Hobbes is usually painted with no nuance: his work justifies the most terrible absolutism, his political theory is the height of immorality. This reading, explains L. Foisneau, is unfair.
This is a work of justice that L. Foisneau does in this work: “Render to Hobbes what is Hobbes’s” (p. 149, and passim). Yes, because Hobbes is one of those philosophers whose thought is usually reduced to a few spectacular and devastating formulas, and most of the time to deplore their content, even if it means admiring the audacity of the thinker who diagnosed modernity by ridding it of the make-up of tradition.
The great merit of the book is to nuance the portrait, without losing the great perspectives of this political philosophy which aims, above all, at efficiency. While correcting certain misinterpretations, committed elsewhere by great thinkers, it measures the scope of the work to this equivocal posterity. From this mosaic of essays emerges a rich work, which despite being described as unpublished actually brings together articles mostly published over twenty years, a sort of Hobbes dictionary, mainly oriented towards political thought, the complexity of which it traces, hence the recurrence of formulas likely to seal the authority of the specialist: it’s more complicated than that (p. 48), things are not so simple (p. 465), the reading is more contrasted than one might think (p. 467), up to the “most beautiful misinterpretation one can imagine” (p. 395), of which Rawls and many others are said to have been guilty, and which consists in believing that Hobbes “ignores the question of justice”, whereas on the contrary he bases justice on the plurality of conceptions of the good – a thesis which seems to constitute the main leitmotif of the work.
Each series of articles is sewn around a “problem”. Political problem: “why does the State have authority over us”, when we do not consider ourselves as social animals, but as individuals? Sociological problem: “why do we live in society if we do not like the company of others?”, in other words if social life does not fundamentally suit us? Ethical problem: “What does happiness look like when life has no ultimate goal?” Theological problem: “Why do sacred texts not draw their authority from God”, but from the sovereign? Finally, current problem: “why read Hobbes today”, have things changed much since England in the XVIIe century, plagued by religious wars and revolutions? These problems, formulated with great clarity, are followed by very detailed analyses and dealing with specific questions, which are much more difficult to read and which cannot be reported in a few lines. We will stick here to the recurring thesis of the book as well as to its general style, which itself poses an interesting problem.
Insurmountable worry
The title of Luc Foisneau’s book relates Hobbes’ political thought to his anthropology. Human life is “unquiet”; this observation is not new; but, adds Hobbes, it is doomed to remain so, which means that traditional philosophy must revise its ambitions downwards. Happiness itself, as the English philosopher conceives it, is inseparable from unrest: it is an endless desire, in every sense of the word, “a perpetual and unceasing desire to acquire power upon power, a desire that ceases only at death”. Thus the classic enterprise of philosophy, to free man from his unrest and to provide him with tranquility, peace of mind, happiness, is doomed to failure. Why? Quite simply because the diversity of opinions on this subject is insurmountable. Hobbes notes the loss of confidence “in the theoretical relevance of the Aristotelian conception of justice” (p. 254), due to the progressive affirmation of the values of commercial society (even if McPherson’s reading, which relates Hobbes’ political theory to the bourgeois ideology which triumphs in XIXe century, is in itself “anachronistic”).
We must therefore assign another role to philosophy: to ensure that this diversity does not degenerate into conflict and fear of violent death. Philosophy must become political. Before living well, it is a question of living, and of surviving when everything in human nature disposes it to conflict and war of all against all. Because there is no agreement on the sovereign good, the only consensus must be on the need for absolute sovereignty, which forces men not to kill each other.
But this necessity to obey the sovereign is not itself necessary, it is never anything but an obligation, the awareness of which establishes the legitimacy of the State. Up to the conclusion:
When Leviathan turns into Behemoth, the law-producing State in a state of exception, citizens are right to protest against the State in the name of a morality which is that of the State itself. (p. 503)
L. Foisneau rightly underlines the moral character of this political theory, formerly denounced as the height of immorality, and more recently as the mask of a theory of domination. For it is not a question of describing “effective reality” by giving up all moral injunction; but rather of converting morality to politics, which is very different. Thus, against Michel Foucault who claims that Hobbes wants to “eliminate” the idea of conquest, or that of domination, the author (p. 65) points out that the word “conquest” is indeed used by Hobbes. But by substituting for the ordinary meaning of the word (imposition of an order by arms) a moral meaning (act by which the sovereign forces his subjects to obey), Hobbes proposes a rigorous reinterpretation of the problem itself: all domination is based on consent. Which, beyond the words, does not really contradict Foucault’s reading in substance.
Hobbes, an unbeatable option?
Without going into the details of these analyses, I would like to question the very form of the book, which brings together after the fact (since they were the subject of previous publications) articles around “problems” formulated especially for this edition. However, by perpetually correcting attempts to evaluate Hobbesian thought by a return to the text and the context, to its internal logic and its coherence, the analysis ends up, by this very prudence, by giving the image of a thought as solid as it is arbitrary. Why does Hobbes see things this way? Because he is Hobbes, and we must give Hobbes what is Hobbes – a principle of justice that, for once, Hobbes takes from tradition even if he rethinks it in the light of his contractualist theory. But what about the reason for his thought? L. Foisneau rightly points out that it cannot be reduced to historical circumstances, even if these count. In fact, the reason for being seems to be abandoned to the interpreters who themselves are part of the history of philosophy, the historian being responsible for pointing out inaccuracies, comparing the affinities and oppositions between, for example, Augustine and Hobbes, evaluating the twists imposed by Foucault, by Strauss, by Rawls etc., without ever taking a position or even evaluating these similarities and differences, which would undoubtedly require putting forward hypotheses, or adopting an external position. L. Foisneau’s work is absolutely positive.
From there an approach in accordance with the main presupposition of this philosophy, as it is presented by the author: everything is justified, in the last instance, by a reference to something indisputable – the desire to live indefinitely and to gain power over power. This principle applies just as well to Hobbes’ thought: what keeps it in action is its posterity, and finally, once the inevitable misinterpretations committed by it have been corrected, the return to the text. From then on, by sticking to a strict and neutral exegesis, this thought supposedly so logical, and so anxious to convince, takes on the air of provocative aphorisms in the manner of Oscar Wilde.
The book includes a large apparatus of notes, a bibliography of Hobbes’ works – but no Hobbesian bibliography. And in fact, most of those who have written memorable books on Hobbes have done so to criticize him, or at least to see in him the theoretician of an obsessive ideology (that of the merchant bourgeoisie, of possessive individualism, of sovereignty, etc.), to make of him a stage of political thought – in other words to exceedwhich, in Hobbes’ language, is the definition of misfortune, if not death. This work, which patiently restores “to Hobbes what is Hobbes’s”, is therefore an exception. Left to himself, the English philosopher appears as an opaque character, all the more so since his thought here takes on the full range of its nuances and developments.