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Chapter 7
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
Virtue is generally valued and used to compare people to one another, and virtues that are considered of the mind are commonly called intellectual virtues. These can be either natural or acquired. Natural wit comes about through experience without structured education. When imagination is slow, it is known as “stupidity,” and these discrepancies in wit are caused by individual passions.
According to Hobbes’s philosophy, a person who has a slow imagination (i.e., those who are “stupid[]”) are simply not motivated by the right passions. Thus, Hobbes’s theory doesn’t have much to do with innate ability or aptitude. This reflects Hobbes’s belief in human equality—under the same conditions and passions, people are more or less capable of the same things.
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People who notice similarities and connections where others do not are said to have “Good Wit,” or “Good Fancy,” and their ability to discern differences and similarities is said to be “good Judgement.” Someone who exercises such judgment has the virtue known as discretion. A good poem—be it an epic, drama, sonnet, or epigram—has both fancy and judgement; however, in a good history, judgement is more important. Orations of praise and invectives, which aim to honor or dishonor a certain person, rely almost completely on fancy.
Hobbes ultimately argues that a philosopher must have “Good Wit” and “good Judgement,” as they must have the proper eloquence needed to get people to listen and trust them. In this way, Hobbes is making philosophy a genre of writing, like poetry and history, and he is defining exactly what is needed to compose reasonable and eloquent philosophy.
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People’s personal and individual thoughts vary. Personal thoughts are both clean and indecent, holy and blasphemous, and serious and light. When one’s thoughts have a specific purpose and contain much experience and memory, this is known as prudence, and prudence applied to unjust ends is called craft.
Craft is an abuse frequently seen in common-wealths, and Hobbes draws attention to this. Royalists in Hobbes’s day would have viewed many parliamentarian acts as craft.
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Unlike natural wit, acquired wit is obtained by instruction and method. Acquired wit is grounded in the correct use of speech and definitions and produces science. Different wits are caused by different passions, and from different passions come different bodies and different levels of education. These different passions are caused mainly by a desire for power, wealth, knowledge, and honor; however, this list can be condensed to simply power, since wealth, knowledge, and honor are merely specific types of power.
Hobbes’s entire philosophy and explanation of nature and society is based on power—getting power and keeping power. This power is individual (as in one person subduing another and imposing power over them), or power is more collective (like multiple people combining their individual power into one larger power, as is done within a common-wealth).
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As Hobbes has defined different virtues of the mind, he also defines certain defects of the mind, including giddiness, madness, rage, and melancholy. Madness is too much passion that can be brought about by too much alcohol, and, according to some, madness and the passions that cause it can come from demons and spirits, both good and bad. Christian doctrine espouses inspiration from the Holy Spirit and likewise believes in evil possession. Hobbes challenges any academic to make the Holy Trinity or transubstantiation comprehensible. “So this kind of Absurdity,” Hobbes says, “may rightly be numbered amongst the many sorts of Madnesse.”
Hobbes outright calls Christian doctrine, especially that which relies on transubstantiation, incomprehensible “madnesse,” which was an incredibly controversial statement in Hobbes’s time. Even Protestants take Communion, although they do not believe that the bread and wine become Jesus's body and blood. Generally speaking, however, Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, believe that Jesus is present in the sacrament in some sense. Hobbes considers this practice nonsense and lacking reason.
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