Thomas Hobbes and teaching

This week marks the beginning of tutorials, i.e. discussion sections, for the year in Exeter. They are a bright group of students and are a real pleasure to work with. Of course, English students are somewhat reticent, making tutorials a little quiet from time to time. However, on the whole they are productive.

A particular thrill is that I'm teaching the philosophers I've been researching for my PhD. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. My research is sometimes too specialized to bring into the classroom, but I'm trying to make sure that my teaching isn't just stock in trade. I want my students to be able to see that what we are studying is vital. Part of that must be to bring my own research interests into the classroom. Its a balancing act to which I'm looking forward.

Apart from this, I just want to show plenty of enthusiasm when teaching. This isn't hard since it’s the subject I love and its Thomas Hobbes. He really is a fantastic figure to teach. For one thing his thought, while subtle and penetrating, is fairly straightforward. I think, and some of my students quickly noticed, that Hobbes wants his reader to understand him. As one of my students said, "he is a transparent thinker." So, Hobbes is the kind of thinker that the students can work through in class one step at a time. That kind of analytical process viva voce is a rewarding experience.

But the thrills of the philosopher from Malmesbury don't stop there. Hobbes happens to be an extremely powerful prose writer. His writing explores the dark side of humanity in a way that few before him did as masterfully. I'll get around to putting some quotations up to show what I mean, but these lines from memory should get the point across. Concerning the problems of the state of nature or war, "and worst of all continual feare and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Leviathan, Chapter 13). And concerning justice, law and morality, "in the state of warre force and fraud are cardinall virtues.” (Leviathan, Chapter 13).

For Hobbes it is always fear that is the passion to be reckoned upon. Even though man left to his own devices through egoism, competing desires, worries over self-preservation, and love of glory will construct himself an inferno no less cruel than Dante's, fear gives man a chance for order and stability. And that is the subject for my students next week.

All in all a rewarding exercises, even if Hobbes is often disturbing. I have always agreed with my undergraduate political philosophy professor that even if Hobbes is not quite right, the dark power of his thought must be taken seriously. Even if not all people are appetitive and maniacal without political order, Leviathan has truth to it. The dark side of human nature is there, and a host of recent events testify to man's capacity for horror when order is removed by chaos. Hobbes is probably wrong to universalize this aspect of humanity, but it would be equally foolish to ignore it. Hobbes reminds us that humans have a capacity for radical self-preference, and for this he is pre-eminently valuable.