Title: "Obligation and Liberty in Hobbes"

Paul Garofalo

Abstract:

In both De Cive and Leviathan Hobbes claims that obligation is inconsistent with liberty. This generates the question of how obligation can be inconsistent with liberty, we require some accounting for Hobbes’s claim. In this paper I explore how this account differs between De Cive and Leviathan by focusing on the prototypical obligation in Hobbes—obligation by covenant. In De Cive’s account of obligation by covenant, obligation restricts one’s liberty by restricting what one can rationally will to do. One’s covenanted obligations determine one’s will and make voluntary behavior to the contrary against right reason, and hence without liberty. This suggests that in De Cive there is a sense of “liberty” tied to “right reason.” In Leviathan Hobbes presents two main changes to this account: First, Hobbes changes his account of obligation by covenant by removing references to how covenants determine one’s will and second, Hobbes is more explicit about what he means by the “will” and “liberty” such that he seems to exclude a sense of “liberty” tied to “right reason.” While this makes Hobbes’s account of liberty in Leviathan clearer, especially for his purposes of reconciling liberty and necessity, it makes his account of how obligation is inconsistent with liberty unclear. This suggests a tension in Hobbes’s work between his account of liberty and his claim that obligation is inconsistent with it. I conclude by returning to De Cive and evaluating whether Hobbes needs to have abandoned the account of liberty found there.