Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Joseph Butler (1692-1752) hold contrasting views on how to build a human society. For Hobbes the most important issue is to achieve and maintain peace, and points out, that men ought to give up their natural rights and transfer them to a sovereign.
For Butler the best way is to follow the rules of God which are already inside of every man’s soul.The two both start with an account of human nature: Hobbes notes that it is lead by appetites and aversions and results in selfish individuals; Butler argues that man is born to virtue, so that every human being is naturally benevolent and has an inborn motivation to love and help others. In the pages that follow I shall refer to different arguments by Hobbes and Butler to understand each other’s conceptions on human society.Hobbes’s conception of the will The will is a very problematic term in Hobbes’s moral philosophy. Round 1640 it was the subject of fierce debates with the Bishop of Derry, John Bramhall, and eighty years later received harsh criticism from Joseph Butler.
Hobbes’s main idea is that there is no such thing as ‘free will,’ regarded by Bramhall as the faculty of the rational soul to act or not, depend on moral considerations (Bramhall, vol. 4, p. 290, Russell, p. 5).
What we call the will, insists Hobbes, is merely the last appetite or aversion that moves us to act: “In deliberation, the last appetite, or aversion, immediately adhering to the action, or to the omission thereof, is that we call the WILL, the act (not the faculty) of willing. And beasts that have deliberation must necessarily also have will. ” (Leviathan, p. 33). This phrase of Hobbes can be seen as a summary of all his views on man as a moral agent in building a peaceful society.In his definition of ‘deliberation’ as ‘the whole sum of desires, aversions, hopes and fears’, we can find two important features: (1) deliberation and reason are not equivalent, and (2) deliberation is not an exclusive faculty of human beings.
Regarding the first feature, Hobbes says that reason arises from true definitions and what distinguish men from other animals, consist entirely in the ability to use speech. Since deliberation for common people is a matter of passions it is far from any deductive reasoning from definitions, and thus it does not consist of a set of rational choices (Leviathan, pp. 21-23).The second feature takes us to the region of liberty and animal deliberation.
Human beings (especially in the state of nature without government and civil laws) have the liberty to deliberate between various competing desires and aversions and then delineate a course of action. The wining desire (which is the will) that concludes in an action represents this liberty of man but also is the meeting point between human and animal nature. Since human deliberation and the will are desires and aversions and since animals also have desires and aversions, it means that animals also deliberate and indeed have will (Leviathan, pp. 1-23, The Elements of Law, pp. 47-49). Butler’s human nature There are two distinctions with regard to human nature that are essential to Butler’s conception: (1) between a system and its several parts, and (2) between higher and lower faculties.
To explain the first distinction, Butler equates human nature with a watch. To form an exact idea of a watch, he argues, it is not enough to have the notion of the several pieces and how to unit them, it is also important to recognize the respects and relations which they have to each other, as well as the purpose of the whole system which in this case is to measure time.In the same way, continues Butler, our inward nature cannot be grasped as a whole by attending to its several parts, namely, appetites, pas¬sions, affections, and the principle of reflection; it is necessary to consider the relationship between every of them, and also to learn that the purpose of human nature is the good by following the rules of God. The second distinction is concerned with the hierarchy between human nature as a system and its several parts, and also the hierarchy occupied by each of those parts.Nature as a system and the conscience (the principle of reflection) are the higher faculties, and appetites, pas¬sions, and other affections are the lower faculties (Five Sermons, pp.
8-9). When Butler says that “Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate, his real proper nature” (Five Sermons, p. 38), is pointing out that man has the strongest inclination to act in the sense of the higher faculties (Nature and conscience), but since appetites and pas¬sions are part of his inward ature, sometimes he can be lead by these lower faculties. Let’s see the phrase in detail.
First, Butler considers that the ‘real proper nature’ of man is just this higher faculty of nature regarding as a system and whose purpose is the good, i. e. , benevolence and love of our neighbor. Second, all those principles and motivations that lead us to make the good have been put inside of the man’s heart by God (Five Sermons, p. 37).Third, virtue consists in following nature which is the same as follows the way designed by God.
Four, as part of his nature man shares with animals various instincts and principles of action, namely, appetites, aversions, passions and affections; these instincts, depending upon the constitu¬tion of the body and the external circumstances which it is in, lead man to violate the path of virtue and hence act contrary to his proper nature (Five Sermons, pp. 10, 38).Five, unlike beasts, man has a superior principle of reflection named conscience which exercises authority over all those instincts and passions, allowing or forbidding their gratification; in other words, this faculty tends to restrain men from doing mischief to each other, and directs and redirects man to his proper nature (Five Sermons, p. 26). Hobbes and Butler: different motivation systems and reasons for action Hobbes and Butler both developed motivation systems that are different in some respects.For Hobbes, according his view on human nature, presided by passions, there is a sole source of motivation, namely, the endevors which are tiny motions within the body that can develop into desires or aversions.
For Butler, on the contrary, there are two sources of motivation: (1) desires and emotions which represent the lower faculties of human nature, and (2) beliefs which represent what we know it is good or bad. For Hobbes the motivation system is self-interest, i. e. all human beings are pursuing their own desires, and even what they judge as good or bad it is because fulfills or not those desires (Leviathan, p.
28). Apart from self-interest, or self-love, Butler notes that there are another three kinds of motivation: (1) benevolence which is an inborn motivation to love and help others, (2) a miscellaneous motivations that are not versions of sel-love and benevolence, and (3) conscience which is the principle of reflection that govern over the passions, and leds man to follow his proper nature.Taking the view of Hobbes that all motivation system is self-interested, and that there is no such thing as the will, we can argue that for him the only reason for action that men have are their desires and aversions. For instance when a man in the state of war is afraid of dying at the hands of his enemies, a good reason for action is to follow his desire of preserve his life and thus try to prevent the issue by killing his enemies.
For Butler, on the contrary, conscience is the great source of reason for action because is the chief authority over all those instincts and passions, and by allowing or forbidding them gives us reason to act. As an example for this, Butler says that the affection of love that a parent has to his children, with the intervention of conscience, can become a much more settled prin¬ciple and carries him on through more labor and difficulties for the sake of his children (Five Sermons, p. 26).Final wordsAlthough Hobbes and Butler have different views on the human nature both intent to make moral agents. Hobbes by employing the same kind of liberty that man shares with animals, namely the desires and passions, to perform a distinct kind of act by signing a covenant and giving up those liberties and rights and transfer them to a sovereign. Butler by stating nature as the main source of all moral so, to build a moral society man only needs to follow his own nature.
For Hobbes there is no moral agent before the existence of a peaceful society, for Butler the moral agent already exists and his mission is to build the moral society.
