WorkThomas Hobbes

Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society

Against Aristotle, Hobbes argues that fear brings people under government, and that the government must decide even what Scripture means.

by Thomas Hobbes382 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: De Cive
First published: 1642(aged 54)
Original language: Latin

Report a rights issue

Overview

Aristotle had taught that human beings are political animals, fitted by nature for life in a city, and the universities of Europe still taught it. Thomas Hobbes opens by denying it. People seek company for gain or for reputation, he argues, and what brings them into lasting societies is fear: without a ruler they are equal enough to kill one another, each has a right to everything, and the result is a war of all against all, a formula that first appears in this book. Peace requires that everyone submit their will to one man or one council. The sovereign so created decides what is just, what may be taught and, in the book's third part, what Scripture means, since a church with authority of its own would be a second sovereign. All that a Christian needs for salvation, Hobbes adds, is obedience and the belief that Jesus is the Christ. He finished the Latin text in Paris in November 1641, a year after leaving England, and had it printed in 1642 in so few copies that the book stayed rare. It was the third section of a planned system — body, man, citizen — and it came out first. The preface he added to the second edition explains why: England's dispute over the rights of rulers and the duty of subjects would not wait for the other two. In 1647 his French friend Samuel Sorbière arranged an enlarged edition at the Elzevir press in Amsterdam, with that preface and with notes replying to objections, and this was the first edition most readers could obtain. Sorbière's French translation followed in 1649. The English version appeared in London in 1651, the same year as Leviathan. Who made it is disputed: Hobbes's friend John Aubrey reports that he put part of it into English himself, and modern scholarship has proposed the poet Charles Cotton.

Key concepts

What is the “war of all against all”?

It is Hobbes’s name for the condition of people who have no common power over them. Each has a right to anything he judges useful for his survival, each is able to kill, and each has reason to distrust the rest. War here means the known readiness to fight, and not constant battle. Hobbes calls every other time peace, and argues that only a civil power can secure it.

What does Hobbes mean by a “city”?

A city, his word for the state, is one person whose will counts as the will of all its members, because each of them has agreed to submit his own will to one man or one council. It can therefore use their combined strength for peace and defence. The city is distinct from the individuals who live in it, and only the city can make law or own a right.

What is the “internal court” of conscience?

The internal court is conscience, where a person’s intentions are judged. Hobbes says the laws of nature, his rules of reason for peace, always bind there: one must always be willing to keep them. They bind outward actions only when keeping them is safe. Nobody is obliged to keep faith alone among people who break it, because that would make him their prey, which the rules were never meant to do.

What does “dominion” mean in De Cive?

Dominion is the right to command another person. Hobbes allows three sources: agreement, as when people set up a government; conquest, when the defeated promise obedience in exchange for their lives; and birth. On the last he breaks with tradition. A newborn is first in its mother’s power, so dominion over a child belongs to her by nature, and to the father only through some arrangement with her.

What is the “kingdom of God by nature”?

It is God’s rule over everyone who acknowledges his providence, exercised through reason alone, without prophets or Scripture. Its laws are the laws of nature. Hobbes grounds God’s right to rule there in power that nothing can resist, and he distinguishes it from the kingdoms by covenant, in which God ruled Israel and will rule through Christ. In each of them, he argues, subjects owe obedience to their civil sovereign.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Fear Builds the City

Are human beings fitted by nature to live together, as Aristotle taught? Hobbes says no, and from that denial follows a state founded on mutual fear and held together by one will.

People seek company for gain or for reputation, the opening argues, so nothing lasting comes of goodwill alone. Without a common power everyone has a right to everything, and the result is a war of all against all. Reason supplies rules for peace, but they bind in practice only where keeping them is safe. Safety comes when each submits his will to one man or one council, whose will then counts as the will of all. That sovereign makes property, defines justice and cannot be bound by his own laws. His one duty is the safety of the people.

state of nature
self-preservation
natural law
peace
covenant
social contract
consent
sovereignty
political authority
political obligation
obedience
monarchy
democracy
civil law
justice
property
liberty
rights

Enter a dialogue

The Sovereign Reads Scripture

What happens to peace when a church can command in God’s name against the state? The third part answers by giving the ruler the last word on what Scripture means, and by asking very little of the believer.

God rules by nature through reason, and by covenant through Scripture, and in both kingdoms Hobbes finds obedience to the civil power commanded. A church is the Christian city under another name; were it to hold authority of its own, subjects would serve two masters. So the sovereign appoints teachers and settles disputed readings. The price to conscience is kept low: salvation needs obedience and one belief, that Jesus is the Christ. A subject ordered to deny that belief may not resist. Hobbes’s answer for him is martyrdom.

religious authority
religion and politics
scripture
scriptural interpretation
faith
salvation
religion
prophecy

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 382
distinct concepts: 442
by passages held, corpus-wide: #198

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “political authority” and “sovereignty”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 24 pairings. 85 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
political authority	sovereignty	17
political obligation	sovereignty	11
law	sovereignty	10
obedience	political authority	10
faith	obedience	9
political authority	religious authority	8
natural law	political obligation	7
natural law	sovereignty	7
law	religious authority	6
religious authority	sovereignty	6
obedience	religious authority	5
faith	religious authority	4
law	political authority	4
law	political obligation	4
obedience	sovereignty	4
law	natural law	3
political authority	political obligation	3
faith	political authority	2
law	obedience	2
natural law	obedience	2
natural law	political authority	2
obedience	political obligation	2
faith	law	1
faith	sovereignty	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1642 Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (De Cive) you are here EN
1650 The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic
De Cive and Leviathan both grow out of this treatise, the first statement of Hobbes's political theory, which he wrote in English in 1640 and did not himself send to the press.
EN
1651 Leviathan
The last of Hobbes's three statements of his political theory and the one that is still read: it repeats the argument of The Elements of Law and De Cive and says far more about religion than either.
EN
1655 Elements of Philosophy: Concerning Body (De Corpore)
This is the opening section of Hobbes's Elements of Philosophy, where he sets out his logic and his theory of motion. He drafted it over ten years or more, and it reached print only in 1655, thirteen years after the section on the citizen.
EN
1656 The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance
This is Hobbes's fullest treatment of free will and his last word on it in his argument with John Bramhall, an argument that reached print in four instalments between 1654 and 1658.
EN
1682 An Answer to Bishop Bramhall’s The Catching of the Leviathan, with An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy
Two defensive pieces from the late 1660s, when Hobbes was barred from publishing on religion: one closes his quarrel with John Bramhall, which had begun over free will, and the other is his history of how heresy came to be punished.
EN

— or open another of their works