Veranstaltung: Justice, gratitude, and trust in Leviathan

This paper argues that Hobbes altered his accounts of distributive justice, merit, and gratitude in Leviathan, and that these changes are interlinked. The merit implied by distributive justice, Leviathan emphasizes, “is rewarded of Grace onely” (L 15.14). This redefinition of merit served a twofold goal. It ensured, first, that citizens cannot possibly receive less from the sovereign than they deserve, thus defusing an explosive source of civic grievances. Distributive civil laws create rather than track merit: the sovereign first determines what is due to each – i.e., what citizens deserve to have – by freely issuing laws establishing property, rank, and civil rights. The same set of revisions enabled him to hold, secondly, that natural law obliges citizens to be grateful to the sovereign for his beneficence.

Hobbes had to rethink the concept and morality of gratitude to seize this last opportunity. The early works had linked gratitude to imparted trust: ingratitude consists in betraying the trust another has freely given you in hopes of obtaining future favours. Leviathan ties gratitude to mere grace instead. Ingratitude now more generally means giving benefactors reason to regret their gift. Citizens must not give their sovereign protector “reasonable cause to repent” his goodwill – even if his donations were not intended to curry favour (L 15.16). Nobles in particular should give thanks to their ruler for the public offices, honours, and titles he has graciously bestowed upon them. Along the way, my analysis clarifies the meaning of trust in Hobbes’s political theory. It has hitherto gone unnoticed that Hobbes recognizes two types of trust. Fides is the trust central to covenants (promises obliging to future performance). Fiducia, or trust in another’s goodwill, involves no pacts. Fides is key to justice and covenants; fiducia to gratitude and free gifts.