Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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by pride and vainglory to seek dominion over others. That would be a

questionable assumption. It would give his conclusion, but much too easily.

What makes his argument frightening and gives it signiﬁcance and dra-

matic power is that he thinks that normal, even quite nice, people can be

put in this sort of situation, and it will degenerate into a state of war. You

lose the signiﬁcance of the view if you overemphasize the desire for power

and domination. The force of Hobbes’s thesis, and why it is so signiﬁcant an

achievement (even though Hobbes does not frame it in such a careful and

rigorous fashion), is that the premises rest solely on normal and more or less

permanent circumstances of human life as they quite plausibly might be in a

State of Nature. The point is: we don’t have to be monsters to be in deep

trouble.

(v) Remember that Hobbes’s psychological and other assumptions need

not be strictly true of all human conduct. He is not a thoroughgoing psy-

chological egoist, as we have seen. His assumptions about basic human in-

terests need only be accurate enough to represent the major inﬂuences on

human conduct in the kinds of social and political situations he is con-

cerned with. On the interpretation proposed, Hobbes’s secular moral sys-

tem is meant as a political doctrine; and as such, it is appropriate that it

stress certain aspects of human life. The relevant question is, are his as-

sumptions true enough to model some of the major psychological and in-

stitutional forces that inﬂuence human behavior in political situations?

(vi) Hobbes is trying to convey to us that, even if all were moved by nor-

mally moderate wants and we were perfectly rational people, we are still in

danger of a State of War in the absence of an effective Sovereign with all

the powers Hobbes says the Sovereign must have to be effective. However

bad some Sovereigns may be, the State of War is still worse. Greed, love of

dominion, pride, and vainglory can be serious complicating elements; but

they are not actually necessary to bring it about that the State of Nature

will become a State of War. At best, the possibility that some are so moved is

enough.

(vii) A useful exercise is to see how far the assumption of Hobbes’s thesis

can be weakened still further in the sense that people in a State of Nature

are in a State of War even though their psychology is less self-centered and

they are more virtuous, or moved by wider attachments and affection. For

example, suppose all are motivated according to Hume’s account of limited

altruism. Consider here the case of religious wars, for example in the 16th

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and 17th centuries. We can suppose that all are devout and faithful to their

conception of religious obligation and still they can be thrown into a State

of War. Remember that Hobbes is writing against the background of this

history and the English Civil War.

Finally, as an aside, let me say that in looking at a text of this sort,

which is so large, and with so many elements in it, if you are to get as much

out of it as you can, you must try to interpret it in the best and most inter-

esting way. There is no point in trying to defeat it, or to show the author

was wrong in some way, or that his argument doesn’t follow. The thing is to

make as much out of it as you can and to try to get a sense of how the

overall view might go, if you put it in the best way. Otherwise, I think it is a

waste of time to read it, or to read any of the important philosophers.

Hobbes Lecture II: Appendix A

Handout: Outline of Hobbes’s Claim that

the State of Nature → a State of War

1. State of Nature = df. state of affairs in which there is no Sovereign

power to keep everyone in awe. State of War = df. state of affairs in which

the will to contend by battle is publicly recognized. A State of War consists

not in actual ﬁghting but in a known disposition thereto during a stretch of

time in which there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

2. Argument for the Claim that the State of Nature → State of War:

(a) Equality (of natural endowments and mental powers)—given the

central place in Hobbes’s political doctrine of the desire for self-preserva-

tion and the desire for the means of a commodious life—leads to equality

of hope in attaining our ends.

(b) Equality of hope—given the scarcity of natural and produced

means of life—puts people in competition with one another and makes

them potential enemies.

others and the possibility of their forming alliances and coalition against

us—gives rise to difﬁdence, that is, to a general state of distrust.

(d) Difﬁdence—made greater by the possibility that others may be

moved to gain dominion by pride and vainglory, together with the fact

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that no covenants can provide security—makes productive industry seem

less worthwhile (predation may be more productive) and leads people to

ﬁnd their security by anticipatory attack.

(e) Anticipation, as the state of affairs in which the disposition to

strike ﬁrst when the circumstances seem propitious is generally and pub-

licly known, is by deﬁnition a State of War.

3. Observe these points:

(i) In this argument no one is assumed to act irrationally. Nor does

the argument assume that people have boundless desires for ever greater

means of a commodious life.

(ii) At step (d) it is assumed that it is possible that other people are

moved by pride and vainglory to seek dominion, and that this possibility

must be taken into account; but no one may actually be so moved. (One

should also consider the question whether the assumption of this possibil-

ity is necessary for Hobbes’s argument.)

(iii) The signiﬁcance of Hobbes’s claim lies in part in the fact that it

rests in quite plausible assumptions about the normal conditions of human

life. For example, it does not assume that everyone actually is swayed by

pride and vainglory to seek dominion over others. This questionable as-

sumption would give the conclusion but make it much less interesting.

(iv) We should recall that Hobbes’s psychological and other assump-

tions need not be strictly true of all human conduct. We have seen that he

is not, for example, a psychological egoist. His assumptions need only be

accurate enough to model the major inﬂuences on human conduct in the

kinds of political and social situations that Hobbes is concerned with. Don’t

forget that, on the interpretation proposed, Hobbes’s secular moral system

is meant as a political doctrine; and as such, it is appropriate that it stress

certain aspects of human life.

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hobbes iii

Hobbes’s Account of Practical Reasoning

§1. The Reasonable and the Rational

Today I will discuss Hobbes’s account of practical reasoning as it arises

within what I call his secular moral system, or within his political doctrine.

He views practical reason as a kind of rationality and has a view, which I

will attribute to Locke, of practical reason as involving a kind of reason-

ableness. That is, it is my view that we can distinguish between two forms

of practical reasoning. We can think of practical reason as rational, or as

reasonable. For the moment “rational” and “reasonable” are simply words,

labels, and we do not know what the difference between them might be. In

ordinary English both mean being consistent with or based on reason, in

some way. But, in everyday speech we do seem to have a sense of the differ-

ence between them. We don’t usually use these terms synonymously. One

might say of somebody, “He was driving a very hard bargain and being ex-

tremely unreasonable, but I had to concede that from his point of view he

was being perfectly rational.” In that, we recognize the distinction, to some

extent. We tend to use “reasonable” to mean being fair-minded, judicious,

and able to see other points of view, and so forth; while “rational” has more

the sense of being logical, or acting for one’s own good, or one’s interests.

In my own work, and in this discussion, the reasonable involves fair terms

of cooperation; while the rational involves furthering the good or advan-

tage of oneself, or of each person cooperating.

Hobbes illustrates the view that practical reasoning is deliberating con-

cerning what is the rational thing to do (where rational ≠ reasonable).

Many of the Laws of Nature Hobbes lists fall under what intuitively we

consider the Reasonable. The Laws of Nature formulate precepts of fair co-

operation, or dispose us to virtues and habits of mind and character favor-

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able to such cooperation. For example, the ﬁrst law is to seek peace and fol-

low it and to defend ourselves as necessary; the second says that a man

should be willing, when others are too, to lay down his right to all things,

and be contented with as much liberty against other men as he would allow

other men against himself; the third concerns honoring our covenants. The

fourth through the tenth all have to do with one virtue or another involv-

ing cooperation: gratitude, accommodation to others, forgiveness and par-

don; not showing contempt for other people, acknowledging others as

equals, and the like. The 10th Law of Nature says not to reserve to our-

selves a right we are not content that others should have as well, and so on.

All have to do with the precepts of cooperation necessary for social life and

a peaceful society (Leviathan, Chapters 14 and 15). But these reasonable prin-

ciples, Hobbes urges, are rational for us to follow, on the condition that oth-

ers follow them likewise. The role of the Sovereign is in part to guarantee

that (enough) others follow them, so that it is rational for each to follow

them. Thus Hobbes justiﬁes Reasonable principles (with reasonable content)

in terms of the Rational.

Hobbes, however, urges that it is rational for us to follow these reason-

able principles, only on the condition that others also follow them. They

will help us to achieve our own good. In other words, he is making an argu-

ment to the effect that this group of principles that we could accept as rea-

sonable, in my sense of that term, are rational principles for us to follow,

based on our fundamental interests, provided others follow them also. The

appeal is to what is conducive to our self-preservation, conjugal affections,

and means for commodious living, or in other words, to our own essential

good. The role of the Sovereign is then, in part, to guarantee that enough

others follow the laws of nature so that it is rational for us to follow them

also, thus ensuring peace.

Later we will take up the social contract and what that actually does,

which is to set up the Sovereign with sufﬁcient powers to effectively achieve

the conditions necessary to such a guarantee. The existence of the Sover-

eign changes the circumstances in such a way that there are no longer rea-

sonable grounds, or rational grounds, for not complying with the laws of

nature. But, the difﬁculty, which Hobbes, I believe, was one of the ﬁrst to

see, is that within the state of nature itself, it is hard to see how such agency

could exist that would make it rational to make or to follow through on our

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covenants. Therefore, one of the basic arguments of the book is that we

take these reasonable principles of social cooperation and justify them in

terms of the rational.

Let me try to explain in a bit more detail the contrast between rational

principles and reasonable principles. There are two ways to do this:

(a) By their distinctive role in practical reasoning and in human life; and

(b) By their content, or what they actually say and direct us to do, which

content we can usually intuitively recognize as belonging to the Rational or

the Reasonable.

The distinction of (a) the role these principles play is this: I think of

conceptions of social cooperation as being quite different from another no-

tion, which would be merely efﬁcient and productive coordination of social ac-

tivity, for example, bees in a hive, or workers on an assembly line in a fac-

tory. They are engaged in coordinated activity, it’s productive, and certainly

we’d say it’s social. But, it’s not necessarily cooperation. It is socially coordi-

nated, and perhaps there are public rules of some kind which people know

they’re supposed to follow, but they’re not cooperating in the normal sense.

What, then, is the notion of cooperation that distinguishes it from socially

coordinated and even productive activity?

Every conception of social cooperation (as opposed to the merely efﬁcient

and productive and coordinated social activity) has two parts:

(a) One part deﬁnes a notion of rational advantage for those engaged in

cooperation, some idea of each individual’s or each association’s, good or

well-being etc. An enumeration of principles of rational choice enters here as

an essential, but not the sole, element in deﬁning rational advantage. Ratio-

nal advantage involves some idea of what each individual, or each associa-

tion engaged in cooperation is going to gain from taking part in this activ-

ity. We suppose that they are rational and have reﬂected on this. It is an idea

of their own good that hasn’t been imposed on them by other people, but

that they hold on their own part, after reﬂection; and it leads them to be

willing to accept the second aspect of the notion of cooperation;

(b) This second part deﬁnes fair terms of social cooperation, or just terms

of cooperation, as may be appropriate. These terms involve some notion of

mutuality or reciprocity, and how speciﬁcally this notion is to be interpreted

in practice. This does not mean that there is a single interpretation of reci-

procity, or of mutuality. There might be a number of them appropriate to

different situations. These will be expressed in terms of the constraints that

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fair terms impose on efﬁcient and productive and coordinated social activ-

ity so that this activity is also fair social cooperation. The principles deﬁning

these terms of fair social cooperation we deﬁne as the reasonable. This is their

role: to interpret such a notion of reasonableness.

Note too that a conception of social cooperation also supposes that

people are capable of engaging it and honoring its terms, and has some view

of what makes their cooperation possible. Later we will discuss the role of

a sense of right and wrong, a sense of justice, in enabling people to engage

in social cooperation.

Now, the precepts or principles that specify the fair terms of coopera-

tion in any particular case will be reasonable. So, when we describe some-

one as being unreasonable when he is bargaining with someone else, al-

though perfectly rational from his own point of view, what we are saying is

that somehow he took advantage of some, perhaps accidental, fortunate

position on his part to impose unreasonable (unfair or unjust) terms on the

bargain. Although, we have to grant that given the situation and looking at

things from his point of view, perhaps it was rational (furthering his own

good) for him to do that.

I have already touched on some of the features of Hobbes’s account of

practical reasoning as rational, in the sense that we discussed the self-related

nature of the ends of human beings that Hobbes focuses on. Recall that

those ends were those of our own self-preservation, conjugal affections,

and the means of a commodious life. I will now go over these in somewhat

more detail.

In Hobbes’s secular moral system, or in his political conception, peo-

ple’s ﬁnal ends are the states of affairs and activities which they strive for

and enjoy for their own sake. These ends are focused on the self, being con-

cerned with our desires for our own health, strength, and well-being; with

the well-being of our family; or with obtaining the means to live a comfort-

able life. It is a relatively narrow concern, and it is in that sense that Hobbes

gives a self-interested account of human nature for the purpose of his polit-

ical view. Two points about these ﬁnal ends or desires:

First, (a) these ﬁnal ends or desires are all self-related, and object-depen-

dent, as I deﬁne them. To say they are object-dependent means they can all

be described without referring to or mentioning any reasonable or rational

principle, or any moral notions generally. For example, take the desire for

food and drink; or for friendship and company. I can describe a state of af-

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fairs that I care about in terms of these and other “objects” in a broad

sense; as one in which I have all I want to eat, or all I want to drink, in

which I am secure, or my family is secure, and the like. There is no refer-

ence to notions like being treated justly, or to rights or other notions that

have a moral character. (b) In Hobbes’s view, the most important ﬁnal ends

or desires that people have are non-social; that is, they are desires they are

presumed to have in a state of nature, and not as members of civic society.

They would remain as characteristics of human beings even if we were to

think of society as if dissolved or degenerated back into its elements. What

that means is that Hobbes’s social theory, or his account of the political

doctrine, is not, on the whole, going to rely on ends and desires that have

been created by social institutions. He thinks of these desires as more basic,

as parts of the elements, the human beings, that go to make up society.

These ends are features of the parts—the individuals—out of which the

commonwealth is,asitwere,mechanically assembled as an artiﬁcial body (cf.

passage in De Cive EW ii, p. xiv). (Recall here the three parts of Hobbes’s

scheme: body, man, citizen—each built up from the preceding.)

Second, on Hobbes’s view, people also have, in addition to these object-

dependent desires, certain principle-dependent desires. These are higher-order

desires and presuppose lower-order desires such as the object-dependent de-

sires discussed above. In Hobbes, the only principle-dependent desires are

those deﬁned by the principles of rational choice as opposed to the princi-

ples of reasonable conduct. I call them principle-dependent because in or-

der to describe them, we must cite some principle or other. They are ratio-

nal as opposed to reasonable because they are desires to act in accordance

with, or to deliberate in accordance with, a principle of rationality that we

can describe and state. For example, a rational principle might be that we

should take the most effective means to achieve our ends. The desire to de-

liberate and to act in accordance with that principle would be a rational de-

sire. I think of these also as ﬁnal desires or ends in the sense that we desire

to act from such a principle and to deliberate in accordance with it for its

own sake.

Now, let’s recall what Hobbes says at Ch. 11, p. 47 (1st paragraph):

“. . . the object of man’s desire, is not to enjoy once only, and for one in-

stant of time; but to assure forever, the way of his future desire. And there-

fore the voluntary actions, and inclinations of all men, tend, not only to the

procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life.” Thus we have, each

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of us, a general inclination which Hobbes describes as: “. . . a perpetual and

restless desire of Power after power that ceaseth only in Death.” There is

no utmost aim which, once achieved, we can rest in the repose of a mind

satisﬁed.

There are several points to be noted here:

(1) First, I understand Hobbes to be saying also that because of our ca-

pacity for reason, we have a conception of ourselves as an individual living

a life over time and see ourselves as having a future and perhaps a far dis-

tant future. Not only do certain ﬁnal desires move us now, but we foresee

and we understand the possibility of a whole unending series of desires

moving us in the future. These future desires are not desires that we ac-

tually have now. They are not now psychologically active, but we do foresee

now that we shall have, or most likely shall have, such desires at certain

times in the future. For example, I may know that in the future I am going

to want food to eat, and I may want to assure that I can make provision for

making sure the larder is ﬁlled; but that desire is not based on a present

state of hunger. There is a higher-order desire which we do now have and al-

ways will have, to the extent that we are rational, and that is our desire to

assure ourselves now, by some appropriate conduct in the present, based on

some rational principle as earlier described, to make provision for these fu-

ture desires. It is not the future desires, but rather, the higher-order desires

that move us now; and in order to describe its object, that is, what it tries to

do, it is necessary to refer to certain principles of rational deliberation.

Higher-order desires move us and express themselves in actions just as

other desires do.

Hobbes describes men as having “a perpetual and restless desire of

Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this, is not

always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already

attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but be-

cause he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath

present, without the acquisition of more” (Leviathan, p. 47). Remember

here that “the Power of a Man ...ishispresent means, to obtain some fu-

ture apparent Good” (Leviathan, p. 41). The desire for “power after power”

suggests that there is no utmost aim that, once achieved, we can rest and

suppose ourselves to be completely satisﬁed with.

(2) The second point is: the general inclination that expresses itself as a

desire for power after power (given the circumstances of human life) is a

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principle-dependent desire in the sense that in order to describe the object of

this desire, what it strives to achieve, it is necessary to refer to certain princi-

ples of rational deliberation (or rational choice) in the forming of our plans

and intentions. The higher-order desires are desires to form and to pursue a

scheme of conduct that is rational as deﬁned by certain principles. Basic, self-

centered (lower or 1st order) desires cannot account for these higher-order

desires, or explain the conduct in which they are expressed.

Some examples here will help: consider these principles of rational choice:

Perhaps we can only deﬁne these by a list.

(i) Principle of Transitivity etc: (Complete Ordering) applied to Prefer-

ences (or over alternatives)

(ii) Principle of effective means

(iii)Principle of Preferring the Greater Probability for the more pre-

ferred outcome

(iv)Principle of the Dominant alternative

A rational being understands and applies these and other rational princi-

ples; and their higher-order desires as deﬁned by these principles can be

viewed as the desire to regulate their pursuit of the totality of their object-

dependent (and natural) desires by these principles.

Thus it seems appropriate to call these desires rational desires. I shall

not try to deﬁne “rational” or “rationality.” Instead, we proceed via examples

and lists. For such a list consider the principles just enumerated. Contrast

rational principles with other kinds of principles, for example, reasonable

principles. Consider the principle that Hobbes uses to state a kind of direc-

tive for discerning the force of the laws of nature:

“Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy

self.” I: 15: p. 79 (This comes after 19th Law of Nature and last Law of Na-

ture L: 79).

This can be given as an example of a reasonable principle: someone who

does not take effective means to advance their ends is being (let’s say) irra-

tional (other things equal); whereas those who do to others what they

would not have done to themselves (perhaps because they think they can

get away with it) are being unreasonable. This does not imply that they are

being irrational, given the aims of theirs they are seeking to further. But in

violating this principle they are being unreasonable.

All of the principles Hobbes calls “the Laws of Nature” could plausibly

be called reasonable principles. See especially the following:

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