Abstract

McNeilly presents an interesting if not altogether convincing analysis of Hobbes' Leviathan. He argues in introductory chapters that the different accounts of human nature given in The Elements of Law, De Corpore, and Leviathan reveal a development parallel to the development in the Hobbesian notion of science. More particularly, he claims that the theory of science presented in Leviathan is a conventionalist one, taking mathematics as its model. This is in contrast to the self-evidence theory of mathematics and the hypothetico-deductive theory of physics found in De Corpore and it is like the conventionalism of Elements. Using the conventionalist model, Hobbes presents in Leviathan, a science of man which is a formal system of moral and political propositions definitionally true and not "purporting to state truths about human nature." The system of propositions remains true whatever the actual nature of human motivation. Applying his thesis to the various parts of the Leviathan, McNeilly finds Hobbes presenting there a generalized theory of the passions from which the egoism of the earlier works cannot be logically deduced, but is merely a "cautious empirical generalization added to the latter," and not necessary to it. He then shows that notions like power, glory, and felicity of the ethics, and the state of nature, natural law, and obligation of the politics, are reformulated in Leviathan as strictly formal concepts and are logically deduced from the theory of the passions. Material concepts, such as self-preservation, are seen to be expressions of Hobbes' private views and not essential to the system. McNeilly's analyses are lucid and perceptive throughout with the exception of his discussion of the nature of science. Here he imposes upon the writings of Hobbes the contemporary meanings and distinctions instead of working within the tradition of the seventeenth century where the distinctions have not yet been made. A good short English bibliography on Hobbes is appended.--M. M. H.