Hobbes has served for both philosophers and political scientists as the paradigm case of someone who held an egoistic view of human nature. In this article I shall attempt to show that the almost unanimous view that Hobbes held psychological egoism is mistaken, and further that Hobbes's political theory does not demand an egoistic psychology, but on the contrary is incompatible with psychological egoism. I do not maintain that Hobbes was completely consistent; in fact, I shall show that there was (...) a continuous development in Hobbes's works away from an egoistic psychology. But I do think that the main outlines of Hobbes's political theory, i.e., his account of the laws of nature, the right of nature, the obligations imposed by laws and covenants, and the rights and duties of citizen and sovereign, are essentially the same in The Elements of Law, De Cive, and Leviathan. I thus hold that even in his earliest work, The Elements, the only one where a charge of egoism is justifiable, the political theory does not depend on egoism. But the first and most important point to be established is that Hobbes did not hold an egoistic psychology. (shrink)

KANT USED the metaphor of a Copernican revolution for that inversion according to which our philosophic principles are to be drawn from the character of the knower—from the faculties of the human mind—rather than from the object to be known. We might say that there may be a further such inversion, a second Copernican Revolution in philosophy, so to speak. By this turn, both the things to be known and the determinations of the knower might be thought to revolve around (...) language. From this stance, we may be led to seek our philosophic principles in our habitual or our necessary modes of expression. Linguistic capacities would thus become the sieve—or the veil, or the limiting distortion—through which, or by means of which, all else is determined. Among them will be found reality and such objects of knowledge as may be formulated in scientific fashion. And also such psychic powers and conceptual patterns as are susceptible to human communication. Were we to undertake such a succeeding revolution, language itself would become the center around which must turn both our real world and our minds themselves. (shrink)

The decade of criticism directed at The Political Philosophy of Hobbes has found the critics united in rejecting many of Warrender's conclusions, but it has not produced a generally accepted alternative interpretation. I shall argue in this paper that this has happened because the critics have not been searching enough in their criticism. Often they have taken over without discussion two crucial but highly questionable features of Warrender's book: first, his ignoring the definition of ‘obligation’ given in Leviathan ; and, (...) second, his presentation of logically independent conclusions about Hobbes's theory as if they were related. As a result of the first, Warrender's critics have sometimes followed him into error; and, as a result of the second, they have sometimes been led to dismiss correct conclusions in the belief that these were logically bound up with other conclusions that really were wrong. Too often they have thrown out the baby and kept the bathwater. (shrink)