Jendrysik, “Land or Sea Beast”
MPSA 2004
2
to be tamed. Perhaps Leviathan might be best thought of as the theory of mastering the cycle of
decay and Behemoth evidence for that decay. Behemoth can also be seen as providing reasons
why disorder sometimes cannot be controlled.
While Behemoth is clearly a history of the English Civil War, what is to be gained by
considering Leviathan as a history of that event? Leviathan explains the failure of existing
conceptions of religious and political sovereignty. Leviathan becomes, in effect, a unique history
of the civil war. Hobbes noted that his work was “occasioned by the disorders of the present
time.”
5
The causes of civil war are rooted in both recent and distant history. Leviathan traces the
relationship between church and state and man and the state, reaching into the mythic biblical
past. The problems created in the earliest times, the confusion about the proper roles of
sovereigns, priests, prophets and subjects, all culminated in the English Revolution. But there is
more to Leviathan than history. In Hobbes’s mind, his analysis of the history of the civil war also
demonstrates the correctness of his general theory about the origins and course of disorder.
Hobbes offers Leviathan as an opportunity for humanity to escape the effects of history and
create an “immortal commonwealth.”
6
A key insight into the relationship between history and theory in Leviathan lies in seeing
how Hobbes understands the relative place of history as a science. As Robert Kraynak notes
“Hobbes explicitly says that the discipline of ‘civil history’ is inferior to political science because
it is based on experience rather than on demonstrative science.”
7
If Leviathan is science then
Behemoth is its lesser stepchild: history.
Scholarly opinion about Behemoth is divided. Robert Kraynak believes that “in order to
understand the problem – the imperfectly constituted governments of the past and the causes of
civil war – one must turn to Hobbes’s historical writings, above all to Behemoth.
8
But as Royce
5
Leviathan, Review and Conclusion, 491. While Hobbes only makes this claim in the conclusion to Leviathan it
is clear that he has the Civil War and its attendant disorder in mind throughout the work. Historians of political
thought have generally accepted that the disorder created revolution and civil war were critical to Hobbes’s account
of political and religious order in Leviathan. Richard Ashcraft claimed that for Hobbes knowledge of the causes of
civil disorder was the central purpose of political theory. See his “Ideology and Class in Hobbes’ Political Theory,”
in Thomas Hobbes: Critical Assessments, Volume I, Background: Texts and Contexts, ed. Preston King (London:
Routledge, 1993). Jean Hampton called Leviathan part of a Europe-wide effort to explain social disorder. See her
Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 1. Don Herzog saw
Hobbes as trying to cure the illnesses (disorders) of the body politic. See his Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent
Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 100. The analysis of disorder was critical because only by
reaching to core beliefs about the nature of politics could Hobbes excise those beliefs which created civil strife. But
Hobbes had a greater goal. I agree with David Johnston that Leviathan was inspired both by the disorders of the
Civil War and a desire on Hobbes’s part to produce a work for the ages. See his The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas
Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), xviii. Sharon
Lloyd believed that Hobbes attempted to provide a universally valid analysis of disorder in Leviathan. See her Ideals
as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The power of mind over matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
309.
Hobbes said that the Union of England and Scotland would have “prevented the Civill warres, which make both
these Kingdomes, at this present, miserable.” See Leviathan, XXIX, 138 and Behemoth, 33. This passage might
suggest that Hobbes began writing Leviathan in the late 1640’s, since it is generally accepted that the Civil Wars
ended with the final defeat of Charles I. Hobbes also used “Civil War” to refer to the war between England and
Scotland in 1650-1. Leviathan was published in May 1651, in the course of this war. It should also be remembered
that the initial resistance to Charles I was not in England but in Scotland.
6
In Hobbes’s Political Theory Cambridge: (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Deborah Baumgold suggests
that Leviathan must be treated as a work of reconstruction (philosophy) and explanation (history).
7
Robert P. Kraynak, “Hobbes’s Behemoth and the Argument for Absolutism.” American Political Science
Review, Vol. 76, No. 4 (December 1982), 837. Very Aristotlean one might think.
8
Kraynak, “Hobbes’s Behemoth ,” 837.
Convention