In this review of Abizadeh's book, I question whether identifying a human 'capacity for reason' really resolves the problems with Hobbes's philosophy's distinctive combination of mechanistic materialism and moral normativity

Field, Sandra Leonie

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Online Colloquium (2): Field on Hobbesand the Two Faces of Ethics This online colloquium has been established to discuss ArashAbizadeh’s recent book, Hobbes and Two Faces of Ethics[https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/philosophy/early-modern-philosophy/hobbes-and-two-faces-ethics?format=HB] . We began with an introduction[http://www.europeanhobbessociety.org/general/online-colloquium-1-introduction-to-hobbes-and-the-two-faces-of-ethics/] to the text by Professor Abizadeh. We now have aresponse from Sandra Field [https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/about/faculty/sandra-field/] (Yale-NUS), whichwill be followed by responses from Michael LeBuffe[http://www.europeanhobbessociety.org/general/online-colloquium-3-lebuffe-on-hobbes-and-the-two-faces-of-ethics/] (Otago) and Daniel Eggers (Köln), and finally areply by Arash Abizadeh. Many thanks to CambridgeUniversity Press for supporting this colloquium.December 21, 2018 / in Discussion, Features, General, MemberPublications / by adminHome / Discussion / Online Colloquium (2): Field on Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics Abizadeh’s Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics is anambitious book. It seeks to provide a comprehensiveinterpretation of Hobbes’s ethics, and to make thatinterpretation speak equally to historians of ideas as tocontemporary metaethics and normative ethics. There ismuch to admire in the execution of this project. Abizadeh isrelentless in parsing fine distinctions amongst contemporaryreadings of Hobbes, and in deploying textual evidence fromacross Hobbes’s oeuvre to support his favoured view. And theends to which this rigour and precision are deployed areintellectually significant. Abizadeh identifies a bifurcationbetween the good and the right in Hobbes’s normative ethics—on the one hand, a natural law representing an ethics ofindividual prudence; on the other hand, a model of justicerepresenting a juridical morality of interpersonal obligation—claiming that both are genuinely, but independently,normative. This interpretation is controversial but ultimatelycompelling, and historically illuminating. I found his analysisof the genuine normativity of the ethics of individual self-interested prudence particularly useful; Abizadeh diagnoses acertain narrowness of current philosophical conceptions ofmorality as the obstacle to appreciating this normativity (10,219–23).My critical comments focus on Abizadeh’s central metaethicalclaim: that Hobbes offers a sophisticated ethical naturalism,one which is neither reductionist or noncognitivist (17–19,61). While the bulk of Abizadeh’s discussion is devoted toexegesis, at no point in the book does Abizadeh indicatefinding the position to be problematic or incoherent. Thus, Itake it that Abizadeh’s goal is not merely to establish thatHobbes held this view, but also to commend such a view asbeing sufficiently philosophically compelling and appealing tomerit our present attention. I will try to articulate theenduring difficulties facing such a view, both on Hobbes’sown terms and for us.Abizadeh’s starting point is the puzzle of the apparentincompatibility between Hobbes’s materialist mechanisticmetaphysics and his normative philosophy (7–8). One mightthink that in a materialist metaphysics, lacking free will, therecan only be causal responsibility and instrumental sanctions(like rewards and punishments for animals), not genuinemoral responsibility. But to the contrary, Abizadeh arguesthat this is a medieval scholastic prejudice: aligning Hobbeswith the earlier Aristotelian view, we see that the possibility ofattributing genuine moral responsibility relies not on thepossession of free will, but on the capacity for reason (183–87, 213). Might one then object that that in a materialistmetaphysics, reason itself is deflated, becoming a merelypassive mental process? Again, to the contrary, Abizadehargues that it is possible for one’s reasoning to be active, bywhich he means capable of reflecting on and being guided byreasons (62–65, 93).Abizadeh’s response to worries about Hobbes’s naturalismultimately relies on identifying a capacity for active reasoning.Hobbes and Abizadeh distinguish having a capacity forreason from exercising that capacity: there are people withweak understanding, unclear thoughts, countervailingmotivations, and so on, and correspondingly people often failto fulfil their moral responsibilities. But how is the distinctionbetween possessing an unexercised capacity versus simplylacking the capacity to be specified? And given Hobbes’sdeterminist view of causation, how can the salience of such adistinction be upheld?Abizadeh does not provide an explicit account, so let us turnto Hobbes’s general metaphysics of bodies. Hobbes makesclear that at a fundamental level, nothing is truly contingent:an act is either determined to occur, or it is not. Thepossibility of an act does not mean its contingency, but ratherthat the act is not impossible: at some point of time a full setof determinate causes will converge such that it will in factoccur (AW 37.5). This view of possibility generates afundamentally un-Aristotelian understanding of capacity. AsHobbes explains in the course of criticising his Aristotelianopponent’s view: ‘We may say … that an axe can cut becausethere is nothing in the axe that stops it from cutting. Yet theremay well be, in the nature of things, causes that make itimpossible for the axe—or anything else—ever to be pickedup, and as a result the axe cannot cut’ (AW 37.11). Thus, it isnot the inner properties of a thing which specify its capacities,but its place in an actual web of deterministic causes: ifdeterminate causes mean a putative capacity is neverexercised, it turns out that it is no capacity at all. In ourignorance of the future, more loosely and derivatively wemight call an act possible when it may (for all we know)occur; correspondingly we might attribute a capacity or powerto produce that act. (DCo 10.5; AW 35.6–10). This is harmlessenough, so long as we bear in mind the strict meaning ofpossibility: if there are reasons to think that the act will notoccur, then it is not permissible to attribute capacity or powerfor that act.Is Hobbes’s discussion of the human capacity for reason, andcorrespondingly of the human capacity to feel the rationalforce of obligations, compatible with this anti-Aristotelianism? At face value, it is compatible. After all,Hobbes and Abizadeh are careful not to attribute a capacityfor reason in certain cases where it predictably will not be putinto practice (19, 122, 136). Children and the mad are ruledout; and even amongst sane adults, the attribution ofnormative obligations requires that the relevant reasons areepistemically and motivationally accessible (in particular,ruling out normative obligations to act in extremecontravention to one’s own wellbeing, for instance anypurported obligation to obey a command to kill oneself orone’s parent). And outside of these cases, individuals (for allwe know) may reason and act well, so we may permissiblyattribute full capacity for reason and full moral responsibility,which is exactly what Abizadeh proposes doing.However, against appearances, I would suggest that Hobbes’sethics’ extensive reliance on the human capacity for reasonand corresponding rational action is deeply problematic onhis own terms. The problem comes into view once we shift theanalytical lens from humans considered individually to thedomain of sociological reflection. At the scale of society, wecan see poor reasoning and poor behaviour arisingpredictably from certain aspects of the social domain, evenwhen subjects are not facing the kind of extreme threat totheir wellbeing outlined above. Under certain socialconditions, it is predictable that a proportion of thepopulation will steal (for instance, when law enforcement isimperfect and there is a stark gap between rich and poor).Under certain social conditions, it is predictable that aproportion of the population will rationalise unjust conduct(for instance, when gratifying rhetoric connects with feelingsof grievance or dissatisfaction). (See DC Chapter 12; LChapter 29). In this light, while it may be fair to say that forall we know, a particular individual will behave rationallyand fulfil their obligations, it is not fair to say that for all weknow, everyone will do so. Thus, to say that all sane adultmembers of a population have the Hobbesian ‘capacity’ toreason aright and to fulfil their obligations seems untenable.The tension is brought to the fore in the discussion ofpunishment. Abizadeh wants to reject the view by whichmaterialist metaphysics requires a merely strategic attitude topractices of blame and punishment (in terms of salutarysociological and political effects, not in terms of genuinemoral responsibility). On Abizadeh’s reading, certainly, forHobbes it is necessary that such practices do have salutaryeffects (this explains his opposition to vengeful punishment).But strategic usefulness alone is not sufficient: those breakingthe law are truly morally responsible for their action, in lightof their rational capacity. Therefore punishment is alsomorally important mode of expressing this second-personholding responsible (21, 203–9). Perhaps this is textuallyaccurate (although it seems to me that Hobbes’s own defenceof blame and punishment rests rather more heavily on itssalutary strategic effects than Abizadeh’s reconstructionwould suggest, see LN 248–55). But I want to underscore theunappealing, and perhaps incoherent, commitment this kindof naturalism involves. It seeks still to blame people for badbehaviour, even if it is the sociologically predictable result ofcertain social conditions. It lays deep moral responsibility onthe individual and obscures the larger web of causes in whichindividual action occurs. The political consequence is holdingcommunities responsible for sociologically predictabledysfunction.Perhaps Abizadeh’s moralised naturalism, with itsconcomitant individualisation of responsibility and refusal ofthe ambiguities of agency, is the genuine legacy of Hobbes’spolitical philosophy, and the correct all-things-consideredinterpretation of his texts. But first, I wonder about itscoherence: it is not clear to me that it fully addresses thechallenge of a materialist metaphysics. Abizadehcomprehensively addresses one possible tension (hownaturalism fits with the possibility of moral truths and thepossibility of active reasoning) without addressing adequatelyanother tension (how complex causal determinism fits withthe attribution of moral blame). And second, it is far fromclear why Hobbes’s moralised naturalism merits beingpromoted over the thoroughgoing materialist undercurrent ofHobbes that Abizadeh rejects. According to this more! " #subversive undercurrent, political and sociological reflectionon the determinate causes of human conduct shouldcomplicate the easy attribution of a capacity for moral andjust action, and give us pause to reflect on the broaderdeterminate causes helping or inhibiting the development ofsuch capacity.Sandra Field (Yale-NUS College) AbbreviationsAW: Thomas Hobbes, Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined,trans. Harold Whitmore Jones (London: Bradford UniversityPress, 1976).DC: Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. and trans. RichardTuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2014).DCo: ‘De Corpore’, in Thomas Hobbes, Thomæ HobbesMalmesburiensis Opera philosophica quæ latine scripsitomnia, Vol. 1, ed. William Molesworth (London: John Bohn,1839).L: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: with selected variants fromthe Latin edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1994).LN: ‘Liberty and Necessity’, in Thomas Hobbes, The EnglishWorks of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Vol. 4, ed. WilliamMolesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839).

Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics

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Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics

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