Obligation and Advantage in Hobbes' Leviathan

Abstract

In this essay, I examine two claims Hobbes makes about obligation in Leviathan: 1) that obligation and ‘prudence’ (or advantage) are conceptually separate; 2) that fulfilling one's obligations is to one's advantage. My thesis is that Hobbes seeks to reconcile these apparently conflicting claims by arguing that obligation and advantage are empirically identical. He does so, I hold (in contrast to many of his interpreters), without ‘reducing’ obligation to advantage. That is, he does not hold that people should only keep covenants if doing so is in their self-interest. In section I, I analyse the temporal structure of covenants and distinguish the decision to enter (or not to enter) a covenant from the decision to break or keep a covenant one has already entered. In section II, I examine Hobbes’ fool. Hobbes tries to refute the fool by putting him right about that which conduces to his ‘conservation, and contentment.’

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