Classic Political Philosophy for the Modern Man

by Andrew Lynn

  Here, then, we see what honour was paid in Rome to poverty, and how four acres of land sufficed to support so good and great a man as Cincinnatus. We find the same poverty still prevailing in the time of Marcus Regulus, who when serving with the army in Africa sought leave of senate to return home that he might look after his farm which his labourers had suffered to run to waste. Here again we learn two things worthy our attention: first, the poverty of these men and their contentment under it, and how their sole study was to gain renown from war, leaving all its advantages to the state. For had they thought of enriching themselves by war, it had given them little concern that their fields were running to waste. Further, we have to remark the magnanimity of these citizens, who when placed at the head of armies surpassed all princes in the loftiness of their spirit, who cared neither for king nor for commonwealth, and whom nothing could daunt or dismay; but who, on returning to private life, became once more so humble, so frugal, so careful of their slender means, and so submissive to the magistrates and reverential to their superiors, that it might seem impossible for the human mind to undergo so violent a change.

  This poverty prevailed down to the days of Paulus Emilius, almost the last happy days for this republic wherein a citizen, while enriching Rome by his triumphs, himself remained poor. And yet so greatly was poverty still esteemed at this time, that when Paulus, in conferring rewards on those who had behaved well in the war, presented his own son-in-law with a silver cup, it was the first vessel of silver ever seen in his house.

  I might run on to a great length pointing out how much better are the fruits of poverty than those of riches, and how poverty has brought cities, provinces, and nations to honour, while riches have wrought their ruin, had not this subject been often treated by others.

  Book III, Chapter 31

  That Strong Republics and Valiant Men Preserve through Every Change the Same Spirit and Bearing

  Among other high sayings which our historian ascribes to Camillus, as showing of what stuff a truly great man should be made, he puts in his mouth the words, ‘My courage came not with my dictatorship nor went with my exile’; for by these words we are taught that a great man is constantly the same through all vicissitudes of Fortune; so that although she change, now exalting, now depressing, he remains unchanged, and retains always a mind so unmoved, and in such complete accordance with his nature as declares to all that over him Fortune has no dominion.

  Very different is the behaviour of those weak-minded mortals who, puffed up and intoxicated with their success, ascribe all their felicity to virtues which they never knew, and thus grow hateful and insupportable to all around them. Whence also the changes in their fortunes. For whenever they have to look adversity in the face, they suddenly pass to the other extreme, becoming abject and base. And thus it happens that feeble-minded princes, when they fall into difficulties, think rather of flight than of defence, because, having made bad use of their prosperity, they are wholly unprepared to defend themselves.

  The same merits and defects which I say are found in individual men, are likewise found in republics, whereof we have example in the case of Rome and of Venice. For no reverse of fortune ever broke the spirit of the Roman people, nor did any success ever unduly elate them; as we see plainly after their defeat at Cannae, and after the victory they had over Antiochus. For the defeat at Cannae, although most momentous, being the third they had met with, no whit daunted them; so that they continued to send forth armies, refused to ransom prisoners as contrary to their custom, and dispatched no envoy to Hannibal or to Carthage to sue for peace; but without ever looking back on past humiliations, thought always of war, though in such straits for soldiers that they had to arm their old men and slaves. Which facts being made known to Hanno the Carthaginian, he, as I have already related, warned the Carthaginian senate not to lay too much stress upon their victory. Here, therefore, we see that in times of adversity the Romans were neither cast down nor dismayed. On the other hand, no prosperity ever made them arrogant. Before fighting the battle wherein he was finally routed, Antiochus sent messengers to Scipio to treat for an accord; when Scipio offered peace on condition that he withdrew at once into Syria, leaving all his other dominions to be dealt with by the Romans as they thought fit. Antiochus refusing these terms, fought and was defeated, and again sent envoys to Scipio, enjoining them to accept whatever conditions the victor might be pleased to impose. But Scipio proposed no different terms from those he had offered before saying that ‘the Romans, as they lost not heart on defeat, so waxed not insolent with success.’

  The contrary of all this is seen in the behaviour of the Venetians, who thinking their good fortune due to valour of which they were devoid, in their pride addressed the French king as ‘Son of St Mark’; and making no account of the Church, and no longer restricting their ambition to the limits of Italy, came to dream of founding an empire like the Roman. But afterwards, when their good fortune deserted them, and they met at Vailà a half-defeat at the hands of the French king, they lost their whole dominions, not altogether from revolt, but mainly by a base and abject surrender to the Pope and the King of Spain. Nay, so low did they stoop as to send ambassadors to the Emperor offering to become his tributaries, and to write letters to the Pope, full of submission and servility, in order to move his compassion. To such abasement were they brought in four days’ time by what was in reality only a half-defeat. For on their flight after the battle of Vailà only about a half of their forces were engaged, and one of their two provedditori escaped to Verona with five and twenty thousand men, horse and foot. So that had there been a spark of valour in Venice, or any soundness in her military system, she might easily have renewed her armies, and again confronting fortune have stood prepared either to conquer, or, if she must fall, to fall more gloriously; and at any rate might have obtained for herself more honourable terms. But a pusillanimous spirit, occasioned by the defects of her ordinances in so far as they relate to war, caused her to lose at once her courage and her dominions. And so will it always happen with those who behave like the Venetians. For when men grow insolent in good fortune, and abject in evil, the fault lies in themselves and in the character of their training, which, when slight and frivolous, assimilates them to itself; but when otherwise, makes them of another temper, and giving them better acquaintance with the world, causes them to be less disheartened by misfortunes and less elated by success.

  And while this is true of individual men, it holds good also of a concourse of men living together in one republic, who will arrive at that measure of perfection which the institutions of their state permit. And although I have already said on another occasion that a good militia is the foundation of all states, and where that is wanting there can neither be good laws, nor aught else that is good, it seems to me not superfluous to say the same again; because in reading this history of Titus Livius the necessity of such a foundation is made apparent in every page. It is likewise shown that no army can be good unless it be thoroughly trained and exercised, and that this can only be the case with an army raised from your own subjects. For as a state is not and cannot always be at war, you must have opportunity to train your army in times of peace; but this, having regard to the cost, you can only have in respect of your own subjects.

  When Camillus, as already related, went forth to meet the Etruscans, his soldiers on seeing the great army of their enemy, were filled with fear, thinking themselves too weak to withstand its onset. This untoward disposition being reported to Camillus, he showed himself to his men and by visiting their tents, and conversing with this and the other among them, was able to remove their misgivings; and, finally, without other word of command, he bade them ‘each do his part as he had learned and been accustomed.’ Now, anyone who well considers the methods followed by Camillus, and the words spoken by him to encourage his soldiers to face their enemy, will perceive that these words and methods could never have been used with an army which had not been trained and disciplined in time of peace a
s well as of war. For no captain can trust to untrained soldiers or look for good service at their hands; nay, though he were another Hannibal, with such troops his defeat were certain. For, as a captain cannot be present everywhere while a battle is being fought, unless he have taken all measures beforehand to render his men of the same temper as himself, and have made sure that they perfectly understand his orders and arrangements, he will inevitably be destroyed.

  When a city therefore is armed and trained as Rome was, and when its citizens have daily opportunity, both singly and together, to make trial of their valour and learn what fortune can effect, it will always happen, that at all times, and whether circumstances be adverse or favourable, they will remain of unaltered courage and preserve the same noble bearing. But when its citizens are unpractised in arms, and trust not to their own valour but wholly to the arbitration of Fortune, they will change their temper as she changes, and offer always the same example of behaviour as was given by the Venetians.

  * * *

  Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 496. ↵

  Ferdinand of Aragon. ↵

  Frederick the Great was accustomed to say: ‘The older one gets the more convinced one becomes that his Majesty King Chance does three-quarters of the business of this miserable universe.’ Sorel's ‘Eastern Question’. ↵

  4

  Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

  Introduction

  Of Thomas Hobbes’ several contributions to philosophical inquiry, probably his most challenging and certainly his most influential is Leviathan (1651)—a stunning account of the state of nature as ‘war of all against all’ and unabashed justification of absolute sovereign power.

  Hobbes was born on Good Friday 1588 in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, the son of a local clergyman. He went to Oxford at fifteen, where he studied Aristotle and scholastic logic, and upon graduation in 1608 was recommended by the Principal of Magdalen Hall to Sir William Cavendish to be tutor and travelling companion to his eldest son (later second Earl of Devonshire). Remarkably for someone who would go on to be so prolific, in the next thirty years Hobbes published nothing but a translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. These were not, however, wasted years: in addition to learning from Thucydides the ‘enduring lesson’ that Athenian democracy ‘was ultimately incapable of imposing the unity of organization and the continuity of purpose required for the successful prosecution of policies needed for the long-term preservation of the commonwealth’,[1] Hobbes obtained insight into practical politics through his continuous contact with men of great power in the state, including the Cavendishes and Francis Bacon (for whom Hobbes had acted as secretary in the early 1620s). Aware that civil war was brewing, Hobbes fled England for Paris in 1640, where he associated with mathematicians, scientists, and Royalist refugees. King Charles I was put on trial in England and executed on 30 January 1650. Hobbes published Leviathan the following year, went home, made submission to Cromwell’s Council of State, and swore allegiance to the new government. At the Restoration in 1660, Charles II, evidently willing to let bygones be bygones, invited Hobbes to court, awarding him a pension of £100 per annum. In the context of the plague and Great Fire of 1666, however, the House of Commons ordered an inquiry into atheistical writings, Hobbes being specifically mentioned, which terrified the old philosopher, and he retired to the countryside to be sheltered by the Cavendish family at Chatsworth. He died in 1679 at the age of ninety-one. After his death, the University of Oxford condemned his works and had them burned in the quadrangle of the Bodleian Library.

  To understand Hobbes’ political philosophy we first need to understand his view of human nature. Humans are, he says, complex physical systems, or natural automata, endowed with sense, reason, and passions. Motion of thought or imagination toward something, we call desire; and motion away from something, we call aversion. Through deliberation, namely the succession of contrary appetites, we arrive upon final appetite or aversion prior to taking (or refraining from taking) action—this is the will. This mechanical and deterministic process leaves little room for authentic free-will in the sense of unconstrained voluntariness: ‘a man can no more say that he will will, than he will will will, and so make an infinite repetition of the word will,’ says Hobbes. Happiness, nevertheless, is found in prospering and continuing to prosper through continued and renewed satisfactions of the will. This means that there is no such thing as static happiness, and no escape from continual striving in a world in which all other men are continually striving too.

  A fundamental plank of Hobbes’ thinking is that all men are naturally equal. Hobbes is no egalitarian so it is important to appreciate what he means by this. He accepts, as any unbiased observer would be bound to, that there may be found one man manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another. He also accepts that men may reach differing levels of wisdom in different fields, although he considers that this is simply an effect of some men spending more time on certain matters than others. What is most important, however, is that none of the differences between men amount to very much. There is nothing that one man can claim that another cannot make claim as much as he. Crucially, Hobbes observes, even the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others.

  It is because we are all, in the most significant respects, broadly equal in ability that we cannot—in a state of nature—be at peace. In the first place, natural equality leads to competition, because one man (whether alone or in conjunction with others) is always capable of being displaced by others (‘invaders’), not only of the fruits of his labour, but also of his life or liberty, especially if he has established some favourable possession or position for himself. It gets worse than that, however, for humankind is further troubled by what Hobbes refers to as ‘diffidence’ (a word retaining here much of the meaning of its Latin root, diffidentia, or ‘distrust’): men are distrustful of one another, and even those who would be content to live within modest bounds fear that, if they do not act first, they will remain vulnerable to attack; in these circumstances, the natural reaction is to take preemptive measures and, by striking first, to expand dominion over those who might otherwise pose a threat. Finally, men fall to war about ‘glory’: they want to be valued by others at the same rate as they value themselves, and when that fails to occur, they extract recognition from their contemnors by harming them, and from onlookers by making an example.

  Competition, diffidence, and glory are the hallmarks of the state of nature, which is a state of ‘perpetual war of all against all’, and in which the life of man is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. In such a state there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; there is no culture of the earth; no navigation and no use of such commodities as may be imported by sea; no building of comfortable homes; no knowledge of the world; no account of time; no arts; no letters; and no society.

  We are brought out of the state of nature by means of a ‘covenant’ between men whereby each agrees with the others to choose a sovereign, or a sovereign body, to exercise authority over them all. Once the sovereign has been chosen the citizens are to retain only such rights as the sovereign thinks fit to grant, subject to very limited exceptions. It is important to note that this is not a covenant between the citizens and the sovereign but between the citizens and each other; it does not, therefore, bind or otherwise impose obligations on that sovereign. The sovereign’s powers are unlimited and indivisible: all subjects, including any previously dissenting minorities, must submit to the sovereign that has been declared by the majority, or else justly be destroyed; the sovereign is the sole judge of what is necessary for peace, including what opinions and doctrines may or may not be allowable as conducing thereto; the laws of property are entirely a matter for the sovereign, since property rights are created in the first place by the state; and, in general, the sovereign may legislate and govern as it sees fit. There
is no right of rebellion under any circumstances. The sole right preserved by the subject is the right of self-preservation—the right to self-defence (even against the sovereign), the right to refuse to fight and lay down his life for the sovereign, and the right to protect himself when the sovereign is no longer able to do so.

  This is not as unattractive a condition as it appears on first glance. First, the sovereign provides to the subject the security without which his life and liberty and the fruits of all his labour would be constantly exposed to predation. It is worthwhile observing that if the sovereign fails in this basic task—as, arguably Charles I had done in England prior to the ascension of Oliver Cromwell—then the subject will be discharged and free to enter into a new covenant instituting a new ruler. Secondly, while the subject has no rights against the sovereign except those that the sovereign concedes to him, he remains free insofar as the sovereign has not enacted laws that interfere with his conduct. The absolute authority of the sovereign is authority in potentia; whether and to what extent it is, in fact, exercised over particular aspects of life or fields of activity is a different matter. And finally, although Hobbes is clear that the sovereign is entitled to legislate on all matters, it is also open to the sovereign to do so sparingly in order to leave as much latitude to its subjects as is consistent with peace and security. ‘The greatest liberty of the subjects,’ Hobbes explained, ‘depends on silence of the law.’

  A final question arises as to why absolutism should be any less fearful to the common man than anarchy: John Locke would later ask, famously, why men should take care to avoid mischiefs done by polecats and foxes but be content to be devoured by lions. This is, however, to wilfully turn away from one central justification for absolute sovereignty: when sovereignty is absolute, the interests of the sovereign are identical with those of his subjects—he is richer if they are richer, he is stronger if they are stronger, and he is at peace if they are at peace. It is not strictly speaking necessary that the absolute authority take the form of monarchy: Hobbes expressly conceives of absolute aristocracy and absolute democracy, and, as we know, Hobbes himself came to terms with the revolutionary government under Cromwell after the demise of Charles I. But monarchy, in Hobbes’ view, had several additional benefits. The monarch, in contrast to an assembly, can receive counsel from whomsoever he chooses; his resolutions are subject to no inconstancy other than those of human nature; he cannot disagree with himself out of envy, or interest, and so precipitate civil war; and whereas the favourites of assemblies are many, the favourites of monarchs are few.