Human Nature in Hobbes and Thucydides by Jonathan Wensveen A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario Canada © 2013 Jonathan Wensveen Abstract As a close reader, translator, and self-professed admirer of Thucydides, Thomas Hobbes was heavily influenced by the former’s account of human nature, provided in his History of the Peloponnesian War. In fact, many scholars (in both political theory and international relations) have been keen to point out just this. Passages, they argue, such as the Plague at Athens and the Civil War at Corcyra, both of which reveal human nature at its darkest, undoubtedly shaped Hobbes’s own understanding and conception of man, the most comprehensive account of which appears in the first part of his most famous and mature work, Leviathan. What many of these scholars fail to acknowledge, however, is that for all of their similarities Thucydides’ account of human nature is also somewhat different from that of Hobbes. Indeed, although Thucydides often describes man at his worst, his History also provides moving examples of man at his best. In contrast to passages such as the Plague at Athens and the Civil War at Corcyra, passages such as the Mytilenean Debate and Pericles’ Funeral Oration highlight the human concern and capacity for virtue and justice, and indicate a recognition on the part of Thucydides (as opposed to Hobbes) that, despite what the primordial imposes on human beings they nevertheless and at the same time yearn for something higher. The purpose of this thesis, then, is to account for this fundamental, yet often overlooked difference. In it, I essentially argue that the difference between Thucydides and Hobbes on the question of human nature can be explained best by looking to Aristotle and Hobbes’s attack on him. More specifically, I argue that Hobbes’s rejection of Aristotle’s political science, moral and political psychology, and account of human nature underlying it, is also and at the same time what necessarily handcuffs him from acknowledging as natural certain aspects of the human condition that Thucydides, like Aristotle, does. Finally, I argue that for this reason, Hobbes’s attack on Aristotle also qualifies, in some ways, as an attack on that thinker he admired most: Thucydides. i Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Newell for his willingness to supervise and take me on as a graduate student. I will forever be grateful for his time and generosity as both my teacher and friend. Second, I would like to thank Professor Darby for agreeing to be my second reader and beyond that, for his constant support throughout my M.A. Third, I would like to thank Professor von Heyking—first, for cultivating my interest in political philosophy; and second, for introducing me to Thucydides, whose History I have since fallen in love with. Most important, I would like to thank my parents, James and Mary Anne, for their unconditional love and support. I am proud to be their son. ii Table of Contents Introduction..................................................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Hobbes on Human Nature.............................................................................................................13 Hobbes’s Primordialism........................................................................................................................14 Hobbes’s Reductionism.........................................................................................................................20 The Natural Condition of Mankind...................................................................................................28 Hobbes’s Unnatural Solution..............................................................................................................32 Chapter 2: Thucydides on Human Nature.....................................................................................................42 Pathways to Conflation: The Plague at Athens and The Civil War at Corcyra...............43 The Plague at Athens and The Civil War at Corcyra Reconsidered....................................51 A Gift from the Gods: Thucydides’ Hidden Teaching on Human Nature..........................56 Between Necessity and Justice: The Primordial and the Transcendental in Thucydides..................................................................................................................................................65 Chapter 3: Hobbes’s Attack on Aristotle........................................................................................................73 “The Worst Teacher That Ever Was” ..............................................................................................74 The Leviathan as an Attack on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Politics, and Ethics...................78 Of Beasts and Gods: Hobbes and Aristotle on Human Nature..............................................89 Spiritedness Versus Vainglory and Madness: Aristotle, Hobbes, and Psychology of Thumos.........................................................................................................................................................96 Chapter 4: Hobbes’s Attack on Thucydides...............................................................................................110 “The Most Politic Historiographer That Ever Writ”? ............................................................111 The Leviathan as an Attack on the History?...............................................................................119 Of Beasts and Gods Revisited: Hobbes, Aristotle, and Thucydides on Human Nature.........................................................................................................................................................132 Disordered Souls Versus Soulless Automatons: Hobbes, Aristotle, Thucydides and the Psychology of Thumos.................................................................................................................139 Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................150 Bibliography............................................................................................................................................................155 iii Introduction Hobbes, Thucydides, and The Question of Human Nature At first, comparing and contrasting a modern political philosopher known primarily for his views on domestic politics to an ancient historian known primarily for his on foreign affairs, may seem odd. Whereas Thomas Hobbes, it might be said, devoted the majority of his life to discussing and theorizing about order within political communities, Thucydides devoted the majority of his to documenting disorder between them. Upon deeper reflection, however, the two share more in common than it might, at first, appear; for although they differ in terms of content (not to mention style) both remain, at the most basic and fundamental level, concerned with the nature of war and peace and with the question of human nature more generally. In fact, for this very reason, Hobbes became a close reader, translator, and self- professed admirer of Thucydides. In his verse autobiography, he tells us that, of the Greeks and Latins he read, “none please’d [him] like Thucydides.”1 And in his own translation of the History, he makes a marginal note shedding light on why. As Richard Schlatter observes, in the margin of Book One, Hobbes wrote “the use of this history” where “Thucydides claimed that ‘he that desired to look into the truth of things done and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again.’”2 In marking this passage, however, Hobbes was highlighting more than just the “use” of Thucydides’ History. He was, at the same time and according to Schlatter, “emphasizing a concept which was fundamental in his own thinking as well as in that of Thucydides. The idea of an unchanging human nature, the constant element in history, the common denominator which enables the historian to compare one 1Hobbes, Verse Autobiography, line 84. 2Richard Schlatter, “Thomas Hobbes and Thucydides,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 6, No. 3 (June, 1945), 357 1 event with another and construct a formula or pattern which is intelligible and useful.”3 (Italics mine) Not surprisingly, therefore, Hobbes’s own understanding of human nature, the most comprehensive account of which appears in the first part of Leviathan (a work that, for all intents and purposes, constructs a “formula or pattern” useful for establishing political order) seems to have been heavily influenced by Thucydides’ description of human nature in his History—so much so, as Schlatter rightly points out, that the descriptions in the Leviathan of how men act read like generalizations from the History.4 Passages, for instance, such as the Plague and Athens and the Civil War at Corcyra, both of which reveal human nature at its darkest, seem to have shaped Hobbes’s own understanding and conception of man. Accordingly and as Peter Pouncey puts it, although “Hobbes does not acknowledge any debt to Thucydides for the formations of his conception of human nature, either in the Dedication or Letter to the Readers, with which he prefaced his translation, or later