Hobbes' Natural and Political Philosophy

[Harry Veeder <eo200@xxxxxx>]

Modern Philosophy

Hobbes, Conatus and the Prisoner's Dilemma

Juhani Pietarinen
University of Turku, Finland

jpietari@xxxxxx

ABSTRACT: I want to show the importance of the notion of conatus (endeavor)
for Hobbes' political philosophy. According to Hobbes, all motion of bodies
consists of elementary motions he called 'endeavors.' They are motions 'made
in less space and time than can be given,' and they obey the law of
persistence or inertia. A body strives to preserve its state and resist the
causal power of other bodies. I call this the conatus-principle. Hobbes'
argument for social contract and sovereign is based essentially on this
model. He proves that the natural conatus makes people (i) strive to
preserve their lives and therefore to get out of the destructive state of
nature; (ii) commit to mutual contracts; (iii) keep the contracts unless
some external cause otherwise determines; and (iv) establish a permanent
sovereign power that Hobbes calls 'an artificial eternity of life.' All this
is determined by the fundamental laws of nature, essentially, by the
conatus-principle. I also show that the Prisoner's Dilemma interpretation of
the Hobbesian state of nature does not represent all of the essential
features of Hobbes' argument.

I. Conatus and Motion
Philosophers in the 17th century made hard efforts to explain the beginning
and continuation of the motion of bodies. The notion of conatus ('striving'
or 'endeavoring') was commonly used in the explanations. It refers to the
power with which the motion of a body begins and is kept on.
What is this power? Descartes explained it to be an active power or tendency
of bodies to move, expressing the power of God. He distinguished between
motion and the tendency to move, but Hobbes was anxious to argue that
conatus actually is motion. In The Elements of Law he says it to be the
"internal beginning of animal motion" (EL I.7.2), and in his later writings
the notion of 'endeavor' refers to the beginning or first part of any kind
of motion. Because motion is for Hobbes "a continual relinquishing of one
place, and acquiring of another" (De Corp II.8.10), the beginning of a
motion of a body must be an infinitely small change in the place of the
body. Accordingly, Hobbes defines endeavor "to be motion made in less space
and time than can be given; ... that is, motion made through the length of a
point, and in an instant or point of time" (De Corp III.15.2).

For Hobbes, the conatus is not an inherent power of a body but is determined
by the motions of other bodies. However, he regards it as an active power,
because "the beginning of the motion of a body must be considered as action
or cause" (De Corp II.9.6). Thus endeavor is the power by which a body
affects the motion of other bodies and resists their power, and, in a sense,
also 'causes' the motion of the body itself, for Hobbes takes the principle
of the persistence of motion to be true: "whatsoever is moved, will always
be moved in the same way, and with the same swiftness, if it be not hindered
by some other moved and contiguous body" (De Corp III.15.1). Thus Hobbes,
like Descartes and Spinoza, takes conatus to be the active power by which a
body persists in its state of motion. In brief, Hobbes accepts the following
fundamental principle:

(CP) The conatus-principle: A body endeavors to preserve its state and
resist the causal power of other bodies.

This is a true natural law for Hobbes. I want to show the importance of (CP)
for Hobbes's theory of human action and political philosophy.

<snip>
more at

http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mode/ModePiet.htm