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Teaching the Leviathan : Thomas Hobbes on education

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03054985.2010.514438

1465-3915

Teresa M. Bejan,

Political Philosophy and Ethics

Abstract This paper considers Thomas Hobbes’s educational thought both in its historical context and in the context of his political philosophy as a whole. It begins with Hobbes’s diagnosis of the English Civil War as the product of the miseducation of the commonwealth and shows that education was a central and consistent concern of his political theory from an early stage. For Hobbes, the consensus on civil matters required for peace could be secured only through rigorous and universal civic education overseen by the sovereign in the universities, the pulpit, and the family alike. While some scholars have condemned Hobbesian education as unacceptably authoritarian, others have cited it approvingly as evidence for a more liberal Hobbes. This essay argues that neither reading adequately grasps the subtle relationship between persuasion and authority that characterises Hobbes’s conception of education and, indeed, his political philosophy more generally. Acknowledgements I have incurred many debts in writing this article. Meredith Edwards, Shawn Fraistat, Bryan Garsten, Samuel James, Quentin Skinner and Megan Wachspress read earlier drafts, and I thank them for their comments and criticisms. Jonathan Bruno, Alin Fumurescu, Calvert Jones and Steven Smith were generous with their insights in various contexts during its development. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the Oxford Review of Education and the tireless and endlessly helpful guest editors. I am especially grateful to Quentin Skinner and Mark Goldie for their wonderful supervision of my earliest work on Milton and early modern education reform in the context of the English Civil War. Notes 1. Hobbes’s life in print began with his English translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War (1629) and ended with translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1676; Behemoth, finished in 1668, was published posthumously. Over this long period, Hobbes’s interests, methods, and conclusions underwent significant changes, most notably with his storied ‘discovery’ of Euclidean Geometry in 1629. However, I find his treatment of educational matters to be reasonably consistent across his political philosophical writings, beginning with The elements of law (1640). For the purposes of this discussion I draw from a wide selection of works. 2. Lloyd cites this as evidence that Hobbes would not stifle all dissent (Citation1997, p. 48); Nelson in his introduction to Hobbes’s translations of Homer somewhat undercuts such optimism (pp. xxxiii–xl); see also Hoekstra, Citation2006, p. 45. 3. In Six lessons, Hobbes spoke favourably of the idea of a lay‐university (pp. 345–346); this comment was intended as a provocation to Ward, not as a serious proposal, although Tuck (Citation1998) argues that it should be taken as evidence of Hobbes’s support for free inquiry in the universities; see also Garsten, Citation2006, p. 39. 4. This claim allowed Hobbes’s critics to cast Leviathan as a work written expressly in defence of Cromwell’s title. See Skinner’s ‘Hobbes and the engagement controversy’ (Citation2002, p. 307) for emphasis on the similarities between Hobbes and other de facto theories of the period. 5. On possible similarities to the ‘Rawlsian’ notion of public reason, see Garsten (Citation2006, pp. 27, 116), Gauthier (Citation1995), Lloyd (Citation1992 and Citation1997), Button (Citation2008). 6. This question of influence over meanings is a point of controversy in scholarly assessment of Hobbesian eduction; see Pettit, Citation2008, pp. 115–132; Hoekstra, Citation2006, esp. pp. 34–35. 7. Hobbes insisted that although the sovereign could be guilty of iniquity he could not, by definition, commit injustice (Leviathan, 18:6, p. 113). Whether Hobbes meant his claim that the sovereign could sin against the law of nature as a serious appeal to a power higher than the sovereign’s self‐interest is controversial. Supporters of the ‘Taylor‐Warrender’ thesis argue that a belief in God is necessary to ground Hobbesian moral obligation (e.g. Warrender, Citation1957; Hood, Citation1964), while others argue that Hobbes’s political theory is secular in form and secularising in purpose. Johnston (Citation1986) and Strauss (Citation1953), for example, have argued that Hobbes wanted to ‘disenchant the world’ through education. Lloyd (Citation1992) and Vaughan (Citation2002) emphasise the importance to Hobbesian education of shaping—but not necessarily eradicating—religious belief. 8. I substitute ‘perspicuity of reasons’ (from ‘Philosophical rudiments concerning government and society’ (Hobbes, Citation1991), the 1651 English translation of De cive) for Silverthorne’s ‘clarity of arguments’. Although the former was long thought to have been authorised and approved by Hobbes, this has since been disproved. See Tuck’s introduction to De cive (Hobbes, Citation1998, pp. xxxiv–xxxvii). Malcolm (Citation2002) argues that the translator was Charles Cotton. The Latin version runs: ‘Quoniam autem opiniones non imperando, sed docendo; non terrore poenarum, sed perspicuitate rationum’. 9. Heaven and hell obviously complicate the picture; it is therefore especially important for the sovereign to regulate closely doctrines pertaining thereunto. Whereas in Elements and De cive, Hobbes seemed content to maintain more or less traditional versions of heaven and hell—so long as eternal punishments could be shown to be annexed (like all temporal ones) to violations of the civil law alone—in Leviathan he revised them so as to be consistent with his materialism and therefore denied the immortal soul (418–431). Johnston argues against those who read Hobbes as a sincere Christian that a belief in hell—or in the Christian God, for that matter—could not possibly withstand a Hobbesian education (Johnston, Citation1986, pp. 142–150). While Hobbes clearly intends to undermine hell for those taught the doctrine of Leviathan in the universities, it is less clear that he thought it desirable for this part of his doctrine to be publicized to the population as a whole via public preaching, although the full arguments would certainly be available to those who should inquire. 10. For brief treatments of this puzzle, see Tarcov (Citation1999, pp. 48–49) and Chapman (Citation1975, pp.87–88). See also the growing literature on the role of rhetoric in Hobbes’s thought, which considers directly the limits of reason to persuade (e.g. Kahn, Citation1985; Johnston, Citation1986; Skinner, Citation1996; Vaughan, Citation2002; Garsten, Citation2006). 11. Failure to appreciate this distinction between the rights of the sovereign as teacher versus those of the Church has led some scholars to draw a sharp distinction between teaching and coercion, thus neglecting the expansive role for educative punishments in Hobbes’s thought (see Lloyd, Citation1997, pp. 51–52 and 1992, p. 140; and Waldron, Citation1998, p. 142). Button (Citation2008) acknowledges that this distinction is overdrawn (p. 64), yet continues to employ it elsewhere in his discussion (pp. 38, 62–69). Hobbes is very clear that the distinction does not apply in the case of sovereign‐teachers, or those who act as ministers of the sovereign power; the discussion of teaching as ‘fishing’ as opposed to ‘hunting’ is meant to delimit ecclesiastical power only, not civil (Leviathan, 42:8, p. 337). 12. An earlier generation of scholars treated Hobbes as straightforwardly advocating a programme of indoctrination and mind control; more recently scholars have made the case for ‘a more tolerant’ Hobbes—see Ryan (Citation1983 and Citation1988), Tuck (Citation1990 and Citation1998); Burgess (Citation1996). Tuck goes so far as to suggest that Hobbes desired the universities to be places of protected free inquiry (Citation1998, p. 155)—an interpretation I find implausible. I favour Murphy’s characterisation (Citation1997) of Hobbes’s position as ‘tolerant anti‐toleration’. 13. Hobbes says as much in his discussion of Galileo (Leviathan, 46:42, p. 468). There, he argues that ‘disobedience may lawfully be punished in them that against the laws teach even true philosophy’. This passage, along with his claim that truth is by definition consistent with peace and the sovereign’s judgment of the same (18:9, pp. 113–114), has been a source of much scholarly contention. Arendt cited it as evidence that the sovereign can teach his subjects falsehoods in order to preserve the commonwealth (pp. 297–298); Waldron and Lloyd find it far less sinister (Waldron, Citation1998, pp. 142, 146 n.12; Lloyd, Citation1997, pp. 43–45). 14. I dissent from Johnston’s suggestion that Leviathan was meant to be read by the public at large and attempted ‘to shape public opinion directly’ (Citation1986, p. 89). 15. See also Malcolm’s discussion of the role of such images in education in the context of the frontispiece of Leviathan (Citation2002, p. 228). 16. Some of Hobbes’s early critics accused him of fathering an illegitimate daughter and this claim has been accepted by some scholars, most recently Martinich (Citation2005, p. 8). 17. Again, I depart from the Silverthorne translation which has ‘training’ in place of ‘discipline’. Because the original English version translated disciplina here as ‘education’, many have assumed that this was Hobbes’s preferred translation. The original translation appeals especially to those authors who want to maintain a hard distinction between education and coercion in Hobbes’s thought; however, given that Hobbes refers to ‘discipline’ frequently in his writings, while also taking care at points to distinguish it from ‘education’ (e.g. Leviathan, 29:8, p. 213, ‘Review and conclusion’, p. 489), I believe this is to misrepresent his meaning in this passage. 18. Malcolm, following Johnston, describes Hobbesian education as the ‘liberation’ of the people’s minds from both superstitious falsehoods and ‘the power of those groups, elites, and confederacies that manipulate falsehood for their own ends’ (Citation2002, p. 544). However, in this passage Hobbes states explicitly that he aims to combat such doctrines and factions because they serve to lessen the dependence of individuals on the sovereign power. This is, at best, a peculiar sort of liberation. 19. Garsten (Citation2006) argues that Hobbes’s attempt to devalue judgment and seriously restrict its role in politics was a deliberate departure from classical political thought, and from his neo‐republican contemporaries. 20. Although their specific arguments differ, Johnston (Citation1986), Lloyd (Citation1992 and Citation1997), Waldron (Citation1998), Tuck (Citation1998), Malcolm (Citation2002), and Button (Citation2008) can be seen alike as representatives of this trend, and all endorse Hobbes’s educational project to a greater or lesser extent. These accounts depart significantly from that of Voegelin, who claimed in 1938 that Hobbes’s system would be the envy of ‘a modern minister of propaganda’ (p. 55; see also Arendt, p. 290‐1n.3). Ryan, while making the case for a more tolerant Hobbes, suggests that although ‘Hobbes’s sovereign cannot condition children as the Director in Brave New World can … there is no evident reason of principle to stop him applying the techniques when they are discovered’ (Citation1983, p. 217). Vaughan (Citation2002) and Hoekstra (Citation2006) are notable exceptions to the recent trend. 21. Both groups treat Hobbesian education as though it were concerned with what people would be like; however, it is clear that Hobbes did not entertain high hopes that human nature could be changed (it was evidently quite stubborn) and so did not much care what people were like on the inside, so long as they were simply obedient in externals. Furthermore, when it comes to Hobbes the dichotomy between enlightenment and indoctrination is altogether inadequate. After all, the doctrine to be imprinted is, strictly speaking, ‘true’—though what this means for Hobbes is (fittingly) subject to controversy. For a recent discussion, see Hoekstra (Citation2006).