Comments on Thomas Hobbes Book (1651) The Leviathan Part 2

By Razie Mah

Modernism belongs to the Age of Ideas. According to John Deely, two figures mark the turning point from the Latin Age to the Age of Ideas. They are Rene Descartes, pointing the way to the Age of Ideas, and John Poinsot, arriving at the triadic nature of the sign relation. The time is 1650 AD.
These comments examine a book published in 1651 AD, precisely at the turning identified by John Deely. In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes builds a model of the subject and the commonwealth based on natural civil laws.
Hobbes’ description of the subject and the commonwealth intimate the modern concepts of the citizen and the civil state. For that reason, he was called a monster. He is the prophet of the modern totalitarian state.
These comments differ from modernist commentaries, which try to identify where Hobbes went wrong, his system of thought, and so on. Instead, they show that Hobbes’ models of speech and power are relational structures. They are precisely the types of structures that John Poinsot elucidated in the waning days of the Latin Age. They are also the types of structures that Thomas Hobbes rejected in his human mechanical philosophy.
Part 1 is entitled, “On the Commonwealth”.
In my comments, I use the category-based nested form to show that the subject and commonwealth match the content and situation levels of the society tier. The society tier was introduced in the foundational work: How To Define the Word “Religion”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Nov 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781942824206

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments Thomas Hobbes’ book (1651) The Leviathan Part 2

Razie Mah

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Notes on Work

This 12,300 word commentary is a nested form re-articulation of Part 2 of Thomas Hobbes’, The Leviathan. Part 2 is on the commonwealth.

Written around the time of the Puritan Revolution in England and at the dawn of the post-religious western enlightenment, The Leviathan is one of many signposts marking (what John Deely calls) the end of the Latin Age and the beginning of the Age of Ideas.

My goal is not to analyze the text. My goal is to associate the text to ‘ways of thought that the Age of Ideas buried’. These ways of thought germinate in the postmodern Age of Semiotics.

In this endeavor, I further elaborate a model of society, originally presented in How To Define the Word Religion.

Single quotes and italics are used to group words together for easier reading.

Table of Contents

Chapter 17 on the causes, generation & definition of commonwealth 0207

Chapter 18 on the rights of the sovereign by institution 0216

Chapter 19 on different kinds of commonwealths 0227

Chapter 20 on paternal and despotic dominions 0229

Chapter 21 on liberty of subjects 0231

Chapter 22 on systems of the subject 0272

Chapter 23 on public ministries of sovereign power 0287

Chapter 24 on the nutrition and procreation of a commonwealth 0288

Chapter 25 on counsel 0291

Chapter 26 on civil law 0296

Chapter 27 on crimes, excuses and extenuations 0311

Chapter 28 on punishments and rewards 0315

Chapter 29 things that weaken the commonwealth 0328

Chapter 30 on the office of the sovereign representative 0341

Chapter 31 of the kingdom of God by nature 0368

Chapter 17 on the causes, generation & definition of commonwealth

0207 The second part of The Leviathan begins by summing up the first part.

In ‘the introduction of restraint’, each person mutually renounces ‘his rights to all’. Restraint goes with the second law of civil nature. Restraint aims to get people out of the miserable condition of war, where there is no visible power to keep them in awe and no fear of punishment for not keeping their covenants. This miserable condition is a consequence of the first civil natural law: self-preservation.

The second natural civil law foils the passions, particularities, prides and excesses of the first natural law. ‘Covenants without the sword’ are only words. Words cannot compel a person to fulfill his promises and contracts.

0208 So, what happens when men renounce their right to all in mutual renunciation?

The commonwealth comes into being. The aggregating multitude must have sufficient numbers. It must be large enough to deter an enemy. On top of that, the multitude must not fall into bickering and internal divisions. For these reasons, a civil government is needed.

0209 The only way to construct this power is through one man, or through an assembly of men, so that they may express one will. This one will should act in favor of common peace, safety and sound judgment.

This is more than consent or concord. It is a real unification of all (natural persons) men into one (representative or artificial) ‘man’. It is as if each man says, I authorize this artificial ‘man’ and all his actions. I give up my right of governing myself and give it to this artificial ‘man’. When this is done, the multitude unites into ‘one (artificial) person’. The unified multitude is called a commonwealth.

‘The commonwealth’ is a leviathan, a mortal god, under which we owe ‘our peace and defense to an immortal God’.

0210 The commonwealth is defined as one person, of whose acts a great multitude through mutual covenants with one another, have made themselves everyone the author, to