The Civil State and Popular Sovereignty

Hamilton, James J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-27733-7_6

James J. Hamilton²

86 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter focuses not on the whole gamut of Hobbes’s creative insights on the civil state or commonwealth, but on the creative aspects of an important feature of his philosophical argumentation which I call adversarial thinking. By this I mean that he employs philosophical ideas and theories that attack opposing views and counter, replace, rule out, or otherwise undermine them. I will consider as an example of his robust adversarial thinking his attack on the European theoretical tradition of popular sovereignty. The general form of his adversarial thinking often appears as a broad philosophical position supported by layers of arguments requiring different individual subtasks for which he marshals traditional views and invents new arguments to solve the problem at hand. It may be philosophically problematic to heap up arguments with little regard to their mutual coherence, but doing so no doubt in his judgment enhanced the prospects of convincing his seventeenth-century audience. It also may represent strong divergent thinking, which can produce many different useful ideas, demonstrating his cognitive fluency, flexibility, and originality, which can lead to creativity. Taken together, several aspects of Hobbes’s adversarial thinking constitute a formidable creative force reinforcing the goals of his philosophical project.

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Notes

1.
Robin Douglass, “Authorisation and Representation before Leviathan,” Hobbes Studies, 31 (2018): 30–47; 38 n. 36. The concept of the state in the modern sense was of fairly recent origin. James Collins, “Dynastic Instability, the Emergence of the French Monarchical Commonwealth and the Coming of the Rhetoric of ‘L’état,’ 1360s to 1650s,” in Monarchy Transformed: Princes and their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe, ed. Robert von Friedeburg and John Merrill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 87–126; 92, 101; Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, 341–83; Skinner, Visions of Politics, 2:368–413; 3:13–14; Martin van Gelderen, “Aristotelians, Monarchomachs and Republicans: Sovereignty and respublica mixta in Dutch and German Political Thought, 1580-1650,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1:195–217; 210; Michael Mendle, Henry Parker and the English Civil War: The political thought of the public’s “privado” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 45.
2.
For example, McQueen, “Hobbes’s Strategy of Convergence,” 135–52.
3.
Hoekstra, “Tyrannus Rex,” 420–46.
4.
Runco, Creativity, 8–9. Fluency refers to “the number of ideas” and flexibility refers to “the number of unique and unusual ideas.” Ibid., 8.
5.
The notion of epistemological blocking in Hobbes’s thought was first suggested by Malcolm, and Parkin later used it in a more generalized manner. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 428; Jon Parkin, “Hobbes and the Future of Religion,” in Hobbes on Politics and Religion, ed. Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 184–201; 196.
6.
Frank Lessay coined the term in “Hobbes’s Covenant Theology and Its Political Implications,” in Springborg, Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” 243–70; 258. Also Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, 209; Sommerville, “Hobbes, Selden,” 160–61; Alison McQueen, “Mosaic Leviathan: Religion and Rhetoric in Hobbes’s Political Thought,” in Van Apeldoorn and Douglass, Hobbes on Politics and Religion, 116–34; 128–29. This approach can also be characterized as judo-like or using an opponent’s idea against her. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 411; Parkin, “Future of Religion,” 194–95.
7.
Francisco de Vitoria, “On Civil Power,” in Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 3–44; q. 1, a. 8, pp. 19–21; Hobbes, De Cive X.8, 175–76; Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 21, 110–11. Bodin and Barclay thought that subjects can have more liberty under monarchy than in a democracy. Bodin, Six Bookes, bk. VI, ch. 4, 708; Barclay, Kingdom, bk. III, sect. 4, 166.
8.
Runco, Creativity, 15–17; Daniel J. Harris, Roni Reiter-Palmon, and Gina Scott Ligon, “Construction or Demolition: Does Problem Construction Influence the Ethicality of Creativity?” in The Ethics of Creativity, ed. Seana Moran, David Cropley, and James C. Kaufman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 170–86; Mark A. Runco and Gayle Dow, “Problem Finding,” in Runco and Pritzker, Encyclopedia of Creativity, 1st ed., 2:433–35; 433.
9.
Hobbes, Leviathan, Epist. Ded., Sig. A2^v; “A Review, and Conclusion,” 395–96.
10.
Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Malcolm, Epist. Ded., 2:n.p. Also Malcolm, “General Introduction,” 20.
11.
Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Malcolm, ch. 47, 3:1125. This is the last chapter of the Latin translation.
12.
For a discussion of Hobbes’s self-serving claims about his motives for writing Leviathan after its publication, and the role which his need to rebut his critics played in sha** it, see Malcolm, “General Introduction,” 82–87.
13.
Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 299, 330.
14.
Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments, Epist. Ded., 25–26; Hobbes, Elements of Law, Epist. Ded., xvi.
15.
Hobbes, Elements of Law II.6.1, 144; II.6.4, 146–47; II.6.11, 157; II.10.3, 185–86; Hobbes, De Cive VI.13, 141–43; XI.5, 182–83; XIV.20, 216–17; XVII.10–12, 259–62; XVIII.13, 291–92.
16.
Hobbes, Elements of Law I.15.3, 75–76; I.19.10, 104; II.1.7, 111; II.1.18, 116; II.3.2, 127–28; Hobbes, De Cive I.5, 94; II.4, 100; II.18, 105; V.7, 133; V.11, 134; VI.11, 140–41; XVII.27, 277.
17.
Sreedhar, “Interpreting Hobbes,” 154; Sreedhar, Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 171; Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 21, 112–13.
18.
Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 18, 91; ch. 21, 112–13; ch. 24, 128; ch. 26, 149; ch. 43, 321, 331; ch. 46, 378.
19.
Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments, Preface to the Reader, 30–31 (italics removed). Also Hobbes, Elements of Law, II.9.8, 183.
20.
Hobbes, De Cive XII.4–7, 187–90; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.8.4, 170–71. Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 29, 169–72. I will put aside the Catholic and Calvinist doctrine that faith and sanctity are infused or inspired supernaturally, which was of concern to Hobbes because it could provide a source of independent, authoritative scriptural interpretation to use against the sovereign. Hobbes’s response formed part of his challenge to covenant theology. Luc Foisneau, Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), 339–58.
21.
Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, xvi. Also Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, 17; Sommerville, “Lofty science,” 247; Baumgold, Hobbes’s Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 3–4 and passim.
22.
Malcolm, “General Introduction,” 23–24, 41.
23.
Ibid., 82.
24.
Hobbes implicitly characterizes the theory of popular sovereignty in Hobbes, Elements of Law II.1.13, 113; and Hobbes, De Cive VI.17, 147.
25.
Digest 1.1.9, 1:2 (Gaius).
26.
The distinction can be found in Aristotle, Politics, 1278^b23–24.
27.
For details see Lee, Popular Sovereignty, 31–39.
28.
Codex 1.14.4.
29.
Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 1:62–65; Lee, Popular Sovereignty, 71–77; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 210.
30.
Skinner, Foundations, 2:36–40. The Council of Basel technically became the Council of Ferrara in 1438 and the Council of Florence in 1439.
31.
Francis Oakley, “Almain and Major: Conciliar Theory on the Eve of the Reformation,” The American Historical Review, 70 (1965): 673–90; 687.
32.
Antony Black, Council and Commune: The conciliar movement and the fifteenth-century heritage (London: Burns and Oates, 1979), 8.
33.
For their ecclesiastical views see Skinner, Foundations, 2:43–47. The oath of allegiance controversy following the Gunpowder Plot drew attention once again to Mair and Almain. The Cavendish library contained Almain’s pivotal Expositio de suprema potestate ecclesiastica et laica (Explanation of Supreme Ecclesiastical and Lay Power) and works by Jean Gerson and William of Ockham in the first two volumes of Melchior Goldast’s De monarchia sacri Romani imperii (On the Monarchy of the Holy Roman Empire). Talaska, Hardwick Library, 52; Oakley, “Almain and Major,” 684–85.
34.
Skinner, Visions of Politics, 2:257–62; Skinner, Foundations, 2:118–23.
35.
Black, Council and Commune, 194–95; J. H. Burns, “Scholasticism: survival and revival,” in Burns and Goldie, Cambridge History of Political Thought, 132–55; 151; Howell A. Lloyd, “Constitutionalism,” in Burns and Goldie, Cambridge History of Political Thought, 254–297; 261–62; Skinner, Visions of Politics, 2:257–62; Skinner, Foundations, 2:117–23.
36.
Nathaniel Mull, “Divine Right and Secular Constitutionalism: The Jesuit-Absolutist Debates, 1580-1620,” History of Political Thought, 39 (2018): 606–33.
37.
Vitoria, “On Civil Power,” q. 1, aa. 4–5, sects. 7–8, pp. 11–17; q. 2, a., sect. 14, pp. 30–31; Soto, De iustitia, bk. I, q. 6, a. 4, 1:52 col. 1; bk. III, q. 6, a. 4, 2:269 col. 2; bk. IV, q. 4, a. 1, 2:302 cols. 1–2; Molina, De la Justicia, bk. I, tract. 2, disp. 22, sect. 9, 1:380–82 (citing Vitoria and Soto); disp. 23, sect. 8, 1:387 (citing Vitoria and Soto); disp. 26, sect. 4, 1:402; Suárez, De legibus, bk. I, ch. 7, sect. 5, 1:39 col. 2–40 col. 1; bk. III, ch. 3, sect. 6, 1:205 col. 1; ch. 4, sect. 5, 1:207 col. 2; Brett, Liberty, 136; Brett, Changes of State, 123–28.
38.
Vitoria argued that the commonwealth transferred only its authority to the king. Vitoria, “On Civil Power,” q. 1, a. 3, sect. 6, p. 10; Soto, De iustitia, bk. I, q. 1, a. 4, 1:13 col. 1; Molina, De la Justicia, bk. I, tract. 2, disp. 22, sect. 9, 1:380–82; Suárez, De legibus, bk. III, ch. 3, sect. 6, 1:205 col. 1.
39.
Molina, De la Justicia, bk. I, tract. 2, disp. 20, sect. 8, 1:355; disp. 26, sects. 4–5, 1:402; Suárez, De legibus, bk. III, ch. 3, sect. 8, 1:205 col.2; ch. 4, sect. 5, 1:207 col. 2-208 col. 1.
40.
Soto, De iustitia, bk. III, q. 6, a. 4, 2:269 col. 2; Suárez, De legibus, bk. III, ch. 4, sect. 6, 1:208 col. 1.
41.
Soto, De iustitia, bk. III, q. 5, a. 1, 2:240 col. 1; q. 6, a. 4, 2:269 col. 2; Suárez, De legibus, bk. III, ch. 3, sect. 6, 1:205 col. 1; ch. 4, sect. 5, 1:207 col. 2–208 col. 1; Suárez, Defensio fidei Catholica (Defense of the Catholic Faith), in Suárez, Selections from Three Works, 237–724; bk. IV, ch. 4, sect. 6, 1:717 col. 2; sect. 15, 1:721 col. 1; Burns, “Scholasticism,” 1:154–55; Brett, Changes of State, 124–25.
42.
Molina, De la Justicia, bk. I, tract. 2, disp. 23, sect. 10, 1:387; disp. 26, sect. 6, 1:402–403.
43.
Soto, De iustitia, bk. V, q. 1, a. 3, 3:389 cols. 1–2; Suárez, Defensio fidei, bk. VI, ch. 4, sect. 6, 1:717 col. 1–718 col.2; sects. 14–15, 1:720 col. 1–721 col. 2; Höpfl, Jesuit Political Thought, 332–37.
44.
Vitoria, “On the Power of the Church,” in Vitoria, Political Writings, 47–151; q. 5, aa. 6–8, sects. 10–13, pp. 90–94; Soto, De iustitia, bk. I, q. 2, a. 1, 1:18 col. 2; bk. IV, q. 4, a. 1, 2:301 cols. 1–2; Molina, De la Justicia, bk. I, tract. 2, disp. 21, sects. 2-5, 1:362–65; disp. 29, sect. 23, 1:440; Suárez, Defensio fidei, bk. III, ch. 23, sect. 10, 1:336 col. 1; sects. 21–22, 1:340 cols. 1–2; bk. VI, ch. 4, sect. 16, 1:721 col. 2.
45.
Vitoria, “On Civil Power,” q. 3, a. 4, sect. 21, p. 40; Soto, De iustitia, bk. I, q. 6, a. 7, 1:69 cols. 1–2.
46.
Molina, De la Justicia, bk. I, tract. 2, disp. 23, sect. 6, 1:386–87; Suárez, De legibus, bk. VII, ch. 12, sect. 1, 1:820 col. 2.
47.
Beza’s Right of Magistrates and the Vindiciae were in the Cavendish library. Talaska, Hardwick Library, 115, 121.
48.
François Hotman, Francogallia (Frankish Gaul), ed. Ralph E. Giesey and J. H. M. Salmon, trans. J. H. M. Salmon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), ch. 19, 405.
49.
Ibid., ch. 9, 255, 257; Ralph E. Giesey and J. H. M. Salmon, “Editors’ Introduction,” in Hotman, Francogallia, 3–134; 69.
50.
Hotman, Francogallia, ch. 7, 235; ch. 25, 459, 473.
51.
Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), bk. VI, ch. 20, sect. 31, 2:1519; Skinner, Foundations, 2:315–16.
52.
Theodore Beza, Right of Magistrates, in Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza, and Mornay, trans. and ed. Julian H. Franklin (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 101–35; bk. VI, 111–12, 115, 124.
53.
Ibid., bk. VII, 129; bk. VIII, 131–32.
54.
Ibid., bk. VI, 112, 114; bk. VII, 130.
55.
Ibid., bks. I–II, 101–102; bk. VI, 127.
56.
Ibid., bk. VI, 108.
57.
Stephanus Junius Brutus, Vindiciae, contra tyrannos, ed. George Garnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Q. 3, 68, 71, 74–75.
58.
Ibid., Q. 3, 96, 111, 172; Postscript, 186; Lee, Popular Sovereignty, 142–49.
59.
Brutus, Vindiciae, Q. 1, 21–2. For the complex details see George Garnett, “Introduction,” in Brutus, Vindiciae, xix–lxxvi; xxii–xxxi. There also some covenants of lesser importance.
60.
Brutus, Vindiciae, Q. 3, 77, 86, 172.
61.
Ibid., Q. 2, 62; Q. 3, 171–72.
62.
Ibid., Q. 2, 47; Q. 3, 78.
63.
Ibid., Q. 3, 75, 119, 125.
64.
Ibid., Q. 2, 49–50; Q. 3, 158–59, 172; Lee, Popular Sovereignty, 149–55.
65.
Brutus, Vindiciae, Q. 2, 46–48.
66.
J. H. M. Salmon, “Catholic resistance theory, Ultramontanism, and the royalist response, 1580-1620,” in Burns and Goldie, Cambridge History of Political Thought, 219–53; 219–31.
67.
Althusius, Politica, ch. XXXIX, sects. 15–16, 203–204.
68.
Ibid., Preface to the First Edition, 6–7; ch. I, sect. 13, 20.
69.
Ibid., ch. XIX, sects. 18, 23–25, 27, 29, pp. 123–24.
70.
Ibid., ch. XVIII, sects. 61–66, 68, pp. 103–104.
71.
Ibid., ch. XX, sect. 20, 134; ch. XXXVIII, sects. 3–10, 191–92.
72.
George Buchanan, A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots, ed. Roger A. Mason and Martin S. Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 150–153.
73.
Ibid., 152–55.
74.
Juan de Mariana, Del rey y de la Institucion Real (Barcelona: La Selecta, 1880), bk. I, ch. 6, 142–46; Salmon, “Catholic Resistance Theory,” 240–41. Mariana’s book was in the Cavendish library. Talaska, Hardwick Library, 95.
75.
Tuck, Hobbes, 62; Brett, Liberty, 205; Brett, Changes of State, 103–14; Deborah Baumgold, Contract Theory in Historical Context: Essays on Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 76–77; Martin Harvey, “Grotius and Hobbes,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 14 (2006): 27–50. Perez Zagorin, however, has challenged the claim that Hobbes was indebted to Grotius’s concepts of natural law and natural right. Perez Zagorin, “Hobbes without Grotius,” History of Political Thought, 21 (2000): 16–40; Zagorin, Hobbes, 20, 24–26, 31–32, 53.
76.
Grotius, Right of War, bk. I, ch. 3, sect. 8, para. 1, 1:260–62; bk. II, ch. 5, sect. 31, 2:563; bk. III, ch. 19, sect. 10, 3:1543. This work was in the Cavendish library. Talaska, Hardwick Library, 87.
77.
Grotius, Right of War, bk. I, ch. 3, sect. 17, 1:305–306; bk. II, ch. 9, sect. 8, para. 1, 2:671–72. For an explanation see Brett, Changes of State, 134–35.
78.
Grotius, Right of War, bk. I, ch. 3, sect. 16, 1:300–302, 305; sect. 17, 1:306.
79.
Ibid., bk. II, ch. 14, sect. 2, para. 1, 2:804.
80.
Ibid., bk. II, ch. 20, sect. 40, para. 1, 2:1021; ch. 21, sect. 3, para. 1, 2:1061.
81.
Ibid., bk. I, ch. 3, sect. 11, 1:280–81; Lee, Popular Sovereignty, 268–71.
82.
Grotius, Right of War, bk. I, ch. 4, sect. 1, 1:337–38.
83.
Ibid., bk. I, ch. 4, sect. 7, 1:357–58.
84.
Ibid., bk. I, ch. 4, sect. 6, 1:354.
85.
Ibid., bk. I, ch. 4, sects. 8–14, 1:372–77.
86.
Martin van Gelderen, “‘So merely humane’: theories of resistance in early modern Europe,” in Brett and Tully, Rethinking the Foundations, 149–70; 162.
87.
Skinner argues in several works that one of Hobbes’s aims was to “demolish” a “neo-Roman” republican political theory which was popular in Renaissance Italy and emphasized self-government and civic virtue. But the theory of popular sovereignty accepted monarchy as a valid (and sometimes preferable) form of government, while republicanism in this form considered life under monarchy to be slavery. Thus “neo-Roman” republicanism was not the target of the collective criticisms which we have identified from De cive, although Grotius does express this republican, anti-monarchical view. Skinner, Visions of Politics, 3:13–15. Skinner’s thesis has been subject to criticism. See for example Robin Douglass, “Thomas Hobbes’s Changing Account of Liberty and Challenge to Republicanism,” History of Political Thought, 36 (2015): 281–309; Philip Pettit, “Freedom in Hobbes’s Ontology and Semantics: A Comment on Quentin Skinner,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 73 (2012): 111–26; Zagorin, Hobbes, 76–80; Blair Worden, “Republicanism, Regicide and Republic: The English Experience,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1:307–27; 327 n. 16. See also, more generally, Blair Worden, “English republicanism,” in Burns and Goldie, Cambridge History of Political Thought, 443–75. For Skinner’s reply see Quentin Skinner, “On the Liberty of the Ancients and Moderns: A Reply to My Critics,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 73 (2012): 127–46.
88.
Hobbes, De Cive I.2, 90–92; Aristotle, Politics, 1253^a2–3, 1278^b19–24.
89.
Brett, Changes of State, 121–22.
90.
Aristotle, Politics, 1271^b16–18.
91.
Hobbes, De Cive II.11, 102.
92.
Ibid. I.2, 91–92. Paganini makes an interesting case that Hobbes is responding in the two notes to objections posed by Gassendi. He also observes that the motives of glory and fear in the formation of a commonwealth are typically Epicurean. Paganini, “Early Modern Epicureanism,” 699–704; Gianni Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi et le De cive,” in Materia actuosa: Antiquité, Âge classigue, Lumières: Mélanges en l’honneur d’Olivier Bloch, ed. Miguel Benitez et al. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2000), 183–206; 203–205 and n. 58.
93.
Aristotle, Politics, 1264^a35–37.
94.
Hobbes, De Cive I.2 first note, 92.
95.
Tuck, “Hobbes and Democracy,” 176.
96.
Hobbes, De Cive V.4, 131–32; Hobbes, Elements of Law I.12.7–8, 63.
97.
Hobbes, De Cive V.6, 133; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.1.2, 108–109.
98.
Hobbes, De Cive II.4, 100; Hobbes, Elements of Law I.19.6–7, 103–104.
99.
The non-resistance feature of his concept of rights transfer has been criticized for failing to create an obligation to obey the sovereign, and thus for failing to create absolute authority and the means of escape from the state of nature. Zarka, Décision métaphysique, 334–37. Hobbes improved his theory in Leviathan by introducing a theory based on authorization and sovereign representation, which has been much discussed. Philippe Crignon, De l’incarnation à la représentation: L’ontologie politique de Thomas Hobbes (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012); Mónica Brito Vieira, The Elements of Representation in Hobbes: Aesthetics, Theater, Law, and Theology in the Construction of Hobbes’s Theory of the State (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Mónica Brito Vieira and David Runciman, Representation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 24–28 and passim; Quentin Skinner, “Hobbes on Persons, Authors and Representatives,” in Springborg, Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” 157–80; David Runciman, “The concept of the state: the sovereignty of a fiction,” in States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, ed. Quentin Skinner and Bo Stråth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 28–38; David Runciman, “What Kind of Person is Hobbes’s State? A Reply to Skinner,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 8 (2000): 268–78; Skinner, Visions of Politics, 3:177–208; Runciman, Pluralism and the personality of the state, 6–33.
100.
Hobbes, De Cive VI.6, 138; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.19.7, 111.
101.
He also held that a commonwealth could be established by conquest, but this alternative is not directly relevant to the discussion.
102.
Hobbes, De Cive VI.5, 138. Hobbes’s creative account of the establishment of sovereign right appears to be an emergent feature of his philosophy because it was possible only after he developed his theory of the state of nature and his concept of natural right.
103.
Ibid. V.6–8, 133–34.
104.
Hobbes, Elements of Law II.8.7, 172–73. He quotes from the English translation of Richard Knowles without acknowledgment.
105.
Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty, ed. and trans. Julian H. Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), bk. II, ch. 1, 104. Bodin even claimed that only an absolute monarch is a sovereign in the proper sense because his will cannot be divided. Hobbes did not endorse this view, though he considered the singularity of a monarch’s will one of the advantages of monarchy. Bodin, Six Bookes, bk. VI, ch. 4, 715.
106.
Hobbes, De Cive V.7, 133; Hobbes, Elements of Law I.4.7, 103–104. Hobbes does not actually say that subjects must covenant that the will of the sovereign is to be taken for the will of all until the second printing of De cive. But he implies it in the original text (De Cive V.9 and X.5). See Hobbes, De Cive VI.1 note, 136; Douglass, “Authorization and Representation,” 40.
107.
Daniel Lee, “Sovereignty and Dominion: The Foundations of Hobbesian Statehood,” in Douglass and Olsthoorn, Hobbes’s “On the Citizen,” 126–44; 137.
108.
Hobbes calls the body politic one person, a fictitious body and a civil person. Hobbes, Elements of Law I.19.8, 104; II.2.4, 120; Hobbes, De Cive V.9, 134. I disagree with Olsthoorn’s claim that Hobbes’s state is not a fictitious person in any of Hobbes’s works. Johan Olsthoorn, “Leviathan Inc.: Hobbes on the nature and person of the state,” History of European Ideas, 47 (2021):17–32.
109.
Cf. Hobbes, De Cive V.9, 134; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.1.1, 108.
110.
Hobbes, De Cive VI.19, 148.
111.
The representative is in some sense identical with the represented. Crignon, De l’incarnation, 338–39; Brito Vieira, Elements of Representation, 161–62.
112.
Hobbes, De Cive V.6, 133.
113.
Hobbes, Elements of Law I.12.8, 63.
114.
Ibid. II.2.11, 124; II.5.2, 139; Hobbes, De Cive V.9, 134.
115.
Hobbes, De Cive VI.13 note, 143. This idea was not entirely new, but Hobbes gives it substance. Soto, discussing the lex regia, had asserted that “a king is to be reputed the commonwealth itself.” (“Rex … ipsa eadem respublica repudendus est.”) Soto, De iustitia, bk. III, q. 6, a. 4, 2:269 col. 2.
116.
Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. II, ch. 1, 89–90; Hobbes, De Cive VII.1–3, 150–51.
117.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.17–18, 264–65.
118.
Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments XVIII.28, 249 (italics removed).
119.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.17–18, 264–65; XVIII.14, 292–94.
120.
Thomas Hobbes, The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, in EW, 5:259, 269.
121.
Johan Olsthoorn, “The Theocratic Leviathan: Hobbes’s Arguments for the Identity of Church and State,” in Van Apeldoorn and Douglass, Hobbes on Politics and Religion, 10–28; 18–19; Richard Tuck, “Hobbes, Conscience, and Christianity,” in Martinich and Hoekstra, Oxford Handbook of Hobbes, 481–500; 494–95; Richard Tuck, “The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 120–38; 124; Tuck, Philosophy and government, 319; Richard Tuck, “The “Christian Atheism’ of Thomas Hobbes,” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. Michael Hunter and David Wooton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 111–30; Tuck, Hobbes, 96–97; Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, 168.
122.
Malcolm, “General Introduction,” 40–41; Alison McQueen, “‘A Rhapsody of Heresies’: The Scriptural Politics of On the Citizen,” in Douglass and Olsthoorn, Hobbes’s “On the Citizen,” 180–98; 185 n. 6; Johann Sommerville, “Hobbes and Christian Belief,” in Lloyd, Interpreting Hobbes’s Political Philosophy, 156–72; 167–68; and esp. Sommerville, “On the Citizen and Church-State Relations,” in Douglass and Olsthoorn, Hobbes’s “On the Citizen,” 199–216; 208–13.
123.
Lodi Nauda, “Hobbes’s Views on Religion and the Church between The Elements of Law and Leviathan: A Dramatic Change of Direction?” Journal of the History of Ideas, 63 (2002): 577–98; 588; Collins, Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, 66–69.
124.
Hobbes knew that this idea would be controversial and he amended it in a note to the second printing. He continued to insist that the doctrine that Jesus is the Christ, that is, the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament, was the only doctrine necessary to be believed internally for salvation. He added that the Apostles’ Creed (not the Nicene Creed which he found metaphysically objectionable) contained additional points explicating the idea that Jesus is the Christ. However, apparently following the thought of Chillingworth, he claimed that the fact that Christ and the Apostles admitted people to the Kingdom of God without understanding the implications of the teaching that Jesus is the Christ proved that it was the only point necessary for salvation. Chillingworth, unlike Hobbes, had been keen to point out that those who were admitted without an understanding of the implications were those who could not understand or be taught for lack of time. He considered those exempted exceptions; Hobbes did not. Hobbes, De Cive XVIII.6, 285–87; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.6.8, 152–53.
125.
Hamilton, “Hobbes the Royalist,” 447; Hobbes, De Cive XVIII.13, 291–92.
126.
Ibid. XVI.16, 248.
127.
Ibid. XVII.6, 254. For the importance of Abraham, Moses, the kings of Israel, and the Sanhedrin as a political blueprint for early modern theorists see Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), 3, 122–23; McQueen, “Mosaic Leviathan,” 117–18; McQueen, “‘A Rhapsody of Heresies’,” 191–97; Lea Campos Boraclevi, “Classical Foundational Myths of European Republicanism: The Jewish Commonwealth,” in Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism, 1:247–61.
128.
Later Hobbes gave judges considerable leeway in interpreting and applying natural and civil law to individual cases. But they could not change the law formally, could be overridden and punished by the sovereign, and did not make law for others. Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 26, 143–46. Dyzenhaus exaggerates the implications of this development for Hobbes’s theory of sovereign power. Dyzenhaus, “Hobbes on the authority of law,” 186–209.
129.
For the idea that a community, or a body taken as a whole, comes into existence only with the union of a multitude created “largely” by establishment of a ruler, see Suárez, De legibus, bk. 1, ch. 6, sect. 19, 1:36 col. 2–37 col. 1; bk. III, ch. 2, sect. 4, 1:202 col. 2–203 col. 1; Brett, Changes of State, 125–26. Also Cicero, De re publica (On the Republic), in Cicero, De re publica, De legibus, trans. Clinton Walker Keys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 12–285; bk. I, ch. 25, sect. 39, pp. 64–65; bk. III, ch. 33, sect. 45, pp. 222–23. Barclay had held versions of the other two views. Barclay, Kingdom, bk. VI, ch. 5, 510; bk. III. ch. 16, 268.
130.
Brutus is vague about the origins of the community. Althusius employs the concept of representation but bases his theory of community formation on mere consent. Althusius, Politica, ch. IV, sect. 1, 33.
131.
Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments XII.8, 151 (italics removed). Also Hobbes, De Cive VI.1, 136; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.2.11, 124–25; II.8.9, 174.
132.
Thus the impetus for Hobbes’s startling identification of a sovereign monarch or aristocratic assembly with the people may have had little to do with “reflections on democracy.” Tuck, Slee** Sovereign, 100.
133.
Hoekstra, “Lion in the house,” 205–206.
134.
Hobbes, De Cive VII.11–12, 154–55.
135.
Grotius, Right of War, bk. I, ch. 3, sect. 11, 1:279–85; Tuck, Slee** Sovereign, 90–91.
136.
Hotman, Francogallia, ch. 12, 296–97.
137.
Hobbes adopts Bodin’s distinction between forms of state and forms of government, as well as Bodin’s view that that form of sovereign democracy or sovereign aristocracy is best in which the sovereign assembly only elects a small number of people actually to govern. Such a government by a few people is better, Hobbes says, because it resembles a monarchy. It also resembles usufructuary monarchy because the sovereign body does not interfere in the government of affairs. Hobbes, Elements of Law II.1.17, 115–16; Hobbes, De Cive X.15 and 19, 179–80; Bodin, Six Bookes, bk. IV, ch. 6, 517–18; bk. VI, ch. 4, 708–13.
138.
Hobbes, De Cive VII.16, 156–58; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.2.9–10, 121–24.
139.
Barclay, Kingdom, bk. VI, ch. 14, 544; ch. 17, 555–56. The right to summon and dissolve the estates was one of the factors which Bodin had used to show that the kings of Aragon, one of the prototypes for the monarchomachs’ view of kingship, was superior to the estates. Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. I, ch. 8, 10; Xavier Gil, “Republican Politics in Early Modern Spain: The Castilian and Catalano-Aragonese Traditions,” in Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism, 1:263–88; Julian H. Franklin, “Introduction,” in Franklin, Constitutionalism and Resistance, 11–45; 14–15.
140.
Grotius, Right of War, bk. I, ch. 3, sect. 11, 1:280.
141.
Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. I, ch. 8, 12–13; Digest, 45.1.109, 4:181; Hobbes, De Cive XII.4, 187–88.
142.
Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. I, ch. 8, 14; Hobbes, De Cive VI.14, 144; XII.4, 187–88.
143.
Hobbes, De Cive XII.5 and 7, 188–90.
144.
Barclay, Kingdom, bk. III, ch. 5, 523.
145.
Hobbes, De Cive VI.18, 147–48.
146.
Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. II, ch. 1, 91.
147.
Hobbes, De Cive XII.5, 189.
148.
Ibid. VI.15, 144–45; Barclay, Kingdom, bk. II, 131; bk. IV, ch. 14, 465; Laurens van Apeldoorn, “Property and Despotic Sovereignty,” in Douglass and Olsthoorn, Hobbes’s “On the Citizen,” 108–25; 109, 121–25; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.8.8, 174.
149.
Hobbes, De Cive XII.5, 188–89. The idea that subjects will obey those who control their consciences had appeared in Paolo Sarpi’s Tractatus de interdicto (Treatise on the Interdict), contained in Controversiae memorabilis (Memorable Controversies), which was in the Cavendish library. Gregorio Baldin, “Hobbes, Sarpi and the Interdict of Venice,” Storia del pensiero politico, 2 (2016): 261–80; 278; Talaska, Hardwick Library, 126.
150.
Hobbes, De Cive XV.16–17, 229–31; XV.19, 233.
151.
Ibid. XVII.27–28, 276–79; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.7.11, 167.
152.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.17–18, 264–66; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.7.11, 167. His definition of the word of God is expansive. Hobbes, De Cive XVII.15, 263–64.
153.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.27, 277.
154.
Ibid. XVII.20–21, 266–67.
155.
Ibid. XVII.24, 269–70.
156.
Ibid. XVII.22, 267–68. Also Herbert A. Deane, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 11, 172–74. St. Augustine’s De civitate dei (The City of God) was in the Cavendish library. Hamilton, Hobbes’s Study, 448. Responses to Catholic claims of the universality of the pope’s authority during the Interdict and Oath of Allegiance controversies argued, inter alia, that the Catholic church was not a separate entity from commonwealths. But they do not seem to have been based on a strict distinction between the church universal as a corpus mysticum and a body politic, as was Hobbes’s in De cive. Stefania Tutino, Empire of Souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 172–83; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, 116.
157.
Hobbes, De Cive XVI.6, 237; XVI.13–17, 242–48.
158.
These ideas emerged from the international dispute over the papal interdict of Venice in 1606–1607. They were embraced by Marco Antonio de Dominis, archbishop of Spalato, whose important work on the church, De republica ecclesiastica (On the Ecclesiastical Commonwealth), was in the Cavendish library. Noel Malcolm, De Dominis (1560-1624): Venetian, Anglican, Ecumenist, and Relapsed Heretic (London: Strickland and Scott, 1984), 82.
159.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.6–7, 254–56; XVII.11, 260–61; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.7.9, 164–65.
160.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.5–13, 253–62.
161.
Sarpi had written that Christ had given the clergy only the power to teach. Baldin, “Hobbes, Sarpi,” 271.
162.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.25, 271–73; XIV.17, 213–14.
163.
Ibid. XVII.26, 274–76.
164.
Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace, ed. and trans. Annabel Brett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 208–12; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, 131–32.
165.
Sommerville, “Hobbes, Selden,” 160–88.
166.
Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, 118; Sommerville, “Hobbes, Selden,” 175, 178.
167.
Hobbes, De Cive XIV.10, 210. Also Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, 29, 41.
168.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.27, 276.
169.
Burns, “George Buchanan and the anti-monarchomachs,” 18.
170.
Hobbes, De Cive XII.2, 186–87; XV.18, 231–32. He supports his position again by his unorthodox interpretation of Old Testament history. Ibid. XVI.18, 248–49. Similarly, Soto wrote that when a subject acts by the commander’s command, it is properly an act of the commander. Soto, De iustitia, bk. V, q. 1, a. 3, 3:390 col. 1.
171.
Hobbes, De Cive XVII.11, 260–61; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.6.11, 157; II.8.5, 171.
172.
Hobbes, De Cive XII.2, 187; XV.19, 233.
173.
Ibid. XVIII.1, 280–81; XVIII.6, 285–87; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.6.11, 157. Hobbes’s theory does not leave any room for a formal doctrine of passive obedience on matters of conscience in a Christian commonwealth, the conventional doctrine that one must disobey an unjust command and accept one’s punishment passively. He attacks the doctrine together with the concept of the purely penal law in De Cive because it entails a form of passive obedience. Hobbes, De Cive XIV.23, 217–18. For the theory of the purely penal law see William Daniel, The Purely Penal Law Theory in the Spanish Theologians from Vitoria to Suárez (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1968).
174.
Hobbes, De Cive III.3, 109; Hobbes, Elements of Law I.16.2, 82.
175.
Hobbes, De Cive III.7, 111; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.2.3, 120; Digest 47.10.1.5, 4:285 (Ulpian).
176.
Hobbes, De Cive VII.14, 155–56; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.2.3, 119–20; II.2.7, 121.
177.
Hobbes, De Cive VI.12, 141; Hobbes, Elements of Law II.1.12, 113; II.8.10, 174–75.
178.
Grotius, Right of War, Prolegomena to the First Edition, 3:1749. See also Cicero’s influential statement that the basis of justice is faithfulness to promises and agreements in De officiis, bk. I, sect. 7, para. 23, p. 25. Paganini sees possible Epicurean influence. Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi, and De cive,” 200–201.
179.
Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes, 88.
180.
Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. II, ch. 5, 120; Hoekstra, “Tyrannus Rex,” 422.
181.
Hobbes, Philosophicall Rudiments VII.2, 107. Also Hobbes, Elements of Law II.1.3, 109–10.
182.
Hobbes, De Cive VII.3, 151. Cf. Hobbes, Elements of Law II.5.1, 137–38.

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Hamilton, J.J. (2023). The Civil State and Popular Sovereignty. In: Hobbes's Creativity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27733-7_6

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