A Study of Thomas Hobbes's Post-Restoration Dialogues
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2010 Doubting Thomas: A Study of Thomas Hobbes's Post-Restoration Dialogues Adam George Yoksas Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Yoksas, Adam George, "Doubting Thomas: A Study of Thomas Hobbes's Post-Restoration Dialogues" (2010). Dissertations. 221. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/221 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2010 Adam George Yoksas LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO DOUBTING THOMAS: A STUDY OF THOMAS HOBBES’S POST-RESTORATION DIALOGUES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE BY ADAM GEORGE YOKSAS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A debt is owed to the many people who have inspired and shaped me, and in turn, inspired and shaped this work. I would first like to thank my dissertation committee for their service and insight: three men who deserve to be acknowledged individually as well. This study would not be possible without the piercing logic and high standards of my dissertation director John Danford. His thorough consideration of my many thoughts was instrumental in shaping not only this study, but the mind that produced it. His precise suggestions and care in his critiques helped to bring this study to completion. Equally important to me are the efforts of Claudio Katz, the man who first welcomed me to Loyola University Chicago. Throughout the years of my study, he was and continues to be many things for me, a wise tutor, a compassionate listener, a meticulous critic, and a good friend. Few I have encountered in my life to this point have fulfilled so many roles and, as time passes, I recognize his impact in my development as a complete academician. His presence is hopefully evident throughout this study. I would also like to thank Robert Mayer for his commitment to this project. Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from him is this: if political philosophy is to be truly valuable, it must strive to constantly make itself relevant to political practice. His office door was always open to me, never letting the business of academic life interfere with the life of the mind. iii I must also mention those other scholars who have inspired and influenced this work. I would be remiss if I did not thank two scholars from Northwestern University, Keith Topper and Dilip Gaonkar, for inviting me to the Center for Global Communication and Culture Summer Institute on Rhetoric and Political Thought in 2007 and again in 2008. I was introduced to two scholars through this program that deeply influenced my approach to this study, Kirstie McClure and Victoria Silver. I found Kirstie McClure’s overall approach to studying the moderns extremely intriguing and her comments on my initial observations of Hobbes were very useful in helping me to approach Hobbes from a new direction. Victoria Silver’s interest in my study was invaluable to me, and her generosity with her time and wisdom over the few days we spent together in Evanston were crucial to the production of this manuscript. The student participants of the Summer Institute at Northwestern have my deepest gratitude as well. Though there are too many to be listed here, the perspectives and ideas they brought to the study of political thought both challenged and enlightened me over the brief time we shared together. In addition to the directors, lecturers, and participants of the Summer Institute, I would like to thank the participants of two panels, conducted in 2008 and 2009, on Hobbes’s place in the history of political thought. Much of chapter IV was delivered as a conference paper at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in 2008, and I would like to thank David Lay Williams for giving me valuable comments and the encouragement to pursue Hobbes’s thoughts on political skill. When I returned to the Midwest Political Science Association the following year, I presented a paper on Hobbes’s use of equity. Though the material presented there is not included in this iv manuscript, I would like to thank Gregory Bruce Smith and Laura Ephraim for giving me valuable insight into Hobbes’s political thought. I would also like to thank the other scholars who have conversed with me about various tangential issues relevant to this study. Thomas Engeman, Raymond Tatalovich, and Alan Gitelson are just some of the people who helped refine my thinking, but this list is by no means complete. It also includes my students at Loyola University Chicago. I have and continue to be inspired by them, and I am grateful for the contribution they make to my studies and the joy they bring to my life. Additionally, I would like to thank all the other people who have helped me in various ways over the last several years both inside and outside of the academy. Clay Yoksas, Char and Dick Boyell, Chris Jaffe, Sarah Skowronski, Nelson Wainwright, Tim Yetzina, Megan Sholar, Jason Reifler, John Allen Williams, Peter Sanchez, Mary Frances Lebamoff, Diane Wawrejko, Michael George McGettigan, Steven Hadesman, Teresa Negrini, Piotr Paradowski, and Meridith Bell have all played important roles in my life at the time this manuscript was being produced. I would be remiss not to mention them. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, George and Diana Yoksas, for all of their love, encouragement, and support. v For David S. Lindberg PREFACE The seed of this project was planted in December of 2005. One month earlier, I was presenting a paper on Reinhold Niebuhr’s normative contribution to international relations at the annual meeting of the Illinois Political Science Association. My plan was to follow up on my initial observations and write a work of some length on the subject. Between November and December, I had amassed a considerable bibliography of works by and about Niebuhr, as I hoped to propose a dissertation about him after submitting final grades for the fall term. In my preparations, I came across an intellectual biography of Niebuhr entitled The Constant Dialogue by Richard Halliwell. Niebuhr had often been criticized for being an inconsistent thinker who held various and even contradictory opinions throughout his career. Yet this was not seen by Halliwell as a defect of Niebuhr, but Niebuhr’s strength as a theologian and as a critic. Niebuhr’s willingness to consider perspectives other than his own helped him to respond to changing circumstances. Given that Niebuhr’s career spanned two world wars, a cold war, a civil rights movement, and the general instability that occurred in American life in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Niebuhr witnessed more change than most philosophers. This made me consider what a good philosopher should do. Should a good philosopher doggedly defend his position, however untenable? Or should a good philosopher pursue the truth in light of new evidence, even when it contradicts his philosophy? vii I happened to reexamine my copy of Hobbes’s Behemoth to prepare my students’ final exam. Although I had read Hobbes’s Epistle Dedicatory letter to Lord Arlington several times, I read it differently this time. I realized that the statements Hobbes made in that Epistle Dedicatory were to be taken seriously, for they contained claims that seemed to propose a different sort of philosophy than the one I had previously attributed to Hobbes. It occurred to me that what I was reading was not the Hobbes I was taught, but a different Hobbes, and one that I would have never considered had I been operating under the assumption that a good philosopher should never write anything that even remotely challenges his previous statements. Hobbes, like Niebuhr, had experienced change throughout his career. Specifically, within Hobbes’s own lifetime, England went from a relatively stable commonwealth under James I, to a tumultuous commonwealth plagued by civil war, to another relatively stable monarchy under Charles II. At that point, I knew that I had to explore this Hobbes from Behemoth’s Epistle Dedicatory. In a sense, the subject chose me more that I chose the subject, simply because it was too important not to consider. This lends credibility to Max Weber’s notion that ideas have a volition all their own, and they pursue their authors more than their authors pursue them. A. Yoksas March 1, 2010 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii PREFACE vii ABSTRACT xi CHAPTER I: HOBBES’S DIALOGUES AS A RE-EVALUATION 1 Section 1: Hobbes’s Behemoth and the Problem of Good Administration 2 Section 2: Research Question 19 Section 3: Literature Survey 23 Section 4: Scope and Relevance 34 CHAPTER II: INTERPRETING HOBBES’S DIALOGUES 46 Section 1: Hobbes’s Turn to Dialectic 46 Section 2: Hobbes’s Dialectical Style 69 CHAPTER III: THE PROBLEM OF SCIENCE TEACHING TRUTH TO POWER 83 Section 1: Hobbes’s Scientific Idealism 83 Section 2: Science in Behemoth’s First Dialogue 88 Section 3: Science in Behemoth’s Second Dialogue 97 Section 4: Science in Behemoth’s Third Dialogue 107 Section 5: Science in Behemoth’s Fourth Dialogue 110 CHAPTER IV: THE PROBLEM