Chapter 9 Thomas Hobbes on Intentionality, Desire, and Happiness
Hobbes offers a surprisingly modern account of happiness, or felicity, as con- tinuous success in life. At the same time, he recognizes its paradoxical aspects, namely, happiness is never devoid of anxiety. His idea of happiness is based on desires, which is to be expected because for Hobbes persons are dynamic agents who aim at their own good directed by deliberation. I pay attention to the problems of intentionality. Deliberation is presented by Hobbes in exten- sional language, according to the principles of his scientific project, although intensional language is clearly needed when we discuss the success of projects and something like hitting a set target. I review and criticize the views of some authors who write as if Hobbes’s project were plausible, or he could reduce causa finalis to causa efficiens. In the end, I offer some comments on Hobbes’s alleged egoism.
Theories of Happiness
The following theories of happiness have been popular. They answer the ques- tion, when can we say a person is happy? I provide a brief sketch of each of them, relate Hobbes to some of them, and finally go deeper into his theorizing. Here are six typical views of happiness:
A virtuous and only a virtuous person is happy, or happiness is virtuousness.
A person who enjoys life is happy, or happiness means maximal pleasure and avoidance of pain. This is hedonism.
A person who is calm and contented is happy, or happiness is peace of mind (ataraxia); it is also possible she enjoys the benefits of apatheia or freedom from passions.
A person is happy when she systematically gets what she wants, or hap- piness is fulfilled desire.
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A happy person is, somehow, a complete person, or happiness is flourish- ing as self-realization, or “becoming what you are” in terms of one’s real- ized potential. This is eudaimonia.
A happy person enjoys a full range of social goods, such as loving family, prosperity, and overall appreciation and success in her social and politi- cal life, in addition to such natural goods as good health.
The idea that happiness is or follows from moral virtue has been the dominant theory from antiquity to the early modern times. Socrates is perfectly happy in his prison cell although he is sentenced to die and he is innocent. One could expect that these two conditions over-determine his unhappiness, but they do not. He is happy because he is virtuous. This has been called a “Socratic para- dox” in ethics, and a paradox it is, namely, to say a virtuous, happy person is immune to the vagaries of the world is clearly an exaggeration. Normally, we think the world makes one happy or the world takes happiness away. However, the Socratic view does not respect this intuition. Hobbes’s own view of virtue is rather bleak, perhaps even ironic. He knows perfectly well how important and central this notion has been and still is. Therefore, he plays down virtue’s import in a way that he knows so well, by ironic belittlement:
[T]herefore that modesty, equity, trust, humanity, mercy (which we have demonstrated to be necessary to peace), are good manners or habits, that is, virtues. The law therefore, in the means to peace, commands also good manners, or the practice of virtue; and therefore it is called moral.1
In the Aristotelian lore, moral or practical virtues are acquired character traits but no one would call them mere good manners. Nevertheless, Hobbes says that the laws, both natural and civic, command the good and that is why they are moral. Perhaps they are moral because no peace can prevail without those virtues and in this sense the law’s purpose presupposes them, but that alone does not make them moral virtues in the traditional sense. Hobbes says virtues are moral when they aim at peace, peace makes it possible to act and succeed, and hence virtues promote happiness; but virtues as such do not make men happy. Hobbes could well ask, why would they? Now, it is still possible that virtue brings about happiness and if it does, it certainly is valuable happiness. Obviously, many types of successful happiness ascriptions are devoid of value or they may even be evil – hedonistic
1 De Cive, 1642, Ch. 3, Sec. 31. All references to Hobbes’s works are to the standard Molesworth edition.