Leviathan

What was merely innuendo in the previous three parts is here made far more obvious by Hobbes’s explicit attacks on the rituals and interpretations favored by the Catholic Church. Many of these interpretations are rooted in a belief in the incorporeal, and thus the emphasis Hobbes places on the topic of materialism in Part 1 finally pays off with respect to his broader thesis. In his polemical efforts to brand the Catholic Church as evil, he accuses it of just about the worst blasphemy imaginable: relying more on heathen and pagan traditions than scripture. By tying Catholicism to Greek philosophical traditions, Hobbes accuses the entire Catholic Church of being under the influence of the man Hobbes has depicted as a veritable bogeyman: Aristotle. Of Aristotle, he writes, “And I believe that scarce anything can be more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called Aristotle’s Metaphysics” (457).

Yet while it is true that exorcism and transubstantiation aren’t generally central to Protestant beliefs, the notion of incorporeal spirits is hardly unique to Catholicism or even Aristotle. As pointed out earlier, the philosopher René Descartes, who is known for lifting the spell of Aristotelian thought cast on Western philosophy, also believed in incorporeal bodies. And so the conspiracy Hobbes attempts to conjure of the Catholic Church tricking innocent Christians through heathen traditions doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny.

If Part 3 read more like a piece of scriptural analysis or literary criticism, this last part returns to the style of the pamphleteer found in Part 2. This time, however, Hobbes’s writing feels more like that of a religious pamphleteer than a political one. His rhetoric involving a kingdom of darkness threatening to befall Christian society—thus depriving it of entry into the kingdom of heaven upon Christ’s return—is similar to the language used by contemporary millenarians in England. Millenarianism is a form of Christian eschatology warning that the return of Christ is very near and that Christians, both individually and collectively, must prepare themselves by purging evil influences—which in Hobbes’s case means the Catholic Church.

Some scholars have argued that the millenarian influence evident in Leviathan is yet another example of Hobbes using the religious rhetoric of his time to further his argument. This argument would align with the camp of scholars who believe Hobbes’s religious beliefs are insincere. Yet historian Margaret C. Jacob points out that millenarianism was in fact quite common among the burgeoning scene of natural science, of which Hobbes was a member. She traces this interest in millenarianism to Isaac Newton, the father and patron saint, as it were, of modern natural science. She writes:

We should not be surprised to find churchmen of Newtonian persuasion convinced that the ordered and mathematically regulated universe explicated in the Principia would, at an appointed time, physically disintegrate, destroyed by an act of God foretold by Scriptural prophecies. (Jacob, Margaret C. “Millenarianism and Science in the Late Seventeenth Century.” Journal of the History of Ideas. Apr.-June 1976.)

Finally, in “A Review and Conclusion” Hobbes offers a dedication to the memory of his best friend, the poet Sidney Godolphin, who was killed fighting on behalf of the Royalists during the English Civil Wars. Given the somewhat clinical approach Hobbes takes in most of the book, this dedication is startlingly personal and touching. One could read this dedication as betraying Hobbes’s own biases; after all, of course a man whose best friend was killed by Parliamentarian rebels would argue in favor of a system of civil order under a strong central authority. Yet from another perspective, this passage makes the arguments found in Leviathan more compelling because it humanizes its author, who for so much of the book has kept himself at an academic remove from the reader.