Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes (Re-Reading the Canon) by Nancy Hirschmann & Joanne Wright

Author:Nancy Hirschmann & Joanne Wright [Hirschmann, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 2012-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Human Nature, Civil Society, and Freedom

To understand the theoretical grounding of Cavendish’s theory of women’s freedom, it is helpful to explicate a few features of her theory of individuals, including human individuals. In her Philosophical Letters, she takes issue with what she sees as Hobbes’s view of freedom, according to which the human will is not free. According to Hobbes, the will is assimilated to fully determined appetites—“the will is appetite; [man can no more] determine his will than any other appetite, that is, more than he can determine when he will be hungry and when not”8—and the will is simply the last appetite before action. It is thus a contradiction to speak of a “free will,” even while it makes perfect sense to speak of a free human (Leviathan, ch. 21, 262). Deliberation is the alternating of desires (or appetites and aversions, including emotions such as hope and fear) to either perform or not perform a given action, before the final appetite (will) determines an action (ch. 6, 127). Similarly, human action is necessitated because human action follows from a necessitated human will. As a result, Hobbes must define liberty or freedom in such a way that it is consistent with necessity:

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