The Monster for Modernity

The Monster for Modernity

Kyle Cregge

Citation Format: MLA

5 December 2013 Cregge 1 HE495 Captain MacLean

“You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these...

these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.” - The Joker, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight

Look upon it. Its fearsome teeth are bared, lining the massive mouth. Its skin taut; scales

line its back and blunt any arrow and iron, sword or javelin, club or lance. Its chest is hard as

rock, and its undersides are jagged and barbed. The inferno that streams from its nostrils can

burn all in its path. This creature is not a dragon of legend. Nor is it Charybdis of Greek myth,

though it does stir up the sea and leave a wake behind itself. This is Leviathan; the monster God

describes to Job in the Hebrew Bible1. This beast is not equaled nor has it any fear. Thomas

Hobbes adopted this horror as both the title of his book, Leviathan, as well as the representative

force of the monarch. The sovereign’s power was massive like Leviathan’s, leaving only God

himself capable of defeating either of them.

Terror lies at the heart of Hobbes’ work, and it is easy to understand why. He wrote

Leviathan from 1647-1650, and it was certainly a tumultuous time for monarchists like Hobbes

(Hobbes liv). During this time, Oliver Cromwell would strike down rebellions in Ireland, and

push back Royalist groups in Scotland and Wales (Hobbes liv). In 1649, King Charles I would be

executed; all of which Hobbes would watch in Paris as he tutored the son and then next in line

for the throne, Charles II (Hobbes liv). To appreciate Leviathan is also to appreciate the times in

which Hobbes lived. If there are two foremost philosophical aims for the writing of the book

then, they are this: to examine and give Hobbes’ thoughts on the subject of nature, and to

reestablish the rational idea of the state under the rule of a sovereign. Hobbes’ introduction

begins with his definition: “Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the word) is by

1 Descriptions of Leviathan taken from Job 41, New International Version


the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial

animal” (Hobbes 7). “For seeing life,” in Hobbes’ mind, “is but a motion of limbs” (Hobbes 7),

he radically refuses the classical ideas on how a soul might move a body (Hobbes 477). In

opening with this explanation of nature, Hobbes continues to give his thoughts on the essence of

life. However he is also recreating the philosophical arguments for the state that have been

thrown asunder by the English Civil War. Hobbes wrote a dedicatory letter to Mr. Francis

Godolphin, the brother of a Royalist killed in 1643 who left two hundred pounds to Hobbes in

his will. In the letter, Hobbes speaks of “the endeavor to advance the civil power” and that his

possibly uncommon uses of Holy Scripture would create “outworks of the enemy, from whence

they impugn the civil power” (Hobbes 3). Clearly Hobbes wants to put forward the argument for

why the civil power, or Leviathan, should serve a more important role in the state, which he will

continue to build upon over the course of the work. Yet where did this beast come from, and

what havoc will the demon wreak when Leviathan is set off of its chain?

This paper will not address the mayhem of modernity’s monster chronologically. Instead

it will thematically turn between three authors, Plato, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, over five

examinations of their arguments. These inquiries into human nature, justice, fortune and

progress, and finally religion lead to the eventual conclusion of Leviathan’s domination. The

paper will first trace the classical roots of Hobbes’ arguments about equality, the state of nature,

and social contracts, as illustrated in the character Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic. The

Thrasymachan view of justice explains what Hobbes uses as his founding narrative, the state of

nature, but does not provide the philosophical necessity for the sovereign. In looking to the past,

there is a shift in discourse about the goal of the political realm that is first altered by

Machiavelli. That modern turn proposes that fortune is something that guides life beyond the


divine will, which allows for Hobbes to define his idea of progress. While Plato or Machiavelli

do not expressly address progress as a goal of the state, they both agree that religious narratives

provide the most effective way to institute the justice and order in a state. Hobbes consequently

adopts religious narratives in order to secure this new idea of progress. In using religious

narratives, Hobbes reaches the terrifying conclusion that Leviathan will take over the position of

the classical God, who will provide for the safety and growth of society, but also determine what

is good and right for his people.

I.

Hobbes’ recreates the founding narrative of government with the concept of the state of

nature. He begins building the idea around the initial statement that all men are equal (Hobbes

82). The supposition is not inherently logical as his statement differentiates that men are equal

physically and mentally, stating: “the weakest have strength enough to kill the strongest, either

by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himself”

(Hobbes 82). This is the first evidence that Hobbes weaves a new founding narrative of the state.

What Hobbes describes as the inherent equality of man in their physical nature, is not that we are

physically alike. Some humans are stronger than others, as some are weaker. What Hobbes

describes however is humanity’s equality of mortality and our fear of violent death, and therefore

while he states this as evidence of our equality and moves on, it also serves to foreshadow his

views about the innate evil of mankind. For if he had a positive view of the soul, he could just as

easily have described physical strength as the ability of man to defend, rather than kill each other

in confederacies or secret machination.


Secondarily, Hobbes explains the mental capability of people with the statement that, “I

find yet a greater equality amongst men, than that of strength” (Hobbes 82). How people could

be more equal than equal itself is the sort of logical inconsistency Orwell would take up in

Animal Farm, but Hobbes continues to illustrate his position while foreshadowing as well. He

summarizes that given enough time, all men are capable of learning, but adds specifically, “That

which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom,

which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the vulgar; that is, than all men

but themselves, and a few others, whom by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they

approve” (Hobbes 82). Vain men all think they are smarter than each other and believe in

themselves; foretelling again the inner egotism of the human soul. Hobbes concludes that

because men accept their share of intelligence, they are thus equal in that sense (Hobbes 82). He

continues in this progression of definitions to explain that because man is equal, we equally hope

and thus desire the same things, but because all things cannot be equally possessed, man quarrels

(Hobbes 83). Hobbes makes the clear point that “we find three principal causes of quarrel. First,

competition; secondly, diffidence, thirdly, glory” (Hobbes 83). This is a logically consistent

proposition, but Hobbes lays the new foundation of the state in one sentence: “Hereby it is

manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they

are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man”

(Hobbes 84). Men must be in awe of a central force or implicitly there is no reason to stop them

from quarrelling with each other. The ramifications of this statement are massive and represent

the first step of justifying the unleashing of Leviathan upon the people.

Hobbes clearly implies that man is not nor does he strive to be good. As a result, this state

of nature is so bad that “In such condition, there is no place for industry… and consequently no


culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities… no commodious building; no

instruments of moving… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no

letters; no society” (Hobbes 84). This primitive society before the state is chaos, and Hobbes

describes the life of man in this state as being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes

84). It is so injurious to people that Leviathan could be justified. However, Hobbes takes care to

explain what he admits might be considered a minority opinion: “It may seem strange to some

man, that has not well weighed these things; that nature should thus dissociate, and render men

apt to invade, and destroy one another” (Hobbes 84). His commentary on the unpopular opinion

is simply the recognition that men arm themselves on journeys, lock their doors when they sleep,

or lock up their property (Hobbes 84). It is a logical point to make, but not original. While the

realization of the inherent evil in man may seem a modern opinion, Thomas Hobbes actually

adopted the philosophical position of Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic.

The Republic opens with Socrates recounting a conversation. The dialogue came as a

result of the encounter of a group of men after a religious festival in the port of Athens (Republic

327A-328A). Characters like Glaucon, Adeimantus, Niceratus, Polemarchus, and Cephalus all

talk with Socrates and eventually come to the discussion on the nature of justice. Some of the

men start to provide their own definitions on what is just (Republic 328C-335E). Butting in to

the conversation, Plato introduces Thrasymachus as a brash and arrogant man in need of

recognition (Republic 336B-C). The spirited Sophist insults Socrates and wants to get paid for

his own answer on the nature of justice, and when he finally proposes it, he states it thusly:

“‘then listen,’ he said. ‘I assert that what’s just is nothing other than what’s advantageous to the

stronger” (Republic 338B). Thrasymachus continues that laws are set by the people who rule and

only in that way that is advantageous to them (Republic 339A). The one virtue in the realism of


Thrasymachus is the recognition of power, as he says of the rulers creating regulations that

support their rule, “And this surely prevails in strength, so the conclusion, for someone who

reasons correctly, is that the same thing is just everywhere, what’s advantageous to the stronger”

(Republic 339A). However, over the course of the dialectic, he gets argued into submission by

Socrates, to the point that he blushes out of embarrassment and departs from the other

interlocutors (Republic 350A). Yet it is at the beginning of Book Two that Glaucon takes up the

argument again, because he “wouldn’t stand for Thrasymachus’ giving up” (Republic 357A). In

Glaucon’s explanation of the argument, he lays out the foundational ideas of social contracts and

the state of nature that Hobbes would later use:

People claim that doing injustice is by its nature good and suffering injustice bad,

but that suffering injustice crosses over farther into bad than doing injustice does

into good, so that when people both do injustice and suffer it from each other and

get a taste of both, it seems profitable to the ones who don’t have the power to

avoid the latter and choose the former to make a contract with each other neither

to do injustice nor suffer it. (Republic 358E-359A)

The “people” of Glaucon’s illustration are those that are in the minority of classical and

later Christian philosophy. As opposed to Thrasymachus, figures like Socrates and St. Augustine

purported that there was a Good to strive for in all of man’s interactions. In the Republic,

Socrates describes the Good through metaphors like the divided line, the sun, and the cave

(Republic 508B-520A). Augustine viewed the Good as an expression of God, as he says when

speaking of the human soul that is directed towards God, “It is by this capacity the soul drinks in

wisdom, and becomes endowed with those virtues by which, in prudence, fortitude, temperance,

and righteousness, it makes war upon error and the other inborn vices, and conquers them by


fixing its desires upon no other object than the supreme and unchangeable Good” (Augustine and

Schaff 502-503).

One of the larger philosophical shifts to modernity came in the ability to speak the

Thrasymachan position openly as Machiavelli did. In his seminal work The Prince, Machiavelli

speaks of the two modes of combat, laws and force; yet since the former is not often as

successful as the latter, “it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the

man” (Prince 69). The scheming Italian references in an even greater way to the Thrasymachan

position alluding, “This role [of the beast and the man] was taught covertly to princes by ancient

writers,” and “if all men were good, this teaching [of using law and force] would not be good;

but because they are wicked and do not observe faith with you, you also do not have to observe it

with them” (Prince 69).

In the case of Hobbes, he is not using the Thrasymachan teaching to advise princes as

Machiavelli did, but to use it as the basis of the argument for recreating the state. For while

Hobbes does write with the expectation of Charles II and other princes reading Leviathan, the

book also serves to address the people of Cromwell’s short lived commonwealth. On May 19 th,

1649, England was declared a “Commonwealth and free state,” and Hobbes concludes Leviathan

with the statement of his intentions that:

And thus I have brought to an end my Discourse of Civil and Ecclesiastical

Government, occasioned by the disorders of the present time, without partiality,

without application, and without other design than to set before men’s eyes the

mutual relation between protection and obedience; of which the natural condition

of human nature, and the laws divine, (both natural and positive) require an

inviolable observation. (Hobbes 475)


Hobbes is clearly referring to all people in the British Isles, even if they all might not read

it. Going back into the classical period, when Glaucon speaks of suffering injustice as crossing

over more into bad than doing injustice is good, he speaks of the state of nature in a proto-

Hobbesian manner. While Hobbes focuses his energy on man’s reaction to the hypothetical

nonexistence of the government, Glaucon speaks of justice in its purest form, absent of the

deontological ethics that a government provides. In the same way, though eighteen hundred

years apart, Hobbes and Thrasymachus (through Glaucon also) came to the same position: that

man will seek to do evil to each other given the opportunity. Glaucon even adds to the narrative

of the inherent evil of man when he brings up the story of the Ring of Gyges. It was a ring that

would allow the wearer to become invisible, thus incapable of being caught. He proposes it as a

test to show how men would act if the consequences of injustice were removed. Glaucon clearly

states that people will quarrel over what they want in much the same way Hobbes spoke of:

“Then [if the ring was used] we could catch the just person in the act of going the same route as

the unjust one because of greed for more, which is what every nature, by its nature, seeks as

good, though it’s forcibly pulled aside by law to respect for equality” (Republic 359C). Not only

does Glaucon at this time in the Republic see men as equals as Hobbes does, but he also sees

man’s soul in the same way. For that is the nature of man, making seemingly just decisions on

the utilitarian reasoning that everyone agreeing to not do evil is better for the whole than

everyone doing evil. Moreover, this dramatically reduces goodness as something that exists

beyond the bounds of human interaction to something that is decided based on the whims of

human collaboration. The connection of the social contract concept between both works is

unmistakable however.


Like the Thrasymachan position, Hobbes radically reduces justice to the keeping of

contracts as created by society. Hobbes’ negation of the classical interpretation of justice comes

as a clarification of laws in the state of nature: “To this war of every man against every man, this

also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and

injustice have there no place” (Hobbes 85). In the state of nature that Hobbes creates, men are

nothing but beasts in an endless competition for survival. Indeed, he says as much, declaring,

“there be no property, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s,

that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it” (Hobbes 85). When Hobbes reinstitutes the

concept of justice, it comes listed under “Of Other Laws of Nature,” no longer the central focus

of man’s endeavors or its abiding principle. He defines justice thusly: “But when a covenant is

made, then to break it is unjust: and the definition of injustice, is no other than the not

performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust, is just” (Hobbes 95). For Hobbes,

justice itself lacks a definition, and is only recognized in the renunciation of its opposite like

Thrasymachus before him.

Additionally, the Sachs translation of the Republic specifically uses the word contract to

describe the agreement between those men that would choose to not suffer injustice from each

other. Before Leviathan is even introduced to the pre-societal men in the Hobbesian and

Thrasymachan founding narratives, people will seek to create pacts with each other not to hurt

their ability to produce the industry, culture, etc., that Hobbes speaks of not existing in the

chaotic state of nature. This social contract is different than the contract that is often thought of

with governments and the governed. Glaucon does describe the contract between ruler and

subject when he asserts, “[The pre-societal people] begin to set up laws and agreements among

themselves and to name what’s commanded by the law both lawful and just… What’s just, being


at a mean between [justice and injustice], is something to be content with not as something good,

but as something honored out of weakness at doing injustice” (Republic 359A-B). Both Glaucon

and Hobbes use a narrative to lay the foundations of justice and government, regardless of its

factual reality. Glaucon merely adopts the Ring of Gyges as a story then expands it to a

hypothetical test with two rings of invisibility for the just and the unjust man. Hobbes as well

says that the state of nature is almost a hypothetical test as well: “It may peradventure be

thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of war as [the state of nature]; and I believe it

was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now”

(Hobbes 85). Hobbes lists the wilderness in America and nations during civil war as something

that would come close to the state of nature as a result of there being no civil government to

enforce order.

Yet how can Hobbes use the state of nature as a founding narrative to establish social

contract theory when in the next paragraph he explicitly declares, “…there had never been any

time, wherein particular men were in a condition of war against another;” (Hobbes 85)? Hobbes’

declaration that the state of nature is merely a philosophical first position reveals that it need not

have truly existed, but he must use that founding narrative in order to justify the unleashing of

the sovereign with the power of Leviathan. Leviathan the monster strikes terror into the hearts of

men; Leviathan the state is meant to do the same. With a singular power capable of forcing

submission and supervising all his subjects, then he can wrestle humanity from the war of all

against all and achieve peace. Peace, after all, is the principle aim of man in the Hobbesian pre-

society, as he concludes “The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such

things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them”

(Hobbes 86). In that last paragraph Hobbes alludes to the modern shift in his philosophical


argument. Not only is the state founded on a Thrasymachan view of human nature, but it has a

secondary goal that is not present in the classical idea of government: progress.

II.

Can man improve his condition on Earth? The post-Machiavellian answer is yes; but for

Thrasymachus, the answer is ambiguous at best. The private condition of a man could potentially

be improved by injustice, so long as there were no consequences, as the Ring of Gyges would

allow (Republic 360C-D). However that is merely a hypothetical question about the nature of

justice. If modern political philosophers would have men look at the world realistically and

without fear, than they must also recognize that most actions have consequences, especially for

the broad swath of society. Additionally, when Socrates hypothetically presents the most unjust

ruler, the tyrant, Socrates makes clear how unhappy the tyrant truly is. The tyrant is able to

pursue all of his desires (Republic 571D-573D), but he is also the most unhappy and lamentable

figure in the entire city (578A-B). Given the ability to acquire all of a man’s wishes, Socrates

explains that the Thrasymachan ideal leads to despair. Truly the tyrant views justice as

Thrasymachus did because he is not weak; he is in fact strong enough to not need the social

contract between men.

In the Hobbesian state, while the sovereign will at first secure the peace, he secures the

peace so that the safeguards and agreements laid out in the commonwealth allow for prosperity.

Indeed it is inherent in the term for Hobbes’ state; it is not the polis nor a republic or principality.

It is a commonwealth, so that wealth, and consequently prosperity of all kinds, may be found for

all men in common. Hobbes also details the idea of progress and prosperity of the eventual goal

of the state in his chapter “Of the Difference of Manners”. He states explicitly on this topic that


he his breaking into a new political era, asserting, “For there is no such finis ultimus, (utmost

aim,) nor summum bonum, (greatest good,) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral

philosophers” (Hobbes 65). These are the very same moral philosophers that were focused on

the Good through its undefined form or through God.

Clearly Hobbes is in many ways thinking differently about the future of the state as much

as its creation from the void. Nor does Hobbes mince words when expressing what the progress

in fact is: “Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining

of the former, being still but the way to the latter” (Hobbes 65-66). Felicity, or happiness, is not

only the progress of the self, but it is implicitly the progress of the state. This is because that in

the way Hobbes spoke of the state of nature, men could only call theirs that which they could

keep by force. It is the force of Leviathan that can reverse nature and allow for contracts to be

kept in trust. With the trust that contracts can be upheld by the central governing force, then the

industry of the citizenry can flourish without the fear of suffering injustice. Hobbes elucidates

the yearning desire for industry in man, commenting, “And therefore the voluntary actions, and

inclinations of all men, tend, not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented

life” (Hobbes 66). Man does not wish to meet his needs at the current time, but also continue to

do all that he can to secure them in the future, which require the progress that the safeguards of

the state allow. As Hobbes does believe in the inherent malevolent nature of humanity, he would

of course see even outside the state of nature that mankind has a “perpetual and restless desire of

power after power,” (Hobbes 66).

However it is the role of the sovereign to bring peace to the commonwealth but also to

pursue the growth to secure future well-being, even at the expense of other nations: “And from

hence it is, that kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring of it at home


by laws, or abroad by wars: and when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire; in some of

fame from new conquest; in others, of ease and sensual pleasure…” (Hobbes 66). Not only does

the above quote hint at the realist position in foreign policy, but it also serves in a greater way to

establish the larger social contract, not between equal men to not suffer each other’s injustices,

but for the ruled to subject themselves to the ruler. He confirms as much in the next paragraph,

saying, “Desire of ease, and sensual delight, disposeth men to obey a common power: because by

such desires, a man doth abandon his own industry, and labour” (Hobbes 66). With Leviathan

protecting the subjects, they neither have to worry nor work for their own protection. Given this

older concept of the social contract spoken of above in classical terms, how is the idea of

progress formed in other modern political works?

Machiavelli laid the groundwork for political progress in his work The Prince. He and

Hobbes certainly differ in many ways, including their overall response to politics. Hobbes’

overall answer to the state of nature is to bring it forth for all to see and thusly respond to it with

the force of the sovereign, whereas Machiavelli would seek only to reveal the truth of the

Thrasymachan tradition to the rulers so that they may succeed in power, as he so plainly lays out

in the middle of The Prince, “For a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards

must come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary to a prince, if he

wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able to not be good, and to use this and not use it

according to necessity” (Prince 61). So while both have divergent first goals of government,

their secondary is the same. Where Hobbes uses the word progress, Machiavelli uses the word

fortune, though they are inherently related to each other. “Fortune,” Machiavelli says, “is a

woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to bear her and strike her down. And

one sees that she lets herself be won more by the impetuous than by those who proceed coldly”


(Prince 101). While he uses a metaphor rather than Hobbes’ direct explanation, the prince and

the sovereign would find much agreement in how to secure man’s desires, or take fortune to bed.

The prince must beat down fortune through war abroad, or hold her down with laws instituted

within the state, much as the sovereign would for Hobbes. Inherently in both though there is the

idea that the status of life can be improved and secured for the future given the work and effort

that the prince or the sovereign can produce. However without Machiavelli creating a

philosophical foundation for a view of the world that is not totally guided by divine intervention,

as fortune proposes, then Hobbes could never suggest that progress could be the state’s

secondary aim.

Hobbes also agreed with Machiavelli that an amorphous idea of goodness was a

necessary part of the development of society toward success. Machiavelli provides this

consideration, “On this [the mastering of fortune] also depends the variability of the good: for if

one governs himself with caution and patience, and the times and affairs turn in such a way that

his government is good, he comes out happy; but if the times and affairs change, he is ruined

because he does not change his mode of proceeding” (Prince 100). Not only is this a cynical

conception of goodness as something that vacillates with the time, but it is also an indictment of

the citizens or subjects of the state. Implicitly in Machiavelli’s statement he contends that they

too at least outwardly lack the sort of classical virtue or goodness to differentiate between a state

progressing, consequently helping those subjects, and a state that is being run immorally

regardless of military, monetary, or any other form of state progress.

Hobbes approves of this vacillation of goodness as well, for when he speaks of the

sovereign’s legislative power, it is irreproachable, stating, “To the care of the sovereign,

belongeth the making of good laws. But what is a good law? By a good law, I mean not a just


law: for no law can be unjust. The law is made by the sovereign power, and all that is done by

such power is warranted…” (Hobbes 230). For Hobbes it is not the sovereign’s singular desire

that should be considered in law-making, for if he wishes to achieve the power to rule all the

people, “for the good of the sovereign and people, cannot be separated” (Hobbes 230). If there is

some semblance of a redeeming quality in this modern opinion of progress of the state it is that

subjects and citizens must be considered at least as judges of the meritocratic nature of the

sovereign’s or the prince’s actions. If the king rules well, the people will support him, but if not,

allegiance will dissipate. While tyranny can still exist in this form, it would allow for the creation

of a better tyranny than pure subjugation of the general will. Yet while classical and modern

political philosophers disagree on whether progress is or should be the eventual goal of the state,

both agree that the most effective narrative to use in the mollification of the masses is not the

fulfillment of sensual desires or winning of financial security, but the adoption of religious

belief.

III.

Plato, Machiavelli, and Hobbes all see at the very least the utility and efficacy of faith in

the preservation of the state, even if they do not appreciate its veracity. Plato’s Republic is a

dialogue that spends nine books focused on the reasoned argument about what justice is in both

the man and the city. As it is stated above, in the discourse Socrates responds to the

Thrasymachan view of justice, but the continued discussion between the interlocutors continues

up into Book Ten with the reasoning on the immortality of the soul (Republic 608C-614A).

However while Plato used the character Socrates up until that point to operate with logical

argument rather than revelation, there is a shift in the discussion itself. Speaking of the gifts of

the just life, Socrates says, “Well, these are nothing in multitude or magnitude compared to those


that are in store for each sort of person after death. It would be right to hear them, so that in the

hearing each of them may be paid in full the debt he’s owed by the argument” (Republic 614A-

B). No longer is justice for its own sake the focus of persuasion. It is this focus on the results of

actions that Thrasymachus proposed at the beginning of the dialogue, but with an extended,

albeit uncertain timeline. If in fact the actions of people are judged and thusly rewarded or

punished depending on this conclusion, then in a way Socrates and Thrasymachus can reach an

agreement. For justice is the best goal for human life, as Socrates proposes over the course of the

dialogue, yet it is the best option only as a result of the conclusion like that of the first social

contract. If men do agree to not do ill to each other because it is less injurious to the whole to act

that way, then is not the just life (if one believes the Myth of Er) a reasoned reaction that it is

more injurious to do evil to men in life knowing that the unjust man will be punished tenfold in

the afterlife?

The Myth of Er specifically contributes to the Platonic opinion that religious belief is the

most compelling narrative to continue the state and discourage chaos amongst the majority. It

strengthens this point in its uniqueness to the rest of the dialogue. Though it is more than the

revelatory rather than reasonable tone that Socrates takes; it is the contradiction of myth usage in

the first place. Plato’s writing in the Republic is in a large part the denunciation of poetry,

nonetheless this seemingly hypocritical use of myth later was not lost on the careful reader, as

Sir Philip Sidney wrote in his “The Defense of Poetry” in 1579, pointing out, “And truly even

Plato whosoever well considereth, shall find that in the body of his work though the inside and

strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most of poetry” (Sidney). The

Myth of Er, unlike the Ring of Gyges story, is used not to teach, but to inform. It is the story of

the man Er who dies in battle and sees the passage of the soul through the afterlife, from judging


of just or unjust, the tenfold reaping of reward or punishment, and then the cycle to return back

to new lives for those souls and how they chose (Republic 614B-621B). When the story

concludes and Er’s soul returns to his body, Socrates concludes with a closing statement that

shows the myth’s informative nature and institutional religious intent:

And so, Glaucon, the tale [of Er] was saved and didn’t die; it could save us too, if

we’re persuaded by it, and we’ll get past the river Lethe in good shape without a

stain on our soul. If we’re persuaded by me and believe the soul is immortal and

able to keep itself intact in the face of every evil, and every good as well, we’ll

always keep to the higher road and pursue justice with good sense in every way,

so that we might be friends to ourselves and to the gods… …Both here and in the

thousand-year journey we’ve been going through, we will do well. (Republic

621C-D).

Plato closes the Republic using the Myth of Er and the evangelizing Socrates to show that

above all other arguments for justice and the organization of a city, the argument for religious

belief regardless of its validity will always be the most practical for the continued peace and

prosperity of the state. The political philosophers that follow Plato concur with this as well,

including Machiavelli.

While the embodiments of the classical and modern perspectives disagreed on the

foundations of justice and consequently the state, Machiavelli did agree with the classical

perspective on the utility of faith. In the more well-known Prince, his comments are short but

valuable. He says of ‘Ecclesiastical Principalities’ that, “they are sustained by orders that have

grown old with religion, which have been so powerful and of such a kind that they keep their


princes in the state however they proceed and live.” Adding also, “…only these principalities are

secure and happy” (Prince 45). As previously discussed the modern goals of the state are to

provide for the security and happiness of the people; if an ecclesiastical principality is the only

one that is always so, than clearly the best way to deliver security and happiness is through the

institution of ecclesiastical faith and virtue. In his less popular work, Discourses on Livy,

Machiavelli reveals his agreement with the benefits of belief for the running of the state.

He recounts the story of Numa Pompilius, successor to Romulus in Rome, speaking

directly, “[Pompilius] turned to religion as a thing altogether necessary if he wished to maintain a

civilization.” Machiavelli continues to show his indifference for the veracity of the religion but

compliments its effectiveness plainly, “Whoever considers well the Roman histories sees how

much religions served to command armies, to animate the plebs, to keep men good, to bring

shame to the wicked” (Discourses 34-35). When it comes to the practical administration of the

state, those are the things a leader must be able to do and Machiavelli remains in agreement with

the classical political philosophers. Indeed he again restates that religion will help accomplish the

two principle goals of the state, “For [the introduction of religion] caused good orders; good

orders make good fortune; and from good fortune arose the happy successes of enterprises”

(Discourses 34-35). If there is to be some holy virtue dragged from the pits of Thrasymachan

realism, it is that Machiavelli values the life of a prophet over a prince. Uttering the maxim in the

concluding paragraph on Roman religion, he decides, “Thus it is the safety of a republic or

kingdom to have not one prince who governs prudently while he lives, but one individual who

orders it so that it is maintained when he dies” (Discourses 36). While the individual ordering the

state is not necessarily a prophet, that religious leader is clearly more valuable to the health of the

state than one prince along the way. For as progressive or successful a prince is, once he dies, the


allegiance dissipates. It must be rekindled under a new political leader who is not always inclined

to the best care of the people or his principality. The prophet or the institutor of religious faith

can create the immutable structure for virtue and belief that will last long after that person dies.

Among the longest lasting and temporally powerful religious organizations in the world

is the Catholic Church and it is to that same church that Machiavelli moves his discussion of

religion as he traces the history of Italy. The shift from the religion of “the Gentiles” to

Christianity posed a political issue for those at the time; Machiavelli, again revealing his

indifference to whether any one faith is true but recognizing its value to society, dictates, “Thus,

princes of a republic or of a kingdom should maintain the foundations of the religion they hold,

and if this is done, it will be an easy thing for them to maintain their republic religious and, in

consequence, good and united” (Discourses 37). He also believes that if the Christian states,

presumably of Italy, had been religiously “ordered by its giver, the Christian states and republics

would be more united, much happier than they are” (Discourses 37). Yet the states and republics

were fractious and incapable of coming together otherwise until the much later unification of

Italy.

Machiavelli obviously agrees that religious belief is the most effective structure and

narrative to keep a state good and happy, but that it can be just as effective at tearing it asunder.

From this conclusion stems Machiavelli’s two major criticisms about the Catholic Church’s

influence in Italy: wickedness and divisiveness. Once again these are not philosophical debates

about transubstantiation, indulgences, or the veneration of Mary; Machiavelli’s pragmatism is

substituted for his piety. With wickedness in the Vatican, so followed wickedness in Italy, as

Machiavelli describes, “Because of the wicked examples of that court, this province has lost all

devotion and all religion – which brings with it infinite inconveniences and infinite disorders; for


as where there is religion one presupposes every good, so where it is missing one presupposes

the contrary” (Discourses 37). While the religious belief that is instituted should create a

standard for some good in people, if the current religious leaders do not observe the

commandments, then the general citizenry is under no presumption of following the laws

themselves. The second criticism of the Church is again regarding the success or failing of the

institution; not theologically motivated. Machiavelli arrives at the conclusion that:

For although [the Church] has inhabited and held temporal power [in Italy], it has

not been so powerful nor of such virtue as to be able to seize the tyranny of Italy

and make itself prince of it. On the other hand, it has not been so weak that is has

been unable to call in a power to defend it against one that had become too

powerful in Italy, for fear of losing dominion over its temporal things.

(Discourses 38`).

In a way Machiavelli is more disappointed that the Church’s inability to either conquer

all of Italy or be vanquished entirely leaves the region in a state of flux as foreign nations can

attempt invasions yet no one principality can rise to defeat them. As for the Church’s own

theological existence, Machiavelli is indifferent. On the contrary, Hobbes tweaks the role of

religious faith as a result of his shift in focus from Machiavelli. As it has been previously said,

Machiavelli’s revelation of political realism is meant for the princes while Hobbes intends for all

subjects to understand the necessity of Leviathan. So while Machiavelli’s use of religious faith

could nearly be seen in the Marxist description of the “opiate of the masses,” Hobbes’ criticism

rests with religion’s utility to stem man’s natural fear of death, but also in the creation of a body

capable of wrestling with Leviathan.


IV.

In the same way that Hobbes begins with the simplest definitions of equality and the state

of nature in order to shape the rest of his argument, he uses the structure to define religion in

Chapter Twelve of Leviathan. It is no wonder Hobbes faced claims of atheism (Martinich 35) as

he opened his discussion on belief with the statement that, “Seeing there are no signs, nor fruit of

religion, but in man only; there is no cause to doubt, but that the seed of religion, is also only in

man” (Hobbes 71). Even though there are no signs, man looks for answers and reasons to actions

and when the question of causes goes unanswered it presents a problem to the human mind. For

Hobbes, it is two primal fears that lead to the creation of religious belief: ignorance of causes and

ignorance of the future, specifically death. He explains this at length, admitting plainly, “So that

man, which looks too far before him, in the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long,

gnawed on by fear of death, poverty, or other calamity… this perpetual fear, always

accompanying mankind in the ignorance of causes, as it were in the dark, must needs have for

object something” (Hobbes 72). The object of that wonder and its accompanying fear becomes

the creation of gods. Hobbes takes great care in his writing to differentiate himself from the

nonbelievers of the day and merely condemn the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods as

stemming from fear rather than reason, clarifying:

In which sense perhaps it was, that some of the old poets said, that the gods were

at first created by human fear: which spoken of the gods, (that is to say, of the

many gods of the Gentiles) is very true. But the acknowledging of one God,

eternal, infinite, and omnipotent, may more easily be derived… ….than from the

fear of what was to befall [men] in time to come. (Hobbes 72)


Hobbes’ dabbling in comparative religion is ignorant to the point of intentionally dishonest

writing; in that, his criticism against the religion of the Gentiles is not applied when addressing

the tenets of Christianity. Yet before ridiculing Greek and Roman religion, he defines the four

natural seeds of religion and states explicitly religious use as a narrative for the preservation of

the state. The four seeds of religion are “the opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes,

devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics,” and they are not

unreasonable propositions. Yet Hobbes, in his self-imposed blindness, declares the difference

between two culture’s uses for faith:

One sort have been they, that have nourished, and ordered [religions], according

to their own invention. The other have done it, by God’s commandment, and

direction: but both sorts have done it, with a purpose to make those men that

relied on them, the more apt to obedience, laws, peace, charity, and civil society.

So that religion of the former sort, is a part of human politics; and teacheth part of

the duty which earthly kings require of their subjects. And the religion of the

latter sort is divine politics; and containeth precepts to those that have yielded

themselves subjects in the kingdom of God. (Hobbes 74-75)

What a heresy it would be, to speak publicly of the Christian faith as an invention of men

intent to make their societies more obedient. However, he clearly sees it as a relevant criticism of

the Gentiles. One is left to assume that if Hobbes’ reasoning that shows Roman religion to be a

cultural invention were to also show Christianity to be a western cultural invention, then that

would lead the reader not only to atheism but the conclusion that the religion of Europe is the

modern cultural invention of men intent upon society’s obedience.


Hobbes criticizes and declares the Roman religion illogical for many reasons, and while

some lack a parallel in the Christian faith or are illogical themselves, the sum of Hobbes’

argument and additional comments reveal his true opinion. He first takes to implicitly calling the

polytheism of the Gentiles illogical because everything was a god or “possessed by some spirit

or another” (Hobbes 75). Yet why is polytheism in and of itself fundamentally less logical than a

trinity that somehow becomes a monotheistic interpretation that sees the one God in Hobbes’

own words as, “eternal, infinite, and omnipotent” (Hobbes 72)? It is not any more illogical by

the belief itself; just as Hobbes goes on to critique the Gentiles’ “oblations, prayers, [and]

thanks,” their gods’ pictorial and sculptural representations, and the giving up of land that would

house their representations. The land was separated from other activities and used for only that

purpose as well (Hobbes 76). However, it must be asked again, how are these practices different

than the prayers and thanks that filled Christian churches of Hobbes’ day, or the iconography,

painting, and sculptures of Christ, or any other Christian representations? Or what of the land left

securely to the divine; is this any different than the teaching of the church that Jesus went in to

the temple courts and upon seeing the marketers, drove them out (Matthew 21:12-13)? No, these

are the same sorts of teachings and practices that Hobbes condemns of the Gentiles but leaves

unaddressed for Christianity.

There are three final similarities in religious structure that Hobbes turns a blind eye to in

favor of the Christian faith. These three are: divine involvement and propagation, prophecy, and

revelation. He criticizes the Greek and Roman pantheon for “mixing with one another… but also

by mixing with men and women, to beget mongrel gods, and but inmates of heaven as Bacchus,

Hercules, and others” (Hobbes 76). By such a definition, Jesus of Nazareth is an inmate of

heaven as well; for while many Christians at the time would contend that Jesus was both, fully


God and fully man, rather than a demi-then-full god like Hercules, the conception of Christ was

at its simplest, the mixing of a god in spirit with a woman. Secondly, Hobbes describes the

“prognostics of time to come,” or prophets, as “naturally, but conjectures upon experience of

time past,” (Hobbes 76). Why are Elijah’s, or any of the Old Testament’s prophecies not merely

conjectures of time past as well? Hobbes remains quiet. Finally however, revelation remains

Hobbes’ most absurd logical blunder, or to the careful reader, his strongest admission of the

utility of religion. Hobbes states of the creation of Islam, “Mahomet, to set up his new religion,

pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove” (Hobbes 78). Yet

Hobbes does not say how he knows the incorrectness of Mohammed and the correctness of

Christianity when he says a mere two paragraphs later, “But where God himself, by supernatural

revelation, planted religion; there he also made to himself a peculiar kingdom and gave laws, not

only of behaviour towards himself; but also towards one another; and thereby in the kingdom of

God, the policy, and laws civil, are a part of religion” (Hobbes 78). How does God plant all of

this? Through the same sort of divine revelation that Mohammed “pretended to have,” the

prophets of Christianity received God’s word. This is all to say nothing of the truth or untruth of

the Christian faith itself, but the evidence is obvious; Hobbes’ criticism of Greek and Roman

religion is also the implicit criticism of the Christians of his time. This leads to the conclusion

that it is Hobbes’ true but unspoken opinion that the religion of Europe is the modern cultural

invention of men intent upon society’s obedience.

V.

If this is indeed Hobbes’ conclusion of the state of religion, than the implications cut deep

to the classical philosophies of the Good and of God. In the reestablishment of the modern state

Hobbes tears down the Good and redeems the blushing and dismissed Thrasymachus of the


Republic. To Hobbes, justice is in fact that which is advantageous to the stronger while the

greatest good and final goal of the state ought to be progress. However most important in

Hobbes’ political philosophy is the use of the religious narrative, as he spends the second half of

Leviathan writing about the institution of a Christian Commonwealth. Yet if there is no

established Good nor eternal God, as Hobbes subversively criticized in “Of Religion,” what does

it mean when Hobbes says of the divine kingdom, “God is king of all the earth by his power; but

of his chosen people he is king by covenant” (Hobbes 79). It means that Thrasymachus is not

merely redeemed, but venerated. Leviathan, the sovereign, the man to rule all, through all his

power has subsumed the position of divinity while his power allows the deicide of classical

Goodness. Yet if Leviathan cannot be God of the whole world, then he is king of his chosen

people by covenant, by the social contact that Thrasymachus first proposes and Hobbes later

adopts. As men give up their will to serve God and may not call Him unjust, so too Hobbes gives

this right to the sovereign via his subject, “Because the major part hath by consenting voices

declared a sovereign; he that dissented must now consent with the rest; that is, be contented to

avow all the actions he shall do, or else justly be destroyed by the rest” (Hobbes 117). And just

as it was God who determined what was good for life and will protect His people in His domain,

it is now Leviathan who assumes “The Office of the Sovereign Representative” for which:

…He was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety

of the people; to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an

account thereof to God, the author of that law, and to none but him. But by safety

here, is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life,

which everyman by lawful industry, without danger, or hurt to the

commonwealth, shall acquire to himself. (Hobbes 222)


The state will provide for the subject’s security and contentments, but since the sovereign

has subsumed the role of divine arbiter, there is no one Leviathan must answer to but himself. As

terrifying as the thought is, Hobbes was not dishonest; he foreshadowed the conclusion in his

introduction to Leviathan:

But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him only

with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern a whole nation

must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but mankind: which though

it be hard to do, harder than to learn any language or science; yet, when I shall

have set down my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another

will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of

doctrine admitteth no other demonstration. (Hobbes 8)

What other demonstration need there be but of the man who reads in himself and

determines the Good for the whole world? None; because this realization poses the more

important question: what then is more terrifying? The God who struck down Leviathan, or the

Leviathan that would strike down God?


Works Cited Page

Augustine, St., and Phillip Schaff. Book XXII. "Of the Blessings with Which the Creator Has

Filled This Life, Obnoxious Though It Be to the Curse." City of God. 426. Reprint. New

York, NY: New York: The Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890. 502-504. Print.

Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha. Eds. Robert Carroll and Stephen

Prickett. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

Hobbes, Thomas, and J.C.A. Gaskin. Leviathan. 2008, reimpr. ed. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2008. Print.

Machiavelli, Niccolò, Harvey C. Mansfield, and Nathan Tarcov. Discourses on Livy. 1996.

Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Print.

Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince. Trans. Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press, 1998. Print.

Martinich, A.P.. A Hobbes Dictionary. Cambridge: Blackwell Reference, 1995. Print.

Plant, David. "The Commonwealth, 1649-53." The British Civil Wars Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 18

Dec. 2013. <http://bcw-project.org/timelines/the-commonwealth>.

Plato. Republic. Trans. Joe Sachs. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2007. Print.

Sidney, Sir Philip. "The Defense of Poesy. Sir Philip Sidney. 1909-14. English Essays: Sidney to

Macaulay. The Harvard Classics." Bartleby.com . N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.

<http://www.bartleby.com/27/1.html>.

The Monster for Modernity

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