Many Appetites Hobbes

North American Philosophical Publications
The Many Appetites of Thomas Hobbes

Author(s): Paul Hurley
Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Oct., 1990), pp. 391-407
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical Publications
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History of Philosophy Quarterly
Volume 7, Number 4, October 1990
THE MANY APPETITES OF

THOMAS HOBBES
Paul Hurley
?1.0?
has been widespread dissatisfaction with desire-based ac

counts1 of practical reason
morality and positions since such received
THERE
their modern formulation in the writings of Hobbes and Hume. Yet the
strategy of critics of the desire-based theory has invariably been to allow
that Hume and Hobbes have a coherent, basically accurate account of what
desires are, but to disagree with the claim that such desires are the only
source of the motivating force of practical reason. To argue in this way, it
seems tome, is to grant precisely what should be called into question?the
that the desire-based theorist has a coherent account
assumption single,
of desire.
In what follows I will attempt to partially rectify this oversight through

returning to the historical source of the desire-based account, the work of
Thomas Hobbes2, and exploring the account of appetites which he employs,
particularly in his discussion of self-preservation. Itwill become apparent
that Hobbes appeals to not one, but several importantly distinct kinds of
appetites (Hobbes holds "appetite" and "desire" to be straightforwardly
synonymous, e.g. Leviathan, p. 39), and that his recurrent arguments
regarding the importance of self-preservation depend for their apparent

plausibility upon subtle equivocations among these various kinds of appe
tites. The first step, then, is to provide an analysis ofHobbes' account of
appetites. This analysis will be modeled upon a prior analysis ofhis account
of sensations, just as Hobbes models his account of appetites upon his own
prior account of sensations.
?2.0?
It has often been noted, although with littlemore than passing interest,
that Hobbes puts forward several radically different characterizations of
sensations which are apparently in considerable tension with each other.3
These characterizations do not occur at different chronological points in

the development ofHobbes's thought, but are all incorporated within (or
391

392 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY
at least implicit within) each of several individual presentations ofHobbes's

epistemological account. Itwill be useful to isolate the 3 different roles for
sensations to which Hobbes appeals in his epistemological account.
1 Sensations: Hobbes claims that sensations are caus
Type repeatedly
ally determined physical motions which are common to beast and man, and
nothing but such motions. Such sensations, postulated in a scientific spirit,
are, he asserts, "nothing really, but motion in some internal substance of
the head," [DeHomine, p. 31] and again, "Neither in us.. .are they anything
else, but diverse motions..." [Leviathan, p. 2] [see also Leviathan, p. 38].
The claim appears to be that "experience" can be reduced "to complex
varieties of externally stimulated motion."4 McNeilly notes that "in Levia
than, as elsewhere, Hobbes consistently describes perception, thought and
desire as physical motions. That is what they really are, in Hobbes view."5
Let us label these sensations which Hobbes characterizes as physiological
motions, and in some sense nothing but physiological motions, type 1
sensations.
2 Sensations: Hobbes also characterizes sensations as

Type repeatedly
nothing but "apparitions," [DeHomine, pp. 6 & 31] "images," [DeHomine,

pp. 2 & 6] [De Homine, p. 3], or "appearances" [De Corpore,
"conceptions,"
p. 389, Leviathan, p. 1]; mere or "fancy" [Leviathan, p. 2]. Such
"seemings"
"images" not can be, but are deceptive:

only systematically
whatsoever...qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they

be not there, but are seeming and apparitions only...[De Homine, p. 8]
At times, Hobbes readily concedes that his type 1 account of the source of
these type 2 appearances is not much more than speculation [De Corpore,
p. 388]. Let us label the sensations which Hobbes characterizes as in some
sense nothing but [perhaps deceptive] seemings, phantasms, appearances,
or images, type 2 sensations.
Type 3 Sensations: Yet Hobbes also makes it clear that sensations are
the justificatory foundation of our edifice of knowledge, fromwhich all else
that we can know is compounded:
there be two kinds of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or
knowledge original [De Homine, p. 27, see also De Homine, p. 85, and Levia
than, pp. 17 & 52]
Knowledge here is being understood by Hobbes roughly along the lines of

the standard formula?as justified true belief:
There are two things necessarily implied in the word Knowledge; the one is
truth, the other evidence [De Homine, p. 27]
Such sensations are justified true beliefs about material objects and their
properties fromwhich all other knowledge is properly derived. Throughout
his writings Hobbes continues to be a quintessential empiricist at least in
this respect: he insists that all other knowledge is derived from and
compounded out of such sensory knowledge. I will label these sensations,

THE APPETITES OF THOMAS HOBBES 393
the ultimate intrinsically credible justificatory foundation of all that we

know, type 3 sensations.
It has been noted that certain of these roles exist in considerable tension
with others. If sensations are mere (perhaps fancies or appear
delusory)
ances, how can they be original knowledge fromwhich all other knowledge
springs? How, in short, can we possibly ever determine that such appear
ances correspond to reality if they are the only access we have to reality?6
Moreover, Hobbes manifests a tendency to slide back and forth between

characterizations in unacceptable ways. For example, Hobbes finds himself
that animals as well as men can have sensations of all three
maintaining
sorts, thus that animals can have knowledge. Yet he holds that knowledge
is justified true belief, and cashes out both truth and evidence as necessar
ily requiring speech, ofwhich animals are incapable [DeHomine, p. 28 and
Leviathan, p. 23-24].
There are, then,many disturbing tensions among the roles which Hobbes
calls upon sensations to play.7 But exploring the tensions among these roles
for sensations is not our task here. Rather, these three roles will be used,
much as Hobbes himself uses them in practice, to identify similar roles for
appetites. It is the corresponding tensions among the various accounts of
appetites which itwill be our purpose to explore, in particular through an

analysis of his arguments regarding self-preservation.
?2.1?
Type 1 sensations find their ready practical correlates in type 1 appetites:
As, in sense, that which is really within us, is [as I have said before] onely
motion, caused by the action of external objects...so, when the action of the
same object is continued...to the Heart; the real effect there is nothing but
Motion, or Endeavour; which consisteth in Appetite, or Aversion, to, or from
the object moving" [Leviathan, p. 42] [See also De Homine, 31, and de Corpore,
p. 406]
Appetites, like sensations, are mere physical motions, common to beast
and man [Leviathan, p. 48], which are postulated in a scientific spirit to

explain the possibility of voluntary (as opposed tomerely vital) motion.
Moreover, type 2 sensations find ready correlates in type 2 appetites.
Man has faculties of two sorts, of body and ofmind [De Homine, p. 2]. The
faculty ofmind itself has two components, the one "cognitive/ the other
"motive.** Type 2 sensations comprise the cognitive component; type 2
appetites the motive component. Our "affections,** Hobbes says, "such
things...as or displease us," are "but conceptions.** [Leviathan, p. 28]

please
[See also De Homine, p. 32] Such type 2 appetites are appearances to the
mind of particular states of affairs as states of affairs to which we are
attracted as pleasurable or from which we are repelled as painful. Each is:
a solicitation or provication either to draw near to the thing that pleaseth, or

to retire from the thing that displeaseth, and this solicitation...is called
appetite,...pleasure, love, and appetite, which is also called desire, are divers

names for considerations of the same thing [De Homine, p. 31. See also
Leviathan, p. 42]
And again:
pleasure therefore, [or delight] is the apparence or sense of good...and conse

quently all appetite...is accompanied with some delight more or less [Levia
than, p. 42] [See also De Corpore, p. 406]
Delight is a mere appearance, but "delight is appetite," [DeHomine, p. 33]

and this appetite is a "conception[s]," a mere appearance, which we have
"immediately by the sense" [DeHomine, p. 32]. Appetites are characterized

as mere physical motions (type 1 episodes), just as sensations are, but
appetites are also characterized as mere conceptions (type 2 episodes), just
as sensations are.
?2.2?
Sensations are appearances of states of affairs as true, and the question

is whether these states of affairs are in fact true. Appetites are appearances
of states of affairs as good, and the question would seem to be whether such
states of affairs are in fact good. However, here itmay seem that a crucial
disanalogy between sensations and appetites develops, one which Hobbes

is not only acutely aware of, but which he at times carefully exploits for
his own purposes.
The disanalogy can be approached in the following way. Although Hobbes

ismore than willing to allow that we can have sensations which are not
true, at various points in his account he is insistent that whatever type 2
the agent has, whatever appear to the agent, are
appetites appetites good
those which it is good for the agent to pursue, i.e. which the agent is
justified in pursuing. To be an object of a type 2 appetite?to appear
pleasant to the agent?is to be an end which it is good for the agent to
pursue:
Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to
himself, good; and that evil which displeaseth him...Nor is there any such
thing as absolute goodness, considered without relation...[De Homine, p. 32]
[See also Leviathan, p. 41]
It can seem, then, that type 3 appetites collapse into type 2 appetites, i.e.
are really type ^3 appetites, while type 3 and 2 sensations remain impor
tantly distinct. Moreover it appears that this is precisely the point at which
Hobbes appears at times to be intent upon engineering a parting of the
ways between his accounts of sensations and appetites. There can be no
more to being a type 3 appetite, a justified appetite, than being a type 2
appetite, whereas there is clearly a yawning gap between a type 2 sensation
and a type 3 sensation?something appearing red and something in fact
being red, for instance. The "appearance" of goodness for every man is the
"reality" of goodness for that man, whereas the appearances of type 2

sensations may fail to correspond to reality. 2 appetites, on such a
Type

reading, are type 2/3 appetites, and there is no third role which appetites
are called upon to play which corresponds to that which type 3 sensations
are called upon to play.
The result would seem to be a thoroughgoing relativism, and Hobbes is

not only aware of this result, but repeatedly argues for it.This is precisely
the disanalogy which empiricists have focused upon between sensations
and appetites?that whereas sensations are unjustified if they fail to
correspond to the world, there is no correspondence with appetites, hence
there can be no failure. The result, then, is that whatever the agent has
an appetite for, no matter what it is, is what the agent is justified in
pursuing. (Subject, let us assume, to maximizing constraints.)
?2.3?
Yet the strictly type 3 appetites which Hobbes tosses out the front door
in his meta-ethics are smuggled back in as the foundations of his moral
and political account. From the claim that whatever appears to each of us
as pleasurable and desirable is good for that person, Hobbes moves to the
claim that is an end that we cannot but pursue, an end
self-preservation
that cannot but appear to us as good [De Corpore Politico, Ch. IY Sec. 14],
and even one which we are irrational ifwe fail to pursue, since the Laws
of Nature are dictates of reason, binding upon us all, the sole motive or end
ofwhich is self-preservation [Leviathan, pp. 120 & 146-47]. Self-preserva

tion, forHobbes, is what we do want and what we ought, rationally, to
want, and other principles and ends are justified or unjustified insofar as
they further or impede self-preservation [Rudiments, p. 10]. (See Sees. 3 &
3.1 below for additional textual support for the type 3 status of the end of
self-preservation.)
This point cannot be overemphasized. From a relativist position upon

which self-preservation would not be good and would not be rational to
pursue unless the individual happened to have an appetite for it,Hobbes
repeatedly moves to a position upon which self-preservation must be good
for each person, and upon which an individual is irrational ifhe fails to act
so as to further the end of self-preservation. Within the framework of our
identification of type 1, 2 and 3 episodes, itbecomes clear that self-preser
vation is appealed to as an ultimate type 3 episode in light ofwhich others
are either justified or unjustified as means.
Here, then, is an appetite in light ofwhich other appetites are properly

deemed justified or unjustified, and in light ofwhich other appetites can
be dismissed as formerely apparent goods. Here, in short, is a type 3
appetite. Appetites, then, are 1) mere physiological motions (type 1), 2)
mere appearances of pleasure and pain, appetites and aversions with
respect to certain states of affairs (type 2), and, 3) in the case of self-pres
ervation, an intrinsically credible, naturally desired end which serves as

the foundation forHobbes's edifice ofpractical justification in light ofwhich

other apparent goods can be evaluated as means (type 3).
?3.0?
I have provided an analysis of Hobbes's account of appetites which

demonstrates that there are no less than three radically distinct types of
appetites to which he appeals at various stages of his argument. It seems
plausible, moreover, that since Hobbes himself does not clearly or consis
tently distinguish these different sorts of appetites, his account, and per
haps desire-based accounts generally, depend for their apparent
plausibility upon illicit equivocations among these various types of appe
tites. In what follows I will demonstrate that in fact precisely such equiv
ocations are at work in one of the most important arguments in Hobbes's
account, the argument for the status of self-preservation as a final and
self-sufficient end.8
The argument9, ofwhich Iwill discuss two variations, is one which seeks to
demonstrate the natural necessity of self-preservation as an ultimate ("ulti
mate" is here being used to characterize an end which is final and self-suffi
cient in the traditional, Aristotelian senses of these terms) end in terms of
which the rationality of all other ends and principles is properly evaluated.10
Hobbes repeatedly claims that the necessity ofman's desire for self-preserva
tion is a natural necessity. The many passages in the Rudiments inwhich he

makes this claim are echoed in de Corpore Politico: "Preservation," he there
argues, is "the end that everyone by nature aimeth at," and everyone
"must...call it good, and the contrary evil" [De Corpore Politico, Ch. IY Sec.
14]. Both Gauthier and Warrender argue persuasively that throughout
Hobbes's account he holds self-preservation to be "received from the uncon
trollable dictates of necessity" as an endll, that, as Hobbes himself argues,

we pursue self-preservation "by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than
that whereby a stone moves downward" [Rudiments, p. 8].
?3.1?
Self-preservation is for Hobbes a naturally given, necessary end at the
foundation of practical justification, one which every human being cannot

but have in virtue of his physiological make-up. But his account ofman as
a self-maintaining engine, of "our bodies as biologically programmed to
increase vital motion,"12 [e.g. De Corpore, p. 407] appears aimed at account
ing not only for this necessary status of self-preservation, but for its status
as the ultimate, lexically prior end as well:
Ifwe accept Hobbes's view that man is a self-maintaining engine, then.. .what
ever can be shown to be a condition of human preservation, is thereby shown
to be a means to man's end. From premises of the form "X is a necessary means
to self-preservation", Hobbes can derive conclusions of the form "a man must
do X to secure what he wants"13
Self-preservation is not merely a final end, but the final end in virtue of

which all other ends and courses of action, including the adoption of the
Laws ofNature, are properly shown to be justified or unjustified, rational
or irrational.14
To demonstrate how the type 3 end of self-preservation can readily be seen

to be augmented in these respects by Hobbes, we must first look at the role
which Hobbes calls upon Vital Motion to play in his account?as the type 1
correlate to type 3 self-preservation. Kavka and others have noted that
Hobbes appears to believe at times that he has established the general
doctrine of psychological egoism by giving an account of type 1 appetites
and their role in deliberation.15 But we will see that far more central to
Hobbes's account is his belief that he has established the ultimate end of
self-preservation through appeal to his account of type 1 vital motion.16
?3.2?
Hobbes understands all phenomena in terms of motion, living beings can be

defined only in terms of a motion common to all.17
The characteristically livingmotion towhich Gauthier alludes in the above

quote, a motion Hobbes labels "vital motion," is themotion of the blood etc.
centered around the heart. This organ is not only the source ofvital motion,
but the point of origin of all voluntary action as well. Hobbes's account of
the role of vital motion can be summarized as follows. External objects act
upon the organs of sense, setting up a pressure which moves inward. This
motion proceeds to the heart, the seat of vital motion. Coming into contact
with vital motion, the motion of sense must either help or hinder it:
when it helpeth it is called Delight, contentment or pleasure, which is nothing
but motion about the heart.. .when such motion weakeneth it or hinderith vital
motion, then it is called pain [De Homine, p. 31; see also Leviathan, p. 42, and
De Corpore, p. 407]
If the motion helps vital motion, a type 1 appetite results which manifests
itself as pleasure with respect to the object which gave rise to the motion
coupled with a type 2 appetite for that object [De Homine, p. 32]. If the
motion hinders vital motion, a type 1 aversion results which manifests
itself as pain with respect to the object which caused it and a corresponding
type 2 aversion from that object. The type 1 appetites and aversions,
themselves outwardly directed internal motions, cause us to have the type
2 appetites and aversions which motivate us to act the way we do.
The temptation is strong to conclude that to give such an account simply

is to give an account of the natural necessity of the type 3 appetite for
self-preservation as the ultimate end which every agent has, the end in
terms ofwhich all other ends are properly deemed justified or unjustified.
It can seem to account for why, in Gauthier's words, "each man seeks, and
seeks only, to preserve and to strengthen himself. A concern for well-being

is both the necessary and the sufficient ground of human action.*18
Vital motion, the motion the sole function of which is to preserve and

perpetuate the organism, is the "capo" of the type 1 episodes which deter
mines what all of our type 1 appetites, hence our type 2 appetites, hence
our motions, are to be. Thus we can desire and can act to bring
voluntary
about all and only those ends which most effectively conduce to our
perpetuation as individual organisms.
Each can only seek his own type 3 self-preservation, since his
individual
subsidiary desires and the principles for action which he adopts are one
and all determined by the type 1 vital motion the sole function ofwhich is
the perpetuation of the organism. It is not from the conceptual necessity
of self-interest but from the natural necessity of vital motion that self-pres
ervation is the ground of all that we do. The scientific styled account of
type 1 vital motion is, it can seem, the account of the natural "givenness"
of the ultimate type 3 end of self-preservation, the end which is thus
sufficient justification for adopting the laws of nature as themost effective
means of attaining it [Leviathan, p. 146-47 and 120].
?3.3?
Despite the initial attractiveness of this strategy, it ultimately proves

inadequate for Hobbes's needs. Hobbes's task is to establish self-preserva
tion as the ultimate practical justifier, i.e. as the ultimate type 3 end.
Clearly an end of self-preservation can provide practical justification, but
its status as the ultimate practical justifier is precisely the point at issue,
i.e. is precisely what is inneed of justification. Type 1 vital motion is clearly
itself immune from demands forpractical justification, since it is a mere
physical motion, and not one of the type 3 appetites forwhich such demands
for practical are even But neither can such a type
justification appropriate.
1 appetite, as a mere motion, provide the practical justification which a
type 3 end can. Specifically, it cannot provide justification for the appeal
to a type 3 end of self-preservation. The type 3 end can justify, but is in
need of justification; the type 1motion is not in need of practical justifica
tion, but neither can it provide such justification. The argument strategy
sketched above equivocates back and forth between the two, borrowing the
immunity from criticism from the first (trivial though it is) and the justi
ficatory status of the second to create the illusion of a type 3 end which it
is impossible to criticize, in the process the causal neces
running together
sity of the hypothesized type 1 physical motion with the epistemic necessity
which is claimed for the type 3 end. But if vital motion cannot justify
what can it do? The answer would seem to be obvious: it
self-preservation,
can explain why self-preservation is for each of us the ultimate end for
which criticism is fundamentally inappropriate. Yet clearly such an expla

nation begs precisely the question at issue?whether self-preservation is
such an end.
This criticism does not demonstrate that self-preservation is not a final

end, or even the ultimate end. It merely demonstrates that the appeal to

type 1 vital motion cannot secure for the type 3 end this status. The
naturally given motion, vital motion, cannot justify; the type 3 end of
self-preservation can justify, but is not given as immune from rational
criticism, much less as an ultimate end lexically prior to all others. I have
also not demonstrated that there is not a more subtle way forHobbes to
harness the appeal to vital motion in an attempt to justify pursuing
as ones sole ultimate end, a way which he may at times
self-preservation
have appealed to. It is to the consideration of just such a more sophisticated
strategy that I will now turn.
?3.4?
There may well be a more subtle strategy to which Hobbes has recourse;
a strategy through which he attempts to allow for the radical differences
between type 1 vital motion and the type 3 justificatory end of self-preser
vation, yet still attempts to ground type 3 self-preservation as the ultimate
source of all practical justification through the appeal to type 1 vital
motion. Our analysis of the previous strategy (Which Iwill refer to inwhat
follows as the "direct strategy. **)revealed that the appeal to type 1 vital
motion cannot directly establish the ultimacy of the type 3 appetite for
self-preservation. On the more sophisticated strategy it is conceded, at
least initially, that this type 1 self-preservation is not the great type 3
appetite dominating all other appetites, but rather at most the great
physiological cause of our having the multifarious type 2 & 3 appetites
which even themost superficial scrutiny or introspection reveals us to have
(even on Hobbes's own account [Leviathan, p. xi]). Vital motion is thus
compatible with our having a vast multitude of different type 2 & 3
appetites.
Yet Hobbes still requires self-preservation to be the sole ultimate type 3

end which we have, and must have, in order to anchor his ethical and
political arguments. The sophistication of the strategy for securing this
status involves maintaining both type 1 vital motion and the type 3 end of
self-preservation as distinct, thereby avoiding a straightforward illicit
equivocation, and mediating the problematic gap between the two with
type 2 appetites. Such a strategy would utilize all three different kinds of
appetites, and would appeal to type 1 vital motion as grounding the move
from type 2 appetites to type 3 self-preservation.
There are two reasons for thinking that Hobbes may have toyed with
such a strategy. The first is suggested by his repeated recourse to the
parallel between theoretical and practical reason. Recall that Hobbes
adopts the empiricist caveat?that sensations are the foundation of all
knowledge, where the latter is construed roughly as justified true belief.

Yet forHobbes sensations are type 2 episodes, mere images, which may or
may not correspond to reality. Hobbes, then, is confronted with Desc?rtese
problem, and precludes the appeal to God for a solution. How can he

overcome this difficulty? The most plausible interpretation ofwhat Hobbes

has inmind has him anticipating a Lockean causal theory of perception,
upon which we know that the type 2 sensation corresponds to reality, i.e.
is a type 3 sensation, because of our type 1 explanation. To wit, it is [very
roughly] because the best explanation ofwhy I have a circular sense-datum
is because a circular object is impinging upon my sensory apparatus, that
I can conclude that there is a circular object out there.19
The appeal to type 1 sensations does not directly justify type 3 sensations,
but it does indirectly play a crucial role in such a justification. Such an
interpretation would seem tomake the best sense of the claim that sensa
tions are merely images, but also the foundation for all knowledge. We have
already shown how Hobbes models his account of appetites upon his
account of sensations, and that he appeals to 3 types of appetites. It is
plausible to explore the possibility that he attempts to reconcile the 3 roles
for appetites roughly upon the model of the causal theory.
The second reason is explicit evidence from the text. Hobbes repeatedly
suggests that although we do desire self-preservation by nature, it is a
separate whether we are aware of this fact.20 In many of these
question
cases, the suggestion is clearly that although our type 3 end is self-preser
vation as determined by type 1 vital motion, we may not be able to see this
forest through the trees of our type 2 appetites. One passage inwhich this
suggestion is made, and the sophisticated account is strongly suggested,
appears inHobbes's early work, De Corpore Politico:
Every man by natural passion, calleth that good that pleaseth him for the
present, or so far forth as he can forsee; and in like manner, that which
displeaseth him, evil. And therefore he that forseeth the whole way to his
preservation, which is the end that everyone by nature aimeth at, must call
it good, and the contrary evil [De Corpore Politico, Ch. IV, Sec. 14]
Here Hobbes strongly suggests:

1) that by nature every man aims at self-preservation,
2) that it is a multitude of concrete type 2 appetites/pleasures which every

man has initially,
3) that through experience and reasoning a man can come to see "the whole
way" to type 3 self-preservation as his sole ultimate end.
The self-preservation which we "must call...good" (isolated in (3) above) is

clearly type 3 self-preservation. The appetites which we have for those
things which "pleaseth" us initially are clearly type 2 appetites?appear
ances of certain as The reference to the end which we
objects good.
naturally aim at would seem most plausibly to be understood as a reference
toHobbes's physiological account involving type 1 vital motion. Just as an

inference to best explanation of type 2 sensations in terms of type 1
sensations allows us to establish the type 3 status of sensations, so too an
inference to best explanation of our type 2 appetites in terms of type 1 vital

motion allows us to infer to the type 3 appetite of self-preservation as our

ultimate end. This account demonstrates how all three types of appetites
may be called into play by Hobbes in an ingenious attempt to establish the
ultimate end of self-preservation. Such an account would make sense of
the appeal to three roles of appetites, and would explain why pursuing
self-preservation as an end is in one sense physiologically determined while
in another an achievement borne of experience and careful reasoning.
?3.5?
The viability of a causal theory in epistemology is an issue of considerable

dispute; however, there would also appear to be a glaring disanalogy
between the epistemological and the practical accounts which invalidates
the latter regardless of the success or failure of the former. The disanalogy
is that whereas the causal theory of perception presupposes a set of type
2 sensations about which there is consensus, the causal theory of appetites
can presuppose no such consensus of type 2 appetites. Indeed, it is precisely
the lack of such a consensus which Hobbes is striving to circumvent. An
inference to best explanation argument must presuppose the phenomena
in need of explanation, yet the practical argument must bear the unbear
able burden of establishing the consensus it ismeant to explain. Specific
ally, the theoretical argument contends that the best explanation ofwhy
we all see round objects in standard conditions is that round objects are
causing these perceptions. Yet the practical argument cannot contend that
the best of why we all pursue self-preservation as an ultimate
explanation
end is in terms of vital motion, because it is precisely the contention that
we all pursue self-preservation as an ultimate end that is in dispute, and
precisely the variety [granted ex hypothesi] of type 2 appetites, the lack of

consensus, which is so daunting.
Is there any way forHobbes to circumvent this apparent disanalogy?

This account grants, ex hypothesi, that we have a multitude of type Sy3
appetites, hence that ifwe have an appetite for self-preservation, it is, at
least initially, merely one among many other this as
appetites. Couple
sumption with Hobbes's desire-based account of practical reasoning, and
it becomesapparent that on this reading, if self-preservation is to be the
ultimate type 3 end in any sense, itwill only be as an "organizing principle"
adopted as a means to the satisfaction of themultifarious type^3 appetites
which every individual has, appetites for ends in terms ofwhich all other
ends must be justified as means. Such type ^3 appetites, however, are
relative to the agent on Hobbes's account, and no non-question-begging
grounds have been provided for concluding that the adoption of self-pres
ervation as an organizing principle will provide the most effective means
of satisfying any agent's appetites, much less every agent's appetites.
?3.6?
Perhaps more can be said on Hobbes's behalf, however. Ex hypothesi, on

this reading, vital motion is not itself a type 2, and a fortiori not a type 2/3
appetite, but perhaps the belief that a vital motion account is true can
provide grounds for adopting the end of self-preservation in roughly the
same way that the belief that there is food at the grocery store can provide
grounds for adopting the end of going there. But the belief that there is
food at the grocery store only leads to the adoption of the end of going there
if the agent has a desire to eat, and the belief that a vital motion account
is true will only lead to the adoption of type 3 self-preservation if the agent
has type 2/3 appetites all directed towards self-preservation. This would
appear to beg the question again.
Yet perhaps the assumption is that once an agent realizes that vital
motion determines her type 2/3 appetites, a careful examination of these
type 2/3 appetites will show them all in factmore or less directed toward
self-preservation in a way which was not apparent before. The adoption of
as an organizing would thus be making
self-preservation principle merely
her (already present) implicit pursuit of self-preservation (which her be
liefs concerning vital motion have allowed her to recognize forwhat it is)
explicit. The problem with such an account of the role of vital motion in
the justification of an ultimate end of self-preservation, as noted by Gregory
Kavka in a related discussion, is that the argument is extremely "vulner
able to refutation by counterexample."21
If an individual's examination of her appetites does not reveal that they

are in fact directed towards self-preservation, then Hobbes has not pro
vided an argument that she ought to adopt the organizing principle of type
3 self-preservation, but instead grounds for rejecting his account of the role
of type 1 vital motion. Keeping inmind the distinction between vacuous
self-interest and highly determinate self-preservation, it does not seem
difficult to produce a vast array of such counterexamples.
Perhaps such vulnerability to counterexample can be avoided if it is

granted that the account of vital motion can be true, i.e. that the agent's
type 2/3 appetites are determined to accord with self-preservation by vital
motion, but it is stipulated in addition that they may well be determined
in a way which is not apparent to the agent through reflection upon her
concrete type 2/3 appetites. Yet, the reasoning may be, if the agent wants
to satisfy her type 2/3 appetites, and believes that they are determined by
type 1 vital motion,, then she should adopt type 3 self-preservation as the
means for satisfying her type 2/3 appetites even if she cannot see how it
functions as a means.
Such a proposal puts tremendous weight upon what Hobbes himself

readily admits is highly speculative science [De Corpore, p. 388]. But it is
not even clear what it would mean to grant the premises of such an
argument, nor whether the conclusion would follow if the were
premises
granted. Sidgwick argues forcefully that if an agent's type 2/3 appetites
accord with a certain end by causal necessity, and the agent cannot but act

in accordance with these appetites, then he cannot not pursue the end in
question, and admonishments to conform his actions to it are unmeaning22.
The claim is that if the account of vital motion is correct, it is ridiculous to
counsel the adoption of self-preservation as an organizing principle, since
all of the agent's ends already accord with self-preservation. Kavka gener
alizes Sidgwick's claim as the point that "ifwe were fully Z by nature, there
would be no need to encourage being Z.*23Thus to grant the premises is to
grant that we already pursue self-preservation, and that whether or not
we choose to adopt it as an organizing principle, hence to adopt the laws

of nature as means of realizing this principle, we are choosing in accordance
with self-preservation.
But what does itmean to grant the premise that our ends are determined
by vital motion to accord with the end of self-preservation? On this reading,
the Hobbist has already granted that we do not pursue the type 3 end of
by nature, and that it is at most one among a multitude
self-preservation
of type 3/3 appetites; moreover, that it is an end which the agent cannot
even discern herself as implicitly pursuing. It would seem that there is
nothing left for "pursuing the end of self-preservation" to be.
?3.7?
The direct strategy, we have seen, attempts to ground self-preservation

as the ultimate type 3 end of every agent through an illicit equivocation
between the type 1 appetite of vital motion and the type 3 appetite of
self-preservation. The sophisticated strategy commits Hobbes to the posi
tion that our ends depend entirely upon what appears [type 2] good to each
of us, and forces the abandonment of all grounds for thinking either that
type 3 self-preservation will appear as an ultimate good, or that self-pres
ervation will be the organizing principle which provides the most effective
means to satisfying the various ends which appear to any agent as good.
Either Hobbes falls prey to an illicit equivocation, or he finds himself
enmeshed in the practical equivalent of a thoroughgoing solipsism?the
position that what is good for an agent iswhatever appears to that agent
as good. In either case he fails to establish self-preservation as the ultimate
type 3 end which both leads to conflict in the state of nature and warrants
the adoption of the laws of nature as a means of resolving this conflict.
?4.0?
I suggested at the outset of this essay that both advocates and opponents
of the desire-based theory of reason and moral judgment typically grant as
the basis of their dispute that Hume and Hobbes have bequeathed to us a
coherent and basically accurate account of desires. I have demonstrated,
however, that Hobbes misleadingly refers to at least three different sorts

of episodes as and among them in articulating a

appetites, equivocates
central feature of his particular version of the desire-based theory.
The parallel recognition that "sensation," "sense datum," etc. have his
torically been janus-faced terms which have obscured a slide back and forth
among radically different sorts of episodes has led to profound changes in
epistemology24. Those of us working in the practical domain must confront
the fact that we have been bequeathed a tradition inwhich "appetite" and
"desire" are also janus-faced terms, ranging over no less than three distinct
kinds of episodes. And perhaps, as has been the case in epistemology, there
will be profound changes in store for contemporary ethics at such time as
the insidious influence of the many appetites of Thomas Hobbes is traced

through to the present day.25
Pomona College
Received September 5, 1989
NOTES
1. The label "desire-based theories" is borrowed from Stephen Darwall (Impartial

Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)). Such theories have also been
characterized in the literature as or simply
"instrumentalist"
"Humean" theories
of practical reason and moral judgment. The common feature of all of the accounts
singled out by these labels is the view that practical reason ismerely an instrument
for determining effective means for the satisfaction of antecedently given desires
or preferences. Practical reason can thus be no more than a slave of the passions
(Hume), a scout of the appetites (Hobbes), or a calculating device for maximizing
preference satisfaction (e.g., Gauthier).
2. All subsequent citations of Hobbes's works will be included in the body of the
text, and will be taken from The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Sir Thomas
Molesworth, ed., 9 vols. (London, 1839).
3. F. S. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968),
pp. lOlff.
4. J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1965),
p. 46.
5. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan, op. cit., p. 102.
6. Ibid, p. 31.
7. Itmay be that these three different types of sensations can best be understood
as three "aspects" of one and the same type of sensation?a distinction which will
not affect the substantive claims that I make in the discussion that follows. This
said, Iwill, in the interest of clarity of presentation, continue with the "three types"
idiom.
8. Hobbes's Philosophical Rudiments serves as a useful reminder of the crucial
and pervasive role which he calls upon the end of self-preservation to play. Although
many of the same nagging inconsistencies and unclarities surface in the Rudiments
as are apparent later in Leviathan, one cornerstone of his argument is clearly the
appeal to self-preservation as a final and self-sufficient end. Hobbes argues in the
Rudiments as elsewhere that fear of death is the chiefest of fears, and by implica
tion that the appetite for life is the chiefest of appetites (Rudiments, 17). But

Hobbes's claim on behalf of self-preservation is much stronger and more specific

than this:
.. .whatsoever a man would, it therefore seems good to him because he wills it,
and either it really doth, or at least seems to him to contribute towards his
preservation [Rudiments, 10]
The claim here is clearly that all of the objects of man's appetites are pursued
by him, whether rightly or wrongly, as means to the end of self-preservation.
Self-preservation is not merely the chiefest among equals, but the ultimate end
towards which all other subsidiary ends are directed. Not surprisingly, Hobbes
proceeds to identify the first foundation of natural right as being "that every man
as much as in him lies endeavour to protect his life and members," and "to use all
the means, and do all the actions, without which he cannot preserve himself
[Rudiments, 9]. He then argues that not only is the complete prioritization of the
end of self-preservation not unreasonable, it is dictated by reason (as embodied in
the Laws of Nature) for every man. He further cites the necessary drive for
self-preservation as the primary source of conflict in the state of nature [Rudiments,

p. 17]. These citations from the Rudiments forcefully demonstrate the pivotal role
which the appeal to self-preservation as the ultimate, lexically prior end plays at
almost every stage in Hobbes's ethical and political philosophy, a role it continues
to play throughout his corpus.
9. To many it seems the most obvious feature of Hobbes account that it hinges
upon establishing self-preservation as an ultimate end. Does he not, after all,
explicitly appeal to self-preservation as the sole but sufficient motive or end
underlying the right and laws of nature

both (Leviathan, 120, 146-47)? Yet there
has been a wealth of Hobbes scholarship, much of it quite recent, arguing against
interpreting the arguments of at least the later Hobbes as at all egoistic, and by
implication arguing against reading Hobbes as holding the more specific doctrine
that we each act only to secure our own self-preservation. (See Bernard Gert's
introduction to Man and Citizen, Bernard Gert, ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1972),
and F.
S. McNeilly's The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1968), esp. Ch. 5.) These accounts typically point out that many of Hobbes's claims
about Glory, Commodious Living, etc. are difficult to reconcile with self-preserva
tion as an ultimate end. There is considerable merit to such accounts, for there are
clearly strains of argument in Hobbes, most notable when he is operating within

his introspective method, in which far less emphasis is placed upon the appeal to
self-preservation than is elsewhere the case. These difficulties of reconciliation,

however, do not warrant the conclusion that an ultimate end of self-preservation
ceases to play a dominant role in Hobbes's account. Even at the points of his
greatest reliance upon the evidence of introspection, Hobbes continues to call upon
self-preservation at crucial junctures as an ultimate end. What is needed is not

another attempt to explain away obvious inconsistencies, but an explanation of
why Hobbes was led to such inconsistencies. It is precisely such an explanation

which the account presented here seeks to supply.
10. It often seems that Hobbes is appealing not to the natural necessity of the
end of self-preservation, but to what could be characterized as the conceptual
necessity of that end.This latter sort of appeal can be understood as roughly

analogous to that of an epistemologist arguing that a claim is analytic, just as the
former can be understood as analogous to the epistemologist's appeal to a given
foundation. If we view the end of self-preservation within the context of Hobbes's
psychological egoism, and view Hobbes's psychological egoism as the position that
all human desires are self-interested desires (Merely one of the many versions of
psychological egoism attributable to Hobbes [Bernard Gert, introduction to Man

and Citizen (New York: Doubleday, 1972), pp. 5ff; Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral

and Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 1986) Sec. 2-2]), then the possi
bility emerges of reinterpreting Hobbes in such a way that an end somewhere in
the same ballpark as self-preservation?self-interest?might very well have a claim
to conceptual necessity. Given a suitably broad reading of desire, it certainly seems
irrefutable that "man always acts in order to satisfy his desires" [Gert, Man and
Citizen, p. 6; Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, p. 35]. Furthermore,
there is no doubt that Hobbes endorses such claims. His account of deliberation, of
actions as following always and only from the agent's strongest appetite/desires,
directly entails just such a view [Leviathan, Ch. 6].
Yet both Gert and Kavka have persuasively demonstrated that such an account
of self-interest and psychological egoism does not any limits on the desires
"impose
of men or on what they consider to be good." The egoism advocated is merely a
"tautological egoism" upon which the end of self-interest which emerges is one
"which has no empirical consequences" [Gert, Man and Citizen, p. 7] [See also
Kavka, Hobbesian..., p. 35]. The thrust behind this criticism is that such an end
of self-interest is as vacuous as it is self-evident. It is an end which we have no
matter what ends we have, hence
incapable an end or of determining other ends
courses of action.
Though such a view is sometimes suggested by Hobbes, it is
clearly inadequate to his purposes, and it is not surprising that, as Kavka has ably
demonstrated, he was shrewd enough not to rely upon it as a focal point of his
argument.
11. Howard Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obli
gation (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 214. See also David Gauthier, The
Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 23.

12. Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1986), p. 18 [See also Hampton's discussion of causal
egoism, p. 23, for a related discussion].

13. David Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969),
p. 21.
14. See footnote 8 for additional evidence from the Rudiments that Hobbes is
arguing for self-preservation as both a final and a self-sufficient end. Note also that
even many of those who refuse to take this argument from ultimate natural
necessity seriously acknowledge nonetheless that it is there to be found in Hobbes,

e.g. Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy ofHobbes (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1952), pp. 8ff.
15. Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Philosophy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press), pp. 48-49.
16. It has been argued that although Hobbes does appeal to self-preservation as
an ultimate end grounded in vital motion in the early works, he jettisons this
appeal in Leviathan in favor of one in which "no hypothesis about the nature of the
objectives of desires?neither an egoistic nor any other kind of hypothesis?is
incorporated in, presupposed or implied by the account" [F. S. McNeilly, The
Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968), p. 117]. McNeilly
points to Hobbes's account of passions such as pity, arguing that Hobbes no longer
attempts to reconcile these passions to an ultimate end of self-preservation in

Leviathan as he did in the earlier Elements. Yet others have pointed out that
Hobbes makes more of an effort to reconcile his accounts of glory and suicide to an
ultimate end of self-preservation in Leviathan than he did in earlier works [e.g.,
Jean Hampton's discussion of glory in her Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University 1986), esp. Chs.

Press, 2 & 3].
More central to McNeilly's argument is his contention that vital motion plays a
diminished role in Leviathan. The evidence is two-fold: 1) that vital motion is
presented more cautiously in Leviathan than in earlier works, and 2) that whereas

Hobbes continues to claim that pleasures are a help to vital motion in Leviathan,
he no longer maintains that we must recognize it as such a help. Yet there are
serious problems with each of these claims. Although in his defense of 1McNeilly
quotes the sentence in which vital motion receives its somewhat cautious initial
presentation, he does not give suitable emphasis to the sentence
which follows, in
which vital motion is wielded as an established fact. His claim in
explanatory
2?that the purpose of vital motion may be circumscribed in Leviathan as compared
to the earlier works?is based on even more puzzling evidence. Hobbes does allow
in Leviathan that we may not recognize our actions as all determined to accord
with self-preservation, but Hobbes allows this in early works as well [De Corpore
Politico, Ch. TV, Sec. 14]. The purported evidence of discontinuity between Levia
than and the early works is instead a testament to the continuity of Hobbes's
argument from the earlier to the later works.
Most troubling of all about this
interpretation of the Hobbesian corpus is that it
leaves those who follow McNeilly on the abandonment of the primacy of self-pres
ervation unable to offer a satisfactory account of the right and laws of nature.
Kavka, for example, is led to argue in his seminal work that the former is simply
an unargued postulate put forth by Hobbes [Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and
Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 315].
17. Gauthier, op. cit., The Logic of Leviathan, p. 5.
18. Ibid., p. 7.
19. For more on the causal theory and its shortcomings, see Anthony Quinton,
"The Problem of Perception," from G. J. Warnock, ed., The Philosophy of Perception
(Oxford University Press, 1967).
20. A point made by McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan, p. 116. For an example
of such a claim, see De Corpore Politico, Ch. IV, Sec. 14.
21. Kavka, op. cit., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, p. 35.
22. Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp.
40ff.
23. Kavka, op. cit., Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, p. 32.
24. See, for example, Wilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,"
from Science, Perception and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), and
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and theMirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton Univer
sity Press, 1979), esp. Ch. IV
25. I attempt to trace aspects of this influence in my "Where the Traditional
Accounts of Practical Reason Go Wrong," Logos, vol. 10 (1989).


Many Appetites Hobbes

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The Many Appetites of Thomas Hobbes

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THE MANY APPETITES OF

has been widespread dissatisfaction with desire-based ac

In what follows I will attempt to partially rectify this oversight through

regarding the importance of self-preservation depend for their apparent

These characterizations do not occur at different chronological points in

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at least implicit within) each of several individual presentations ofHobbes's

2 Sensations: Hobbes also characterizes sensations as

nothing but "apparitions," [DeHomine, pp. 6 & 31] "images," [DeHomine,

"images" not can be, but are deceptive:

whatsoever...qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they

Knowledge here is being understood by Hobbes roughly along the lines of

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the ultimate intrinsically credible justificatory foundation of all that we

Moreover, Hobbes manifests a tendency to slide back and forth between

appetites which itwill be our purpose to explore, in particular through an

Type 1 sensations find their ready practical correlates in type 1 appetites:

Appetites, like sensations, are mere physical motions, common to beast

and man [Leviathan, p. 48], which are postulated in a scientific spirit to

appetites the motive component. Our "affections,** Hobbes says, "such

things...as or displease us," are "but conceptions.** [Leviathan, p. 28]

attracted as pleasurable or from which we are repelled as painful. Each is:

a solicitation or provication either to draw near to the thing that pleaseth, or

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pleasure therefore, [or delight] is the apparence or sense of good...and conse

Delight is a mere appearance, but "delight is appetite," [DeHomine, p. 33]

"immediately by the sense" [DeHomine, p. 32]. Appetites are characterized

Sensations are appearances of states of affairs as true, and the question

disanalogy between sensations and appetites develops, one which Hobbes

The disanalogy can be approached in the following way. Although Hobbes

"reality" of goodness for that man, whereas the appearances of type 2

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The result would seem to be a thoroughgoing relativism, and Hobbes is

ofwhich is self-preservation [Leviathan, pp. 120 & 146-47]. Self-preserva

This point cannot be overemphasized. From a relativist position upon

Here, then, is an appetite in light ofwhich other appetites are properly

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the foundation forHobbes's edifice ofpractical justification in light ofwhich

I have provided an analysis of Hobbes's account of appetites which

account, the argument for the status of self-preservation as a final and

tion is a natural necessity. The many passages in the Rudiments inwhich he

trollable dictates of necessity" as an endll, that, as Hobbes himself argues,

Self-preservation is for Hobbes a naturally given, necessary end at the

foundation of practical justification, one which every human being cannot

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To demonstrate how the type 3 end of self-preservation can readily be seen

Hobbes understands all phenomena in terms of motion, living beings can be

The characteristically livingmotion towhich Gauthier alludes in the above

The temptation is strong to conclude that to give such an account simply

seeks only, to preserve and to strengthen himself. A concern for well-being

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Despite the initial attractiveness of this strategy, it ultimately proves

which criticism is fundamentally inappropriate. Yet clearly such an expla

This criticism does not demonstrate that self-preservation is not a final

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Yet Hobbes still requires self-preservation to be the sole ultimate type 3

knowledge, where the latter is construed roughly as justified true belief.

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overcome this difficulty? The most plausible interpretation ofwhat Hobbes

Here Hobbes strongly suggests: