Interview: Professor Devin Stauffer on Hobbes' View of Human Nature

Welcome back to New Think Pretty. My name is David Barr and with me is always my good friend Alex Priu. How are you Alex? Doing well, very tired but glad to be here.

That's right. You're still your daughter, your second daughter, your second child is how many months now? A month? No, she's two weeks old.

Oh, two weeks old. Half weeks now. My half time flies out and our good friend Greg McRaeres with us also. How are you Greg?

I'm not tired. Feeling great and spry, youthful, energetic, good, good. Nothing to spoil my sleep in my house. No, but one day soon.

So who's our guest tonight? We're all very excited. Yeah. Well, our guest tonight is none other than Devin Stauffer, a associate professor of government at the University of Texas Austin, where he's taught since 2007.

He's the author of three monographs. Most recently Hobbes is Kingdom of Light, which is what we're talking about. The study of the foundations of modern political philosophy. Prior to that, he wrote the unity of Plato's gorgias and Plato's introduction to the question of justice.

You did your graduate work at Boston College, right? Yes, that's right. Where I see on your CD preliminary exams were passed with distinction. And then I saw a BA from Kenyonkop College, magna cum laude with the highest honors, but it says in political science.

So that's that's moderate honors in comparison. Yes, right. But it's great to have you here. And we'll be able to send you to join us.

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Let's review it. Congratulations on the on the birth.

Thank you. And my sympathies for the next year. I've been through that twice myself. So that's very nice.

Devin, your book on the gorgias. I sent you an email, but it's excellent. Thank you. It's that book is everybody I know is read it or reads it in grad school.

It's a kind of companion text. I was joking with Devin that pen or daddy was another suggested reading while I was in grad school. And it's it's less accessible. My favorite line from his book on the gorgias is Cali Kleece was deeply into voodoo.

Yeah, what? One boy to apropos of nothing that I could understand he has the line. Cali Kleece was or is deeply into voodoo. That's why we have Alex on the show, Devin.

So he's he wants us to see much Socrates in the face and there's this sort of thing. Yeah, I don't know. I forgot how it comes up. But it's it's yeah, I know there's that stuff about punishment and that's what I figured out.

And the imagining of punishing people. That's where something that's very close to voodoo. But we're not talking about the gorgias or sadly voodoo. The monster for mom's very that's who's up tonight, right?

It makes him sound like a pro wrestler. I like that. So what happened was that he was that moniker during his lifetime? Maybe no, I don't maybe very late maybe at the end.

But okay. I think he was known as the crow when he was. Because he's off to black hair. Oh, that's funny.

So he his reputation. You know, who are we talking about? David, tell him who the crow is. The monster of mom's very yeah Thomas Hobbes.

So like my favorite was did. So, you know, to refer to somebody as Machiavelling is obviously it's carried on as an insult. But to refer to somebody as a Hobbesian, is that pejorative in any way or was it once? Yes, sure.

I mean, it probably in the that probably emerged in the wake of the publication of Ithin, which is 1651 if memory serves. So yeah, while it was while he was still alive, it became, you know, not I mean, there were he's but it wasn't something fun would trumpet in all circles. And he was there was a bill before I don't know, or build me an epic the right word and appeal to parliament to have the old gentleman burnt as a heritage. So, so he got in some very hot water and it's and those who agreed with him got in some very hot water while he was still alive.

So for for reasons we might suspect. Yeah, I mean, I think the most basic reason is that his name was widely associated with atheism. I mean, there's a more complicated explanation than that but that's the, that would be the nub of it. And so, you know, obedientism in some circles even became a kind of code word for a materialistic atheism.

So we're, we read for today the sixth chapter of your book, six of seven. And it's a, it was really an overview of, I want to put this correctly right Hobbes is moral philosophy but, you know, also an account of its basis or its moral basis right. And starting from the question of the relationship you could say three parts right of his thought natural philosophy political philosophy and then the third part is natural theology or he's thinking on religion right. So you sort of start with the question it's kind of age old question and how scholarship right which is specific relationship between his natural philosophy and his political philosophy.

So I don't know how you want to go about this but maybe you want to start with a debate or maybe just jump into how you think they relate because it is, it turns out to be one of those problems right that's on the surface and it gets you the hardest thing. Exactly. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think you know it jumps out at you.

I think as soon as you open the Leviathan is famous for his moral and political philosophy but it begins with the kind of thumbnail sketch of his natural philosophy. I mean, this is real big work of natural philosophy is Deskapore which people don't read as much as obviously as much as Leviathan but there's a kind of little thumbnail sketch at the beginning of the bith and especially of his account of sense perception there and some other matters and so there's, and you can kind of tell the basics of his mechanistic materialism and then the beginning of the chapter you guys read kind of presupposes that that prior that prior picture and then I also in the wake of that have three chapters on this critique of religion. So in any case, so that's kind of the background with my book the basic question though is this did Hobbes see his political philosophy as a very interesting one. So I'm going to call him moral and political philosophy use those terms interchangeably Hobbes calls Hobbes doesn't draw sharp distinction there and he sometimes calls it civil science.

I think there's not the distinction we would draw between moral and civil and political and political side. So in any case that whole side is moral political side there's a question whether that's just a rivetive from the new mechanistic view of nature that he sketches out in his natural philosophy. And there's a few reasons to think it is it's initial ambition was to write a system that the parts of which were going to be body man citizen. And there's a few reasons to think it is it's initial ambition was to write a system that the parts of which were going to be body man citizen.

And there's a few passages in Des Capore that suggest there was a kind of necessary sequence to that triad that it needed to go body man citizen. But so that's only one side of the picture and there's also other things he says where he says the different parts are severable from one another. It's a very mixed picture and I would describe my own position as somewhere in the middle between two poles. And the two poles would be on the one hand the view which is not held by many people but there are a few that would say yes in fact this new moral political philosophy is simply derivative from the natural philosophy it's just simply the working out of the consequences for moral and political and human life of the new materialistic mechanistic view of nature.

And then so that would be one pole the other pole would be to say no these other statements hub says they're separable they're just different worlds hobs is you know natural philosophy is one thing political philosophy is another they have nothing to do with each other. And I try to find a kind of complicated middle ground between those I don't think either of those poles is correct. Most obviously I think the one that would say it's just a riveted from his natural science doesn't really meet the test of looking at the actual procedure that's not works through things. Did you say that one was them then not very common scholarly view or did you say that's pretty rare there's a rare rare one I mean could you flesh it out for every life I think it's wrong and I think you do a really good job of showing how it's not correct.

What would that look like if it were true what would his little science look like if they were simply derived from his understanding of natural world. He would be as it seems to be understood anyway. I mean it would be something like this that what nature consists of is fundamentally matter and motion matter and what he means by that is one one kind of matter presses upon an under kind of matter creates a kind of reaction and where the rubber would really hit the road for applying that vision to his political science would be to say this is how hubs fundamentally conceived of the passion. And there's some reason for thinking this at the beginning of chapter six is long chapter on the passions he does begin from something like that account of the passions that their little their little pushes either either towards or against their you know gives a very brief sketch of a kind of materialistic conception of the passions as a as an impulse as a reaction.

And so that view would say that within the passions you see the that's the bridge that would be the bridge and then if the passions are the fundamental concept that informs his whole understanding of human life. There go it all kind of follows from the natural philosophy. So there is you know the beginning of the chapter and the passions does give some warrant for thinking that but then as I go on to argue my own account of the matter. I try to suggest it's true that the chapter and the passions begins that way but even within that very chapter.

Hobbes then goes on to make a set of broader claims about human striving about the character of the good and so forth that aren't strictly derivative from an aren't fundamentally based on that materialistic sketch that he gives at the beginning of that chapter. One of the things maybe one of the roadblocks right that that account comes up to me we can talk about these strivings a bit right but one of the robots that comes up against is that it seems like man is faced with a choice in the state of nature right to pursue ignorant and glory or to knowingly and rationally decide to enter into the commonwealth right into enter. Right and I think the richness and the mechanistic stuff is a bit of that right. Well you know not really I would say yeah not really at least it doesn't or if you try to give a mechanistic account of it.

I suppose you could say in each of those cases one could explain something like that by some kind of indirect reference to matter motion but two things I would say two things about that one Hobbes doesn't do that so just that he this when he starts talking about the passions in the state of nature he doesn't go back to the mechanistic so just it doesn't happen and then secondly I think you would lose I think the richness of his of his of his thought and the complicated moral slash normative character of the claims he's making even in the state of nature I think if you just reduced it all to simply you'd suck the life out of the moral side of Hobbes's argument and it's particularly on the matter you mentioned the distinction which I argue is very important to Hobbes between the morally legitimate motive of seeking self-preservation and the much more dubious motive of pursuing Vain glory triumph over others that distinction I think isn't really tenable as a moral distinction if it's all just derivative from a mechanistic view of nature. One of the things that you drew out here though just to I was more sympathetic to this glory seeker on a basis of what you wrote and I've been reading Hobbes in the past because it seems like it seems like it's a rational misstep it seems like this glory seeking begins from a rational point. There is some way in which seeking powers are rational thing but somewhere along the way it just gets misguided. At least that's what I thought I understood.

Yeah I can try to lay that out a little bit. Yeah sure but I had in mind that I mean partly that point emerges as I'm trying to raise a partial objection to the view that's very common at Hobbes is just a hedoness that he wants to conceive of all political action as fundamentally guided by the desire for pleasure. In some sense I don't deny that Hobbes is a hedoness but the complication I raised and this comes even out of that chapter in the passions is that Hobbes also stresses very much the human concern for power. Right.

And so you know you say that's the other important side and which doesn't just seem to be a form of pleasure and then I try to do is I go into how power Hobbes understood the human roots of power seeking, why are human beings power hungry. And what I try to argue, what I do argue is that Hobbes understands some of those roots in a sensible rational way is a necessary reaction to our condition. Right. That we're vulnerable beings, we are always looking to the future we don't know clearly what we're going to want in the future but we know we're going to be vulnerable and we know we're going to want things.

So power is the present where with all to be able to satisfy our future desires when we have those desires but without a clear sense of what exactly those desires will be and so I say it emerges out of the Hobbes is somewhat relativistic understanding of the good together awareness of the future also together with this distinctively human power he stresses that we're capable of inventive causal thinking into the future into all of these elements of human life as Hobbes sketches that create a, what I would say is as far as it goes a reasonable desire for power. Yeah. But then it but then it becomes it seems to me Hobbes takes the further step of saying that that reasonable desire in some people can get out of hand. In other words, I think the way I put it if I recall is that what begins as reasonable can become pathological.

You say the striving for power and its signs eventually become on more from its original basis and take on a life of their own. Yeah, I really like that term phrase there. I also saw it, I want to derail this too much but I also saw this seems to be a sort of, I think you say this, the most important to vitamin men is in these two types there's this glory seeking type and then there's this type that seeks ease and it couldn't help be reminded of sort of Machiavelli's account of the two human types. The one that wants to rule and the one that just doesn't want to be ruled like, like there's one that does want this sort of power, and it's not term Machiavelli uses but there's there's these different types and you can see them like the rational industrious versus the lazy or something like this.

That distinction, I learned a lot of this from Shostas book on Hobbes but he traces it all the way back to Aristotle, right? The two peaks and more virtue and justice on the one hand, which is the virtue that really Hobbes runs away with and then greatness of soul, right? These two types that seem to anything. It's not Machiavelli.

David, I forgot to mention you're possibly working on a book on thoughts on Machiavelli but maybe you can confirm this. He also draws. I am not I was more than possibly working on it. It's possibly actually going to see the late of day.

Can I give you a title suggestion for that book thoughts on thoughts on Machiavelli? Yes. But yeah, no, I think that's right. I think this is one of those Aristotelian sort of.

So which one does he or she tell you line up with the life of ease, central pleasure and safety? That's justice. That's certainly not magnanimity, right? No, it's justice.

The idea where there's a greater equality, right? And greater equity and there's a kind of lower peak when it's accessible to more human beings and say they would be egalitarianism. I mean, I think this is the one serious level on which Hobbes is a more egalitarian thinker than probably anybody who preceded him. I could be open to alternative suggestions.

But it seems to me that there is this, you know, if it's true to say, as I think it is, that Hobbes is really taking the side more of the little guy who's not intoxicated with power, you know, in the Machiavelli distinction, the people and not the great. And is more and not only taking their side, but even sees their fundamental motive is more morally legitimate than the other than it seems to me that there is this sense in which Hobbes is a more egalitarian and democratic thinker than any prior thing. I'm just calling him democratic is problematic for obvious reasons of his, you know, doctrine of sovereignty, which prefers monarchy, but nevertheless the basis of it is a more democratic basis. So when when Homp says that, like right in the keyway at the beginning, he says it can be actually read separately and it's got its own principles is this conversation we're having right now about these various sort of tensions between human passions are those insofar as those have a sort of moral or normative character, are those the separate principles that he means?

Yeah. Yeah. So I would say this where everything we're talking about in the last few minutes, I think presupposes that we're doing what Hobbes himself does is entering into the discussion of it sort of on its own terms as it presents itself in ordinary life as we know it through experience and possibly also introspection. What we're not doing for all of this is referring back to the mechanistic materialism and saying, Oh, but because of the mechanistic materialism, they are therefore this follows for this motive and this follows without knowing.

So that's what we're not doing. So yeah, we're entering into it in that spirit in the fat and hot, all these questions come up in the point, which we see more than other just separate. And then I said, well, that can't be quite right either. What are the connections?

And one connection is this, I start from the fact that they're kindred in their spirit, which is a somewhat vague way of putting it. What I'm trying to capture with that is that there's a kind of reductionism and hostility to all things exalted and transcendent that is a part of his political philosophy is more political philosophy. And one can wonder whether his understanding of nature as just matter in motion made him more inclined to such a view of human life. In other words, whether that kinship has, again, I don't think it's that it's simply derivative from the natural philosophy, but did the natural philosophy put a kind of stamp on his thinking so that somebody who comes to these questions with that view of nature is more inclined to a kind of reductionist vision of human life as well.

And so I suspect, yes, but I think it's very hard, maybe impossible to sort out exactly how much that's the case or how that what the cause the force is there, but the kinship in spirit suggests some interconnection to so that's one point. Another point I make is that the natural philosophy is a kind of necessary, partly rhetorical ground clearing for the political philosophy. And what I mean by that is it's meant to sober people up to bring people down from their exalted heights and superstitious notions to move them from a kind of superstitious fear to a healthier form of fear that faces our condition and it's true harshness as Hobbes' high spot. So it's meant to kind of rain on the parade of the exalted hopes that other thinkers inspired in what has regarded as dangerous ways.

I've found this very persuasive, it's clearing the ground as you say, making you psychologically receptive for his political teaching. Like, oh my God, the universe is awful. Not just the state of nature is awful, but not just the state of nature is awful. The whole day in cosmos is awful.

And the more one believes that the more one is in a frame of mind or frame of soul to be receptive to the habeasian political project. So that's another connection. And then the most complicated and difficult one is this possibility that I talk about without coming down clearly about whether this is the case or not that as Hobbes is one of the main arguments in my long chapter on Hobbes' natural philosophy is that Hobbes' natural philosophy was directed against a theistic conception of nature or of the whole. But that Hobbes couldn't fully vindicate his atheistic conception.

And so that his complicated reasons that I try to sort out in the second chapter, Hobbes' natural philosophy, it seems to me, and I think Hobbes shows an awareness of this, doesn't decisively settle the question of whether natural necessity or divine will is the fundamental principle of things. And then I talk in the subsequent chapters about his critique of religion, which I think also is trying to address the same problem, but is similarly inconclusive. And that opens up the possibility that Hobbes somehow, and I use that vague word very intentionally, somehow hoped that his political philosophy would help to address this not fully digested, not fully resolved question by showing that if moral and political life were put in the right condition that belief would weaken and perhaps even fade away and that that would be a theoretical point for Hobbes. So that's the most complicated suggestion I was hoping and writing the book to get more clarity on that than I actually was able to achieve.

One thing I'll say, you apologize earlier for having such a long chapter, but one of the things I like about this book and really everything you write is that every step is very clear and well argued for it. And then you always are very clear about what you cannot show, and that's one of the things where you sort of entertain a few possibilities in trying. So it's almost like to kind of put these pieces together, right? It seems like the natural philosophy has this ground clearing role, right?

It almost sounds like Epicureanism a little bit, right? Like you give this mechanistic account and all of a sudden, stop worrying about the gods so much you started to join life with. And if that whole project seeds, the political philosophy in a way has a theoretical outcome, possible theoretical outcome, which again you hesitate to say that this was Hobbes deliberate intention, right? It's sort of there's no evidence it seems like to decide this, but it might play a kind of theoretical role in ultimately if human beings can be satisfied with this and they can attain a relative amount of sort of artificially humanly contrives happiness, right?

Or contentment with this kind of life, this would ultimately show that there is no need for this other thing or that it doesn't actually make sense of the whole. There is this other sort of thing. Yeah. And if under such conditions, belief and claims of religious experience had a tendency to wither and fade away, that would be a telling point.

But there may not be a decisive point, but it would be at any rate of very telling. Yeah, as I think it is. I mean, there's a lot we can learn from the effects of Hoss's project. Yeah.

Although, yes, although I would say if one thinks of that way, you're right, but it's also maybe a lot more mixed in its results because there's been, I think, more resistance and discontent. Then Hobbes would have anticipated with modern secularism and with this new form of politics. That's one of the things that's sort of a subtle for me that's running throughout here is that in as much as there is, there isn't this sort of natural flow simply from the natural philosophy on in insofar as there is this moral judgment in favor of this greater sort of peacefulness and equality. And it is a kind of experiment you could even say, right?

It does seem like Hobbes was destined to provoke these sorts of reactions. You cite Nietzsche and you alluded to it in a couple of places. But I think you even have a footnote referred to Strauss's German IELISM. So I was throwing Spengler and Younger and Schmitt and all these figures.

It does seem like insofar as there is that moral basis, these people raise maybe a not well thought out, but they have a justifiable reaction or suspicion of this sort of habeasian project is not wholly able to satisfy the deepest longings, which maybe they find expression in religion, maybe they find expression in nationalism or something like that. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. I agree with that. But I think especially the fact that they, at least in some parts of the world, have a much harder time finding expression in religion, has opened up some or did open up some new dangers.

And I mean, the peace and German IELISM I think brings out that most clearly. I mean, the danger of where that headed is obvious. But what I was especially struck by in the German IELISM piece was, and the reason I said it in a footnote is Strauss's suggestion that one of the things moving the German IELISM was a concern for nobility for a disrespected noble and that it was a kind of the despised of a despised principle. And so yeah, so, and I think Hobbes himself would have been surprised by that or would not have anticipated that.

And therefore, I think it's a reason to go back and wonder whether Hobbes is understanding of human nature and human beings is wholly adequate or is capacious enough. On that sport, Devin, I mean, so one of the questions I would ask is, so these critics of dirty, which are implicitly different critics of Hobbes and others, are they missing something in Hobbes? I mean, you make a pretty persuasive case that there is a morality here. There are moral concerns.

And so, you know, maybe ultimately these guys do have a point. But what are the moral concerns as Hobbes sees the role they play in human striving? Maybe especially in this case. Yeah, they are.

I would say they don't. I don't think they necessarily misunderstand Hobbes at least all that much. I mean, because I think the one complicated moral concern in Hobbes himself that I try to bring out is not something that I think would satisfy them. They wouldn't say, yes, that's what we have in mind.

I mean, the way it comes up in my chapter is I try to show that Hobbes' account of what I call his account of human striving human nature is almost entirely amoral. In other words, he's trying to give an account of human action, human striving that writes moral concerns out of the picture and replaces the explanatory principle. The new explanatory principles are pleasuring power. But then I raise the question of whether it's simply true to say that it's amoral.

And then I turn to this very difficult question concerning the basic right to pursue self-preservation in the state of nature and whether that does or does not have a moral character. And the reason it's complicated is that Hobbes says essentially a contradictory thing about it. And on the one hand, he says, there's no right and wrong in the state of nature. There's no good and evil.

There's no sin, essentially prior to law, all those notions have no meaning. But then I kind of dig into his argument about this fundamental right to pursue self-preservation. And I asked the question of whether that, you could say we have the right in the state of nature to do whatever we want. Or not entirely, let me correct that.

To do whatever we think is necessary for our self-preservation, no action is off limits. But that doesn't seem to mean, although the evidence is complicated and mixed in this in Hobbes, that we have the right to do whatever we want, or what any reason at all. In other words, he seems to exonerate actions that are done for the sake of our survival in a way that he's not willing to exonerate actions that are done for the sake of glory seeking and loarding it over others and all of that. And one could argue that that's just a rhetorical distinction in Hobbes because he thinks the one motive is politically beneficial and the other's politically pernicious.

And I try to argue in the book why I think it makes more sense to take it as an authentically intended suggestion of Hobbes, not just as a rhetorical sleight of hand. But one of the things that you draw out very nicely, and this makes it difficult for me, is what makes it moral is that we wouldn't blame or we would maybe exonerate someone who did these things to save their lives. We would not find it absurd or reprehensible or against right reasons to use Hobbes' language if one tried to defend oneself in this way. But it's hard for me to make that next step.

Okay, we would excuse it. Therefore it's right. I mean, that's a hard step to take. I wouldn't blame you for smacking David Barr in the face and saying, your nature is stealing his banana.

But is it right to do that? I think what he means by right there is that we have a, it's not genuinely, you're not truly culpable, you're not truly blameable. The way he puts it in the Republic, we ought to be allowed. Now it's not clear who's doing the allowing and I raise his point in the book and it seems to make sense of that phrase you seem to have to bring back in the notion of a pre-civic moral law.

And it's not clear that it's implicit in saying that certain actions for certain motives are quote unquote allowed and other actions for other motives are not allowed. But I would say it's right in the sense of permissible. It's not right in the sense of no blossom. Yeah, okay.

Well, we ought to be, we can't reasonably be criticized. But again, that only extends to actions that are done for the sake of self-preservation. What I've said is more emphatically in De Kiwe, nothing but the concern to survive excuses taking another's life. And so there I think, and so, you know, I try there, somehow, somewhat, I have to do it to some extent in the footnotes to kind of get really in the weeds of this.

I do think the evidence is really mixed. And one reason I suggest that the evidence is mixed. I say this with some hesitation because I don't want to whack a straw man, but that I think Hobbes' own thinking on this point was not fully clear. And one of the moments where I try to do this cautiously, but I do do it at a few points in the book where I kind of come in and raise more critical reflections.

I didn't write my book primarily as a critique or attack on Hobbes or anything like that, but I do try to, you know, there's a few moments where I come in and raise some critical thoughts and that this is one of them. Can I bring up one of those just because since it's apropos of your last remark. One that I thought was sort of interesting that maybe this sort of thought is beyond sort of Hobbes' sort of, you know, the, what he was thinking about what you talked about were at one point, right? And then the idea of this kind of liberalism, which is, you know, you've got this, this understanding of politics that, right?

What page do you want to ask? I'm on page 230 and you're going to go for it, but you've got this understanding of government that doesn't ask too much of you, right? Yeah. There's something kind of pleasant.

What happens when you get war, right? So the difficulty is whether such a teaching does not make it even harder than it already is for the Commonwealth to ask, ask its citizens to sacrifice their self-interest when such sacrifices are necessary for the common good. And then what I just thought about immediately was, well, wait, technology kind of solves that problem, right? Where we can fight with nerds on computers and on their couches, you know, drinking Dr.

Pepper and that takes care of itself. But I mean, obviously Hobbes knew bacon and bacon, right, in the New Atlantis. It's very clear, right? There are all these engines and guns and we're sort of first-world machines that sort of solve the foreign policy problem and sort of push in the direction you could say like a world state or something like that, even right?

And I would say something about that. I would say that's ultimately consistent with the logic of Hobbes' outlook. And by that, I don't mean that Hobbes says that or goes so far or takes those steps or even sort of raises it as a vision. He doesn't do that, but it is.

It's sort of the habeasian vector gone much further. So yeah, I think that kind of solution is in keeping with the spirit. It brings out, I would say, the difference of outlook with the German nihilists even more vividly or starkly shows. Yeah, then you get somebody like younger in total mobilization.

It's like, this is great. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah, I was thinking of that. I mean, they would think that a world that moved beyond where we said nerds on computers is to them.

That would be a despicable world. But not for Hobbes. Should we return to the role of reason or is rationalizing? I feel like we've been jumping around a bit, but I want to make sure that we get through all the points.

Yeah, maybe can I go back and jump in on one thing? Because we were talking about the way in which Hobbes' project, the morality and Hobbes. And I just wanted to add one other thing to it that I didn't say. It's another point that I think would not satisfy the later modern discontent, but it's in a way another source of their discontent.

So I make this argument, which we've been talking about that right in the state of nature ends up having a certain moral meaning for Hobbes. But I try to, which I suggest he wasn't fully conscious of. I try to draw a very sharp distinction between that and the moral books, in some sense moral project, that he is entirely conscious of through his laws of nature. And so the rational morality that he sketches out in the way, not in the state of nature, but in the wake of the discussion, the state of nature as the response or the answer to the state of nature.

And there what I try to argue is that Hobbes is offering a new moral outlook for the world. One that on the one hand makes morality much less demanding, much simpler, much tamer, but therefore much more rational and consistent with self-interest. And in that sense, Hobbes, I think, helps that in motion a kind of modern moral outlook that I think is part of what that is moral in a way, but it's not the kind of morality that the youngers of the world were yearning for, were eager to try to restore. In fact, it's not that it's deeply antithetical to that.

Most people are, if you're right that Hobbes sort of drawn this main divide between these two types, the ambitious or glary seeking type and this other ease, pleasure seeking type, this more rational morality might be very appealing to the large, vocal mankind. Especially if you're going to see her from their other deep longings or fears in a way that he's trying to do it. And if you look at how this is played out in modern times, the evidence is very, very mixed, but it's not that everybody just spit this out and that there was no appeal to it whatsoever. In many ways, it succeeded tremendously in winning the world.

It's just never, this just left a lot of discontent and rebellion in its way. But if you're right that he was never fully satisfied with his own reputation of the theological account of things, would he have allowed himself there for a seed that this might not have been fully persuasive in the way that he hoped? Like you mean, he had an incentive in other words, as your thought that well, if he had an incentive because this whole thing was in his own mind helping to address a problem that he was still knowing at and then that would give him a kind of psychological incentive to be more hopeful or optimistic about and to under downplay. I guess my question is I'm just trying to make sense of what would you know, if you're right that he's sort of not, if he's missing a piece, what is it that's leading him to miss this piece?

I mean, I don't know that that's a confirmable thing, of course, it does seem to me a very plausible thing to say that if he had something like that strengthening his incentive to, in other words, a hopefulness about about remaking the world. It reminds me a little bit, you guys may know this passage in natural right in Strauss's natural right in history, where it's in the discussion of Hobbes there. But Strauss is talking about sketching out the habeasian vision and he's talking about the uses of the formulation, the city of man to be built on the ruins of the city of God as an expression of this habeasian hope. And then he raises the question, well, why were these modern Machiavellian Hobbes so hopeful where there was so much ground for despair with so much reason for despair.

And he gives an explanation that this this kind of intoxication with the hope for progress in this world, you know, in a way clouded their vision about the problem of eternity to which their project was no solution. So it comes up, it comes up there too. And I think he's suggesting a way that the fact that they had their, you could say they had so much skin in the game. I'll just leave it at how they had so much skin in the game with the vision of this leading to so much such a more rational and enlightened future that that might have made him less awake to the possible sources of dissatisfaction with it.

Alex found the page, I'll go ahead and read it on page 175 and natural right in history. Strauss says, still what is certain is that man's natural state is misery. The vision of the city of man to be erected on the ruins of the city of God is an unsupported hope. Yeah.

Yeah, there is this one. Yeah, and then I think in the very next paragraph he says, well, why and he, and he, I think it's a very important paragraph for Strauss's view that the question of eternity got eclipsed in modern times. And he has, and he's wondering why did the question of eternity get eclipsed in modern times and part of the suggestion there is the hope for progress in this world at that moment was so powerful and strong that they lost sight of the, he says, no, what is it no skippionic vision reminds them of the futility of all that man can do so. Yeah, it's interesting.

He is maybe a little more emphatic on this. It's been a while since I've read the Hobbes chapter in natural and history, but he draws a direct connection between Hobbes and Hegel and finally, Nietzsche, which is you leave the state of nature so as to attain a better life. And this is part of this project and Hobbes's work is in way part of this project of pushing us further down this trajectory of history or even rationalist, if you're looking at the alien route, but ultimately because there's a sort of progress and you don't really know what the end looks like and there's a kind of mystery that's sort of looming there because it's not predetermined and not clear and grounded in an sort of intelligible count of the whole, it becomes open to reinterpretation, right, the trajectory of history. And so when you get these sort of discontent late moderns that we've been talking about, and this is in a way is critique of schnet, right, is that they're not overcoming Hobbes, they're very much operating within certain elements of his thought, and therefore sort of predetermined in the sort of historical trajectory, and they've lost this more fundamental question.

And so maybe another way to look at this is we've talked about these two peaks of Aristotle's ethics right justice and greatness of soul, but there's a third peak that Strauss draws our attention to in the Hobbes book which is dynoetic virtue or right the contemplative life, which is also lost, but it seems to have been lost in some of the readings that Hobbes was doing of of Aristotle and some of the digest I guess that he was was reading and it seems like one of the responses to this is to reopen that question of the whole right which also involves positing this third life right that Hobbes is not directly confirmed right which is the you mean some of the response are you thinking now particularly about Strauss's own responses that we have particularly Strauss's response and you know client a lot of these thinkers who are trying to open up a path to the agents not in a high to Gary way right or even in each way but in this in this way that sort of tries to rescue this in the past. Yeah, right. And I mean I ultimately think by the way you mentioned that I think this is that stake in the thoughts on Machiavelli as well, which I argue which I intend to argue is a deep rich appreciation of Machiavelli great sympathy for Machiavelli but ultimately critical of Machiavelli to some extent along the grounds you've been you've just that that that the theoretical life loses some of its status and clarity. I think Strauss thought that that begins even even with begins even with Machiavelli but why that happened is is is a very difficult thing to sort out.

I lean that same deep sympathy in your book for hops but ultimately critical. Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, I love hops and you know his his directness his lack of pretension his noble spirit.

I have a deep affection for him and but yes but nevertheless as you guys have seen I do raise these critical which I mean I sort of also I had two thoughts when I wanted to understand him more than I wanted to critique him. I also wanted to try to earn the right a little bit to make the more critical statements that I do at certain points. So because a lot of people like to just use hops as a kind of whipping the crude low, you know, boring grumpy old hops whereas I think his works are sparkling with clarity and with and and and you know he's so clear sighted and straight forward that it really helps helps me. You can get I feel like I could really get my teeth into hops as thought because he's so he's so clear.

Well, Devin, is there anything else that we should have covered in this chapter? I feel like we kind of hit most the high points. Yeah, anything you get anything more you guys would like to take up? I'd be happy to take up.

I'd be happy to address. Alex, you're you look pensive. Yeah, I don't know. I'm hesitant because I wanted to talk a little more about stress on how's but just the way that you were putting that I'm reminded of that.

There's a statement natural in history on page 166 where he says he's so enjoyable writer because he's almost boyish, he's never feeling humanity and his marvelous care in force. And then he says he was deservedly punished for his recklessness, especially his country man. He exercised it very, very. Yeah.

So, yeah. He talks about just the decried name right? The lock and by lock. So yeah, this is interesting.

It's an interesting thing to me that Strauss, you know, it seems to me you can see what who was stress paid an awful lot of attention to hops. I mean, he wrote that early book on hops and then he came back to him figures very prominently in natural writing history and then in that piece on the basis of hops as political philosophy, a few other things. So it seems to me that in Strauss's account of modernity, hops is an absolutely crucial figure. And it's not an obvious, you know, that I think for those of us who have come up with a kind of Strausian education that's maybe more seems more obvious to us than it ought to.

You know, why why so much emphasis on hoves, some much less on bacon, much less on Descartes and then sort of only kind of later to Machiavelli. Yeah, it seems like at least for Strauss that it turned to Hobbes was in part related to his concern with sort of the fate of liberalism in Germany right? I'm not sure. Yeah.

I'm sure let me ask you a question more generally because it just occurred to me, right? Your first book was on book one of the Republic. Big chunk of that's not through civic is your second one's on the core, he's got calories and now hops. Is there a sort of, I don't want to say you can put an L.A.

Encline side to my mind. You seem to have a type right and then Machiavelli right like bad boys. Yeah, but in every case, it's not the bad boy wins the you know wins the hour. So, but yeah, I suppose, I mean, you know, although I say that with the Republic book, I really was the Pole of Marcus section of the Republic.

You know, most of all that most of all grab me more than the through some of his part, but I'll say that to try to wiggle off the hook. That would be a good point of which we can ask about your own intellectual education, your own intellectual biography. How did you get interested in this? Have you always been interested in these things?

Was there a turn at your, when the lights came on at some point? Was there a teacher? Is there a moment? There was a moment where the lights really came on.

I, you know, I didn't really probably like most everybody in our field. I didn't really know political philosophy from the whole on the ground when it went to college. But just by luck, I went, I went to Kenyan college as an undergrad and had some, I had some terrific teachers there. Peter Ehrenstorf, Pam Jensen, Fred Baume and Rob Goldberg, at Harry Chlorz.

I really just looked. I just happened to wander into the right classrooms. But for the first couple years of college, I was, you know, I was somewhat busy with other things. I was playing a lot of tennis.

I wasn't a specially serious student. I was very interested, but I didn't really grab me. The moment the lights really came on, where it was a kind of odd situation. I was going the first semester of my junior year on a foreign exchange or foreign study abroad program.

I was going to Kenya for the semester and I was about to leave. You want to change a few numbers of letters in the place where you were studying that? I was like, I know it sounded exotic to me. I'm always really friendly.

It's not like an exotic thing to do. And then as I was about to leave and my dad, who's a sociology professor, kind of left leaning, sociology professors, who served surprising the way that he did this. He said, you have any reading for the plane? I said, no, he said, take this book with you and read it because it's getting a lot of attention these days closing.

He handed me the closing American mind. And it just got me at a moment of my life where I had started to really be interested in this stuff, but I hadn't put all my chips on the table. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. And it made me immediately discontent with this program I was on in the cultural relativism nation message of the thing.

But it made me really eager to get back to Kenya and start studying political philosophy more seriously. So, you know, it was sort of, as a blue was saying to me, I know you're hungry. I know why you're hungry and I know where the food is. And so after that moment, that was the light bulb for me reading reading closing American mind.

When I came back to Kenya, I was then much just poured myself into it. And then, you know, my senior year at Kenya, just another fortuitous thing, Chris rule came to give a lecture there in my senior year on reading Plato today. That's on YouTube. Yeah, on YouTube.

Yeah. Yeah. He gives a very, very someone at the very end asked him a question and answer for you. Ask him a question about what Plato teaches about racism and slavery or something like this or sexism.

His answer was fantastic. Well, he's only claims to learn from a space on one hand and from another lady in the symposium. And there's this nice example of him teaching a slave in the mean. And I thought, man, that's really brilliant.

Nice disarming response. But I watched the whole lecture. Fantastic. And so, yeah, that convinced me.

I thought, you know, I want to go to that guy. And so then I went to Boston College after I graduated from Kenyan. And that was a terrific experience. BC was great.

So the rest is just wrong. Well, then I went to St. John's as Alex mentioned, I don't know if we were on air or not, but I'll mention that. But yeah, I went to St.

John's. I mean, from Boston College, I went to St. John's Annapolis for a year. I liked a lot and would have stayed.

It just so happened that during that year, the chance to move back to Kenya came up and saw it. And then I went back to Kenyan intending to make a life there, intending to just stay for good. My wife was less crazy about that idea than I was. She doesn't like North Central Ohio.

It's fantastic. What does it feel like? Yeah. So anyway, so anyway, so I was there for five years and then came down here at the Austin.

Very good. Well, we do something a little bit indulgent of gray for Greg. Right. Right.

Folks at home, they like it. They like it. Yeah. So Greg likes to do lightning round.

All right. Yeah. Let me ask one question. I was reading.

Alice always says my name. I think she had a story from one of Devin's students. I got it in here. Don't worry.

Listen, I was reading your acknowledgments and you have this lovely acknowledging of your wife, Dina, and stuff. Right. And then he said, Deomides was right when he said that it is better when two go together. That's right before him.

That's not a very good line for a bunch of people. So that's a guy who had somebody got the joke. So is that just a really nerdy way of saying she's your partner in crime? Yes.

Yes. Yeah. So, Terry tribute to my partner in crime. Not exactly going out to murder Trojans, but yeah.

Yeah. I wanted it to be a beautiful sounding thing with the, you know, like dark underside to the joke. Right. I had a similar character.

I'm glad you got it. But I officially David's wedding and I compared his love for his wife to that of Achilles for a close rope. Yeah. All right.

Devin, my first question is who's your favorite philosopher? Plato. Favorite work of philosophy? The Republic.

This is how lightning round should go. Ladies and gentlemen, folks at home, you other professor should be sharing your self's favorite non philosopher writer. Oh, I'm lightning salooned down. He's got a phone.

Okay. No, no, that doesn't. George Orwell in Hemingway. Wow.

You early ones. Okay. Give a favorite work of literature. Sun also rises.

Okay. Have you read any nicknames? We leave those out. Fair enough.

What is your greatest physical accomplishment? What is my greatest physical accomplishment? That's right. Is physical like athletic?

Yeah, sure. Or maybe you hiked Mount Everest? I don't know. Was my senior year, I was an old American legislator.

That's pretty damn impressive. That's very impressive. That's very impressive. Yes.

I was hoping it was going to be a student, a current student here is named Derek Booring. He tells me that your greatest physical accomplishment is jogging while carrying a single two and a half pound barbell. Apparently doing five pounds. Maybe I get it wrong.

Is it wrong? It's more embarrassing than that. Okay. I was doing COVID.

I started doing kettlebell parries around the neighborhood. I see. So, yeah. That's not nearly as embarrassing a kettlebell.

Yeah, that's not embarrassing at all. I carry kettlebells around the hood. He made a sound like you had one dumbbell. That's no, no, no, no.

He's good. No, that's not as embarrassing. That's not how you find David want to ask a question. We use to embarrass because it has a bit of a way.

But he wanted to know if you could get him some free French bread pizza. Oh, what would you do about free French bread pizza? The software. Oh, that's so beautiful.

Right. All right. That's the stuff. What's the best place you've ever visited?

The best place I've ever visited. I don't know if this is the best place I've ever visited. I spent a year in Munich and loved it. So I was not a adult in Munich.

Very good. That's pretty nice. What was your first car? It was a real rundown Toyota semi sports car that I got in grad school that quickly acquired the name the lemon.

Because it was a lemon. What was your first job? I was a frozen yogurt dispenser at a frozen yogurt store in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I can't believe it's not.

What's that? Please don't be like that or the country's best yogurt. I don't think it was actually TCB. I was like one.

It was one of the TCB. The country's second best yogurt. I'm clearly like Ruby from having a newborn because when you said I was a dispenser. You know, you told me I don't really want to be full of handle.

You're very queen kind of style. I think that was probably my first job. I was also, yeah, I've done a fair amount of that kind of stuff when I was young. Fair enough.

Last question. I said, John, another job related question. What would you think you would be if you had not become a professor? Oh, I'm going to go journalist.

Nice. Very good. Very good. Well, I'll speak for the new thank you folks here.

This was a treat. I really enjoyed Alex and I were talking before you hopped on. It really is a very clear, proceed step by steps. I really enjoyed the chapter.

Really enjoyed the book. What's the title of the book again, Alex? Bob's is Kingdom of Light, Study of the Foundations of Modern Political Philosophy. Sold wherever academic books are sold, Amazon, I guess.

Chicago, University of Chicago. And we'll look forward to that book, that forthcoming book, Thoughts on Machiavelli. I mean, we can gather again. Yeah, that'd be a lot of fun.

Maybe we could do an episode on Strauss on Hobbes, even or something like that. We'd love to have you back anytime. It's been a real treat. Thanks folks at home.

Don't forget, like, rate, subscribe, anything else, David? Okay. All right. There we are.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.