Hobbes and Descartes on the Distribution of Wit, and some Plato

Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind then another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe.

And as to the faculties of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science; which very few have, and but in few things; as being not a native faculty, born with us; nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat els,) I find yet a greater equality amongst men, than that of strength. For Prudence, is but Experience; which equall time, equally bestowes on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceipt of ones owne wisdome, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the Vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equall, than unequall. For there is not ordinarily a greater signe of the equall distribution of any thing, than that every man is contented with his share.--Hobbes (1651) Leviathan, Chapter 13.

As regular readers know I am rather fond of these two paragrahs in Hobbes and I treat them as foundational to my own methodological analytic egalitarianism (MAE) [recall here; here and originally here]. But recently, during a seminar discussion, I noticed two features that invite reconsideration. First, in the top paragraph, it is striking that when Hobbes justifies that the strength of body is sufficiently equal, he appeals to a political mechanism that has solved what  we may call the original coordination problem (confederacy). This is a bit awkward for two reasons (;) because such fundamental equality is a kind of premise or step in the argment that is supposed to lead to the social contract in the state of nature. But here we are informed that even in nature, political alliance secures such equality. This is not the place to elaborate what this signifies, but the paragraph suggests to me that for Hobbes politics ("secret machination") is constitutive of human co-existence. The state of nature is not, as it sometimes taken to be, pre-political. About that some other time more. But (ii) the capacity to enter into sucessful confederacy with others (or to execute "secret machination" successfully) seems to presuppose non-trivial social intelligence. And while it can provide evidence for bodily equality, it seems to undermine the idea that we are truly equal (intellectually). I return to this in the paragraph below the next one.

It's also worth noting that in that first paragraph, Hobbes here is recalling some key features of Glaucon's version of the social contract in at Republic 358E-359B: that is, "those who lack the power to avoid [being harmed by others] and [unable to impose harms on others] determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another" (translated by Shorey).I don't mean to suggest Hobbes is deliberately evoking Plato here, but I do think it possible that there is a more general moral lurking here: in order to argue for the conceptual possibility for an egalitarian social contract that has normative or political authority, the construct seems to rest on a prior step in which the many collaborate in subdueing the strong.

My second point pertains to the final three sentences of the second quoted paragraph above (and these I will connect to Hobbes below). Here, in line with my remark above, Hobbes does not really affirm equal mental capacity in extensional terms. (The existence of rhetoric and science, and perhaps education more generally undermines it.) But this extensional perspective is not really doing the work there. He switches to an intensional context, and points out that we all tend to believe we're smart (in the way at Lake Wobegon parents think their child above average) and that we do not tend to envy other people their smarts. Hobbes is articulating here an envy-free distributive principle, which is a key criterion for an egalitarian distribution of an item.

He explains the endorsement of one's own sufficient keen intelligence ('wit') in terms of a kind of perspectival bias--we are too close to ourselves to judge this really impartially. But interestingly enough, the fact that we're free of envy of other people's smarts suggests that this kind of perspectival bias is itself equally distributed among us.

Of course, Hobbes is also being very funny here (and kind of implying he is smarter for noticing this), because on the whole wisdom is in short supply. In conversation, some people deny what Hobbes attributes to them--they are modest and genuinely wish they were as smart as others. In my view these putative counterexamples are not very problematic to Hobbes because such people are not a source of the kind of political trouble he worries about (ambition): as he puts it in chapter XI, "Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdome in matter of government, are disposed to Ambition. " In chapter 13, he is not too worried that people will think they are not sufficiently equal to others and so can be rightfully denied political equality. (A theorist of adaptive preferences or structural injustice may well worry more.)  

It occurred to me,  too, that in these three sentences, Hobbes is trolling Descartes with whom he had an unfruitful, acrimonious exchange, published in 1641 as part of the "Objections and Replies" to/in the Meditations. For Hobbes is here evoking, even adopting for his own ends, the then famous opening lines of Part 1 of Descartes' (1637) Discourse on method. Descartes starts with pretty much the same envy-free criterion to establish the equal distribution of good sense:

Good sense [bon sens] is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess. And in this it is not likely that all are mistaken the conviction is rather to be held as testifying that the power of judging aright and of distinguishing truth from error, which is properly what is called good sense or reason, is by nature equal in all men; and that the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.--Descartes (1637) Discourse on Method, part 1.*

The Discourse on Method is not read much in political philosophy/theory, even though it has quite a bit of pertinent material (recall here; and here).

Of course, Hobbes and Descartes may not saying exactly the same thing (wisdom is not often thought identical to good sense/reason). I am unsure what Hobbes' definition of wisdom in Leviathan is, but in the dedication to  his (1651) De Cive, Hobbes writes that "Wisdome properly so call'd is nothing else but this, The perfect knowledge of the Truth in all matters whatsoever." Leaving aside if wisdom is then possible in reality, this definition suggests that wisdom is considerably rarer than we tend to think it.

Whereas Descartes is suggesting that the capacity to distinguish truth from error is available to us all. That we are led into error is fundamentally the effect of the diversity of or developmental paths and our diverging interests (we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects.) Our life's experience corrupts our capacity to distinguish true from false.

Somewhat surprisingly Descartes goes on to deny the natural equality he had just diagnosed with an intentional envy free criterion, by offering the following extentional judgment: "The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations." Descartes here echoes a rather important passage [491D] Plato's Republic that one can naturally read as concerned with the inductive risk of the teaching of philosophy to ambitious and smart types  [like Alcibiades].[Recall also Ibn Rushd's commentary here.]

Descartes treats reason as the capacity to distinguish truth from falsity. It's pretty clear that Hobbes thinks this a mistake (and I suspect that's the trolling). For Hobbes defines reason, in deflationary fashion, as "nothing but Reckoning" and, in particular, of tracking "the Consequences of generall names agreed upon, for the Marking and Signifying of our thoughts; I say Marking them, when we reckon by our selves; and Signifying, when we demonstrate, or approve our reckonings to other men." (see chapter 5 of Leviathan, emphasis added). What reason really does, for Hobbes, is keep track of our linguistic conventions. 

 

 

 

*I am unsure who the translator of this edition is.

Comments

[Nicolas Delon]

Hi Eric, just saw this. It's funny. I'm teaching Hobbes next week and was reminded of Descartes too. That's a fascinating parallel.

You probably know this, but Descartes himself was trolling (or misunderstanding or riffing on) Montaigne. It would have been an obvious reference at the time.

Montaigne : "On dit communément que le plus juste partage que nature nous ait fait de ses grâces, c'est celui du sens ; car il n'est aucun qui ne se contente de ce qu'elle lui en a distribué." Essais, L II, chap. 17.

Montaigne was clearly being ironic. I'm not entirely sure if Descartes was being ironic too. In any case, Hobbes was probably also indirectly riffing on Montaigne. It's all very kaleidoscopic.