Rationality in Leviathan: Hobbes and his game-theoretic admirers

Abstract

Game theoretic analyses of Hobbes' Leviathan proliferate. By considering elements of Leviathan, which have been scrutinised inter alia by Gauthier, Hampton and Kavka, I argue that the approach capture Hobbes' notion of obligation insufficiently. I search for a concept of rationality in Hobbes' work that goes beyond that of game theory and find one in his distinction between science and prudence. If one attends to this distinction, one is forced to consider the significance of religion for Hobbes' conception of rationality. This, in turn, forces one to examine the status of Hobbes' ‘self-preservation’ postulate.

Keywords:

• Hobbes
• Leviathan
• rationality
• state of nature
• game theory

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank one of the journal's referees for helpful comments on the first draft of this essay.

Notes

 * The author has held teaching and research posts at the Universities of Sussex, Lancaster and Cambridge (the last of which awarded him a PhD in 1996) and at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. Since October 2000 he has been a lecturer at Erfurt University, where he is a member of the Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultät.

All references to Leviathan take this form. The number after ‘Lev’ refers to chapter, that after the colon to page in the Macpherson edition (Hobbes 1985).

Kavka's (1986: 111 – 2) ‘lie low/anticipate’ game is identical.

By ‘object’, I mean not only material things but also actions, my right to execute I may likewise alienate.

Kavka (1986: 130 – 3) likewise rejects the ‘extremely strong assumptions’ required for the backward induction argument.

Glory is joy in contemplating one's own power and ability; it becomes ‘vain-glory’ when based merely on the flattery of others or supposed powers and abilities, which one does not, in fact, possess (Lev 6: 125).

Given the temporal structure of covenants, I transform Hampton's ‘normal’ depictions into extensive forms. Normal forms, as Sorell (1986: 152) notes, abstract ‘from the way the actions of the parties are related in time’. The problem is remedied with extensive forms and is thus not, pace Sorell, a serious flaw in game-theoretic expositions of Hobbes.

Hampton (1986: 81) cites the English translation of De Cive for ‘greed’: ‘men cannot put off this same irrational appetite, whereby they greedily prefer the present good … before the future’ (Hobbes 1991: 3.32). Hobbes' Latin original has no counterpart to ‘greedily’; Tuck's and Silverthorne's (Hobbes 1998) translation is: ‘Men cannot divest themselves of the irrational desire to reject future goods for the sake of present goods’. Greed does, however, play a role in Leviathan (Lev 14: 196) in the form of ‘avarice’. And in De Cive, Hobbes (1991: 3.27) writes of a ‘perverse [iniquio] desire of present profit’.

See Shapin and Schaffer(1985: 149).

The discipline, History, is, for Hobbes, not a science, for it involves not ratiocination but experience; it is a ‘Register of Knowledge of Fact’ (1839: I.8; Lev 9: 148).

Here I agree with Neal (1988: 643) that Hobbes' main concern is with the preservation of an extant commonwealth, not how to entice individuals out of the CoN.

Hampton (1986: 15, 73). Kavka (1986: 363), too, calls self-preservation a ‘key empirical assertion’.

‘Despite a concern for earthly self-preservation, Hobbes is well informed about the relish for martyrdom and other-worldly rewards’ (Holmes, 1990: xxxiv). Holmes' excellent introduction to Hobbes' Behemoth is one of the few modern texts that take irrationality in Hobbes' work sufficiently seriously.

Watkins (1965: 167), who likewise understands self-preservation descriptively, draws on examples from Frazer's Golden Bough and avers that Hobbes' self-preservation principle ‘has been falsified, and not just by stray counter-examples’.

Under the ‘standard interpretation’, which she rejects, Lloyd (1998: 124) includes the postulate that ‘humans are egoists who care above all about self-preservation’.