The New Lifetime Reading Plan

We read the philosophers not only because they are in them- selves interesting, but because their ideas have conse- quences. The quarrel between the individual and the state as to the proper division of power is central to our time. Hobbes is important because he presents the first modern reasoned case for the state as the exclusive holder of power, so long as that state can offer protection to its citizens. Thus ali of today's authoritarian regimes, whether Marxist or non-Marxist, may claim Hobbes as one of their earliest and greatest advo- cates.

Hobbes received a good classical education at Oxford. He later used his scholarship to prepare a translation of Thucydides [9] in whose work he saw a demonstration of the evils of democracy. For some time he made a living as a tutor in a noble family. In his middle years, apparently as a conse- quence of reading a proof in Euclid, he turned from the clas- sics to science and philosophy. His political sympathies during the great English Parliamentary struggle were Royalist; for a short period he taught mathematics in Paris to the future Charles II. But his deeper loyalty was to power irrespective of party. Hence, after Cromweirs victory, he made submission to the Protector. During the Restoration, though attacked as an atheist, he managed to survive successfully enough to reach the age of ninety-one.

His fame rests on the Leviathan. Published in 1651, it was merely a systematic development of ideas he was already hold­ing some years before the Civil War came to a head.

Hobbes's absolutist theory of the state rests on his anti- heroic conception of man's nature. He is a thoroughgoing mechanistic materialist. He does not deny God. But God is irrelevant to his thought. He believes in a proposition by no means self-evident—that ali men are primarily interested in self-preservation. In a natural, lawless state this passion results in anarchy, and the life of man, in his most famous phrase, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.^,>

To escape such an existence, man institutes a common- wealth or government, the great artificial construct Hobbes calls Leviathan. To secure peace, or, as we say today, "secu- rity," we must relinquish our right of private judgment as to what is good or evil, placing that right in the hands of a sover- eign or assembly. Hobbes prefers a monarchy, but his logic would suggest no basic objection to a committee or party, as in the Communist Leviathan. In such a state, morality would flow from law rather than law from morality.

Most so-called realistic theories of politics find their source partly in Hobbes, though also in Machiavelli [34]. Our own democratic doctrine is anti-Hobbesian in its view of human nature. It rests on the notion of a division of powers (Hobbes thought the Civil War came about because power was divided among the king, the lords, and the House of Commons); on a system of checks and balances; and on a vague but so far workable theory of the general will expressed in representa- tive form. To understand what really separates us from ali authoritarian regimes, a reading of the Leviathan is most helpful.

Despite his iron doctrine, Hobbes himself seems to have been a pleasant and rather timid fellow.

He writes a crabbed, difficult prose. Save him for your more insistently intellectual moods. Read the Introduction and Parts 1 and 2 entire, if possible; Chapters 32, 33, 42, and 46 of Parts 3 and 4, in which he argues against the power claims of ali established churches; and finally his Review and Conclusion.

C.F.

RENЙ DESCARTES

1596-1650 Discourse on Method

Descartes is often termed "the father of modern philosophy." Even if this were not so, he would still be well worth reading for the elegant precision of his prose and the mathematical clarity of his reasoning. These two qualities, more than his specific doctrines, have deeply influenced the French char- acter.

Descartes^ family was of the minor nobility and he never had to support himself. This was as it should be; we shall never know how much genius has been lost to the world by reason of the need to make a living. We willingly provide free board and lodging for lunatics, but recoil before the idea of doing so for first-class minds.

Descartes received a good Jesuit education. As his health was poor, his masters, intelligent men, allowed him to stay late in bed instead of compelling him to play the seventeenth- century equivalent of basketball. This slugabed habit he retained ali his life. It was responsible for much calm, ordered thought.