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Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Leviathan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature, War, and Civil Society
Power, Common-wealths, and Monarchies
Religion
Fear
Reason, Fact, and Philosophy
Summary
Analysis
There are two kinds of motion inside animals. One kind includes motions that are vital, like the course of blood and breathing, which are not dependent upon imagination. The other kind includes motions that are voluntary and involve the use of limbs and the desire of minds. As all voluntary motions rely on one of the senses identified in the previous chapters, the foundation of all voluntary motions is imagination.
For Hobbes, imagination underpins all human acts, which is why he spends so much time explaining it. Without first understanding the thoughts that bring humans to civil societies and common-wealths, one can’t possibly understand such civil societies.
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While it is simple for uneducated people to assume there is no movement where none is visible, that is not to say that motion is not present. “These small beginnings of Motion,” Hobbes says, before a person speaks or moves, are called an endeavor. When such an endeavor is applied to something, it is known as appetite, like an appetite for food or water; and when such an endeavor is applied away from something, it is known as aversion. What people have an appetite for, they are said to love. Similarly, what people have an aversion to, they are said to hate. One cannot have an appetite for something they do not already know from experience, other than to have an appetite to try something new and unknown. On the other hand, people can have an aversion based on what they know and what they do not know.
According to Hobbes’s theory, one can’t desire what they don’t know from experience, other than a desire to try something new. This argument is also based in Hobbes’s materialist beliefs, which assume one must come into contact with an object through one of the sense organs in order to have experience and thoughts based on said object. In this vein, Hobbes implies that one cannot desire what they have never had, but they can fear it.
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Things that people neither love nor hate are held in contempt, which is a sort of immobility. As it is in the nature of all humans to be in constant motion, it is impossible to say that all the same sorts of things are always loved or hated. Thus, whatever sort of thing causes appetite is said to be good, and whatever sort of thing causes aversion is said to be evil. However, there is no absolute or “common Rule of Good and Evill.” In Latin, there are two words similar to good and evil, but not exact, and those words are “Pulchrum” (the promise of good) and “Turpe” (the promise of evil). Therefore, pleasure is similar to the promise of good, whereas displeasure is the promise of evil.
For Hobbes, many words—like good and evil, moral and immoral, and just and unjust—can never be adequately defined because different people consider different things evil, immoral, and unjust. This argument becomes important later in the book when Hobbes describes the nature of common-wealths. Evil, immorality, and injustice must be defined within a common-wealth, and it is up to the sovereign power to define these terms for subjects to follow.
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Hobbes goes on to define several other passions, including joy, pain, grief, anger, confidence, and kindness. He also defines curiosity, which is the desire to know something, and fear, which is like aversion, only it involves the distress of being hurt or harmed by something. Fear of an invisible power that is allowed publically is known as religion, and fear of an invisible power that is not allowed is superstition.
“Passions” are similar to emotions, and these emotions, according to Hobbes, drive a person’s actions. Hobbes’s distinction between religion and superstition is subtle (one is authorized, the other is not) and thus makes religion seem like little more than superstition, which would have been a very controversial opinion in Hobbes’s time.
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Success in obtaining that which one desires is known as “felicity”; however, there is no such thing as constant happiness. As life is in constant motion, one can never expect to be without appetite or aversion. Lastly, the kind of speech that signifies something as good is known as praise, and that is all Hobbes has to say about passions and how they are expressed.
Hobbes’s contention that life is in constant motion dismisses accepted philosophies related to objects and motion, which makes Hobbes’s philosophy appear quite radical. Hobbes maintains there is no such thing as constant happiness; however, he later argues that the creation of a common-wealth is the closet one can get to true happiness.
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