASSENDI AND HOBBES 235
that of making oneself as wealthy as one can or as famous as one can, but
Gassendi advocates stillness of mind in the pursuit of not just any personal
project, still less any self-interested project. One is supposed to confine one’s
desires to those that are natural and necessary (Op. Omn. II, 694): a dedication to
wealth or luxury or fame is out of keeping with the pleasant life; and so is much
else—even a strong desire to stay alive may be criticized as the product of a
misplaced fear of death.
Quiet determination in someone of modest desires, someone who has the
pleasures of motion in proportion and under control—this comes close to the
principle of a pleasant life. But it takes wisdom to aim at the right pleasures; and
prudence to know how to get what one aims at. And the pleasant life calls for the
exercise of other virtues, including justice. Justice is giving to each what is his
right: it is the virtue that answers to the status of humans as social beings, and it
is what keeps people from suffering the excesses of a natural struggle for human
survival.
Justice manifests itself in the existence of mutual agreements that limit the
steps anyone can take to preserve himself. It is prudent to enter such agreements,
since otherwise people have a natural right to do whatever they like and go to
whatever extremes they like to improve their chances of staying alive. They can
take anything or do anything, and they must be prepared to see others take the
same liberties (Op. Omn. II, 751). The extreme unpleasantness of a situation in
which no holds are barred and no one is secure in whatever he has motivates
people who are rational to lay down the natural right. Or, instead of speaking of
the way the unpleasantness of pre-social existence rationally motivates people to
lay down rights, Gassendi is willing to speak of a ‘law of nature’ (ibid., 800), or
universally acknowledged rational precept, that men will come together to live in
society (ibid., 802). This they do by making pacts with one another. At first they
make a pact laying down their unlimited right to do and take what they like. The
effect of this pact is to leave each in rightful possession of whatever the pact
does not say should be given up. The pact also leaves each protected by the
combined forces of the other parties to the pact. A second pact creates laws
specifying rights, and so creates conditions for justice, that is, conditions for
recognizing infringements of rights and determining what belongs to each by
right (Op. Omn. II, 786, 795).
The two pacts already described are not by themselves sufficient for the
smooth running of society, for it is impractical to have all the parties to the social
contract involved in making and declaring laws. The authority to do these things
must be delegated by the many to a single person or to a group of men (ibid.,
755), and according to Gassendi this delegation of authority may be understood
to originate in a third pact. It is by this third pact that people become subject to
government. Is this third pact in their interest? It may seem not to be: the
authority that the many vest in government may, Gassendi admits, be misused, as
when a monarch or assembly makes too many laws or makes what laws there are
too exacting. Nevertheless the interest of rulers themselves in a certain kind of