If the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is mainly known for his conception of sovereignty, certain writings of youth, so far unpublished in French, inform us about the gestation of his political thought.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is best known for his political thought as he exposed it in the Leviathan From 1651, written during the English civil wars, which had torn his native country since the early 1640s. Hobbes, being in exile in Paris, details the need for a sovereign “ absolute To which the subjects abandoned their own judgment. Without a sovereign recognized as the sole possessor of the right of life and death, to legislate and to judge, civil peace will never be assured.
At the beginning of Hobbesian thought
If it’s good in the Leviathan That this theory receives its most completed form, Hobbes already devotes developments in his two previous works, Elements of law (1640) and Citizen (1642). The reception of Hobbes has thus shown a strong tendency to focus, almost exclusively, on these three canonical works according to 1640, by neglecting its previous intellectual production and by reducing it to the concept of absolute sovereignty, understood as essentially legal theory with universal and abstract of all historical reality. However, this conception is reductive, and does not allow us to understand the genesis of Hobbesian thought. It is only 50 years old that Hobbes develops his theory of sovereignty and publishes the works which make it one of the great figures of Western political thought.
There is therefore another hobbes before 1640. True child prodigy having translated the Ladder Du Euripides du Greek in Latin at the age of 8, and published his translation of The Peloponnese War From Thucydides in 1629, the philosopher produced works very early on that worth our attention and show his interest in the political question, even if they do not yet show him to his full conception of sovereignty.
Hobbes, Cavendish and Speech on History
In this regard, the two texts gathered and translated under the title of Speech on History By Jauffrey Berthier and Nicolas Dubos are of great interest, not only for Hobbes specialists, but for those who are interested in the political thought of the first modernity. To these two writings of the 1620s translated from English and their commentary added a rich introduction and notes provided. Contrary to what the critical tradition most often retains, Berthier and Dubos therefore consider these two writings as the product of a collaboration between Hobbes and William Cavendish, son of the first count of Devonshire, of which Hobbes was the tutor from 1608.
The two texts belong to Horae subsecivaecollection of “ speech “Published anonymously in London in 1620. The first,” Reading history “(Of reading history) has traditionally been attributed to Cavendish, especially because of what has been considered its character of “ school year ». On the other hand, we considered Hobbes as the only author of the second, entitled “ Speech on the beginning of Tacitus “(A discourse upon the beginnings of tacitus). This last attribution derives from lexicological analyzes, a purely statistical method based on the census of the occurrences of words. It is from these analyzes that we could “ Distinguish, within the volume of 1620, a set of which Hobbes was the author, from another (…) from the hand of William Cavendish (P. 67). Hobbes would have written three of the texts of the collection of 1620, and Cavendish would be the author of the rest.
The method used by this work does not divide Horae subsecivae than by formal or stylistic aspects. The questions relating to their philosophical content, as well as their possible consistency, are clearly put aside. Without really questioning the possible relationship between the two parts of the collection, we therefore considered the texts attributed to Cavendish “ Like the dilettante work of a great English aristocrat who sought to occupy his rare hours of leisure “, While we thought we detected in the texts which would come in the only hand of Hobbes” Some of the elements of his own political philosophy (P. 68) – As she would appear years later.
Bacon and civil science reform
Berthier and Dubos, on the other hand, consider the two texts as “ A coherent set “(P. 23) part of the” Civil science reform (P. 78) as it was defined by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). So the two texts would be “ The fruit of a collaboration between two men, Thomas Hobbes and William Cavendish, under the aegis of an illustrious third party, Chancellor Francis Bacon (P. 66). More specifically, the two authors consider that the first text explains the principles of historiography which are put into practice in the second: “ The discourse indeed proposes an implementation of the methodological and philosophical principles set out in the essay (P. 23).
From this point of view, the two texts reveal a coherence one can almost no longer narrow, underlined by Berthier and Dubos. Following in the continuity of the English historian Timothy Raylor-for whom it would be anachronistic to want to seek a unique author for this kind of text-they therefore see the fruit of collaboration, according to a widespread mode at the time, and arising from an intimate relationship, both intellectual and political, between Cavendish and Hobbes. For Berthier and Dubos, we cannot separate the two texts both because Hobbes and Cavendish would have collaborated for their production, and because the whole manifests the same belonging to the Baconian reform project.
Hobbes and the “ tacitism »»
The proposed commentary makes it possible to show how these two texts express the same conception of the relationship between political and history thinking, and retraces in detail the changes that historiographical practice suffered during the late Renaissance. These changes, reflected in the texts, are closely linked to the rediscovery of the Roman historian Tacitus (58-120), who deeply marked the intellectual life of the second part of XVIe century. From the masterful edition of Just Lipse, published in 1574, many comments on Tacitus were quickly produced, including those of Scipione Ammirato and Filippo Cavriana, both in the Cavendish library.
What Tacitus offered to the political thought of the period, following Berthier and Dubos, is “ A historical imagination in which a tense anthropology stretched between the crucial experience of the civil war and the vicissitudes of the absolute state elapsed (P. 21). For a century marked by the reform, the bloody wars which it generated, as well as by the consolidation of monarchical powers, the works of Tacitus, which tell the story of the Roman Empire from the last years of Augustus, have constituted a real treasure of political lessons for the first modernity. The similarity perceived between the era described by Tacitus and Europe of XVIe century founded the idea that the facts narrated by the Roman historian could guide modern political action. This utility derives from “ examples »Put on the prudent conduct that the Tacitian narration presents. But if the idea that history presents us with examples to imitate to ensure the accuracy of our actions is very old, it undergoes a deep inflection during the late Renaissance, which is found in the texts of Cavendish and Hobbes.
While the classic design of exemplarity is based on universal moral models valid for any time, the exemplarity which derives from the reading of Tacitus is deeply historicized. The conduct which is worth in a specific situation, historically determined, is not the same as that which would be worth in another. To learn from history in history, it thus appears necessary to develop new reading methods.
A new political relationship to history
It is indeed to such a project that the two texts of Cavendish and Hobbes belong, which are there “ in the movement which aimed to renew the uses of history by emitting them from the rhetorical or edifying function (P. 60). In order for reading the story to be really useful, it can no longer be dominated by moral ideals, frozen outside a properly historical temporality. Such an approach to reading the story plunges these roots into Florentine thought known as “ realistic As Machiavelli and Guichardin expressed it. For history to be useful to us, we must consider the effective behavior of men, not the philosophical ideals whose historical events have no testimony. Such seems to be the methodological lesson on which the tacitism of XVIe century is based.
Consequently, to be able to govern a newly acquired country, as exposed by the Speech on the beginning of Tacitus, We must, for example, avoid annoying “ The spirits of his new subjects “And if that involves using a strategy of” concealment To hide his own political projects, contrary to the opinions of subjects, you have to use it (p. 156). It is this kind of lessons that can be found in Tacitus: knowing how to recognize them is the fruit of what Reading history names “ a diligent reading “From which we draw” The biggest benefits (P. 122). You have to know “ Compare times and places “, And for that that we are exercised” to apply things past to judge things past to judge if they agree and why (P. 125). These two texts therefore seem to be part of the same project of articulation of history to political modernity, specific to this beginning of XVIIe century, and where the political thought of the author of Leviathan actually plunges these roots.
In the last part of their introduction, Berthier and Dubos also strive to show how many aspects of Hobbesian political thought of the 1640s are lit, if they are put in contact with these first works. However, they also show how the conception of the artificiality of political power, as it is formulated in works called “ maturity “, And even if she is already sketched in these texts on Tacitus,” fundamentally deviates from previous speeches »Influenced by tacitism. In subsequent writings indeed, it “ is no longer a question of masking the real nature of power behind useful mysteries and lies, but of revealing the rational character and the need for absolute power (P. 99). It is the artificiality of the State which thus makes its construction transparent to reason and assures us that our will is expressed through the mechanism of political representation. Political power being a construction based on consent, its functioning is no longer hidden behind concealment stratagems adopted by the prince to ensure his own power – conception of political power that is commonly found among tacitists.
Demonstrating, in a very convincing way, the deep interest of comparing these first texts with the canonical works of Hobbes, the Speech on History constitute an enlightening publication, not only for our knowledge of Hobbes, but also to specify our understanding of the articulation between political thought and historical knowledge in the first modernity.