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LIBERTY, NECESSITY
AND CHANCE: HOBBES'S
GENERAL THEORY OF
EVENTS
Yves Charles Zarka
Published online: 14 Oct 2010.

To cite this article: Yves Charles Zarka (2001) LIBERTY, NECESSITY AND
CHANCE: HOBBES'S GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS, British Journal for the
History of Philosophy, 9:3, 425-437, DOI: 10.1080/096087800110072443

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 British Journal for the History of Philosophy 9(3) 2001: 425437

ARTICLE

LIBERTY, NECESSITY AND CHANCE:

HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS
Yves Charles Zarka

INTRODUCTION
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The controversy between Hobbes and Bramhall involves an aspect of

Hobbess work which, in general, is not very well understood. In fact it is a
crucial point in his thought, in the sense that here we nd, on the one hand,
the attempt to extend his system of absolute necessity to the human will and
actions, and on the other, the relationship between the causal chains which
constitute the world and God. It is at the meeting-place between these two
questions, the necessary causality of worldly events and the free causality
of God, that the controversy is focused. It was to have considerable conse-
quences in the work of authors such as Cudworth, Spinoza, Leibniz and
many others. In the present study I would like to examine a particular aspect
of Hobbess approach by placing it in the context of Hobbess other works:
the project of dening a general theory of events which would be capable
of explaining everything which happens, as much the movement and col-
lision of bodies as the wills and actions of men. This project1 of a general
theory of events is linked to two fundamental aspects of his philosophia
prima. The rst concerns the afrmation that bodies and accidents of bodies
(at least common accidents: magnitude and motion) are the only things that
exist; what one could call the corporalist ontic. The second concerns the way
in which bodies operate; the way in which they act upon one another, that
is, produce or destroy accidents. The operativity of bodies is considered by
Hobbes in terms of causality. The general theory of events is thus put in
place around the concept of causality, whose scope it will seek to extend
beyond physical nature to the wills and actions of men. I would like here to
attempt to determine the range and limits of this general theory of events.
I shall examine four points; rst, the concept of cause; second, cause and
event; third, cause and reason; and fourth, cause and author.

1 This is obviously a very ambitious project, and hints of it are to be found in certain forms of
late twentieth-century materialism. However we have no intention of reading Hobbes on
the basis of these materialist forms; rather we intend to show that what are presented as
entirely novel efforts are part of a tradition going back to the seventeenth century.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online 2001 BSHP
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09608780011007244 3
 426 YVES CHARLES ZARKA

THE CONCEPT OF CAUSE

The notion of causality is the most important part of the theory of know-
ledge and of the theory of reality (action and passion). It is thus a concept
which is related at once to the gnoseological and the ontic. If we look at De
Corpore,2 we will be able to note that the notion of cause is present in every
moment of the elaboration of the theory of knowledge. I will content myself
here with mentioning a few of the more signicant points. First of all, the
notion of cause comes into the denition of philosophy itself.

Philosophy is such knowledge of effects or appearances, as we acquire by true

ratiocination from the knowledge we have rst of their causes or generation:
And again, of such causes or generations as may be from knowing rst their
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effects3

This denition of philosophy as knowledge of causes will recur, as we know,

throughout the work. In Chapter 6 of De Corpore, on Method, the idea of
scientic causal knowledge clearly takes shape in the distinction between a
nominal denition, which proceeds by simple circumlocution, and a genetic
denition, in which the movement of knowledge coincides with the gener-
ation of the object. Admittedly this coincidence is only fully realized in the
case of mathematics (and partly realized in political philosophy), but the
concept of cause remains equally central in those parts of knowledge where
acquaintance does not coincide with the production of the object, such as
physics. It is in order to give an account of the relationship of knowledge to
these two types of object that the denition of philosophy given above con-
tains two distinct approaches: from causes to effects (mathematics), and
from effects to possible causes (physics). But if there are two approaches
possible in the knowledge of causes, there is in contrast only one deter-
minable type of cause. This cause is movement. Every causal explanation is
thus necessarily an explanation by means of movement: the movement of
points and lines in mathematics, the movement of bodies in physics, the
movement of (material) minds in ethics. Through the concept of causality,
Hobbes strives to provide a unied theory of knowledge.
The notion of causality is also an essential part of the theory of reality
(action and passion). Thus it also concerns reality to the extent that it is sus-
ceptible to change. Causality, then, concerns that which exists, not as a being
2 I will refer to the admirable critical edition of De Corpore (DCo) recently produced by Karl
Shuhmann (Paris, Vrin, 2000). It is a genuinely pioneering work, as it is the rst critical
edition of the text since Hobbes wrote it. It is impossible to overstate the importance of
Schuhmanns considerable work in providing a perfectly reliable text of this work, which we
know to be one of the more important metaphysical constructions of the seventeenth century
alongside Descartess Meditationes de prima philosophia, Spinozas Ethica, and Leibnizs
Monadologie. When the De Corpore is quoted in English, we give the text of the Molesworth
edition of the English Works (Vol. I).
3 DCo, I, 2.
 HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS 427

(ens) or substance, but in its way of being, that is in its accidentality. Causal-
ity involves a problem in Hobbes which was completely new. Since the sole
concept of a cause which we have is that of movement, it will be necessary
to give an account of everything which happens, not only in nature but also
in man, in terms of movement. In other words, from the ontic point of view,
causality would seem to be the principle of a unied explanation of what
happens in general, whatever its nature. Thus it is a general theory of events
which is being put in place here: a theory of every event, whether it be physi-
cal or mental, involuntary or voluntary, individual or collective. To the uni-
vocal denition of the being (ens) as a body (corpus) is thus added a
denition of events which is general and, equally, univocal.
Hobbes uses the terms causa and ratio quite frequently and sometimes
interchangeably. The search for causes is also the search for the reasons for
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natural phenomena (the actions and passions of bodies) as much as for the
actions and passions of men. Now, as we have just seen, transitive causality,
which is communicated through movement, is the only form of causality
available to Hobbes in order to give reasons for what happens. The ques-
tion which arises is thus to nd out how far the interchangeability of reason
and transitive cause can be taken. To put it another way, doesnt the require-
ment of rationality involve, at a certain level of its use, going beyond the
idea of a cause transmitting itself through movement from one body to
another?
As a consequence, although Hobbes only devotes a single chapter the
ninth of De Corpore entirely to causality, the notion nonetheless involves
determinations which are fundamental to his thought and which run
throughout the whole work. A better way to put it would be to say that the
concept of causality is present in almost all Hobbess texts on natural phil-
osophy, starting from the very rst, the Short Tract4 of the 1630s. When one
compares these texts, from the Short Tract all the way to De Homine5 (1658)
via the Anti-White6 (1643), the debate with Bramhall7 (from 1645) and De
Corpore (1655), one cannot fail to be struck by the permanence of certain
important principles, like the interchangeability of sufcient and necessary
causes, as well as the negation of spontaneous movement or self-movement.
Did Hobbes reach the nished version of his doctrine of causality the rst
time he set himself to think about it, that is in the Short Tract? I think not.
The theory of causality does undergo a change connected to the extension
of its application, rst, to physics, then to ethics and politics. There is no
metaphysic of causality which can provide an a priori framework to be

4 In anticipation of the publication of Karl Schuhmanns work on the Short Tract (ST), I shall
refer to the Tnnies edition, published as Appendix I to his edition of The Elements of Law,
London, Frank Cass, 1984.
5 De Homine (DH), Molesworth edn, Opera Latina, Vol. II.
6 Anti-White (AW), Paris, Vrin-CNRS, 1973.
7 Of Liberty and Necessity, (LN) Molesworth edn, English Works, vol. IV; The Questions con-

cerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance (LNC), Molesworth edn, English Works, vol. V.
 428 YVES CHARLES ZARKA

imposed on the different branches of knowledge, but there is a metaphysic

of causality which constitutes itself at the same time as the concepts eld of
application is extended, from the physical to the mental and the voluntary.
The nished form of the concept is found in De Corpore, and coincides
with the elaboration of the general theory of events, of which it constitutes
the most important part. Or rather, the modications which Hobbes applies
to his concept of causality have the constitution of such a unied theory as
their object.

CAUSE AND EVENT

In order to show how Hobbes attempted to develop a unied theory of

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events, it is appropriate to examine the evolution of his positions on causal-

ity from the Short Tract to De Corpore. I shall examine, not all the texts,
but just those which add something new in relation to their predecessors.

Short Tract (early 1630s)

As noted above, we nd in the Short Tract, positions on which Hobbes was

to remain unmoveable throughout his intellectual life. What are these pos-
itions?
We nd them set out in principles 12, 13 and 14 of the rst section, as well
as in conclusions 11 to 14 of the same section. The principles of the Short
Tract are constituted, as we know, by denitions which involve the denition
of causality directly and, rst of all, its relationship to necessity. The rst
occurrence of the term cause is in principle 13 which states:

A necessary cause is that which cannot but produce the effect.

This denition of a necessary cause is preceded by a denition of necessity

understood as that which cannot be otherwise, and is followed by the de-
nition of a sufcient cause (principle 14):

A sufcient cause is that which hath all things requisite to produce the effect.

Conclusion 11 of the rst part draws from these denitions the fundamental
principle of the Hobbesian theory of causality: that of the interchangeabil-
ity of necessary cause and sufcient cause. This principle will be found
again, in identical terms, throughout Hobbess works.

A sufcient cause is a necessary cause.

This interchangeability is established by an argument which is to be taken

up again in later works: it consists in showing that a sufcient cause cannot
 HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS 429

but produce its effect, in the same way as a necessary cause; failing which it
would not contain everything which is required for the production of the
effect; that is to say it would not be sufcient, which would be contrary to
the hypothesis.
From these principles, Hobbes deduces as a corollary the negation of the
notion of a free agent, i.e. the idea of a free will or the capacity of self-
determination.

Hence appeares that the denition of a free agent, to be that, which, all things
requisite to work being put, may work, or not work, implyes a contradiction.
(Conclusion 11, corollary)

Here is a position which was to become central in the debate with Bramhall,
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and all the more central when one passes from physical action to human will
and actions. Let us recall that it is already present in the Short Tract.
Thus one can understand that conclusion 12 is able to state that every
effect produced hath had a necessary cause. This changes for the future
(conclusion 13) to the statement according to which every effect to be pro-
duced shall be produced by a necessary cause. Two other conclusions
provide determinations which were to be maintained throughout Hobbess
works.
Conclusion 10 states that nothing can move itself. This is proved by the
fact that self-movement would necessarily be a movement of which it would
be impossible to say which way it was going, which is as much as to say that
it would be impossible to give any account of it at all. Finally, conclusion 14
states the principle of the homogeneity of all events within the world:

Necessity hath no degrees.

Despite the presence of a certain number of positions which we will nd

recurring throughout his considerations of causality, we are in no position
to say that Hobbes presented a general theory of events in the Short Tract.
There are two reasons for this: the rst is that Hobbes distinguishes two
types of agent whose nature and mode of action are different (cf. Section I,
Principle 9); in the Short Tract the theory of causality is not linked to a single
concept of action, but to two. The second reason is that causality still
remains largely undetermined in its internal constitution. It was in the Anti-
White that Hobbes was to unify his concept of the agent and dene precisely
the internal constituents of the notion of cause.

Anti-White (1643)

In Chapter XXVII, section 2 of the Anti-White, Hobbes denes his theory

of causality in terms which are very close to those he was to use in. Thus
 430 YVES CHARLES ZARKA

every act (omnis actus) other than corporality itself can be conceived as
engendered or produced. It is on these acts, engendered or produced, that
this concept of cause is brought to bear. The difference from the Short Tract
is that the concept of causality is henceforth linked with a unique concept
of the agent. Thus one can say that the elements of a unied theory of event
begin to be assembled in the text of 1643. After dening the agent as the
body which produces or destroys an act in another, and the patient as the
one in which an act is produced or destroyed, Hobbes afrms that to act is
the same as to produce or destroy an act:

ita ut agere sit idem quod actum producere vel destruere.

(AW, XXVII, 2, p. 314)
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The different sorts of causes retained in the Anti-White in order to give an

account of this production or destruction of an act are: the causa integra and
the causa sine qua non. The rst consists in the sum of the acts which leads
to the production of an effect, and the second in each of the acts which make
up the entire cause. It is on the basis of the concept of the entire cause that
the concepts of material cause and efcient cause are dened. Final cause
and formal cause are, for their part, reduced to the efcient cause. To put it
another way, in the Anti-White the causa integra becomes the pivot of the
theory of causality. It is what enables an account to be given of the relation-
ship between causality and necessity. The entire cause is the one which
always and necessarily produces its effect, when that effect is possible.8
Thus one can say that, even if the elements of a unied theory of events
are brought out, the theory itself is not yet fully realized. The treatment of
Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance is what will show its
true importance.

The Debate with Bramhall on Liberty, Necessity and Chance (from 1645)

The central issue of the debate with Bramhall concerns human will and
actions questions touching on liberty, necessity and chance. So far, the
theory of causality9 provided a model for physical events; can this model be
applied to human will and actions? Is the interchangeability of necessary
and sufcient causes valid in this new eld? Is there not a danger that it will
lead to a destruction of the determinations of will and action, which is to
say liberty, and also of praise and blame, justice and injustice, etc.?

8 Cf. Cees Leijenhorst, Hobbes and the Aristotelians. The Aristotelian Setting of Thomas
Hobbess Natural Philosophy, Utrecht, Zeno Institute of Philosophy, 1998; Douglas Jesseph,
Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science, in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, edited
by Tom Sorell, CUP, pp. 86107.
9 Cf; Yves Charles Zarka, First philosophy and the Foundations of Knowledge, in Cambridge
Companion to Hobbes, Tom Sorell (ed.), CUP, pp. 6285.
 HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS 431

In the debate with Bramhall, Hobbes recognizes the challenge which an

extension of his theory of causality to the realm of human action constitutes
for his own thought. He also recognizes that he cannot shy away from this
challenge, since otherwise his corporalist monism his negation of the exist-
ence of the soul as a spiritual substance would be called into question. This
is why he was to try to make his model more complex, without modifying
its principles, with a view to extending it from the world of physical nature
to those of ethics and politics.
Hobbes attempts, then, to extend his concept of causality, with all the
consequences this leads to in particular, that human will and action will
be subject to a necessity as absolute as that which reigns in the world of
bodies. Note rst of all that the principle of the necessary cause is taken up
again in Of Liberty and Necessity in terms which are fairly close to those of
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the Anti-White:

That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action [. . .] is the sum
of all things, which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production
of that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were wanting, the effect
could not be produced.10

The application of the concept of the necessary cause is explicitly afrmed

as being valid for the human will:

Hence it is manifest, that whatsoever is produced, is produced necessarily; for

whatsoever is produced hath had a sufcient cause to produce it, or else it had
not been; and therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated.11

Hobbes realizes that he cannot content himself with positions of principle,

and this is why his principal effort consists in showing that the extension of
the model of necessary causality to human will and actions can be carried
out with no loss of the psychological, moral, juridical and political determi-
nations which are peculiar to them. According to Bramhall, it is precisely
the application of necessary causality to human will which destroys, in its
very principle, the idea of any deliberation.
What Hobbes has to show is thus that the notion of deliberation does not
become invalid once one thinks of the determination of the will in terms of
a necessary effect resulting from anterior causes. Or rather, it is precisely
the notions of deliberation and consultation which he uses to complexify his
model of causality.

I deny that it maketh consultations to be in vain; it is the consultation that

causeth a man, and necessitated him to choose to do one thing rather than
another: so that unless a man say that that cause is in vain which necessitateth

10 LN, p. 246.
11 Ibid., p. 275.
 432 YVES CHARLES ZARKA

the effect, he cannot infer the superuousness of consultation out of the neces-
sity of the election proceeding from it. But it seemeth his Lordship reasons thus:
if I must do this rather than that, I shall do this rather than that, though I consult
not at all; which is a false proposition and a false consequence, and no better
than this: If I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow, though I run
myself through with a sword to-day. If there be a necessity that an action shall
be done, or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not therefore follow,
that there is nothing necessarily requisite as a means to bring it to pass; and
therefore when it is determined, that one thing shall be chosen before another,
it is determined also for what cause it shall be chosen, which cause, for the most
part, is deliberation or consultation, and therefore consultation is not in vain,
and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated, if
more and less had any place in necessity.12
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As we have just seen, deliberation, far from being made pointless by the
application of the principle of necessary causality to the human will, is on
the contrary essential to give an account of it. From this it results that praise,
blame, reward and punishment also retain their meaning.

The fourth pretended inconvenience is, that praise, dispraise, reward and
punishment will be in vain. To which I answer, that for praise and dispraise, they
depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For what
is it else to praise, but to say a thing is good? Good, I say, for me, or for some-
body else, or for the state and commonwealth? And what is it to say an action
is good, but to say it is as I would wish? or as another would have it, or accord-
ing to the will of the state? that is to say, according to the law. Does my Lord
think no action can please me, or him, or the commonwealth, that should
proceed from necessity? Things may therefore necessary, and yet praise-worthy,
as also necessary, and yet dispraised, and neither of them both in vain, because
praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment, do by example make
and conform the will to good and evil.13

In this way even human actions become events like any others, and enter
into the unied explanation of events.
It is in De Corpore that Hobbes last turns his hand to this theory of events.

De Corpore (1655)

In one sense, Chapter IX of De Corpore seems to resume the various con-

stituent strata of the theory of causality which we have already seen being
elaborated in earlier works. We do indeed nd, once again, the entire system
which, starting with the denition of action, moves on to different sorts of
causes: the causa integra and the causa sine qua non, as well as the parts of

12 Ibid, pp. 2545.

13 Ibid. pp. 2556.
 HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS 433

the causa integra, that is the causa efciens and the causa materialis. To this
is added, of course, the interchangeability of necessary and sufcient causes,
as well as the reduction of every cause to local movement.
There are however two points which set the text of 1655 apart. One of
these is the central place occupied by the notion of the entire cause, and the
other is the link which is realized between cause and accident. On the rst
point one can say that it is henceforth the concept of the entire cause which
enables an account to be given of the interchangeability between sufciency
and necessity. On the second point, the cause is dened in terms of aggre-
gations of accidents, whereas before, as we saw, this connection did not take
place.

But a cause simply, or an entire cause, is the aggregate of all the accidents both
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of the agents how many soever they be, and of the patient, put together; which
when they are all supposed to be present, it cannot be understood but that the
effect is produced at the same instant; and if any one of them be wanting, it cannot
be understood but that the effect is not produced.14

Hobbes, then, achieves in De Corpore the link between his doctrine of ontic
difference (the distinction between body and accident) and his general
theory of events. In the same way as the ontic dened a corporalist monism,
the theory of causality allows an account to be given of everything which
happens, whether it is a question of physical bodies or human will, accord-
ing to a unied explanatory framework. In other words, causality provides
a unifying principle on the level of events which is comparable to the cor-
poralist ontic on the level of substance.
It remains to discover what is the validity of this general theory of events.
Can necessary causality give an account of everything which happens?

CAUSE AND REASON

To put the question in different terms: can reason be brought down to neces-
sary physical causality?
If we take a point of view which is external to the work itself, we can say
that the concept of causality was to be criticized in two ways.
First of all, it was criticized by R. Cudworth. Concerning action, he shows
that Hobbess approach consists in subsuming the category of action within
that of effect. In such a system, every cause is the effect of an anterior cause,
and so on. Thinking he has dened the cause, Hobbes has only dened the
effect. According to Cudworth, it is only on the basis of a theory of action
that one can account for the existence of any effect. Thus, matter is
extended, divisible and impenetrable, but in itself passive and inactive, inca-
pable of moving itself or of producing an effect. If all that existed were
14 DCo, IX, 3.
 434 YVES CHARLES ZARKA

bodies, as Hobbes afrms, the world would be in a state of eternal repose.

In order to understand action, we must therefore go beyond matter to con-
ceive a being which contains within itself an internal principle of activity; an
immaterial, auto-active substance. Consequently, to think of action in
general, and human action in particular, we must reverse the relationship
established by Hobbes: the effect supposes the action, and not the other way
round. Cudworths critique was to be developed at the level of the theory
of liberty. The reduction of liberty to necessity is only possible because
Hobbes removes all positive meaning from liberty, bringing it down to the
idea of the absence of external obstacles. On the other hand, a positive
meaning for liberty can only be elaborated in terms of self-determination,
i.e. by means of a concept which is opposed to that of necessity.
Subsequently the Hobbesian concept of causality was to be criticized by
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Leibniz. In particular, the reduction of the principle of reason to that of the

necessary cause was the object of a criticism which has two elements. The
rst concerns, of course, the Hobbesian conception of necessity as absolute
necessity, which according to Leibniz is based on a confusion of the prin-
ciple of reason and that of contradiction. For Leibniz, there are two funda-
mental errors here: one of them touches on principles, and the other on the
conclusions Hobbes claims to draw from them. One cannot place the prin-
ciple of contradiction, which is a logical principle, on the same footing as
the principle of reason, which is about existence. All the difculties inher-
ent in the system of absolute necessity result from this. This is the case for
the lack of a distinction between logical, or metaphysical, absolute neces-
sity and hypothetical necessity, and it is also the case for its theological foun-
dation:

3. That all events have their necessary causes. WRONG: they have their deter-
mining causes, by which one can give the reasons for them, but which are not
at all necessary causes. 4. That the will of God makes all things necessary.
WRONG: the will of God only produces contingent things which could have
been otherwise, time, space and matter being indifferent to all sorts of gures
and movements.15

But Leibniz is not content to confront Hobbes with the requirement for a
distinction of principles which enables one to conceive the contingency,
which the system of necessity seems to rule out. He also shows, in line with
the objections Bramhall brought against Hobbes,16 that Hobbes in fact has
not at all proved the absolute necessity of all things.17

For every effect there needs to be a concurrence of all sufcient conditions,

anterior to the event, and it is clear that not a single one must be missing, if the

15 Thodice, App. II, 5.

16 LNC, pp. 4256.
17 Thodice, 72.
 HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS 435

event is to follow, for they are conditions; and that the event will not fail to
follow, when they are all found together, for they are sufcient conditions. This
comes down to what I have said so many times, that everything happens
because of determining reasons, the knowledge of which, if we had it, would
tell us at the same time why the thing happened, and why it did not happen dif-
ferently.
But the humour of this author [Hobbes], which leads him to paradoxes and
makes him seek to contradict others, has made him draw consequences and
expressions which are outrageous and odious, as if everything happened
through an absolute necessity. The Bishop of Derry has very well remarked, in
his response to article 35, p. 327, that it only entails a hypothetical necessity,
such as we accord to all events in relation to the prescience of God; whilst Mr.
Hobbes wishes that that same divine prescience alone would sufce to estab-
lish the absolute necessity of events this was also the sentiment of Wyclif, and
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even of Luther when he wrote De servo arbitrario, or at least that is how they
spoke. 18

Hobbes, like those before him who attempted to found a system of absol-
ute necessity, was unable to reconcile what he thought with what he said.
His claim remained simply verbal. The difculty which is peculiar to Hobbes
is the dissymetry he establishes between the cause sine qua non, or the
necessary cause by hypothesis, and the entire cause, which derives from an
absolute necessity.19 As one of them is a condition of the other, one cannot
pass from the hypothetical necessity of conditions to the absolute necessity
of the entire cause without surreptitiously conferring an absolute necessity
on the conditions. This is contrary to the denition of the cause sine qua
non; unless, on the contrary, and this does seem to be Leibnizs position,
Hobbes thought he had established the necessity of all things, whereas in
fact he had only conferred on them a hypothetical necessity.
If we now take the point of view of Hobbes himself, we can say that he
experienced for himself the limits of his own doctrine. The explanation he
gives of events in the world relies on a concept of causality where each cause
leads back to an anterior cause, which at the same time produces and neces-
sitates it. This innite chain of causes calls into question the very possibility
of the operativity of the notion of the entire cause. This is doubtless why
Hobbes proposes the existence of a rst cause without a cause, not as a piece
added on to the system, but in virtue of its own internal requirements. The
system of necessity, thus understood, requires a theological foundation
18 Ibid., App. II, 23.
19 DCo, IX, 3:

Accidens autem, sive agentis sive patientis sine quo effectus non potest produci,vocatur
causa sine qua non et necessarium per hypothesin; et requisitum ad effectum producen-
dum. Causa autem simpliciter sive causa integra est aggregatum omnium accidentium
tum agentium quotquot sunt, quam patientis, quibus omnibus suppositis, intelligi non
potest quin effectus un sit productus, et supposito, quod unum eorum desit, intelligi non
potest, quin effectus non sit productus.
 436 YVES CHARLES ZARKA

which ensures both its possibility and its completion. Recourse to God
permits the unity of the different causal chains which traverse the world to
be founded in a transcendent being (a being which is not part of the world),
as well as accounting for the process of totalization which, at a given time
and in determined circumstances, constitutes the entire cause of any deter-
mined action. In other words, the very notion of the entire cause, which as
we have seen ensures the interchangeability of sufcient and necessary
causes, remained inoperative (and the whole system of necessity with it)
without a theological completion. If there were no eternal rst cause, the
regression would go to innity and it would be impossible to give a reason
for anything at all.20

That which I say necessitateth and determinateth every action [. . .] is the sum of
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all things, which being now existent, conduce and concur to the production of
that action hereafter, whereof if any one thing now were wanting, the effect could
not be produced. This concourse of causes, whereof everyone is determined to
be such as it is by a like concourse of former causes, may well be called (in
respect they were all set and ordered by the eternal cause of all things, God
Almighty) the decree of God.21

So it is clear: the concurrence of anterior causes which determines hic et

nunc the entire cause of such an action, that is the totality of causal chains
constituting the world order, is founded on the omnipotence of God, and
for this reason can be called a decree of God. The different causal chains,
distinct as they are from one another, can only be joined together to form
a world order in the rst link, almighty God:

Nor does the concourse of all causes make one simple chain or concatenation,
but an innumerable number of chains, joined together, not in all parts, but in
the rst link God Almighty; and consequently the whole cause of an event, doth
not always depend on one single chain, but on many together.22

To maintain his principle of a unied explanation of events, Hobbes needs

to place a rst uncaused cause at the beginning of the causal chain. In other
words, as Leibniz was to see, he himself departs from his own principle
that one can only give the reason for an event by reference to an anterior
cause. If Hobbess theory of causality, and thus the system of necessity, does
indeed rest on the requirement to give reasons for effects and events by
means of anterior causes, when it comes to the major theological point on
which depend, as we have seen, both the possibility and the completeness
of the system Hobbes removes God himself from the principle of reason.
20 Cf. A. Pacchi, Scritti Hobbesiani (197890), a cura di A. Lupoli, FrancoAngeli, 1998; and A.
Lupoli, Fluidismo e Corporeal Deity nella losoa naturale di Thomas Hobbes : a propos-
ito dellhobbesiano Dio delle cause, Rivista di storia della losoa, 4/1999, pp. 573609.
21 LN, p. 246.
22 Ibid., pp. 2467.
 HOBBESS GENERAL THEORY OF EVENTS 437

In other words, Hobbes puts, at the foundation of a chain of reason, a prin-

ciple without reason. The doctrine of absolute necessity rests hanging on a
divine will of which no account can be given. This is to say that, in Leibnizs
eyes, Hobbess theology, far from fullling its function as the foundation of
the entire system of absolute necessity, in fact overthrows it.

CAUSE AND AUTHOR (DE HOMINE, 1658)

We can raise another problematical characteristic of Hobbess positions on

causality. We have seen how Hobbes, in providing a unied principle to
explain events, was led to apply the same explanatory scheme to human
action as he had applied to bodies (give or take a degree of complexica-
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tion). Now the paradox is that his theory of causality, considered from
another angle, seems to spare humanity this reduction. Already in De
Corpore, but above all in De Homine, (Chapter 10) Hobbes distinguishes
things of which we are ourselves the causes mathematical objects and the
body politic from those which we do not produce ourselves. The former
can be the object of a priori knowledge, whereas the latter are only suscep-
tible of a posteriori, conjectural knowledge. But, apart from this difference
at the level of knowledge, we can see that the conception of man as the cause
of the body politic makes of him an author, the author of his own world.
Here we nd ourselves in a conguration which is considerably different
from that which prevailed with the application of the general theory of
events to human actions. Man, in this conguration, is above nature, at his
full height as a creator of artice, and his most important creation is the
state. Paradoxically, the reductive character of the general theory of events
lets an image of man emerge as a producer of events, man the author, not
reducible to the concept of necessary causality.

CONCLUSION

We have seen the implications of the concept of causality in Hobbes. These

implications are considerable, because they involve the project of founding
a general theory of events. But when we get beyond that project, we realize
that ethics and politics fall outside its framework. Even if Hobbess theory
of events applies very well to the physical world of nature, it cannot grasp
the world of man who desires, wishes and speaks. Hobbess philosophy thus
remains shot through with a discordance which crosses the face of man, at
once a natural being, a body amongst bodies, and a productive being, the
author of his own world, and above all of the artice of politics.23

CNRS, Paris
23 Translated by Edward Hughes