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An Invisible Nature: The Origin of Thomas Hobbes’s Civil Laws

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The Invisible Origins of Legal Positivism

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library ((LAPS,volume 52))

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Abstract

Thomas Hobbes’ theory of law carries through the paradox of supporting binding civil laws which depend upon an invisible authorizing origin.

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Reference

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  21. Copleston, 109. Emphasis added.

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  43. I refer to the male gender because Hobbes intends that his claims only concern men. Hobbes continually describes the pyramidal organization of offices as “patriarchal.” So, even if women ever occupied an office, their role, which determines their decisions, would come from a patriarchal context.

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  78. Even Howard Warrender misses the point that the natural duties arise before the creatures in the natural condition begin to understand each other through shared conventions about marks and sounds. WarrenderPolitical Philosophy of Hobbes1–79. Warrender does claim that the citizen’s obligation to obey the state’s laws arises prior to and independent of the creation of the state. But Wartender, missing the importance granted to language as the distinguishing factor between the natural condition and civil society, and associates the natural condition with the first act of culture when creatures make covenants with each other. Wartender ignores Hobbes’ focus upon the inability of the creatures in the prior condition to speak or write through a language.

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  107. According to John Knox (c.1513–1572), if the sovereign itself were unjust, the citizenry had the right to depose the immoral sovereign. The citizen may interpret the civil laws in terms of `who is saved’ and ‘who is damned.’

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  113. Dialogue“Of Soveraign Power,” 61 (16). When James I had claimed in theProhibitions del Roythat he too was authorized to resolve disputes amongst the citizenry because “the law was founded upon reason, and that he and others had reason, as well as judges,” CokeCJreported his own reply to the King in these words, “¡­ true it was, that God had endowed his Majesty with excellent science, and great endowments of nature; but His Majesty was not learned in the laws of his realm of England, and causes which concern the life, or inheritance, or goods, or fortunes of his subjects, are not to be decided by natural reason but by the artificial reason and judgment of the law, which law is an actwhich requires long study and experiencebefore a man can attain to the cognizance of it¡­.” (1608), 12Co. Rep.63, 77 E.R.1342 (K.B.). Emphasis added. Coke’s theory of law is examined in William E. ConklinIn Defence of Fundamental Rights(Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijtoff & Noordhof, 1979), 13–53.

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  120. They were called such even in Hobbes’ day. For a discussion of their import today see William E. Conklin“Pickinand its Applicability to Canada”in University of Toronto Law Journal25 (1975): 193–214.

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  127. See Conklin, “The Origins of the Law of Sedition,” inCriminal Law Quarterly 15(1972–73): 277–300.

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  128. Leviathanchap. 30, 381. And again, “for they are bound, every man to every man, to Own, and be reputed Author of all, that he that already is their Soveraigne, shall do, and judge fit to be done: so that any one man dissenting, all the rest should break their Covenant made to that man, which is injustice.”Leviathanchap. 18, 229.

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  132. Drawing from a distinction of Roland Barthes, a myth is a second-level semiological system or metalanguage constructed from prior configurations of signs. Roland Barthes, “Myth Today,” inMythologies(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957), 109–59. Also see Barthes, “From Work to Text,” in Josue U. HarariText and Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 73–81; “Theory of the Text,” inUntying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Readered. Robert Young (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 31–47. This view of myth is modernist in that it fails to account for the presentative character of symbols and of rituals in the totemic culture of early Greece, as elaborated in chapters one and three above. This is also discussed in Conklin, “Hegel, the Author and Authority in Sophocles’Antigone ”in ed. Leslie G. RubinJustice vs. Law in Greek Political Thought(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 129–51.

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  136. I am drawing here from Jacques Lacan’s explanation of the language of the unconscious amongst the mad.

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  159. Interestingly, Warrender seems to suggest just such an intellectualization. See WarrenderPolitical Philosophy 250.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, Canada

    William E. Conklin (Visting Fellow)

  2. Clare Hall, Cambridge University, UK

    William E. Conklin (Visting Fellow)

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Conklin, W.E. (2001). An Invisible Nature: The Origin of Thomas Hobbes’s Civil Laws. In: The Invisible Origins of Legal Positivism. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 52. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0808-2_5

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