Alexandra Chadwick

This chapter considers the extent to which individual and common good are compatible within Thomas Hobbes’s philosophy. It explores Hobbes’s notion of “good”, and considers how he allows for the existence of “real” individual goods. Next, it examines Hobbes’s definition of common good as that which is “good for the commonwealth”. It is the sovereign who decides what is good for the commonwealth, but just as there are real individual goods, there are real common goods. Real goods for the commonwealth are those things that preserve its existence. It is argued that, in Hobbes’s theory, real individual goods are compatible with real common goods; moreover, it is this compatibility that ensures the stability and prosperity of the commonwealth. However, a condition in which all laws are directed to the real common good, and citizens see where their own real good lies, is an ideal, not a realistic political scenario for Hobbes. Real politics requires defusing potential conflict between individual goods and the common good in a different way: namely, by encouraging citizens to accept the sovereign’s judgement of what is “good”. Nevertheless, there are limits to what subjects will accept. Tracing the theoretical compatibility between real goods for individuals and for commonwealths in Hobbes’s thought shows how the preservation of a Hobbesian political community relies not only on citizens accepting the sovereign’s judgement, but also on the ability of sovereigns to see the real common good.

According to Hume, the question of the “dignity” or “meanness” of human nature comes down to a comparison of its “different motives or actuating principles”: that is, whether “our selfish and vicious principles” are “predominant above our social and virtuous” (Hume 1987, 84). Hume was responding in part to Hobbes, and comparison between the two philosophers on this question is common, with Hobbes placed on the “selfish” side, and Hume on the other. But, as Hume immediately goes on to say, “There is much of a dispute of words in all this controversy.” The implication is that the distinction at the heart of the dispute contains fairly little of substance. I shall argue that this is indeed an appropriate description of the difference between Hobbes and Hume on the subject of human selfishness when we consider the former’s psychological writings in Leviathan. Nevertheless, words matter when writing about human motivation because, by carrying connotations of praise or blame, they influence human actions. Accordingly, I shall suggest that the emphasis on self-regarding motives in Hobbes’s political writings results from a judgement about which image of human nature it is most useful to present.

This paper examines the significance and originality of Hobbes’s use of ‘mind’, rather than ‘soul’, in his writings on human nature. To this end, his terminology in the discussion of the ‘faculties of the mind’ in The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640) is considered in the context of English-language accounts of the ‘faculties of the soul’ in three widely-read works from the first half of the seventeenth century: Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in Generall (1604), Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), and Edward Reynolds’s A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soule of Man (1640). For Hobbes’s contemporaries, man’s soul conveyed God-like powers to human beings; for Hobbes this is a dangerous idea. Accordingly, he establishes a sharp divide between ‘soul’ and ‘mind’, understanding the two terms to be concerned with two very different things: one with soteriology, the other with mental abilities. Like his contemporaries, Hobbes thought that understanding the faculties reveals the way to live a good life. But unlike them, his moral and political philosophy relies on citizens accepting that they are not like God, rather than looking to restore the ‘divine’ within themselves.