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Critical Review
Hobbes’s Contempt for Opinions: Manipulation and the Challenge for Mass Democracies
by Geoffrey M. Vaughan
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Abstract
Thomas Hobbes denied both that opinion provides access to truth and that it ought to be protected from political manipulation. Hobbes knew that his contempt for opinion put him at odds with the classical tradition of political philosophy. What he could not have known was that it also would put him at odds with modern, liberal democracy, which protects opinions—the opinions of the public—that it cannot invest with truth value.
Representative democracy is supposed to give political expression to the opinions of the demos. But why should opinions—mere prephilosophical notions—be granted such an important role in politics? An opinion is to be distinguished from the truth. It may provide access to truth, but opinion per se has an uncertain truth content. When, as in this essay, the opinions in question concern the good, the just, the beneficial, the question is why they should, as mere opinions, command respect.
Hobbes stands out in his contempt for opinion. The only respect he showed opinion was the respect he had for the power it could wield when spread widely enough and manipulated expertly. He saw nothing worthy in unmanipulated opinion itself.
Hobbes’s contempt for opinion not only presents a challenge to much of the history of political philosophy, but an especially difficult challenge to liberal conceptions of democracy. It is the latter challenge that will chiefly interest me, although Hobbes’s rejection of classical dialectics will also be considered. Before turning to the role of opinion in Hobbes’s philosophy, however, I shall highlight his departure from the more common practice of respecting opinions. To this end, I will look briefly at the way opinions have been viewed over time by political philosophers.
A Short History of Opinion Theory
Opinions are not demonstrable truths. Given the distinction between opinion and truth, it is surprising that the former has been approached with a certain amount of respect by political philosophers, who have not, for the most part, merely dismissed opinion as irrelevant to their inquiries. But it seems that there can be only two ways for philosophers to respect an opinion: as a source of truth, or as a philosophically uncriticizable phenomenon that is beyond the legitimate reach of politics. This distinction is not always maintained in theory or in practice, but it is a useful one with which to begin.
According to the classical tradition, opinions are the origin of truth and science when they are the starting point for dialectical reasoning (Aristotle, Topica 100a30). If properly handled, common opinions can be sifted by the dialectician to reveal “the principles of all methods of inquiry” (ibid., 101b3). Opinions, therefore, are not something to be scorned or rejected. Instead, they provide philosophy’s access to truth. This respect for opinions carried through to the natural-law tradition of the Middle Ages. Both Christian and Muslim philosophers used the dialectical method to understand the world. There may be some dispute regarding their loyalty to this method, but they at least thought they were following it. The contemporary resurgence of natural-law theory follows very much the same approach (see Finnis 1980, 85ff.), approaching political philosophy through common opinion and therefore upholding the latter as something worthy of respect—at least provisionally.
Liberal theory, by contrast, respects prephilosophical opinions for two reasons, one skeptical and the other less so. Let me take the not-so-skeptical version first. In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls uses a method he calls “reflective equilibrium” to balance philosophical principles with “considered judgments,” giving neither one preference over the other ab initio (see Rawls 1995, 20). Rawls describes considered judgments as one might describe opinions: they are prephilosophical judgments that are not demonstrably true (ibid., 47ff). Although not on a par with philosophical principles, considered judgments cannot be run roughshod over. Rawls suggests that these judgments arise from our sense of justice and, therefore, must be respected for their approximation to justice itself. While this is not a return to classical dialectical reasoning, Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium reserves a very important, though provisional, place for opinions that makes them akin to a route to the truth.
Rawls can also be found on the more skeptical side of liberal theory. This side doubts the ability of philosophy to discover the content of the good for all people. In effect, conceptions of the good are seen as no more than different opinions about the good, because they are both prephilosophical and inaccessible to philosophical scrutiny (Rawls 1995, 92ff.). To this extent, opinion is a black box.
In accord with the theoretical opacity of opinions, their variety has become even more important as a starting point for his liberal theory as Rawls has reflected further on the problem. His Political Liberalism begins with the premise of a plurality of comprehensive doctrines, that is, a plurality of opinions (Rawls 1993, 36). Similarly, deliberative democrats (e.g., Gutmann and Thompson 1997) start with the assumption that people do and will disagree about moral propositions. Yet neither Rawls nor the deliberative democrats address this plurality by trying to disabuse people of their mistaken opinions. On the contrary, they seek to find means by which the variety of opinions might be respected by political institutions (e.g., ibid., 2). Thus, much contemporary liberal-democratic theory respects opinions not because they are true or might lead to truth; rather, such theory does not presume to judge them true or false. In this way the contents of the black box of opinion are irrelevant: it could be filled with any substance, or it could be empty. In the extreme case the liberal position defends the sanctity of an empty box. Therefore, the general definition of opinions as conceptions that are less than true is delicately balanced against a deep and absolute respect for them.
Another Kantian reason liberals offer for respecting opinions is that they bear directly on the moral dignity of those who hold them. That is to say, respect for the morally autonomous individual requires a concurrent respect for that individual’s prephilosophical judgments (see Richards 1986, 166ff.). This is not a mere prudential respect, such as one pays to an armed lunatic. 1 Instead, opinions command profound moral weight even though their specific content is irrelevant. Where the Rawlsian liberal and the deliberative democrat might argue for the sanctity of an empty box, this Kantian version of liberalism is not concerned with the box itself (i.e., the opinion), empty or otherwise, but with the sanctity of the manufacturer of the box—the individual.
Yet another liberal justification for the respect of opinion was offered by John Stuart Mill, especially in On Liberty. Mill, too, returned to something like the classical notion of dialectics, although it was only something like classical dialectics because Mill did not claim that opinions conceal the truths sought by philosophers. Instead, each opinion contains a partial truth that is revealed only through contestation (Mill 1972, 113). Yet Mill did not assume that the triumph of truth was a foregone conclusion. This victory is largely a matter of historical contingency, even though the chances of triumph are significantly improved when opinions are allowed to be freely expressed (ibid., 97). 2 Thus, toleration enjoys an important utilitarian justification: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race” of the partial truth the opinion may contain (ibid., 85). At the same time, Mill thought that the expression of an opinion was good for the person who was expressing it, as it is an important part of the intellectual development of every individual (ibid., 131). Therefore Mill can be seen as standing between the classical respect for opinion as providing access to truth and the twentieth-century respect for opinion as something uncriticizable. (Whether this midpoint can be consistently maintained is another question.)
From the classical philosophers through Mill and up to contemporary liberals, then, opinion has been treated with respect. By contrast, Hobbes was contemptuous of opinion. For him, opinions were neither a source of truth nor a reflection of the moral worth of the individual. As mistakes and unfounded conclusions, they should not be respected. They could be very useful, however. Even though he did not think opinions per se worthy of respect, Hobbes knew their power. Thus, opinions play an important empirical rather than normative role in his political philosophy. 3
Standing on the cusp of the Enlightenment, Hobbes took a position between dialectics and democracy. Rejecting the tradition of dialectic, Hobbes argued that opinions provide no access to truth. Instead, science—or, more specifically, the new scientific method—gives us the only access to whatever truth might be available. This scientific truth is often counterintuitive: that is, it offends common opinion. Not only are opinions disconnected from or even antithetical to truth; they are the source of political problems. Opinions are variable; there can be as many opinions as there are people, or even more because the same person can hold several conflicting opinions in succession. What is worse, people tend not to recognize their opinions as mere opinions but confuse them with the truth. Conflicting opinions as conflicting truth-claims are likely to lead to political conflict. Indeed, according to Hobbes, uncontrolled opinion is the source of political conflict and civil war.
Although Hobbes feared the danger of uncontrolled opinions in civil society, he was in enough agreement with both his predecessors and his descendants to think that philosophically demonstrated truths about politics could never replace opinions in any significant way. Opinions would always be the lifeblood of politics. If properly controlled, however, they might just lead to more life than blood. In Leviathan Hobbes (1996, 124) wrote, “Actions of men proceed from their Opinions; and in the wel governing of Opinions, consisteth the well governing of mens Actions, in order to their Peace and Concord.” If Hobbes is right, the sovereign can maintain the peace by maintaining a tight constraint on the number and types of opinions. Both number and type are important because, according to Hobbes’s understanding of the role of opinion, a plurality of opinions will lead to political conflict. The opinions allowed by the sovereign must also be opinions that are not, in themselves, contrary to peaceful coexistence. Opinions pose a political problem whenever they are many or incompatible with the purpose of government.
The Origins of Political Opinions
According to Hobbes, most people get their opinions from the clergy and from country gentlemen, who are, in turn, beholden for their opinions to their education. “For seeing the Universities are the Fountains of Civill, and Morall Doctrine, from whence the Preachers, and the Gentry, drawing such water as they find, use to sprinkle the same (both from the Pulpit, and in their Conversation) upon the People, there ought certainly to be great care taken, to have it pure, both from the Venime of Heathen Politicians, and from the Incantations of Deceiving Spirits” (Hobbes 1996, 491; see also ibid., 237). 4 Whatever is taught in the universities soon becomes, therefore, the common opinion of the people, educated or not. The common people may not have the same awareness of their own opinions as those who first learned them at university, but their opinions will be the same.
Hobbes therefore wanted to ensure that the universities taught only an officially sanctioned set of opinions, which then would be spread through the commonwealth. This would reduce the potential conflict that might (perhaps necessarily) arise from competing opinions. If opinions are the levers of political action, civil discord could be avoided by controlling their movement at the source.
The most important feature of Hobbes’s view is that public opinion does not begin as something common; it has to become common. Common opinions are neither the morally autonomous creations of the individuals who espouse them nor the incomplete images of universal truths. Political opinions are invented by particular people and then spread to others, but apart from this small group of inventors, people receive their opinions from outside. This is why Hobbes compared people’s minds to blank pages waiting to be written upon by those who can make opinions (see Hobbes 1996, 233; idem, The Elements of Law 2.IX.8).
Hobbes’s general theory of the spread of opinions is supported, but his optimistic theory of trickle-down education is undermined, by Philip Converse’s important essay “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics” (1964). According to Converse, there is a vertical information scale, or pyramid, upon which everyone falls in rank order from ideologue near the top to near-ideologue and then, at the very bottom level, to those whose opinions have “no issue content” (Converse 1964, 212-16). This vertical scale is remarkably similar to Hobbes’s own assessment of civil society if we equate Converse’s ideologue with Hobbes’s university teacher, his near-ideologue with Hobbes’s university graduate, and everyone else on the lower part of the scale with Hobbes’s common people. Standing above Converse’s pyramid is the ideology maker (ibid., 211), a position Hobbes (e.g., 1996, 254) might have reserved for himself.
Converse’s schema supports Hobbes’s idea that opinions are spread from those who invent them to those who probably have no idea of their source. Converse would criticize, however, Hobbes’s assumption that the ideology that constrains those at the top of the scale imposes the same constraints upon those lower down it. According to Converse (1964, 231), “parallel to ignorance and confusion over these ideological dimensions among the less informed is a general decline in constraint among specific belief elements that such dimensions help to organize.” Converse (ibid., 207) uses the term “constraint” to refer to the consistent interconnection of ideas within a belief system. For example, an American isolationist could not consistently hold that the U.S. role in nato should be reduced while its role in the U. N. should be enlarged. Ideological constraint would demand isolationism in all cases.
The diminishing constraint on attitudes exercised by belief systems as one moves down the pyramid of ideological sophistication undermines Hobbes’s opinion-based politics. Like a great oak sprung from the acorn of the university, Hobbes’s system seems to assume that the tree will grow straight and sound. But Converse’s evidence suggests, instead, that the branches of the tree may twist and turn, failing to rise in any one direction. Even better, and to continue the arboreal analogy, the oak should be replaced by a bramble bush, which puts down different roots and soon covers the ground without any indication of its origin. An example may serve here. Hobbes (1996, 127) thought that the English Civil War was the result of a dangerous opinion: “If there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of England, that these Powers were divided between the King, and the Lords, and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided, and fallen into the Civill Warre.” If only people had received the opinion that sovereign authority is indivisible, there would have been no military conflict. But this assumes that people would be constrained by their conception of sovereignty. Converse would reply that only the ideologues and near-ideologues could be so constrained. This would leave the rest of the nation—“the greatest part,” in fact—the possibility of reaching something different from the desired conclusions about particular questions to which an ideology of sovereignty provides answers. Thus, not even a well-orchestrated education growing out of the universities could have prevented the civil war.
Hobbes would probably have gone along with Converse’s criticisms of his argument as I have presented it so far. Hobbes himself made some very similar observations regarding the efficacy of ideologies or, to use his word, opinions. Unlike Converse, however, Hobbes did not hold that opinions are the grounds of further reasoning, which can be either constrained or unconstrained. Rather, Hobbes viewed opinions as the immediate grounds of action. To understand how opinions lead to actions and how Hobbes made sense of this politically, we must reconsider Hobbes’s arguments about opinion from the beginning.
The Political Use of Opinions
Hobbes wanted to find a way to make civil society more stable. He did not, however, develop a unique system of government that would do this. Hobbes looked behind the forms of government with the intention of providing support for all of them—whether democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy (see Hobbes 1998, 14). The particular form of government was largely irrelevant to the stability of civil society.
What Hobbes found underneath the particular forms of government was opinion. Opinion can either strengthen or weaken the government. Therefore, to make governments stronger he had to make opinions work on their behalf. This is a large task, according to Hobbes, because opinions are not political merely when they touch upon political matters. Instead, almost any opinion could pertain to a political matter because almost any opinion can lead to an action with political consequences. That is to say, almost any opinion could strengthen or weaken the government.
To deny that a given set of opinions is political is to assume that nothing within that set could affect one’s political actions. This would be imprudent, according to Hobbes, for the definition of what is political and what is not is itself a political question. A distinction between the personal and the political would require agreement on the dividing line between these spheres, something Hobbes did not think was self-evident. 5 For this reason Hobbes went so far as to annex to the sovereign all rights regarding religion. The sovereign could determine the content of faith and the rituals of practice, or assign these duties to someone else. Indeed, because Hobbes thought that any opinion could have political consequences, one of the duties of his sovereign was to establish definitions, not only for political, legal, and religious terms, but for all terms (see Hobbes 1998, 5). Hobbes’s sovereign was a sort of Academie Francaise with control over not only usage but meaning, and backed with the force of arms.
Hobbes’s preoccupation with definitions stems from their role in constituting the words of which opinions consist. Without definitions, therefore, civil society is impossible and there is no escape from the state of nature. There cannot be a commonwealth without a concordance of opinion, because the commonwealth is designed to overcome the discord that causes the state of nature. Agreement in opinions leads to peace, and concordant definitions lead to agreement in opinions. In Hobbes’s state of nature there is no agreement over right or wrong, just or unjust, because there is no one to establish the definitions of these terms. Opinions must be defined before anyone can understand them. But since they must be defined (somewhat) arbitrarily and are not the result of syllogistic reasoning, the definitions themselves are not knowledge but mere opinion.
Hobbes held consistently to this distinction between knowledge and opinion, in which only what is true can be known and only syllogisms can produce truth (see The Elements of Law 1.V.2; De Cive II.1; Hobbes 1996, 48). By contrast, opinions must be defined by some singular authority. Otherwise each person can judge for himself, as a right of nature, whether “the actions he intends to take are necessary to the preservation of his life and limbs or not” (Hobbes 1998, 27). In the state of nature each person has a different opinion as to what is a danger and what might overcome that danger. Some will perceive a threat where others will not. More to the point, some will act upon what they perceive to be a threat. And since no one knows what another might find threatening, no one is sure that he is not under suspicion. This is what causes the constant fear characterizing the state of nature. Hobbes did not think this fear at all unreasonable. Rather, he considered it the natural condition of the human species, a condition to be overcome only through the imposition of definitions, so that common threats could be perceived.
Differing opinions cause not only the original state of war, but also the breakdown of a commonwealth and, thus, civil war. According to Hobbes in The Elements of Law, “where any subject hath right by his own judgment and discretion, to make use of his force; it is to be understood that every man hath the like, and consequently that there is no commonwealth at all established” (2.I.5). A commonwealth is established in order to overcome the problem of the state of nature. In the state of nature an individual can determine for himself when to use force, that is, when to attack another person. Civil society takes this right away from the individual and gives it to the sovereign alone. If it were ever to fall back to one private individual to make such judgments, it must also fall to every other individual. If not, everyone would be at the mercy of this one person without the protection of the many. In this way a commonwealth would regress to the condition of life before its existence. In De Cive we find Hobbes making the same argument in response to the opinion that sovereigns are subject to the law: “This opinion is obviously incompatible with the essence of a commonwealth because it would put the knowledge of just and unjust, i.e. the determination of what is, and what is not, contrary to the civil laws, back into the hands of individuals” (Hobbes 1998, 134). The destruction of a commonwealth is portrayed as a return to an earlier time, as a falling back. This falling back into the state of nature occurs wherever there is a diversity of opinion.
In Leviathan, however, Hobbes developed an argument about a commonwealth falling into discord that is not exactly the same as falling into the state of nature. Perhaps the change had to do with his experience of the English Civil War. According to the new argument, the danger comes not from a return to individual judgments but from adherence to some common opinion: “For those men that are so remissely governed, that they dare take up Armes, to defend, or introduce an Opinion, are still in Warre” (Hobbes 1996, 125). This is not at odds with the argument developed in his earlier books, but it has a different character. First of all, the blame is put on the government for allowing its monopoly on opinion to be challenged. Second, the danger lies not so much in there being more than one opinion per individual as it lies in there being simply more than one opinion. Even with a small number of conflicting opinions, people can and will adopt one as their own and reject the opinions of others. As soon as this happens there is division and, according to Hobbes, the potential for armed conflict. A diversity of opinions—as diverse as even two—is not compatible with peaceful government. With a great plurality of opinions the full state of nature returns, but even with only a small number of opinions armed factions will arise. So long as men have different opinions, according to Hobbes, so long will they be in imminent danger of falling into war.
One might think that Hobbes believed all could be well if only everyone sat down and thought these issues through; or perhaps if everyone read Hobbes’s books they would be convinced of his reasoning and they would submit to the sovereign. But Hobbes did not think that any such thing could happen. For all of his faith in science he was not a rational optimist. It is, after all, the inability of all men to reason to the same conclusion that causes the diversity of opinions and the disagreements that lead to war. “And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence they will both stand, or their controversie must either come to blowes, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever” (Hobbes 1996, 32; see also The Elements of Law 2.X.8 and De Cive XV.17). There is no uncoerced right reason, according to Hobbes. Uncoerced, un-“arbitrated” agreement is not possible, not because it is merely practically impossible to get everyone to arrive at the same conclusion, but because there is no one conclusion to which we all ought to reason. 6 Any controversy must hang on the definition of words, but these words can be variously defined, even arbitrarily defined. It is for this reason that an arbitrator is required in minor disputes and a sovereign is required in general. The sovereign must establish what shall be the received opinions, especially as to what is “good” and “just.” In Leviathan Hobbes listed the sixth of twelve rights of the sovereign as judging “what Opinions and Doctrines are averse, and what conducing to Peace” (Hobbes 1996, 124; see also The Elements of Law 2.IX.8 and De Cive VI.11). This right of the sovereign was meant to extend to all areas without limitation. Just as in the state of nature, in civil society no one can legitimately say beforehand what is a threat and what is not, so the sovereign has complete freedom to determine what opinions threaten the peace. In fact, “disobedience may lawfully be punished in them, that against the Laws teach even true Philosophy” (Hobbes 1996, 474).
The process Hobbes intended the sovereign to use to ensure a consistent opinion was the very process by which he thought threatening opinions had entered the commonwealth. He wrote in Leviathan: “As for the Means, and Conduits, by which the people may receive this Instruction, wee are to search, by what means so many Opinions, contrary to the peace of Man-kind, upon weak and false Principles, have neverthelesse been so deeply rooted in them” (Hobbes 1996, 236). The conduits were, as we saw, the universities. If only the universities could be corrected and would teach the right doctrines, “young men, who come thither void of prejudice, and whose minds are yet as white as paper, capable of any instruction, would more easily receive the same, and afterward teach it to the people, both in books and otherwise, than now they do the contrary” (The Elements of Law, 2.IX.8; see also Hobbes 1996, 233). If university students were taught correctly they would then pass on their opinions to the rest of the commonwealth.
According to Hobbes, all political disputes are based in contradictory or differing opinions. This is as true in civil society as it is in the state of nature. But he did not think that this was a problem that could be overcome by rational means, because he did not think that it was necessarily a rational problem. That is to say, the conflict of opinions cannot be reconciled by a rational examination of those opinions, since the human capacity for reason and rationality is defective. The problem of differing opinions requires a nonrational solution: the fiat pronounced at the establishment of a state (Hobbes 1996, 10).
Unsystematic Opinions and the Will
Hobbes did not think that inducing people to reason about their opinions could solve the problem of conflicting opinions leading to open political conflict, because according to Hobbes’s understanding of human psychology, people do not reason upon their opinions before acting; they simply act.
The words describing opinions may need to be defined, but in human action opinions do not play the same role that definitions do in a syllogism. Instead, opinions are the immediate cause of the will, which is the immediate cause of actions. Hobbes wrote in De Cive: “It is also evident that all voluntary actions have a beginning and necessarily depend on the will, and the will to do or not to do depends on the opinion each man has formed of the good or evil, reward or penalty to follow from doing or not doing the thing; so that every man’s actions are governed by his opinion” (VI.11). Opinion leads directly to will. There is no intermediary. In Leviathan Hobbes described the will as the last appetite in deliberation (Hobbes 1996, 44). Deliberation itself is simply the sequential alternation of appetites, for or against. But deliberation is also the sequential alternation of opinions, true or false. As Hobbes saw it, the will results as soon as this back-and-forth wavering stops. If the deliberation stops at the appetite for something, it is judged good. If it stops at the appetite against, it is judged evil. A similar process takes place with opinions. Deliberation can stop with the judgment that something past or future is true or false (Hobbes 1996, 47). Deliberation is not rational.
Once an opinion is reached at the end of deliberation, the will is produced and action follows immediately. Even an appetite must be combined with an opinion of the likelihood of attaining or not attaining what is desired (Hobbes 1996, 41). Appetite alone without such an opinion does not lead to actions because only opinion can work upon the imagination, which Hobbes (1996, 38) called “the first internall beginning of all Voluntary Motions.” Thus if someone has the appetite for something but the opinion that it is not possible to achieve it, no action will result. On the other hand, if the opinion is positive an action will result. In this way opinion can stop or start an action. Nothing in this process requires the dubious faculty of reasoning.
If not reason, what is it that ends the ping-pong match between contrary opinions? At some point the match stops, the ball rests on one side, and the process leads to an action. According to Hobbes, there are many reasons, all of which are external to the individual will: “For Sense, Memory, Understanding, Reason, and Opinion are not in our power to change; but alwaies, and necessarily such, as the things we see, hear, and consider suggest unto us; and therefore are not the effects of our Will, but our Will of them” (Hobbes 1996, 256). It is because the process of deliberation—unlike the process of reasoning—can be stopped by external forces that Hobbes thought people’s opinions could be controlled. If deliberation were an entirely internal process this would not be so. But opinions can be produced by an external source. The deliberative process can be stopped on one side or the other by what people “see, hear, and consider.” If what they see, hear, and consider comes from those they respect and of whom they have a good opinion, and those people always come down on one side of the deliberation, people’s own deliberations should reach the same conclusion.
One might raise an objection to Hobbes’s solution based on the loss of ideological constraint as one moves down Converse’s vertical information pyramid. People at the bottom might not receive the right or complete set of opinions. If belief systems do not flow down the pyramid as cleanly as Hobbes thought they might, what would prevent people at the bottom of the pyramid from themselves having conflicting opinions? This is the problem identified by Converse as a lack of ideological “constraint.” What might be a consistent set of beliefs at the apex of the pyramid could become riddled with contradictions at the base. These contradictions would be no different than the conflict of opposing opinions, because there is no reason to think that each and every member of the mass public will hold contradictory beliefs in the same pattern. Their opinions can contradict not only each other, but the opinions of others. Democrats may not be consistently democratic, and monarchists may not be consistent either.
But Hobbes was not trying to produce a consistent “belief system” or ideology. While he had a system to spread opinions—control of the universities—there is no evidence that he planned on a system of opinions. Even his long list of the laws of nature was reduced to one simple maxim in Leviathan, “intelligible, even to the meanest capacity; and that is, Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe” (Hobbes 1996, 109). This is not an ideology; it is a maxim.
Dialectics, Democracy, and Alternatives to the Hobbesian State
Opinions are, by Hobbes’s definition, unproven. If, on occasion, they do accord with what can be proven, this is a fortunate accident and in no way a virtue of the opinions themselves. This constitutes a direct challenge to classical dialectics. At the same time it is a challenge to the liberal conception of opinions as inviolable in their plurality or immune to rational scrutiny because they bear the moral weight of the individual. The sword of Leviathan cuts backwards and forwards. Nevertheless, while Hobbes’s philosophy does not preserve the traditionally important role of opinion in political speculation, it certainly leaves a large role for opinion in political practice.
The function of opinion in Hobbes’s political philosophy is control: by controlling people’s political opinions, Hobbes’s sovereign can control their actions. There is nothing unjust or illegitimate in this because the sovereign is, after all, manipulating mere opinions. Since opinion does not afford us access to truth, it cannot be valued as a pathway to natural right. And since people acquire their opinions from outside themselves, their opinions are not important expressions of their moral dignity, or even of deeply personal convictions. Thus, opinions need not be valued for either classical or liberal reasons.
In modern constitutional democracies the rule of law is supposed to temper the effects of straightforward or pure democracy. Acknowledging the need for temperance might be taken as a nod in Hobbes’s direction. Nevertheless, even in constitutional democracies opinions play a large role. Votes are cast on the basis of opinions rather than philosophical reasoning. Opinions are even polled to determine the direction of major policy initiatives. The assumption underlying both elections and polls is that the consent of the governed is necessary and even sufficient to render a government legitimate. Consent in this sense of the term, however, is not the same as consent rendered upon agreement to a philosophical argument. Political consent is, rather, the expression of an opinion. Hobbes’s argument against opinion is, therefore, especially challenging to modern democracy.
If we are going to continue to respect people’s political opinions and not merely sacrifice them—as Hobbes would have us do—like pawns for the good of the king, we have two options. One possibility is returning to a dialectical method on the ancient model. This, however, can at best provide only a provisional respect for opinion. The liberal alternative must explain why plural, untrue, and philosophically inscrutable statements (i.e., black boxes) are important “facts” that must be respected, or are products of an individual’s moral dignity that should not be manipulated. While the dialectical tradition may have to give an account of how prephilosophical reflections can point to something of which they are not aware (e.g., an underlying human nature), it is not so clear that the liberal respect for opinion can be maintained without a metaphysical account all its own (see, for example, Sandel 1998, 79-80). In this regard the dialectical method seems to have the easier task, because it needs only to justify a provisional respect for opinion, not an absolute respect. Moreover, liberals must take the precarious position of defending the sanctity of a box of unknown contents.
Hobbes makes it uncomfortably clear that opinion is not the same as truth. He also makes it clear that our minds rest in the realm of opinions most of the time and are often doomed to remain there. Of course this insight is not unique to Hobbes. What is unique is the way his contempt for opinion directed his political philosophy. He sought to control opinion, not to protect it or to learn from it. Because an opinion is acquired and not generated, it does not reflect anything important about the person holding it. For example, there is nothing significant about simply holding the opinion that monarchy is the best form of government. If it would do better to have the monarchist become a democrat, so be it. According to Hobbes, changing opinions does as little damage to the integrity of the individual as changing hats because opinions, like hats, are manufactured by others and merely attached to the individual. Opinions are, therefore, legitimate objects of manipulation.
Unless we are going to take the position that opinions provide a certain access to the truth, such as in the dialectical tradition, the only other response to Hobbes would be to give a different account of the origins of opinions. This second response, however, must contend with the findings of public opinion researchers, such as Converse and John Zaller (1992), who confirm that opinions do indeed have their origins outside the individual. With the rise of mass media, the possibilities of opinion manipulation have never been so real; and in mass democracies the political consequences of manipulation have rarely been so extensive. Remarkably, the theorist to capture most fully the potential for such manipulation, and to set forth the arguments most clearly justifying this manipulation, lived 300 years before it became possible to affect opinions with such facility.
Hobbes’s contempt for opinion can be seen as contempt for democracy. But Hobbes presents a challenge not so much to democracy itself as to liberal democracy. In fact, it is the very possibility of manipulating opinion in mass democracies that would rescue them, in his eyes. This is far from a liberal defense of democracy. Hobbesian democracy may be, however, much more stable than liberal democracy. So unless there is a good reason to prefer an unstable state built on a plurality of half-truths (if that) to a stable state built upon well-governed opinions, we might be led in the direction of Hobbes. Perhaps the most we can promise at the outset of this journey is to have a provisional respect for opinions, but this respect is neither Hobbesian nor liberal.
References
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Endnotes
*: Geoffrey M. Vaughan, Department of Political Science, University of Maryland–Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, e-mail gvaughan@umbc.edu, thanks Jeffrey Friedman and other members of Harvard University’s Social Studies Colloquium for helpful comments. Back.
Note 1: It may be hyperbolic to suggest that there is an armed-lunatic version of the defense of free speech, but there is certainly an argument from prudence. The prudential argument runs along the lines that freedom of speech, traditionally including freedom of the press, imposes the most severe limitations on the tyrannical temptations of governors by exposing their misdeeds. Frederick Schauer (1983, 245) makes the point that the United States Supreme Court rules in favor of free speech for these very prudential reasons. Back.
Note 2: The triumph of truth is largely but not exclusively accidental. Mill (1972, 97) based his hope on the assumption that truth suppressed will always come back to fight another day, a fate presumably denied to falsehood. Back.
Note 3: Hegel and Marx may come to mind as two who would neither jump to the defense of opinions nor use them as starting points in philosophic reasoning. This may be true, but they both turned to history as an almost independent force in human events. This obviously had important results for the way they understood opinion. Moreover, it produced in their writings a very different understanding of the term dialectics. To develop this line any further would take me in directions not relevant to the theme of this paper. Back.
Note 4: If this seems somewhat farfetched for the seventeenth century, we should remember that university education in England during the first half of that century was more common than at any other time in English history prior to the First World War (Stone 1964). Back.
Note 5: Hobbes was not making the point that the personal is political, but he was not going to define limits on either. Remember, he claimed that we have, as a right of nature, a right to each other’s bodies (Hobbes 1996, 91). Back.
Note 6: Hobbes’s laws of nature might be proffered in objection to this statement. But not even the laws of nature were meant to receive the reasoned consent of the governed, or of many people at all. Instead, people were to learn simplified rules that would not require such arduous reasoning. See Hobbes 1996, 109. Back.