Sterling on Hobbes: The Primary-Source Record v0.1
Sterling on Hobbes: The Primary-Source Record v0.1
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
The Source
Sterling names Hobbes in eleven posts to the International Stoic Forum between June 2008 and July 2018. All eleven were retrieved in full from the Gmail archive of the forum. His wording is reproduced as written, typos included. Yahoo message numbers were not recovered. The archive search returned no post earlier than 2008 that names Hobbes.
The posts fall into four groups: Hobbes on the meaning of “good”; Hobbes on motive, with Butler’s answer; Hobbes on self-interest and society; and the one point on which Sterling sides with him.
I. Hobbes on “Good”
10 February 2011, Stoicism and “modern notions of economic equality”, replying to Jan Garrett:
Now of course most political theories incorporate a lot of ideas that are not strictly political, and so many actual political philosophers from the past could not have been Stoics. [Thomas Hobbes holds that “good” means “desired”, for example, which is hardly compatible with Stoic thought. …]
5 February 2015, Two (Types of) Moral Premises, replying to Steve Marquis, who had argued that the Golden Rule is a rational response to experience. The passage Sterling quotes is from Leviathan, chapter 6; he gives no citation.
Of course it’s rational...if Reason tells you about the existence of moral requirements. Otherwise, it is less rational than the principle “Do unto others, and then split.”
Hobbes writes: “But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth ‘good’; and the object of his hate and aversion, ‘evil’; and of his contempt ‘vile’ and ‘inconsiderable.’ For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them, there being nothing simply and absolutely so....” That is a statement, by a consistent empiricist, of empiricist morality. The only “good” that can be perceived is “I want that”.
8 February 2015, same thread, on labelling loss of function “bad”:
So if you’re saying “I wish to label loss of function ‘bad’”, that’s fine, but no conclusions about what anybody ought to do follows from it. On the other hand, if you mean “All things that cause loss of function have the character of being ‘bad’”, then you’re not being an empiricist anymore, as good empiricists (like Hobbes in the quotation I gave, or more modern thinkers like Ayer and Hare) realize.
16 February 2015, same thread:
The animal has desires for certain things, and aversions to others, and so even the animal has (I think) a notion of good and bad of a sort. I’m sure the complexity of the thought varies by species, but certainly higher animals have some concept of “X is good” where that ‘good’ means only “I want X”. This is the Hobbesian notion of “good”, and I nothing other than a desire is required to have it.
He then gives two objections to this “desire-based reasons” theory: my desires cannot be criticized, and your desires never give me a reason to do anything. He concludes:
So I quite agree that everyone, practically from birth, has one notion of ‘good’ which is equivalent to ‘that is the object of my desire’. But this isn’t the notion of ‘good’ which appears as an evaluative term in Stoic thought (or in ordinary moral discourse).
II. Hobbes on Motive, and Butler’s Answer
5 June 2008, The Nussbaum Position. Jan Garrett had suggested that a person may believe she decides without passion while a background passion is at work.
This, it seems to me, is the Hobbes argument, and I find Butler’s counter to Hobbes as compelling in this context as well.
The debate between the egoist and Butler was this--Butler thought that some of our actions were not based on self-interest. The egoist said they all are. The egoist backed up his position by claiming, in effect “every action you perform could really be motivated by a self-interested desire of which you’re just not aware”. Butler’s response was that this was true, but that it wasn’t reasonable to believe it is always the case. Apart from a question-begging assumption that the general theory is true, what reason do we have for supposing that all actions are self-interested? People perform actions that don’t appear to be self-interested. They claim that their actions are not always self-interested. Introspectively, some of my own actions appear not to be self-interested. All of these constitute evidence (however strong or weak) that such actions exist. While it is possible that all this evidence is misleading, what greater body of evidence can the egoist produce to outweigh it?
Take the last paragraph and subsitute “passion-driven” for “self-interested”, and I’ll hang my hat on the same argument. I agree that it’s possible that some unconscious passion lurks in the background of all our choices...but I see no positive reason to think it’s true, and lots of reasons to think it’s false. I think Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics are right, and Hume is wrong.
26 November 2008, The Feminist Critique of Traditional Moral Theory (Part I), replying to Robin Turner:
But the Hobbesians are more clever than that. They simply hold that when I love someone I have a powerful desire for them to flourish (in various ways), and so I have a self-interested reason (aiming at my own desire-satisfaction) for trying to make them flourish, even at the cost of sacrificing some of my other desires.
(Hobbes never said people were rational, BTW, only that they were self-interested. The whole point of Leviathan is to help people pursue self-interest rationally, rather than the irrational way in which they are currently acting.)
{I think the Hobbesian position is absurd, BTW, and parental love is just one example of the absurdity. …)
11 May 2011, On preferredness. Kevin had asked whether one can pursue a thing without wanting it.
So my view, which I share with the ancient Stoics and Aristotle and Plato (et al) is that one can indeed make purely rational choices--choices that arise from a recognition of the value of a decision but not accompanied by any sort of felt need.
Now many philosophers (indeed most contemporary ones, as best I can tell) agree with Hume and Hobbes that no such thing is possible. I agree with Joseph Butler--such a question is an empirical one, and I have never seen any empirical evidence offered in favor of this proposition, and the evidence I do have (from introspection of my own choices, from observation of the choices of others, and from others’ accounts of their decisions) suggests that the “desire-necessary-for-choice” theory is completely mistaken.
(Of course, I do not deny that many choices are made on the basis of desires--I only deny that desires are necessary to make choices.)
17 July 2018, Discussion of Epictetus’ Encheiridion, Paragraph #1. Michael Edelstein had asked what incentive the Sage has to preserve life if he is not happy to be alive.
There is a very common view in Philosophy, espoused by people like Hume and Hobbes, according to which Reason is incapable of motivating someone to act--only passions, desires, or feelings of some sort can do it.
The Stoics reject this view. On the Stoic view, it is perfectly possible for someone to perform some action simply because they recognize that it is rational to perform it. The doctrine of ‘preferred indifferents’ makes no sense without this idea--PI’s are precisely things that lead us to act because we recognize that they are appropriate objects of action, without being sources of happiness (or unhappiness).
III. Hobbes on Self-Interest and Society
14 October 2010, The Stoic Origins of (Economic) Liberalism:
Issue #1: Is it the case that when an individual aims at his own gain he produces social benefits as a bonus?
The Stoics believe this is true, because “my own good” means VIRTUE, and treating others virtuously enhances preferred indifferents for them. This idea, though, can be found in philosophers earlier than the Stoics--Plato and Aristotle, specifically.
The economic liberals believe that this is true because they think that as we all aim to satisfy our desires we end up producing an economic system that lifts all boats. (Hobbes believes the reverse--as we all aim at self-interest without constraint, we produce a war or all against all that leads to total misery for everybody.)
Those are totally different views.
28 August 2014, Stoicism and Self-Interest II: What is our interest? He is describing the Epicurean view that virtue is “a generally effective means” to a life of pleasure:
Acts of injustice tend to spark resistance and resentment from others, and this will tend over time to diminish your pleasure--hence, you should be Just. Etc. (Machiavelli and Hobbes have fascinating discussions of the various ways of acting that (they believe) tend to promote our own well-being in the long run. I highly recommend that everyone read them if you haven’t already.)
His verdict on that view comes later in the same post: “I don’t think the Epicurean view recognizes morality at all.”
The post is held in the corpus as “Stoicism and Self-Interest: What Is Our Interest?” That text does not carry the parenthesis naming Machiavelli and Hobbes.
IV. Hobbes as an Ally: The Autonomous Self
11 December 2008, The Autonomous Self. He separates two ideas: “a self that is the locus of choice and control” and “a self as independent of the need for others.” He affirms the first and denies the second.
Consider, as one example, Hobbes. Hobbes thought we were autonomous selves in the first sense. We all possess the natural liberty to act as we please. As Held points out, he treats us as if we had sprung from the ground full-grown, without parents or other sorts of history, for the purpose of explaining our natural rights and how we nevertheless have an obligation to society (and profit therefrom). But Hobbes certainly doesn’t deny our fundamental dependency on others. Quite the contrary--that’s precisely what makes life in the state of nature “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. …
So I am totally and completely on the side of Hobbes and Bentham and Kant and the Stoics and others in defending the idea of an autonomous self. (I don’t think it is autonomous in Kant’s extreme sense of creating moral rules, but I accept the basic characterization of the self.)
In the same post he names the one threat to that self: “The only threat (and I agree that it is a significant one) to this sort of autonomous self is determinism.”
Corpus Note — Dave Kelly
- Hobbes is Sterling’s stock case of the consistent empiricist about value. “Good” means “I want that.” Sterling grants that this notion exists and denies that it is the Stoic or the ordinary moral one. This bears on C3 and C6.
- Against Hobbes on motive he relies on Butler twice, three years apart. The argument is the same both times: the egoist’s claim is empirical, and the evidence runs against it.
- He ties the point to preferred indifferents in his own words. The doctrine “makes no sense” unless reason alone can move us to act.
- He sides with Hobbes on one thing only: the self as the locus of choice.
Theoretical foundations: Grant C. Sterling (Eastern Illinois University). Analysis and synthesis: Dave Kelly. Prose rendering: Claude (Anthropic). 2026.
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