The Many Appetites of Thomas Hobbes

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The Many Appetites of Thomas Hobbes Author(s): Paul Hurley Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 391-407Published by: on behalf of University of Illinois Press North American Philosophical

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History of Philosophy Quarterly Volume 7, Number 4, October 1990

THE MANY APPETITES OF THOMAS HOBBES

Paul Hurley

?1.0?

THERE

has been widespread dissatisfaction with desire-based ac

counts1 of practical reason and morality since such positions received

their modern formulation in the writings of Hobbes and Hume. Yet the

strategy of critics of the desire-based theory has invariably been to allow that Hume and Hobbes have a coherent, basically accurate account of what

desires are, but to disagree with the claim that such desires are the only source of the motivating force of practical reason. To argue in this way, it

seems to me, is to grant precisely what should be called into question?the assumption that the desire-based theorist has a single, coherent account

of desire.

In what follows I will attempt to partially rectify this oversight through returning to the historical source of the desire-based account, the work of Thomas Hobbes2, and exploring the account of appetites which he employs, particularly in his discussion of self-preservation. It will become apparent that Hobbes appeals to not one, but several importantly distinct kinds of

appetites (Hobbes holds "appetite" and "desire" to be straightforwardly synonymous, e.g. Leviathan, p. 39), and that his recurrent arguments

regarding the importance of self-preservation depend for their apparent plausibility upon subtle equivocations among these various kinds of appe tites. The first step, then, is to provide an analysis of Hobbes' account of

appetites. This analysis will be modeled upon a prior analysis of his account of sensations, just as Hobbes models his account of appetites upon his own

prior account of sensations.

?2.0?

It has often been noted, although with little more than passing interest, that Hobbes puts forward several radically different characterizations of sensations which are apparently in considerable tension with each other.3

These characterizations do not occur at different chronological points in the development of Hobbes's thought, but are all incorporated within (or

391



392 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

at least implicit within) each of several individual presentations of Hobbes's

epistemological account. It will be useful to isolate the 3 different roles for sensations to which Hobbes appeals in his epistemological account.

Type 1 Sensations: Hobbes repeatedly claims that sensations are caus

ally determined physical motions which are common to beast and man, and

nothing but such motions. Such sensations, postulated in a scientific spirit, are, he asserts, "nothing really, but motion in some internal substance of

the head," [De Homine, p. 31] and again, "Neither in us.. .are they anything else, but diverse motions..." [Leviathan, p. 2] [see also Leviathan, p. 38].

The claim appears to be that "experience" can be reduced "to complex

varieties of externally stimulated motion."4 McNeilly notes that "in Levia

than, as elsewhere, Hobbes consistently describes perception, thought and

desire as physical motions. That is what they really are, in Hobbes view."5

Let us label these sensations which Hobbes characterizes as physiological motions, and in some sense nothing but physiological motions, type 1

sensations.

Type 2 Sensations: Hobbes also repeatedly characterizes sensations as

nothing but "apparitions," [De Homine, pp. 6 & 31] "images," [De Homine, pp. 2 & 6] "conceptions," [De Homine, p. 3], or "appearances" [De Corpore,

p. 389, Leviathan, p. 1]; mere "seemings" or "fancy" [Leviathan, p. 2]. Such

"images" not only can be, but are systematically deceptive:

whatsoever...qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there, but are seeming and apparitions only...[De Homine, p. 8]

At times, Hobbes readily concedes that his type 1 account of the source of these type 2 appearances is not much more than speculation [De Corpore, p. 388]. Let us label the sensations which Hobbes characterizes as in some sense nothing but [perhaps deceptive] seemings, phantasms, appearances,

or images, type 2 sensations.

Type 3 Sensations: Yet Hobbes also makes it clear that sensations are

the justificatory foundation of our edifice of knowledge, from which all else that we can know is compounded:

there be two kinds of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or

knowledge original [De Homine, p. 27, see also De Homine, p. 85, and Levia

than, pp. 17 & 52]

Knowledge here is being understood by Hobbes roughly along the lines of the standard formula?as justified true belief:

There are two things necessarily implied in the word Knowledge; the one is

truth, the other evidence [De Homine, p. 27]

Such sensations are justified true beliefs about material objects and their

properties from which all other knowledge is properly derived. Throughout his writings Hobbes continues to be a quintessential empiricist at least in this respect: he insists that all other knowledge is derived from and

compounded out of such sensory knowledge. I will label these sensations,



THE APPETITES OF THOMAS HOBBES 393

the ultimate intrinsically credible justificatory foundation of all that we

know, type 3 sensations.

It has been noted that certain of these roles exist in considerable tension with others. If sensations are mere (perhaps delusory) fancies or appear

ances, how can they be original knowledge from which all other knowledge springs? How, in short, can we possibly ever determine that such appear

ances correspond to reality if they are the only access we have to reality?6

Moreover, Hobbes manifests a tendency to slide back and forth between characterizations in unacceptable ways. For example, Hobbes finds himself

maintaining that animals as well as men can have sensations of all three

sorts, thus that animals can have knowledge. Yet he holds that knowledge is justified true belief, and cashes out both truth and evidence as necessar

ily requiring speech, of which animals are incapable [De Homine, p. 28 and

Leviathan, p. 23-24].

There are, then, many disturbing tensions among the roles which Hobbes calls upon sensations to play.7 But exploring the tensions among these roles

for sensations is not our task here. Rather, these three roles will be used,

much as Hobbes himself uses them in practice, to identify similar roles for

appetites. It is the corresponding tensions among the various accounts of

appetites which it will be our purpose to explore, in particular through an

analysis of his arguments regarding self-preservation.

?2.1?

Type 1 sensations find their ready practical correlates in type 1 appetites:

As, in sense, that which is really within us, is [as I have said before] onely motion, caused by the action of external objects...so, when the action of the same object is continued...to the Heart; the real effect there is nothing but

Motion, or Endeavour; which consisteth in Appetite, or Aversion, to, or from the object moving" [Leviathan, p. 42] [See also De Homine, 31, and de Corpore, p. 406]

Appetites, like sensations, are mere physical motions, common to beast

and man [Leviathan, p. 48], which are postulated in a scientific spirit to

explain the possibility of voluntary (as opposed to merely vital) motion.

Moreover, type 2 sensations find ready correlates in type 2 appetites. Man has faculties of two sorts, of body and of mind [De Homine, p. 2]. The

faculty of mind itself has two components, the one "cognitive/ the other "motive.** Type 2 sensations comprise the cognitive component; type 2

appetites the motive component. Our "affections,** Hobbes says, "such

things...as please or displease us," are "but conceptions.** [Leviathan, p. 28]

[See also De Homine, p. 32] Such type 2 appetites are appearances to the mind of particular states of affairs as states of affairs to which we are

attracted as pleasurable or from which we are repelled as painful. Each is:

a solicitation or provication either to draw near to the thing that pleaseth, or to retire from the thing that displeaseth, and this solicitation...is called

appetite,...pleasure, love, and appetite, which is also called desire, are divers




names for considerations of the same thing [De Homine, p. 31. See also

Leviathan, p. 42]

And again:

pleasure therefore, [or delight] is the apparence or sense of good...and conse

quently all appetite...is accompanied with some delight more or less [Levia than, p. 42] [See also De Corpore, p. 406]

Delight is a mere appearance, but "delight is appetite," [De Homine, p. 33] and this appetite is a "conception[s]," a mere appearance, which we have

"immediately by the sense" [De Homine, p. 32]. Appetites are characterized as mere physical motions (type 1 episodes), just as sensations are, but

appetites are also characterized as mere conceptions (type 2 episodes), just as sensations are.

?2.2?

Sensations are appearances of states of affairs as true, and the question is whether these states of affairs are in fact true. Appetites are appearances

of states of affairs as good, and the question would seem to be whether such

states of affairs are in fact good. However, here it may seem that a crucial

disanalogy between sensations and appetites develops, one which Hobbes is not only acutely aware of, but which he at times carefully exploits for his own purposes.

The disanalogy can be approached in the following way. Although Hobbes is more than willing to allow that we can have sensations which are not

true, at various points in his account he is insistent that whatever type 2

appetites the agent has, whatever appetites appear good to the agent, are

those which it is good for the agent to pursue, i.e. which the agent is

justified in pursuing. To be an object of a type 2 appetite?to appear pleasant to the agent?is to be an end which it is good for the agent to

pursue:

Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to

himself, good; and that evil which displeaseth him...Nor is there any such

thing as absolute goodness, considered without relation...[De Homine, p. 32] [See also Leviathan, p. 41]

It can seem, then, that type 3 appetites collapse into type 2 appetites, i.e. are really type ̂3 appetites, while type 3 and 2 sensations remain impor tantly distinct. Moreover it appears that this is precisely the point at which Hobbes appears at times to be intent upon engineering a parting of the

ways between his accounts of sensations and appetites. There can be no

more to being a type 3 appetite, a justified appetite, than being a type 2

appetite, whereas there is clearly a yawning gap between a type 2 sensation and a type 3 sensation?something appearing red and something in fact

being red, for instance. The "appearance" of goodness for every man is the

"reality" of goodness for that man, whereas the appearances of type 2

sensations may fail to correspond to reality. Type 2 appetites, on such a




reading, are type 2/3 appetites, and there is no third role which appetites are called upon to play which corresponds to that which type 3 sensations are called upon to play.

The result would seem to be a thoroughgoing relativism, and Hobbes is not only aware of this result, but repeatedly argues for it. This is precisely the disanalogy which empiricists have focused upon between sensations and appetites?that whereas sensations are unjustified if they fail to

correspond to the world, there is no correspondence with appetites, hence

there can be no failure. The result, then, is that whatever the agent has an appetite for, no matter what it is, is what the agent is justified in

pursuing. (Subject, let us assume, to maximizing constraints.)

?2.3?

Yet the strictly type 3 appetites which Hobbes tosses out the front door in his meta-ethics are smuggled back in as the foundations of his moral and political account. From the claim that whatever appears to each of us as pleasurable and desirable is good for that person, Hobbes moves to the claim that self-preservation is an end that we cannot but pursue, an end

that cannot but appear to us as good [De Corpore Politico, Ch. IY Sec. 14], and even one which we are irrational if we fail to pursue, since the Laws of Nature are dictates of reason, binding upon us all, the sole motive or end

of which is self-preservation [Leviathan, pp. 120 & 146-47]. Self-preserva tion, for Hobbes, is what we do want and what we ought, rationally, to

want, and other principles and ends are justified or unjustified insofar as

they further or impede self-preservation [Rudiments, p. 10]. (See Sees. 3 & 3.1 below for additional textual support for the type 3 status of the end of

self-preservation.)

This point cannot be overemphasized. From a relativist position upon which self-preservation would not be good and would not be rational to

pursue unless the individual happened to have an appetite for it, Hobbes

repeatedly moves to a position upon which self-preservation must be good

for each person, and upon which an individual is irrational if he fails to act so as to further the end of self-preservation. Within the framework of our

identification of type 1, 2 and 3 episodes, it becomes clear that self-preser vation is appealed to as an ultimate type 3 episode in light of which others are either justified or unjustified as means.

Here, then, is an appetite in light of which other appetites are properly deemed justified or unjustified, and in light of which other appetites can

be dismissed as for merely apparent goods. Here, in short, is a type 3

appetite. Appetites, then, are 1) mere physiological motions (type 1), 2) mere appearances of pleasure and pain, appetites and aversions with

respect to certain states of affairs (type 2), and, 3) in the case of self-pres ervation, an intrinsically credible, naturally desired end which serves as




the foundation for Hobbes's edifice of practical justification in light of which other apparent goods can be evaluated as means (type 3).

?3.0?

I have provided an analysis of Hobbes's account of appetites which demonstrates that there are no less than three radically distinct types of

appetites to which he appeals at various stages of his argument. It seems

plausible, moreover, that since Hobbes himself does not clearly or consis

tently distinguish these different sorts of appetites, his account, and per haps desire-based accounts generally, depend for their apparent plausibility upon illicit equivocations among these various types of appe tites. In what follows I will demonstrate that in fact precisely such equiv ocations are at work in one of the most important arguments in Hobbes's

account, the argument for the status of self-preservation as a final and

self-sufficient end.8

The argument9, of which I will discuss two variations, is one which seeks to demonstrate the natural necessity of self-preservation as an ultimate ("ulti

mate" is here being used to characterize an end which is final and self-suffi cient in the traditional, Aristotelian senses of these terms) end in terms of which the rationality of all other ends and principles is properly evaluated.10 Hobbes repeatedly claims that the necessity of man's desire for self-preserva

tion is a natural necessity. The many passages in the Rudiments in which he makes this claim are echoed in de Corpore Politico: "Preservation," he there

argues, is "the end that everyone by nature aimeth at," and everyone

"must...call it good, and the contrary evil" [De Corpore Politico, Ch. IY Sec.

14]. Both Gauthier and Warrender argue persuasively that throughout Hobbes's account he holds self-preservation to be "received from the uncon

trollable dictates of necessity" as an endll, that, as Hobbes himself argues, we pursue self-preservation "by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than

that whereby a stone moves downward" [Rudiments, p. 8].

?3.1?

Self-preservation is for Hobbes a naturally given, necessary end at the

foundation of practical justification, one which every human being cannot but have in virtue of his physiological make-up. But his account of man as a self-maintaining engine, of "our bodies as biologically programmed to increase vital motion,"12 [e.g. De Corpore, p. 407] appears aimed at account

ing not only for this necessary status of self-preservation, but for its status

as the ultimate, lexically prior end as well:

If we accept Hobbes's view that man is a self-maintaining engine, then.. .what ever can be shown to be a condition of human preservation, is thereby shown to be a means to man's end. From premises of the form "X is a necessary means to self-preservation", Hobbes can derive conclusions of the form "a man must do X to secure what he wants"13

Self-preservation is not merely a final end, but the final end in virtue of




which all other ends and courses of action, including the adoption of the Laws of Nature, are properly shown to be justified or unjustified, rational or irrational.14

To demonstrate how the type 3 end of self-preservation can readily be seen to be augmented in these respects by Hobbes, we must first look at the role which Hobbes calls upon Vital Motion to play in his account?as the type 1 correlate to type 3 self-preservation. Kavka and others have noted that Hobbes appears to believe at times that he has established the general doctrine of psychological egoism by giving an account of type 1 appetites and their role in deliberation.15 But we will see that far more central to Hobbes's account is his belief that he has established the ultimate end of

self-preservation through appeal to his account of type 1 vital motion.16

?3.2?

Hobbes understands all phenomena in terms of motion, living beings can be defined only in terms of a motion common to all.17

The characteristically living motion to which Gauthier alludes in the above

quote, a motion Hobbes labels "vital motion," is the motion of the blood etc. centered around the heart. This organ is not only the source of vital motion, but the point of origin of all voluntary action as well. Hobbes's account of the role of vital motion can be summarized as follows. External objects act

upon the organs of sense, setting up a pressure which moves inward. This

motion proceeds to the heart, the seat of vital motion. Coming into contact with vital motion, the motion of sense must either help or hinder it:

when it helpeth it is called Delight, contentment or pleasure, which is nothing but motion about the heart.. .when such motion weakeneth it or hinderith vital

motion, then it is called pain [De Homine, p. 31; see also Leviathan, p. 42, and De Corpore, p. 407]

If the motion helps vital motion, a type 1 appetite results which manifests itself as pleasure with respect to the object which gave rise to the motion

coupled with a type 2 appetite for that object [De Homine, p. 32]. If the motion hinders vital motion, a type 1 aversion results which manifests itself as pain with respect to the object which caused it and a corresponding type 2 aversion from that object. The type 1 appetites and aversions, themselves outwardly directed internal motions, cause us to have the type

2 appetites and aversions which motivate us to act the way we do.

The temptation is strong to conclude that to give such an account simply is to give an account of the natural necessity of the type 3 appetite for

self-preservation as the ultimate end which every agent has, the end in

terms of which all other ends are properly deemed justified or unjustified. It can seem to account for why, in Gauthier's words, "each man seeks, and

seeks only, to preserve and to strengthen himself. A concern for well-being is both the necessary and the sufficient ground of human action.*18

Vital motion, the motion the sole function of which is to preserve and




perpetuate the organism, is the "capo" of the type 1 episodes which deter mines what all of our type 1 appetites, hence our type 2 appetites, hence our voluntary motions, are to be. Thus we can desire and can act to bring

about all and only those ends which most effectively conduce to our

perpetuation as individual organisms.

Each individual can only seek his own type 3 self-preservation, since his

subsidiary desires and the principles for action which he adopts are one

and all determined by the type 1 vital motion the sole function of which is the perpetuation of the organism. It is not from the conceptual necessity of self-interest but from the natural necessity of vital motion that self-pres ervation is the ground of all that we do. The scientific styled account of

type 1 vital motion is, it can seem, the account of the natural "givenness"

of the ultimate type 3 end of self-preservation, the end which is thus sufficient justification for adopting the laws of nature as the most effective

means of attaining it [Leviathan, p. 146-47 and 120].

?3.3?

Despite the initial attractiveness of this strategy, it ultimately proves

inadequate for Hobbes's needs. Hobbes's task is to establish self-preserva

tion as the ultimate practical justifier, i.e. as the ultimate type 3 end.

Clearly an end of self-preservation can provide practical justification, but its status as the ultimate practical justifier is precisely the point at issue, i.e. is precisely what is in need of justification. Type 1 vital motion is clearly itself immune from demands for practical justification, since it is a mere

physical motion, and not one of the type 3 appetites for which such demands for practical justification are even appropriate. But neither can such a type

1 appetite, as a mere motion, provide the practical justification which a

type 3 end can. Specifically, it cannot provide justification for the appeal to a type 3 end of self-preservation. The type 3 end can justify, but is in

need of justification; the type 1 motion is not in need of practical justifica tion, but neither can it provide such justification. The argument strategy sketched above equivocates back and forth between the two, borrowing the

immunity from criticism from the first (trivial though it is) and the justi ficatory status of the second to create the illusion of a type 3 end which it is impossible to criticize, in the process running together the causal neces

sity of the hypothesized type 1 physical motion with the epistemic necessity which is claimed for the type 3 end. But if vital motion cannot justify self-preservation, what can it do? The answer would seem to be obvious: it

can explain why self-preservation is for each of us the ultimate end for

which criticism is fundamentally inappropriate. Yet clearly such an expla nation begs precisely the question at issue?whether self-preservation is

such an end.

This criticism does not demonstrate that self-preservation is not a final

end, or even the ultimate end. It merely demonstrates that the appeal to




type 1 vital motion cannot secure for the type 3 end this status. The

naturally given motion, vital motion, cannot justify; the type 3 end of

self-preservation can justify, but is not given as immune from rational

criticism, much less as an ultimate end lexically prior to all others. I have also not demonstrated that there is not a more subtle way for Hobbes to harness the appeal to vital motion in an attempt to justify pursuing self-preservation as ones sole ultimate end, a way which he may at times

have appealed to. It is to the consideration of just such a more sophisticated strategy that I will now turn.

?3.4?

There may well be a more subtle strategy to which Hobbes has recourse; a strategy through which he attempts to allow for the radical differences between type 1 vital motion and the type 3 justificatory end of self-preser vation, yet still attempts to ground type 3 self-preservation as the ultimate source of all practical justification through the appeal to type 1 vital

motion. Our analysis of the previous strategy (Which I will refer to in what follows as the "direct strategy. **) revealed that the appeal to type 1 vital

motion cannot directly establish the ultimacy of the type 3 appetite for

self-preservation. On the more sophisticated strategy it is conceded, at

least initially, that this type 1 self-preservation is not the great type 3

appetite dominating all other appetites, but rather at most the great physiological cause of our having the multifarious type 2 & 3 appetites which even the most superficial scrutiny or introspection reveals us to have

(even on Hobbes's own account [Leviathan, p. xi]). Vital motion is thus

compatible with our having a vast multitude of different type 2 & 3

appetites.

Yet Hobbes still requires self-preservation to be the sole ultimate type 3 end which we have, and must have, in order to anchor his ethical and

political arguments. The sophistication of the strategy for securing this status involves maintaining both type 1 vital motion and the type 3 end of

self-preservation as distinct, thereby avoiding a straightforward illicit

equivocation, and mediating the problematic gap between the two with

type 2 appetites. Such a strategy would utilize all three different kinds of

appetites, and would appeal to type 1 vital motion as grounding the move

from type 2 appetites to type 3 self-preservation.

There are two reasons for thinking that Hobbes may have toyed with such a strategy. The first is suggested by his repeated recourse to the

parallel between theoretical and practical reason. Recall that Hobbes

adopts the empiricist caveat?that sensations are the foundation of all

knowledge, where the latter is construed roughly as justified true belief. Yet for Hobbes sensations are type 2 episodes, mere images, which may or

may not correspond to reality. Hobbes, then, is confronted with Desc?rtese

problem, and precludes the appeal to God for a solution. How can he




overcome this difficulty? The most plausible interpretation of what Hobbes has in mind has him anticipating a Lockean causal theory of perception, upon which we know that the type 2 sensation corresponds to reality, i.e. is a type 3 sensation, because of our type 1 explanation. To wit, it is [very roughly] because the best explanation of why I have a circular sense-datum is because a circular object is impinging upon my sensory apparatus, that

I can conclude that there is a circular object out there.19

The appeal to type 1 sensations does not directly justify type 3 sensations, but it does indirectly play a crucial role in such a justification. Such an

interpretation would seem to make the best sense of the claim that sensa

tions are merely images, but also the foundation for all knowledge. We have

already shown how Hobbes models his account of appetites upon his account of sensations, and that he appeals to 3 types of appetites. It is

plausible to explore the possibility that he attempts to reconcile the 3 roles for appetites roughly upon the model of the causal theory.

The second reason is explicit evidence from the text. Hobbes repeatedly suggests that although we do desire self-preservation by nature, it is a

separate question whether we are aware of this fact.20 In many of these

cases, the suggestion is clearly that although our type 3 end is self-preser vation as determined by type 1 vital motion, we may not be able to see this forest through the trees of our type 2 appetites. One passage in which this

suggestion is made, and the sophisticated account is strongly suggested,

appears in Hobbes's early work, De Corpore Politico:

Every man by natural passion, calleth that good that pleaseth him for the

present, or so far forth as he can forsee; and in like manner, that which

displeaseth him, evil. And therefore he that forseeth the whole way to his

preservation, which is the end that everyone by nature aimeth at, must call it good, and the contrary evil [De Corpore Politico, Ch. IV, Sec. 14]

Here Hobbes strongly suggests:

1) that by nature every man aims at self-preservation,

2) that it is a multitude of concrete type 2 appetites/pleasures which every man has initially,

3) that through experience and reasoning a man can come to see "the whole

way" to type 3 self-preservation as his sole ultimate end.

The self-preservation which we "must call...good" (isolated in (3) above) is

clearly type 3 self-preservation. The appetites which we have for those

things which "pleaseth" us initially are clearly type 2 appetites?appear ances of certain objects as good. The reference to the end which we

naturally aim at would seem most plausibly to be understood as a reference

to Hobbes's physiological account involving type 1 vital motion. Just as an inference to best explanation of type 2 sensations in terms of type 1 sensations allows us to establish the type 3 status of sensations, so too an

inference to best explanation of our type 2 appetites in terms of type 1 vital motion allows us to infer to the type 3 appetite of self-preservation as our




ultimate end. This account demonstrates how all three types of appetites may be called into play by Hobbes in an ingenious attempt to establish the ultimate end of self-preservation. Such an account would make sense of

the appeal to three roles of appetites, and would explain why pursuing self-preservation as an end is in one sense physiologically determined while in another an achievement borne of experience and careful reasoning.

?3.5?

The viability of a causal theory in epistemology is an issue of considerable

dispute; however, there would also appear to be a glaring disanalogy between the epistemological and the practical accounts which invalidates the latter regardless of the success or failure of the former. The disanalogy is that whereas the causal theory of perception presupposes a set of type

2 sensations about which there is consensus, the causal theory of appetites can presuppose no such consensus of type 2 appetites. Indeed, it is precisely

the lack of such a consensus which Hobbes is striving to circumvent. An inference to best explanation argument must presuppose the phenomena in need of explanation, yet the practical argument must bear the unbear

able burden of establishing the consensus it is meant to explain. Specific ally, the theoretical argument contends that the best explanation of why we all see round objects in standard conditions is that round objects are

causing these perceptions. Yet the practical argument cannot contend that the best explanation of why we all pursue self-preservation as an ultimate

end is in terms of vital motion, because it is precisely the contention that we all pursue self-preservation as an ultimate end that is in dispute, and

precisely the variety [granted ex hypothesi] of type 2 appetites, the lack of

consensus, which is so daunting.

Is there any way for Hobbes to circumvent this apparent disanalogy? This account grants, ex hypothesi, that we have a multitude of type Sy3 appetites, hence that if we have an appetite for self-preservation, it is, at least initially, merely one among many other appetites. Couple this as

sumption with Hobbes's desire-based account of practical reasoning, and

it becomes apparent that on this reading, if self-preservation is to be the ultimate type 3 end in any sense, it will only be as an "organizing principle" adopted as a means to the satisfaction of the multifarious type ̂3 appetites which every individual has, appetites for ends in terms of which all other ends must be justified as means. Such type ̂ 3 appetites, however, are relative to the agent on Hobbes's account, and no non-question-begging

grounds have been provided for concluding that the adoption of self-pres ervation as an organizing principle will provide the most effective means

of satisfying any agent's appetites, much less every agent's appetites.

?3.6?

Perhaps more can be said on Hobbes's behalf, however. Ex hypothesi, on




this reading, vital motion is not itself a type 2, and a fortiori not a type 2/3 appetite, but perhaps the belief that a vital motion account is true can

provide grounds for adopting the end of self-preservation in roughly the same way that the belief that there is food at the grocery store can provide grounds for adopting the end of going there. But the belief that there is food at the grocery store only leads to the adoption of the end of going there if the agent has a desire to eat, and the belief that a vital motion account is true will only lead to the adoption of type 3 self-preservation if the agent has type 2/3 appetites all directed towards self-preservation. This would

appear to beg the question again.

Yet perhaps the assumption is that once an agent realizes that vital motion determines her type 2/3 appetites, a careful examination of these

type 2/3 appetites will show them all in fact more or less directed toward

self-preservation in a way which was not apparent before. The adoption of

self-preservation as an organizing principle would thus merely be making

her (already present) implicit pursuit of self-preservation (which her be liefs concerning vital motion have allowed her to recognize for what it is) explicit. The problem with such an account of the role of vital motion in the justification of an ultimate end of self-preservation, as noted by Gregory Kavka in a related discussion, is that the argument is extremely "vulner able to refutation by counterexample."21

If an individual's examination of her appetites does not reveal that they are in fact directed towards self-preservation, then Hobbes has not pro

vided an argument that she ought to adopt the organizing principle of type 3 self-preservation, but instead grounds for rejecting his account of the role of type 1 vital motion. Keeping in mind the distinction between vacuous self-interest and highly determinate self-preservation, it does not seem

difficult to produce a vast array of such counterexamples.

Perhaps such vulnerability to counterexample can be avoided if it is

granted that the account of vital motion can be true, i.e. that the agent's type 2/3 appetites are determined to accord with self-preservation by vital

motion, but it is stipulated in addition that they may well be determined in a way which is not apparent to the agent through reflection upon her concrete type 2/3 appetites. Yet, the reasoning may be, if the agent wants to satisfy her type 2/3 appetites, and believes that they are determined by type 1 vital motion,, then she should adopt type 3 self-preservation as the

means for satisfying her type 2/3 appetites even if she cannot see how it functions as a means.

Such a proposal puts tremendous weight upon what Hobbes himself

readily admits is highly speculative science [De Corpore, p. 388]. But it is not even clear what it would mean to grant the premises of such an

argument, nor whether the conclusion would follow if the premises were

granted. Sidgwick argues forcefully that if an agent's type 2/3 appetites accord with a certain end by causal necessity, and the agent cannot but act




in accordance with these appetites, then he cannot not pursue the end in

question, and admonishments to conform his actions to it are unmeaning22.

The claim is that if the account of vital motion is correct, it is ridiculous to counsel the adoption of self-preservation as an organizing principle, since

all of the agent's ends already accord with self-preservation. Kavka gener

alizes Sidgwick's claim as the point that "if we were fully Z by nature, there would be no need to encourage being Z.*23 Thus to grant the premises is to

grant that we already pursue self-preservation, and that whether or not

we choose to adopt it as an organizing principle, hence to adopt the laws

of nature as means of realizing this principle, we are choosing in accordance

with self-preservation.

But what does it mean to grant the premise that our ends are determined

by vital motion to accord with the end of self-preservation? On this reading, the Hobbist has already granted that we do not pursue the type 3 end of

self-preservation by nature, and that it is at most one among a multitude

of type 3/3 appetites; moreover, that it is an end which the agent cannot even discern herself as implicitly pursuing. It would seem that there is

nothing left for "pursuing the end of self-preservation" to be.

?3.7?

The direct strategy, we have seen, attempts to ground self-preservation

as the ultimate type 3 end of every agent through an illicit equivocation between the type 1 appetite of vital motion and the type 3 appetite of

self-preservation. The sophisticated strategy commits Hobbes to the posi tion that our ends depend entirely upon what appears [type 2] good to each

of us, and forces the abandonment of all grounds for thinking either that

type 3 self-preservation will appear as an ultimate good, or that self-pres

ervation will be the organizing principle which provides the most effective means to satisfying the various ends which appear to any agent as good.

Either Hobbes falls prey to an illicit equivocation, or he finds himself enmeshed in the practical equivalent of a thoroughgoing solipsism?the position that what is good for an agent is whatever appears to that agent as good. In either case he fails to establish self-preservation as the ultimate

type 3 end which both leads to conflict in the state of nature and warrants

the adoption of the laws of nature as a means of resolving this conflict.

?4.0?

I suggested at the outset of this essay that both advocates and opponents of the desire-based theory of reason and moral judgment typically grant as

the basis of their dispute that Hume and Hobbes have bequeathed to us a

coherent and basically accurate account of desires. I have demonstrated,

however, that Hobbes misleadingly refers to at least three different sorts




of episodes as appetites, and equivocates among them in articulating a

central feature of his particular version of the desire-based theory.

The parallel recognition that "sensation," "sense datum," etc. have his

torically been j anus-faced terms which have obscured a slide back and forth

among radically different sorts of episodes has led to profound changes in

epistemology24. Those of us working in the practical domain must confront the fact that we have been bequeathed a tradition in which "appetite" and "desire" are also j anus-faced terms, ranging over no less than three distinct

kinds of episodes. And perhaps, as has been the case in epistemology, there will be profound changes in store for contemporary ethics at such time as

the insidious influence of the many appetites of Thomas Hobbes is traced

through to the present day.25

Pomona College

Received September 5, 1989

NOTES

1. The label "desire-based theories" is borrowed from Stephen Darwall (Impartial Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)). Such theories have also been

characterized in the literature as "instrumentalist" or simply "Humean" theories

of practical reason and moral judgment. The common feature of all of the accounts

singled out by these labels is the view that practical reason is merely an instrument

for determining effective means for the satisfaction of antecedently given desires or preferences. Practical reason can thus be no more than a slave of the passions

(Hume), a scout of the appetites (Hobbes), or a calculating device for maximizing

preference satisfaction (e.g., Gauthier). 2. All subsequent citations of Hobbes's works will be included in the body of the

text, and will be taken from The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Sir Thomas

Molesworth, ed., 9 vols. (London, 1839). 3. F. S. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968),

pp. lOlff.

4. J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1965), p. 46.

5. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan, op. cit., p. 102.

6. Ibid, p. 31.

7. It may be that these three different types of sensations can best be understood as three "aspects" of one and the same type of sensation?a distinction which will

not affect the substantive claims that I make in the discussion that follows. This

said, I will, in the interest of clarity of presentation, continue with the "three types" idiom.

8. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments serves as a useful reminder of the crucial

and pervasive role which he calls upon the end of self-preservation to play. Although many of the same nagging inconsistencies and unclarities surface in the Rudiments as are apparent later in Leviathan, one cornerstone of his argument is clearly the

appeal to self-preservation as a final and self-sufficient end. Hobbes argues in the

Rudiments as elsewhere that fear of death is the chiefest of fears, and by implica tion that the appetite for life is the chiefest of appetites (Rudiments, 17). But




Hobbes's claim on behalf of self-preservation is much stronger and more specific than this:

.. .whatsoever a man would, it therefore seems good to him because he wills it, and either it really doth, or at least seems to him to contribute towards his

preservation [Rudiments, 10]

The claim here is clearly that all of the objects of man's appetites are pursued

by him, whether rightly or wrongly, as means to the end of self-preservation.

Self-preservation is not merely the chiefest among equals, but the ultimate end

towards which all other subsidiary ends are directed. Not surprisingly, Hobbes

proceeds to identify the first foundation of natural right as being "that every man

as much as in him lies endeavour to protect his life and members," and "to use all

the means, and do all the actions, without which he cannot preserve himself

[Rudiments, 9]. He then argues that not only is the complete prioritization of the

end of self-preservation not unreasonable, it is dictated by reason (as embodied in

the Laws of Nature) for every man. He further cites the necessary drive for

self-preservation as the primary source of conflict in the state of nature [Rudiments,

p. 17]. These citations from the Rudiments forcefully demonstrate the pivotal role

which the appeal to self-preservation as the ultimate, lexically prior end plays at

almost every stage in Hobbes's ethical and political philosophy, a role it continues

to play throughout his corpus.

9. To many it seems the most obvious feature of Hobbes account that it hinges upon establishing self-preservation as an ultimate end. Does he not, after all,

explicitly appeal to self-preservation as the sole but sufficient motive or end

underlying both the right and laws of nature (Leviathan, 120, 146-47)? Yet there

has been a wealth of Hobbes scholarship, much of it quite recent, arguing against

interpreting the arguments of at least the later Hobbes as at all egoistic, and by

implication arguing against reading Hobbes as holding the more specific doctrine

that we each act only to secure our own self-preservation. (See Bernard Gert's

introduction to Man and Citizen, Bernard Gert, ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1972), and F. S. McNeilly's The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press,

1968), esp. Ch. 5.) These accounts typically point out that many of Hobbes's claims

about Glory, Commodious Living, etc. are difficult to reconcile with self-preserva tion as an ultimate end. There is considerable merit to such accounts, for there are

clearly strains of argument in Hobbes, most notable when he is operating within

his introspective method, in which far less emphasis is placed upon the appeal to

self-preservation than is elsewhere the case. These difficulties of reconciliation,

however, do not warrant the conclusion that an ultimate end of self-preservation ceases to play a dominant role in Hobbes's account. Even at the points of his

greatest reliance upon the evidence of introspection, Hobbes continues to call upon

self-preservation at crucial junctures as an ultimate end. What is needed is not

another attempt to explain away obvious inconsistencies, but an explanation of

why Hobbes was led to such inconsistencies. It is precisely such an explanation which the account presented here seeks to supply.

10. It often seems that Hobbes is appealing not to the natural necessity of the

end of self-preservation, but to what could be characterized as the conceptual

necessity of that end. This latter sort of appeal can be understood as roughly

analogous to that of an epistemologist arguing that a claim is analytic, just as the

former can be understood as analogous to the epistemologist's appeal to a given foundation. If we view the end of self-preservation within the context of Hobbes's

psychological egoism, and view Hobbes's psychological egoism as the position that

all human desires are self-interested desires (Merely one of the many versions of

psychological egoism attributable to Hobbes [Bernard Gert, introduction to Man

and Citizen (New York: Doubleday, 1972), pp. 5ff; Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral




and Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 1986) Sec. 2-2]), then the possi

bility emerges of reinterpreting Hobbes in such a way that an end somewhere in

the same ballpark as self-preservation?self-interest?might very well have a claim

to conceptual necessity. Given a suitably broad reading of desire, it certainly seems

irrefutable that "man always acts in order to satisfy his desires" [Gert, Man and

Citizen, p. 6; Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, p. 35]. Furthermore, there is no doubt that Hobbes endorses such claims. His account of deliberation, of

actions as following always and only from the agent's strongest appetite/desires,

directly entails just such a view [Leviathan, Ch. 6]. Yet both Gert and Kavka have persuasively demonstrated that such an account

of self-interest and psychological egoism does not "impose any limits on the desires

of men or on what they consider to be good." The egoism advocated is merely a

"tautological egoism" upon which the end of self-interest which emerges is one

"which has no empirical consequences" [Gert, Man and Citizen, p. 7] [See also

Kavka, Hobbesian..., p. 35]. The thrust behind this criticism is that such an end

of self-interest is as vacuous as it is self-evident. It is an end which we have no

matter what ends we have, hence an end incapable of determining other ends or

courses of action. Though such a view is sometimes suggested by Hobbes, it is

clearly inadequate to his purposes, and it is not surprising that, as Kavka has ably

demonstrated, he was shrewd enough not to rely upon it as a focal point of his

argument. 11. Howard Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obli

gation (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 214. See also David Gauthier, The

Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 23.

12. Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cam

bridge University Press, 1986), p. 18 [See also Hampton's discussion of causal

egoism, p. 23, for a related discussion].

13. David Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969),

p. 21.

14. See footnote 8 for additional evidence from the Rudiments that Hobbes is

arguing for self-preservation as both a final and a self-sufficient end. Note also that

even many of those who refuse to take this argument from ultimate natural

necessity seriously acknowledge nonetheless that it is there to be found in Hobbes,

e.g. Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1952), pp. 8ff.

15. Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 48-49.

16. It has been argued that although Hobbes does appeal to self-preservation as

an ultimate end grounded in vital motion in the early works, he jettisons this

appeal in Leviathan in favor of one in which "no hypothesis about the nature of the

objectives of desires?neither an egoistic nor any other kind of hypothesis?is

incorporated in, presupposed or implied by the account" [F. S. McNeilly, The

Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968), p. 117]. McNeilly

points to Hobbes's account of passions such as pity, arguing that Hobbes no longer

attempts to reconcile these passions to an ultimate end of self-preservation in

Leviathan as he did in the earlier Elements. Yet others have pointed out that

Hobbes makes more of an effort to reconcile his accounts of glory and suicide to an

ultimate end of self-preservation in Leviathan than he did in earlier works [e.g., Jean Hampton's discussion of glory in her Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), esp. Chs. 2 & 3]. More central to McNeilly's argument is his contention that vital motion plays a

diminished role in Leviathan. The evidence is two-fold: 1) that vital motion is

presented more cautiously in Leviathan than in earlier works, and 2) that whereas




Hobbes continues to claim that pleasures are a help to vital motion in Leviathan, he no longer maintains that we must recognize it as such a help. Yet there are

serious problems with each of these claims. Although in his defense of 1 McNeilly quotes the sentence in which vital motion receives its somewhat cautious initial

presentation, he does not give suitable emphasis to the sentence which follows, in which vital motion is wielded as an established explanatory fact. His claim in 2?that the purpose of vital motion may be circumscribed in Leviathan as compared to the earlier works?is based on even more puzzling evidence. Hobbes does allow in Leviathan that we may not recognize our actions as all determined to accord

with self-preservation, but Hobbes allows this in early works as well [De Corpore Politico, Ch. TV, Sec. 14]. The purported evidence of discontinuity between Levia than and the early works is instead a testament to the continuity of Hobbes's

argument from the earlier to the later works.

Most troubling of all about this interpretation of the Hobbesian corpus is that it

leaves those who follow McNeilly on the abandonment of the primacy of self-pres ervation unable to offer a satisfactory account of the right and laws of nature.

Kavka, for example, is led to argue in his seminal work that the former is simply an unargued postulate put forth by Hobbes [Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 315].

17. Gauthier, op. cit., The Logic of Leviathan, p. 5.

18. Ibid., p. 7.

19. For more on the causal theory and its shortcomings, see Anthony Quinton, "The Problem of Perception," from G. J. Warnock, ed., The Philosophy of Perception (Oxford University Press, 1967).

20. A point made by McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan, p. 116. For an example of such a claim, see De Corpore Politico, Ch. IV, Sec. 14.

21. Kavka, op. cit., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, p. 35.

22. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 40ff.

23. Kavka, op. cit., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, p. 32.

24. See, for example, Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," from Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), and

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton Univer

sity Press, 1979), esp. Ch. IV

25. I attempt to trace aspects of this influence in my "Where the Traditional Accounts of Practical Reason Go Wrong," Logos, vol. 10 (1989).



The Many Appetites of Thomas Hobbes

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