The scholastic’s dilemma: Hobbes critique of scholastic politics and papal power on the Leviathan frontispiece

ABSTRACTThe idea that the Leviathan frontispiece offers a visual summary of the contents of the work is widespread. However, the analysis of the frontispiece often under-explores Leviathan's text or leaves certain iconographic elements aside. In discussions of the Scholastics ‘Dilemma’ emblem, for instance, the image is commonly reduced to a representation of ‘logic’ or ‘scholasticism’, leaving aside the intricate interrelationship between the objects present in the image and their connection with the content of the book. This paper argues that this image helps understanding Hobbes’ critique of Scholastic doctrines and their political effects in Leviathan. For Hobbes, these supposedly pure philosophical concepts either in logic (trident of the ‘Syllogism’) or metaphysics (‘Real/Intentional’ bident) hide a central part of Scholastic thought: a ‘seditious’ political conception claiming that the Pope has an indirect right to temporal power in affairs concerning spiritual matters theory (‘Spiritual/Temporal’ and ‘Direct/Indirect’ bidents). The Scholastic model made the common people believe that the Pope would have at least as much authority as the Sovereign. When faced with the choice between obeying either the Pope or their Civil Sovereign the subjects would find themselves in a dangerous ‘Dilemma’.KEYWORDS: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)politicsmetaphysicsRobert Bellarmine (1542–1621)frontispiecescholasticism AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Gerson Tadeu Astolfi Vivan Filho, Francisco Basso Schroeder, Northon dos Santos Bernardes, Mariana Kuhn de Oliveira, Manon Westphal, and Alexandra Chadwick for their feedback on the first draft of this paper. I am also grateful to Laurens van Apeldoorn, Maria Isabel Limongi, and Paulo MacDonald for their insight into structural strategies for the final draft. Moreover, I am deeply indebted to Johan Olsthoorn and Wladimir Barreto Lisboa for their dedication, support, and guidance throughout all the versions of this manuscript.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See also: BE, 224–31. Hobbes’ works are abbreviated as follows: VCE – Vita, Carmine Expressa, in Opera Philosophica, I, 81–99; Lev – Leviathan. The English and Latin texts, 2 vols., ed. N. Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); BE – Behemoth in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. 6, ed. W. Molesworth (London: Molesworth, 1840).2 For the function of the frontispiece as a visual summary of the work, see: Carlo Ginzburg, Paura, Reverenza, Terrore. Cinque Saggi di Iconografia Politica (Milano: Adellphi Edizioni, 2015), preface, §7; Giorgio Agamben, Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm (Homo Sacer II, 2) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 25; Quentin Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 284.3 David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 89. For different approaches concerning Leviathan’s audience, see: Gary Shapiro, ‘Reading and Writing in the Text of Hobbes's Leviathan’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 18, no. 2 (1980): 147–57; Tracy Strong, ‘How to Write Scripture: Words, Authority, and Politics in Thomas Hobbes’, Critical Review 20, no. 1 (1993): 128–59; Geoffrey Vaughan, ‘The Audience of Leviathan and the Audience of Hobbes's Political Philosophy’, History of Political Thought 22, no. 3 (2001): 448–71.4 For texts that relate this emblem to Hobbes’ critique to Scholastic’s doctrines, see: Margery Corbett and Ronald Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-Page in England 1550–1660 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1979), 228; Aloysius Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 366; Marco Bertozzi, ‘Thomas Hobbes. L’enigma del Leviatano (1983). Un'analisi della storia delle immagini del Leviathan’, Storicamente 3, no. 12 (2007): 8; Quentin Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 194; Quentin Skinner, ‘The Material Presentation of Thomas Hobbes’s Theory of the Commonwealth’, in The Materiality of Res Publica: How to Do Things with Publics, ed. D. Colas and O. Kharkhordin (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 134; Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, 279; Justin Champion, ‘Decoding the Leviathan: Doing the History of Ideas’, in Printed Images in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation through Images, 1651–1714, ed. M. Hunter (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2010), 261; Magnus Kristiansson and Johan Tralau, ‘Hobbes's Hidden Monster: A New Interpretation of the Frontispiece of Leviathan’, European Journal of Political Theory 13, no. 3 (2013): 303–4; Susanna Berger, The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 195.5 See: Corbett and Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece, 228; Bertozzi, Thomas Hobbes. L’enigma del Leviatano, 8; Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies, 32; Champion, ‘Decoding the Leviathan’, 261; Kristiansson and Tralau, ‘Hobbes's Hidden Monster’, 303–4; Agamben, Stasis, 34; Berger, The Art of Philosophy, 195; Noel Malcolm, ‘General Introduction’, in Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 128–40.6 See: Keith Brown, ‘The Artist of the Leviathan Title-Page’, The British Library Journal 4, no. 1 (1978): 31; M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics’, History of Political Thought 11, no. 4 (1990): 649; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 366; Carl Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (London: Greenwood Press, 1996), 18; Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, 194; Skinner, ‘The Material Presentation of Thomas Hobbes’s Theory’, 134.7 Skinner only lists the ‘Syllogisme’ trident, and completely ignores one of the iconographic elements present there, namely the horns containing the word ‘Dilemma’. See: Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, 279–80.8 See: Martine Pécharman, ‘Hobbes on Logic, or How to Deal with Aristotle’s Legacy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes, ed. A. Martinich and K. Hoekstra (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Cees Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on Sense Perception and Imagination’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan, ed. P. Springborg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 82–108.9 See: Gianni Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences and Its Sources’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan, ed. P. Springborg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 337–57; Patricia Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine: Leviathan and “the Ghost of the Roman Empire”’, History of Political Thought 16, no. 4 (1995): 503–31; Matthew Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, Journal of Moral Theology 4, no. 2 (2015): 43–62.10 Since I agree with the thesis that the frontispiece works as a visual summary of the work (Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, 284), I decided, as a methodological approach, to use exclusively the frontispiece, and the English and Latin versions of the Leviathan, and to bracket support that other Hobbes’ works might provide.11 All Leviathan quotes are from Leviathan. The English and Latin texts, 2 vols., ed. N Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).12 For Hobbes critique on Scholastic’s metaphysics, see: Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics’; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan; Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’; Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense’; Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’; Rose, ‘Hobbes contra Bellarmine’; Pécharman, ‘Hobbes on Logic’; Timothy Raylor, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes; Lodi Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).13 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. ‘Dilemma’.14 Ibid.15 Corbett and Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece, 228.16 The Latin Leviathan text omits this passage.17 See: Cees Leijenhorst, ‘Hobbes, Heresy, and Corporeal Deity’, in Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion, ed. J. Brooke and I. Maclean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 193–222.18 See: Douglas Jesseph, Squaring the Circle: The War Between Hobbes and Wallis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999); Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People; Cees Leijenhorst, Hobbes and the Aristotelians: The Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes’s Natural Philosophy (Utrecht: Zeno Institute for Philosophy, 1998); Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’.19 According to Malcolm, these letters cannot be found in the correspondence of Leo III or Charlemagne: ‘Possibly there is a confused reference here to the Council of Chalon-sur-Saone (813), which required the setting up of “schools”, in accordance with Charlemagne’s orders’ (Noel Malcolm, ‘Notes’, in Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), aj, 1074). See also: BE, 213–18.20 When these students were ‘unable to settle metaphysical disagreements by reason or temporal authority’, they had to ‘look to spiritual authorities and their alleged sacramental powers and gifts of understanding’ (Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 60). This helped the Catholic Church consolidate a hierarchical structure based on a supposed spiritually revealed order. For an in-depth analysis of scholastic disputation, see: Olga Weijers, La 'disputatio' à la Faculté des arts de Paris (1200–1350 environ): Esquisse d'une typologie (Amsterdam: Brepols, 1995); Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), especially chapter 5 ‘The Institutionalization of Disputation: Universities, Polyphony, and Preaching’.21 Corbett and Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece, 228.22 Although Hobbes continually uses the term ‘syllogism’, his use is ‘detached from any Aristotelian logical ground’, relying ‘on an etymological justification for a strict “computational” approach of reasoning’ (Pécharman, ‘Hobbes on Logic’, 33).23 A good example of syllogism created from erroneous premises and whose conclusion is a false opinion can be found in: ‘The name of fulmen excommunicationis [the thunderbolt of excommunication] proceeded from the false imagination of some Bishop of Rome who, thinking himself King of Kings, imitated the heathen poets, who assigned a thunderbolt to Jove [Jupiter]’ (Lev, 807).24 ‘The seventh [cause of Absurd conclusions], to names that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the Schooles, as hypostatical, transubstantiate, consubstantiate, eternal-Now, and the like canting of Schoole-men’ (Lev, 72).25 Pécharman, ‘Hobbes on Logic’, 26.26 Even though Hobbes criticizes ‘Aristotelian metaphysics, he did not criticize Aristotle’s logic’ (Pécharman, ‘Hobbes on Logic’, 22), his ‘main charge is not against Aristotelian logic itself, but against its theological abuse when combined with Aristotle’s metaphysical doctrine’ (Ibid., 27).27 Ibid.28 Raylor, Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes, 192.29 According to Hobbes, ‘the errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds’, leading the common person ‘into absurdities’ (Lev, 56).30 Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense’, 101.31 Words or expressions used to designate things that exist in nature or that can be ‘feign’ [fingi] in mind.32 Words or expressions such as ‘nothing’, ‘no man’, ‘infinite’, ‘indocible’, ‘three want foure’, which, although they are not the name of anything, in particular, are used for reasoning either for its correction or for its reminding, because they make us ‘refuse to admit of Names not rightly used’ (Lev, 60).33 Historically ‘the aura of Latin as a special language has all too long been used to mystify the people’ for ‘much of post-classical Latin had developed into the language of the papacy’ (Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People, 189).34 Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense’, 101–2; Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences and Its Sources’, 338–9; Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 53; Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People, 183–8 (esp. 184–5).35 Corbett and Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece, 229; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 366; Champion, ‘Decoding the Leviathan’, 261.36 Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes, 279–80. See also: Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 366.37 Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense’, 100.38 Lev, 24–5, 36–7, 968–9, 1088–9.39 Herbert Spiegelberg, ‘“Intention” and “Intentionality” in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl’, The Context of the Phenomenological Movement. Phaenomenologica, 80 (1981): 6. For a deeper analysis concerning Intentio and Intentionality see also: Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Jeffrey Brower and Susan Brower-Toland, ‘Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality’, The Philosophical Review 117, no. 2 (2008): 193–243.40 Tomas Aquinas, On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists, trans. Beatrice H. Zedler (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1968), §110.41 Spiegelberg, ‘“Intention” and “Intentionality” in the Scholastics’, 6.42 Ibid.43 Jesseph, Squaring the Circle, 206.44 Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 56.45 Jesseph, Squaring the Circle, 206.46 See: Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 57.47 Hobbes proposes that ‘Good successe is Power; because it maketh reputation of Wisdome, or good fortune; which makes men either feare him, or rely on him’ (Lev, 134).48 I agree with Leijenhorst’s suggestion that however easy it was for the people of the seventeenth century ‘to believe that sensible qualities actually exist outside us’, for Hobbes ‘these are nothing other than mechanically provoked reactions stemming from the heart, in other words nothing other than a certain motion in our bodies’ (Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense’, 99).49 For a detailed analysis concerning Hobbes’ critique to the doctrine of separated essences see: Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’, 527; Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense about Sense’, 99–101; Michael Krom, ‘Vain Philosophy, the Schools and Civil Philosophy’, Hobbes Studies 20 (2007): 95–6; Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’; Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’; Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People, 183–8.50 Although Hobbes imputes the doctrine of ‘separate essences’ to Aristotle, ‘there is not much historical foundation for doing so’ (Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’, 350). For Cicero attributed to Aristotle ‘the idea that stars have souls that move them […] (De Natura Deorum, II.xv.42), and has some basis in his writings: see On the Heavens, II.12, esp. 292a18-21’. While the ‘idea of a separate (or separable) human soul was attributed to him by some writers on the basis of On the Soul, III.5 (430a17-26)’ (Malcolm, ‘Notes’, 1080).51 Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences and Its Sources’, 344.52 Hobbes considers the Scholastic metaphysics politically dangerous because whenever the citizens ‘absurdly believe that earthly authorities are transcended by a higher spiritual authority’ (Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 58), they ‘see double and mistake their lawful sovereign’ (Lev, 734). See also: Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’; Skinner, From Humanism to Hobbes; Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’.53 See: Meirav Jones, ‘“My Highest Priority Was to Absolve the Divine Laws”: The Theory and Politics of Hobbes’ Leviathan in a War of Religion’, Political Studies 65, no. 1 (2016): 1–16; Alison McQueen, ‘Mosaic Leviathan: Religion and Rhetoric in Hobbes’s Political Thought’, in Hobbes on Politics & Religion, ed. L. Apeldoorn and R. Douglass (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 128–34; Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 54.54 See: Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’, 522; Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 56; Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People, 186.55 See: Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’, 350.56 Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People, 186.57 See: Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 59; Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’, 339.58 Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense About Sense’, 102.59 See: Ibid., 101; Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’, 339.60 See: Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense About Sense’, 102; Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 56.61 According to Hobbes, the process of excommunication necessarily needs the support of the civil power, otherwise it ‘was no more than to avoid the company of them that were [excommunicated]’ (Lev, 798). For Hobbes, the Early Church had ‘no power to bind, no power to excommunicate, no power to depose’ (Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 51). Therefore, Hobbes claims to defend ‘the practices of primitive Christianity’ by insisting that the ‘pre-Constantinian Church’ (authorized as the official religion by the state) as a ‘voluntary association of individuals’ would have no ‘coercive power’ (Ibid., 52).62 For Hobbes there cannot be ‘subordination of powers’ inferred from a ‘subordination of purposes’ (Ibid., 58).63 For Hobbes ‘this sort of terminology is not only philosophically insignificant but it has also proven to be politically pernicious’ (Nauta, Philosophy and the Language of the People, 186). See also: Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 59.64 For an analysis of the prophetical kingdom of God see: Jones, ‘My Highest Priority Was to Absolve the Divine Laws’, 8–11; McQueen, ‘Mosaic Leviathan’, 128–34.65 All quotes make reference to the King James Version of the Bible.66 ‘The “two swords” theory, based on Luke 22: 38 [KJV], was a traditional papalist teaching, embodied in the Bull of Boniface VIII Unam sanctam (1302)’ (Malcolm, ‘Notes’, bw, 983).67 Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 50.68 Although Hobbes’ passage quotes Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16: 13, instead of Romans 13, it seems fit to illustrate his point of view.69 See: Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 59.70 Hobbes sees the idea that society needs a ‘spiritual power to guide its temporal power’ – given that ‘there can be no society without a soul to rule the body politic’ (Ibid., 55) – as fallacious.71 Hobbes focused on Bellarmine and scholastics’ polemic conception of power. As Curley points out, by the claim made by Bellarmine that the Pope could not be entitled to temporal powers directly, his book entered the ‘Index at the end of Sixtus V's papacy’ (Curley, Notes, n82, 391). See also: BE, 171.72 Although Martinich theorizes that ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ refer to different ‘moods of the syllogism’ (Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 366), Hobbes does not mention this distinction in Leviathan’s text.73 Hobbes argued that the pope’s claim to any form of indirect power ‘reflects a defective understanding of both revelation and reason’ (Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 45).74 Springborg even argues that by raising points in favor of the Pope's supremacy over Christian sovereigns, his Controversiae would represent an ‘anti-Leviathan’ (Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’, 518). See also: Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 45.75 See: Johan Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (Houndmills: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1992), 114.76 See: Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’, 519.77 Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 45.78 See: Ibid., 53.79 See: Malcolm, ‘Notes’, ih, 909; Indirect: ‘Deceitful, Devious’ (OED).80 For an in-depth analysis of the issue concerning indirect power see Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, esp. 47–9; Gregorio Baldin, ‘Hobbes, Sarpi and the Interdict of Venice’, Storia del Pensiero Politico 2 (2016): 109–30; Gregorio Baldin, ‘Chiesa, scomunica e potestas indirecta: Sarpi e Hobbes, lettori di Marsilio e critici di Bellarmino’, Dianoia 28 (2019): 109–30.81 Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 47.82 Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context, 116.83 See: Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 50; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context, 115.84 See: Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine’, 521.85 See: Leijenhorst, Hobbes and the Aristotelians, 33.86 ‘Hobbes thus sees a straight-line connecting scholastic education – and its conceptual apparatus of supersensible forms, natures, souls, and essences – and the religious practices of Christian folk religion’ (Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 61).87 Ibid., 58.88 See: George Wright, ‘The 1668 Appendix and Hobbes’s Theological Project’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan, ed. P. Springborg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 392–409.89 Leijenhorst, ‘Sense and Nonsense About Sense’, 101; Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context, 114; Rose, ‘Hobbes Contra Bellarmine’, 53 and 58.90 Paganini, ‘Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences’, 339.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) [grant number 141424/2018-4] and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) [grant number 88887.583578/2020-00].