Hobbes, education and the long run stability of nations: toward a Hobbesian model for contemporary religious theocratic socities

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HOBBES, EDUCATION AND THE LONG RUN STABILITY OF NATIONS:
TOWARD A HOBBESIAN MODEL FOR
CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS THEOCRATIC SOCITIES

by:

Maryam Qudrat

________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(PHILOSOPHY)

August 2008

Copyright 2008 Maryam Qudrat
ii
DEDICATION

For my parents, Abdul Qadeer and Shaesta Qudrat
iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ……………………………………………………….. ii

ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………. iv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND ………….. 1

CHAPTER 2: TRANSCENDENT INTERESTS ……………………. 20

CHAPTER 3: RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION …………………. 38

CHAPTER 4: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC JUDGMENT …………… 53

CHAPTER 5: RE-DESCRIPTION OF RELIGION THROUGH RE-
EDUCATION ………………………………………………………. 63

CHAPTER 6: EDUCATION ……………………………………….. 83

CHAPTER 7: JIHAND AND AFGHANISTAN …………………. 122

CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION …………………………………….. 142

BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………….. 145

iv
ABSTRACT

Hobbes wrote Leviathan in response to the horrifying prospect of a civil war
rooted largely in factions’ differing conceptions of religious duty. His proposed
absolutist, authoritarian remedy and prophylactic for such disorders seeks to cause
subjects through extensive education, to internalize a settled, principled commitment
to deferring to the judgment of a single sovereign arbitrator on all disputed matters.
The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s may appear to model
Hobbes’ recommendation. However, the fall of the Taliban, unseated by the United
States government in partnership with several European nations in 2001 reveals a
serious fault in Hobbes’ recommended strategy for building a stable state. Hobbes
insisted that only pervasive and uniform education—we might rather think of it as
indoctrination—could force the internalization of attitudes of willing deference
needed to ensure stability. But mere deference is not a principled commitment, and
sheepishfollowers beaten down by an “educational system” that compels them
uncritically to parrot whatever they are told will not have the wherewithal to defend
their regime against any threat, whether external or internal. The very sort of
charismatic “seducers of the people” that so exercised Hobbes, find easy prey in a
society of sheepish Hobbesian followers. Hobbes’ educational system proves self-
defeating.
This project begins by describing the rise of the Taliban and situating it in
Hobbesian terms. The particular content and methods of its educational system are
described in detail. I then explain the features of that system that made it vulnerable
v
to such an easy overturning by invading forces. I argue that this vulnerability is an
ineliminable defect of the educational model Hobbes proposed, and I conclude by
offering a sketch of a more useful educational model that preserves Hobbes’s
insights about the importance of education in any stable theocracy, while
incorporating elements of Mill’s “market place of ideas” to enable citizens to forge a
principled attachment to the system that sustains social order.

1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Hobbes’s Philosophical concern:

…I recover some hope that, one time or other, this writing of mine may fall
into the hands of a sovereign…and by the exercise of entire sovereignty in
protecting the public teaching of it, convert this truth of speculation into the
utility of practice.
1
– Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes is concerned with the problematic state of affairs of his era, namely
the English Civil wars, and how to gain resolution in favor of civil peace.
Philosophers such as Plato, Machiavelli and Spinoza all have a political project
intended to increase the stability of their nation, relative to their own individual era,
each encompassing a unique set of political and social challenges to peace.
Similarly, countless other philosophers both those that pre-date and post-date
Hobbes, have addressed the philosophical concern of whether government is right in
its treatment of its citizens, how to construct the best composition of a government
that will serve the long run interests of the people, what sorts of characters pose a
challenge to the state’s stability and what mechanisms can serve as a methodology to
gaining compatibility between sovereign rule and religious interests – attached to
their own time. As Machiavelli stated in The Discourses:
it is the duty of the rulers of a republic or of a kingdom to maintain the
foundations of the religion that sustains them; and if this is done it will be
easy for them to keep their republic religious and, as a consequence, good

1
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. Edwin
Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), xxxi.41.
2
and united. And they must favor and encourage all those things which arise
in favor of religion, even if they judge them to be false.
2

Machiavelli continues
If one desires or intends to reform the government of a city so that the reform
will be acceptable and will be able to maintain itself to everyone's
satisfaction, he should retain at least the shadow of ancient customs so that it
will not seem to the people that they have changed institutions; whereas in
actual fact the new institutions may be completely different from those of the
past; for the majority of men delude themselves with what seems to be rather
than with what actually is; indeed, they are more often moved by things that
seem to be rather than by things that are true.
3

In this same tradition, I will endeavor to explore the state of affairs of my era,
specifically exploring a case study within the Islamic context of Afghanistan in order
to test Hobbes’s views on education, government control, transcendent interests and
gaining overall civil peace and social obedience through sovereign control of
religious interpretation and re-description of religious principles and re-education of
citizens – in order to extrapolate whether his model would in fact offer long run and
perpetual civil peace as he had intended. I will attempt to build a Hobbesian model
to deal with these problems, suggesting modifications to avoid defects in his model
by employing J.S. Mill.
Hobbes is typically understood as looking at force as a simple solution that
will, if exercised by the sovereign, gain perpetual civil order. But this standard
interpretation does not take into account the realistic view that Hobbes holds in

2
Peter Bonandella and Mark Musa, eds., The Portable Machiavelli (New York: Viking Books, 1979),
211.
3
Ibid, 231.
3
dealing with citizens as he realizes that mere force will not cause them to obey their
duties to the state:
For if men know not their duty, what is there that can force them to obey the
laws? An army, you will say. But what shall force the army?…
4

If we were to interpret Hobbes as having held that social order is maintained by
terror and force and that any freedom of conscience must inevitably lead to
resistance against the government, then the proposed solution I make to Hobbes’s
problem will render his project incoherent. But what I argue is that his project as it
stands is incoherent because his solution does not serve his goal. Furthermore, what
I take to be the most adequate interpretation of Hobbes can incorporate Millian
mechanisms that I will suggest. I reject the two claims about 1) sovereign
maintaining order by might and terror, 2) freedom of conscience will lead to
potential overthrowing of the sovereign. I am not committed to an interpretation of
Hobbes that would be incompatible with the Millian mechanisms I propose in this
project. It may appear astonishing that one would endeavor to correct Hobbesian
deficiencies using Millian mechanisms. I carefully engage Hobbes’s texts but my
primary interest is not to offer interpretation of Hobbes but to use parts of Hobbes
that would be valuable and useful because as it stands Hobbes’s project needs a
different solution which I find in Mill. Even if this were not the standard
interpretation of Hobbes, it is more faithful to Hobbes’s aims and intentions than
more familiar interpretations.

4
S.A. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 235.
4
S.A. Lloyd’s account provides a markedly different view from the standard
interpretation and takes into consideration people’s religious interests and
persuading citizens through education to accept Hobbes’s principle of political
obligation through both those religious interests and understanding of the laws of
nature.
It is against the sovereign’s duty to let the people be ignorant or misinformed
of the grounds and reasons of those his essential rights; because thereby men
are easy to be seduced, and drawn to resist him, when the commonwealth
shall require their use and exercise. And the grounds of these rights, have the
rather need to be diligently and truly taught; because they cannot be
maintained by any civil law, or terror of legal punishment…
5

Hobbes is especially concerned with the types of religious interests which can
lead to transcendent interests that people are willing to die for, eliminating the
sovereign’s ability to control through reward or punishment – and how education in
particular plays a paramount role in teaching the citizens through a careful process of
re-description of religious ideals, to obey the state. Hobbes seeks to gain the
agreement by persuasion of the population via education that it is in fact in their
religious interests and personal interests (by acceptance of the laws of nature which
would be taught through education as well) – to obey the sovereign of the state. In
this sense, Hobbes is more realistic about the sources of motivation of his audience,
their belief system and how those beliefs directly impact behaviors which lead to
social instability, instead of thinking that force alone would maintain social order
forever. He is also practical in his strategy by addressing the strong need for “right”

5
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (London: Penguin, 1968), 377. (L 175)
5
education and reformation in the universities in order to achieve his overarching goal
of gaining the consensus of the population in favor of obeying the sovereign,
Hobbes’s principle of political obligation, and upholding his decree as described and
set forth in his rules for a commonwealth.
I will argue that Hobbes’s argument is plausible but that his strategy is
wanting. It is in his heavy reliance on the integrity of ruling governments to uphold
the long run interests of the state as opposed to their own personal short term gains
and in his justification for stripping private judgment from citizens through education
that I believe Hobbes has undermined his own goal. He will render citizens so
intellectually dense and obedient that they in fact become susceptible to the kinds of
misguided transcendent interests that would cause the downfall of the state –
Hobbes’s monumental concern. Furthermore, by placing blind trust in seated
governments to control both the universities and religious interpretation with the
purpose of ensuring the state’s interests – Hobbes places too much trust in the hands
of government without a gauge that would force them to comply with the express
goals of the state, rather than exercising their power over religion and education to
secure their own seated regime.
Introduction:
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan served as a politically motivated philosophical
work that directly addressed his view of the dismal state of affairs of his era, as his
writings took place during the English civil war. Specifically, Hobbes observed as
problematic and indicative of social disorder, the clash between the expression of
6
religious duties and the interpretation of responsibilities to God, which the church
was responsible for – with civic responsibility and duty to obey the sovereign, social
order and the effective upholding of the commonwealth.
The most frequent pretext of sedition and civil warre in Christian common-
wealths hath a long time proceeded from a difficulty, not yet sufficiently
resolved, of obeying at once, both God, and Man, then when their
commandments are one contrary to the other. It is manifest enough that
when a man receiveth two contrary commands, and knows that one of them is
God’s, he ought to obey that, and not the other, though it be the command
even of his lawfull Sovereign (whether a monarch, or a sovereign assembly)
or the command of his father.
6

In essence, he found that there was a conflicting relationship between obedience to
the sovereign and obedience to God, and this was a conflict that Hobbes cleverly
tackles in an effort to resolve the clash and gain compatibility in favor of the
sovereign and subsequently in favor of a strong and healthy state. The danger that
religious obedience led to was transcendent interests such that individuals were
willing to die for religious ideals – at which point the sovereign is left powerless to
control such religious-minded individuals since no threat of this worldly reward or
punishment could gauge their behavior which was propelled by religious ideals. My
view encompasses S.A. Lloyd’s account of Hobbes’s resolutive-compositive method
which involves determining the causes of social disorder, specifically determining
that particular practices and institutions that produce people with religious interests
of a certain sort that when acted on cause disruption, and then isolating the interests
they serve, the operations by which they are established and the tendencies to make

6
Hobbes, Leviathan, 187. (L 63)
7
the errors on which they rest, finally considering people with those interests and
tendencies. On Lloyd’s view, it is only after analyzing this that Hobbes can describe
how a society can be recomposed in such a way that it would not produce practices
and institutions that generate disruptive activity – as opposed to the standard view
that a society is composed of individual persons, therefore we start by examining the
properties of isolated individuals.
7
Further, I will adopt S.A. Lloyd’s view on
Hobbes’s approach which acknowledges religious interests and education as a means
to gaining civil obedience and not merely force as a methodology to gaining
perpetual social order. Hobbes wishes to unify civil and religious authority because:
…if that were not, but kings should command one thing upon pain of death,
and priests another upon pain of damnation, it would be impossible that peace
and religion should stand together.
8

There are many resemblances between the clash that Hobbes was concerned about
and the contemporary problem within the Islamic context of Afghanistan. A
discussion of the English civil wars will not be elaborated on here as it is not the
historical analogy that is attempted but rather the particular principles of: 1) conflict
between religious and civil obedience, 2) problem of gaining civil obedience when
citizens hold transcendent interests, 3) re-description of religious texts according to
Hobbes in order to re-define religious ideals to comport with preservation of the
authority and power of the sovereign, 4) Hobbes’s views on education and the
university as they relate to civil obedience and religious obedience. The scope of

7
S.A. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 235.
8
Ferdinand Tönnies, Elements of Law (London: Frank Case, 1969), 2.7.10.
8
this discussion will be limited to the exploration of these four distinct areas in which
Hobbes’s concerns are analogous and relevant in the contemporary clash that exists
particularly in the modern day Islamic context of Afghanistan.
Background:
After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the country plunged
into a state of civil war and without the presence of an effective sovereign, laws,
constitution, military force, etc. a war of all against all ensued. Hobbes’s description
of how he envisions such a state without an effective sovereign is such that humans
will regress into a state of nature,
9
and Afghanistan’s civil war exemplified this
human condition where “by the manner of life, which men that have formerly lived
under a peaceful government, used to denegrate into, in a civil war.”
10
Hobbes
believes that life outside of civil society is brutish, and a sovereign is the necessary
component to maintaining civil obedience and thus a secure, healthy state. Since the
price to pay for not having this sovereign is so high, (alternatively a state of nature)
Hobbes empowers the sovereign to ensure civil obedience even at high individual
costs and since an individual may suffer some personal loss as a result of living in an
established state, the alternative would be astoundingly worse and so s/he should
concede the price of having a sovereign maintain order in the state. The alternative
that Hobbes predicts is a precise depiction of the condition of Afghanistan during its
civil war:

9
A state of nature for Hobbes is a state of unbridled private judgment in which “everyone is governed
by his own reason.” “…that every private man is judge of good and evil actions…is true in the
condition of meer nature.”
10
Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13.
9
Whatsoever therefore is a consequent to a time of war, where every man is
enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live
without other security than what their own strength and their own invention
shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for industry,
because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the
earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea,
no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such
things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no
account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which worst of all,
continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.
11

In Afghanistan, individual towns and provinces divided amongst each other and
became dominated by warlords who would protect their turf against neighbors.
Security had disintegrated and all individuals carried firearms in order to protect
against the barbarism that immediately sprang from the lack of law and order.
Young girls were kidnapped and raped, forced into marriage as sex slaves. Those
who had the might to enforce their will upon others would be able to do so and
would exercise this ability in order to demonstrate that the lives of others were at
their disposal. The common Afghans took to the mosques and prayed for a strong
force to come in and restore security and reclaim the country.
In 1997, what seemed an impossibility began to materialize as the Taliban
steamrolled through the country and crushed the warlords with all of their firepower.
Ordinary citizens immediately and willingly gave up their weapons to the Taliban
who claimed to be the soldiers of the former King, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who was
in exile in Rome as a result of the coup that his cousin, President Daoud (formerly

11
Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants, viii. 9.
10
the King’s prime minister) staged just before the Soviet coup took place killing him
and leaving the King in Rome for decades to come while Afghanistan fought the
Soviets and then fought the civil wars. The Afghan people were elated that their
reverent King would return, a unifying symbol of a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.
However, once they seized full control of the country, the Taliban publicly
proclaimed that they would place the King on trial if he were to return to
Afghanistan. The Afghan people felt duped but were stripped of their arms and
stood no chance of rebelling against the iron fist security that the Taliban instituted.
The punishments that the Taliban implemented were quite ruthless and their
zero tolerance policies terrorized the Afghans into submission. The national soccer
stadium was converted into a public executing and arm severing arena. Certainly,
the Taliban did manage to bring security to the lawless nation but the price to pay for
that security was too high for the Afghans as the doors to schools were closed,
women were not allowed to go out in public without escorts, even to work, and were
compelled to wear burqas. The artwork in the museums were destroyed, all films cut
and burned, statues blown up since they were seen as symbols of idolatry, and books,
especially philosophical texts were burned. All citizens were completely banned
from expressing private judgment, or engaging in open debate and dialogue. The
justification for all of these harsh measures was grounded in maintaining security in
an otherwise chaotic state. Since the country was still in a fragile state, all of these
precautions had to be taken until eventually over time, the Taliban regime felt
11
confident and judged that people would be able to roam the streets and speak freely
within the boundaries defined by the sovereign.
Goal:
To apply Hobbes’s model as illustrated by his construction of political
obligation in the Leviathan, which directed citizens to obey their sovereign first and
foremost in all matters, including religious– to a contemporary scenario in the
Islamic context of Afghanistan that resembles the conflict of religious expression
with sovereign authority. Hobbes has formulated this principle of political
obligation as that one is to obey the effective government of the commonwealth of
which one is a member in all of its commands not repugnant to one’s duty to God.
12

That subjects owe to Sovereigns, simple obedience, in all things, where in
their obedience is not repugnant to the Lawes of God.
13

In an attempt to apply Hobbes’s model to the contemporary mirroring clash, I
will illustrate the analogous scenarios and pose the solution that Hobbes suggests and
explain why this model would undermine his goal. By projecting Hobbes’s theory
onto a case study that results not in the civil obedience that Hobbes hoped for but
instead the cultivation of religious minded people with uncontrollable transcendent
interests, I will argue that Hobbes actually breeds the kinds of citizens who will
cause the implosion of the state instead of its stability. In the case of the Taliban,
despite the US-led war against the regime of the Taliban, I hold that the support and
will of the people of Afghanistan allowed for the success of the Taliban ousting

12
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 50.
13
Hobbes, Leviathan, 395 (Ch. 31)
12
campaign by the US. If the citizens of Afghanistan were not in favor of their
removal, I believe that the Taliban would not have lost its stronghold and the
resistance to keep them in power on the part of the citizens would persist as it has in
the successive wars in Afghan history that have led to the defeating of Alexander the
Great, Changes Khan and the Mongols, Anglo wars in Afghanistan which defeated
the British, and most recently the Russians in the decade long Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Thus, even though it may seem as though the US removed the Taliban,
I agree that it was the will of the Afghan people that made it possible for the Taliban
regime to be toppled.
I will anticipate Hobbes’s potential response(s) and alternatively construct a
system of education that would save Hobbes from serving short run individual
political regimes and restore the long term sanctity of the state. My position is that
Hobbes’s idea is correct but that his strategy is wanting. Specifically, I will
contribute to the analysis with an alternative solution to attaining religious and civic
compatibility that Hobbes aspired to. I will hold that it will be through allowing
private judgment and dialogue at the university as it relates to religious principles -
that education will work to create stability, not by controlling/prohibiting it. By
cultivating free-flowing dialogue in an intellectual atmosphere at the universities, the
sovereign can minimize faulty reasoning, grossly erroneous interpretations that lead
to misguided passions and transcendent interests. Those that do occur would be
isolated incidences that would not have the potential to pose a serious threat to the
state.
13
The focus of this project and Hobbes’s concern is with citizens of the state
who hold transcendent interests. I will argue that Hobbes renders citizens
susceptible to holding misguided interests by requiring uniformity of thought and
judgment by censoring private judgment. I believe that this feature of his argument
undermines his own goal. He would be better suited to breed intellectually
sophisticated citizens who can be less susceptible to dysfunction and less gullible
and less easily mobilized by misguided transcendent interests. One may object that
if citizens were activated to hold rightly guided transcendent interests that do serve
the state then Hobbes’s strategy would be in alignment with his express goal of
maintaining sovereign control and civil peace. However, once individuals have been
cultivated into sheepish followers, the directionality of their loyalty cannot be
guaranteed by the state. Charismatic leaders, who emerge from this pool of
misguided transcendent interests-holding followers, could otherwise espouse a
political project aimed at undermining the sovereign and gain full support from such
narrowly focused followers who are composed of their peers. These charismatic
leaders may position themselves to destroy the authority of the sovereign by
interrupting civil institutions via a destabilization of security since of course this
group is willing to die for their ideals which are motivated by religion. In sum, the
very group that the sovereign would rely on for upholding the state would organize
under a charismatic leader who emerges from amongst this pool and would be well
poised to overthrow the very sovereign who expected their loyalty and obedience by
14
creating insecurity and eventually a civil war which would pronounce the death of
the state for Hobbes.
The solution I pose illustrates an inherent inversion of Hobbes’s view as it
will promote diversity in religious opinion through the university’s scholarly
approach to the study of religion and creating a marketplace of ideas. One may
argue that in order to protect against political abuses, what is really needed is a
process of strengthening civil institutions such as media agencies, etc. However, I
will agree with Hobbes that the universities are a central area of interest for the state
in that the leadership team of the state (both public and private sectors) are cultivated
at the university and through a trickle down process will go through the university
educational system and eventually occupy leadership positions throughout the whole
of the nation. Thus, the work of the university manifests itself across the entire state
and must therefore be targeted as the main source of what the nation receives in all
of its institutions. On the other hand, news media agencies which are another
important member of civil society, for instance, may not necessarily reflect the
opinion of the general population since their broadcasters, reporters and
correspondents are often not a true sampling of the general population but reflecting
a particular angle or social view. We see this in most of the media outlets and can
not make the case that the role of the media is as far reaching throughout society as
the university. Secondly, universities stand the test of time whereas other institutions
such as media agencies will not become part of the permanent fabric of society. In
fact, though there is usually some form of transfer of information in societies, the
15
outlets are usually transient as the institution is not rooted in the way that the
university is based in a society and this is precisely why Hobbes focused his
attention upon this particular academic entity. For Hobbes, controlling universities is
part of the sovereign’s extension of authority but I disagree with his strategy.
Certainly Hobbes is correct in pointing out the importance and significance of
universities to sovereign authority and civil obedience but it is in his approach that I
will argue that Hobbes does not serve the state’s long run interests as he would like
to do.
Allowing 1) non-governmentally controlled universities (in terms of content)
that are publicly funded to advance a scholarly, critical and analytical approach to
the study of religion coupled with 2) disallowing any central religious authority or
institution, especially not the sovereign, would lead to citizens who are moved by
their passions to obey the sovereign – based on appeal to their reason. An objection
may hold that my view will rule out the free exercise of religion since ordinary
citizens may not be able to offer their children religious education at their local
mosques since on my view the mullahs and mosque authority structure is susceptible
to short term political gains and interests which must be restructured and placed in
the universities. However, I argue that the university must be the host and catalyst
for breeding religious scholars and leaders but these would be elected by local
communities by the citizens of the area so that the people would decide to elect who
best represents the religious interpretation that they express in their daily lives.
Rather than undereducated or uneducated mullahs who promote a dogmatic view of
16
religion on a leap of faith, mosques would be led by university educated religious
scholars emanating from a school of thought that the local community agrees with
and is interested in ingraining in their children. Thus, critical religious education
would trickle from the universities and could also be preceded by being introduced in
grade school as a preparatory phase for university education. Of course, this level of
religious understanding presupposes literacy and a basic understanding of how to
reason. Hobbes talks a great deal about the importance of reasoning and reasoning
correctly. For instance, in his discussion on the fool which will be elaborated on in
chapter five, this is precisely where the fools folly – in his inability to reason
correctly. For Hobbes, reasoning on religious matters should be left to the sovereign
and not religious institutions or other potentially competing forces that would
challenge the authority of the state. All of this must precede the university and
therefore the elementary and secondary school education coupled with the education
of religion that children receive at local mosques would be the foundation upon
which the universities would build. This component is crucial to the project
although it will not be discussed here as it will instead be assumed as an integral part
of this cycle of education.
Politics follows power and as such one may object that eventually the
universities will emerge as an enterprise that is itself politically driven. The actual
organizational structure of such an enterprise in terms of the admissions process of
universities, composition of the faculty must gauge against political abuse.
17
Mediators between man and God set up the structure which is conducive to
the kinds of corrupted shortsighted political projects I am concerned with. Allowing
mullahs, sovereigns or mosques as institutions to dictate the laws of God rather than
handing to the people the literacy, reasoning skills and religious education necessary
for them to be able to arrive at sound conclusions on their own, sets up the recipe for
the kinds of dangerous and subservient interpretations of religion that are required of
citizens to hold and practice – that foolishly serve short run gains while undermining
the long term interests of the state. In short, by extracting any sort of mediation
between man and God, sovereign included, Hobbes would be well placed to lead an
intelligent, robust obedience to the sovereign rather than relying on dense, narrowly
focused followers who could be easily swayed and redirected against the sovereign.
Though religious guidance and scholarship is necessary, setting up individuals or
entities that would claim to have a superior relationship with God and who would
expect worshippers to deal through them as a channel or means to reach God – is in
my opinion problematic for reasons that will be argued throughout this discussion.
According to the analogy, I will argue that as Hobbes had predicted, civil war
led to a state of nature in Afghanistan. This was followed by a political regime that
held security throughout the nation by stripping private judgment and appointing
itself as the religious authority. However, it only served the ends of the Taliban, a
political regime that has since disintegrated – instead of the perpetual sanctity of the
state (which is what Hobbes was aiming for). In his time, Hobbes felt that the
church gained loyalty from citizens and therefore power over the sovereign whereas
18
in the current problem, the sovereign has re-described the religious and moral
principles of duty to God, making defense of territorial integrity central and
paramount – as Hobbes purported to be a desirable scenario, where individual
interests would be in line with the will of the sovereign who would exercise his (as
an entity) authority to protect the people and maintain their strength against internal
and external attack. However, now that this has successfully occurred in the case
study of Afghanistan, we have arrived at a series of problems with closed-minded
individuals who hold transcendent interests to uphold their state, interests that the
state itself can no longer control.
Unlike Hobbes’s vision, it points to a need for regression of this re-
description – to extinguish such acts of martyrdom. The inherent flaw of extracting
private judgment from citizens is thus manifested in their loss of rational abilities by
reducing citizens to narrowly focused followers who become obstacles to their own
interests. I propose that open and uninhibited knowledge (religious and otherwise) at
the university must be advanced rather than abolished to ensure the preservation of
the long run interests of the state.
In my view, knowledge of religion must be limited to this level of scholarly,
academic engagement and not be placed in the mullah structure (religious leaders
trained in mosques and funded by political movements) or any other system that
would be hijackable by political motivations of seated governments. Religious
authority would instead be gained through university education in religious studies.
This replaces mullahs, priests and/or any other self-proclaimed religious leaders with
19
religious scholars who are not susceptible to being attached to the interests of
shifting political processes or political climates.
In sum, I suggest that the sovereign allow scholarly private judgment and
disallow the formation of a single religious authority or enterprise – that can corrupt,
manipulate and eventually become a self-serving, counterproductive institution.
Individual religious scholars may gain popularity, their writings and opinions being
embraced to a greater degree in society. However, they would not be able to claim
to be mediators between man and God. Final religious expression would reside in
the hearts of believing Muslims who would be required to have the literacy and
reasoning skills to arrive at and grapple with arguments and arrive at sound
conclusions in a Rawlsian tradition. I believe Hobbes would have done better to
target the representation of the religion, namely the mechanism of the church – rather
than the religious scriptures and their underlying principles. This would have been
seen as a critique on individuals rather than the religion, and he would have been
well placed to gain support for the dismantling of the institution of the church, which
posed a threat to the state instead of attempting to re-define scriptures or the religion
itself.
20

CHAPTER 2: TRASCENDENT INTERESTS
Certain ideals are worth not only fighting for but also dying for. Willingness
to die poses a special challenge to the state since the sovereign cannot threaten to
punish or pose offers of reward to such individuals, especially when they are
motivated by religious passions. According to S.A. Lloyd, Hobbes acknowledges at
least four kinds of interests: 1) narrowly prudential interests in physical survival, 2)
moral interests in fulfilling natural duties and moral obligations, 3) religious interests
in fulfilling duties to God and 4) special prudential interests in achieving salvation.
14

Religious interests can take on the structure of a transcendent interest since it can
override one’s interest in physical survival. How to convince such religious minded
people who hold transcendent interests, that they should obey the laws of the state,
becomes a challenging endeavor that Hobbes tactfully tackles from a basic human
interest point of view.
From Hobbes’s starting point of motivation through self interest, humans are
moved by their desires and those desires must move them to attain the kinds of
transcendent interests that will uphold the ideals of the state.
…for the similitude of the thoughts, and passions of one man, to the thoughts,
and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself, and considereth
what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c, and upon
what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and
passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of
passions, which are the same in all men, desire, fear, hope, &c,; not the
similitude of the objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared,

14
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 51.
21
hoped, &c: for these the constitution individuall, and particular education do
so vary, and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge, that the
characters of mans heart…are legible only to him that searcheth hearts.
15

Ideals are not upheld purely on the basis of their merit but rather based on people’s
passion for them. Hobbes asserts that “the understanding is by the flame of the
passions never enlightened, but dazzled.”
16
Hobbes realizes that reason is the slave
of passion and he operates on this premise in order to ingrain the passion in citizens
to obey their sovereign. Human beings must be taught to want to uphold the state
and to protect it. However, it is how each individual calculates their own perceived
interests that will determine whether they have sufficient reason and this can be
arrived upon through prudential, moral and religious considerations. Hobbes would
like to see a concurrence of reasons that will give sufficient reason to adhere to his
principle of political obligation.
Starting from identifying the concept of a commonwealth which he defines as
“One person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutuall covenants one with
another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the
strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and
common defense.”
17
Hobbes writes in Parts 2 and 3 of Leviathan about rules that
would lead to an indestructible state (one that would not befall the fate of civil war or
implosion) in order to defend his basic principle that “one is to obey the government
of the commonwealth of which one is a member in all of its commands not

15
Hobbes, Leviathan, 82. (L 2)
16
Ibid., 485. (L 242)
17
Ibid., 228. (L 88)
22
repugnant to one’s duty to God.” Hobbes moves to show that his principle really
would work if followed, obeying his principle would lead to social order and to
demonstrate this Hobbes derived the rules from the sources of disorder and social
collapse. By the aforementioned definition of a commonwealth one finds in Hobbes
1) a final authority –single unified judgment directed by a single person necessary in
order to secure the preservation of citizens from external or internal aggression. In
essence the people “reduce all their wills…unto one will.”
18
This single person
whose single judgment is to direct the strength of the commonwealth towards
defending the state – must be 2) authorized through the mutual covenants of the
members of the state such that they accept his single judgment and based upon this
acceptance, subjects who disobey act unjustly. The subjects’ view of the extent of
the sovereign’s authority is key in that his authority should be limitless, leaving no
room for subjects to be exempted from the reach of his rule of law.
Without other design, than to be set before men’s eyes the mutual relation
between protection and obedience; of which the condition of human nature,
and the laws divine, require an inviolable observation.
19

Thirdly, the size of the commonwealth must be large enough to intimidate and detour
foreign aggressors from attacking it since a group that is too small to defend the
whole of the group, inherently leaves individual members to fend for themselves as
they see fit and are able to. This would undermine the sovereign’s ability to ensure

18
Ibid., 227. (L 87)
19
Ibid., 728. (L 395-96)
23
that obeying the rules of the commonwealth would lead to protection, security and
perpetual peace and stability in the state.
Nor is it the joining together of a small number of men that gives them this
security; because in small numbers, small additions on the one side or the
other, make the advantage of strength so great, as is sufficient to carry the
victory; and therefore gives encouragement to an invasion. The multitude
sufficient to confide in for our security is…then sufficient, when the odds of
the enemy is not of so visible and conspicuous moment, to determine the
event of warre, as to move him to attempt it.
20

If in fact the sovereign would not be able to protect the citizens of the state, then the
citizens are released from their obligation to obey the state since “no man is obliged
(when the protection of the law faileth,) not to protect himself, by the best means he
can.”
21

Fourth and fifth are the need for the members of the state to trust in and act upon the
direction of their effective sovereign. The leader of the state utilizes resources as he
thinks fit and the citizens should follow his judgment and use their strength to
enforce it when they are directed to do so.
The only way to erect such a common power as may be able to defend them
from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby
to secure them in such sort, as that by their own industrie, and by the fruits of
the earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is to conferre all
their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that
may reduce all their wills…unto one will.”
22

Since people differ in their private judgments 6) security requires single direction.
The sovereign should be the sole authority when it comes to matters of domestic

20
Ibid., 224. (L 86)
21
Ibid., 345. (L 156)
22
Ibid., 227. (L 87)
24
peace and common defense. People hold a host of historical and social backgrounds
that inject a flurry of differing opinion and judgment on particular matters.
Educational backgrounds, socio-economic position, emotional and psychological
experiences all contribute to diversity and a plethora of opinion on matters relating to
the state and how to protect it. As a result, there should be one navigating force who
will steer the ship, as it were, and to lead the group based on their expressed goals of
enforcing security. This is why sovereign rule should not be limited since limiting
the sovereign leaves room for private judgment.
And because the end of this institution is the peace and defense of them all;
and whosoever has the right to the means; it belongeth of right, to whatsoever
man, or assembly that hath the sovereignty, to be judge both of the means of
peace and defense; and also of the hindrances and disturbances of the same;
and to do whatsoever he shall think necessary to be done, both before hand,
for the preserving of peace and security, by prevention of discord at home
and hostility from abroad; and, when peace and security are lost, for the
recovery of the same.
23

Lastly, the very reason that people enter into the social contract allowing government
to impinge their individual liberty -is to increase prospects of a secure living. Thus,
the state must provide security in exchange for the willingness on the part of the
citizens to agree to support and defend the sovereign’s judgment and decision in
matters of peace and defense.
Naturally, human beings want to protect themselves and yet in many cases
are willing to die to safeguard themselves as well as their family. This individual
desire for self preservation can be extended to the entire nation such that individuals

23
Ibid., 232-33. (L 90-91)
25
are willing to die for the protection of their state when it is so threatened. This
would be considered a correct transcendent interest but I argue that this is only the
case when the sovereign describes threat to the state based on upholding the long
term integrity of the state and not utilize his authority over the state as an instrument
to ensuring his own seat and short run gains. Hobbes realizes the special danger that
transcendent interests pose as individuals who are willing to die present a unique
challenge to the state’s ability to gain full obedience. Hobbes states “May I not
rather die if I think fit?”
24
What is a sovereign to do in order to control such unruly
individuals who would be willing to sacrifice themselves for an ideal that they hold
worthy of the cost of their life? Hobbes is particularly concerned with disruptive
transcendent interests and is not against people holding transcendent interests in
general as long as they support the preservation of the state and do not threaten it.
Instead, Hobbes believes in a process of education or re-education to guide
transcendent interests in order to cultivate correct transcendent interests which will
advance the perpetual sanctity of the state. The process of education that Hobbes
espouses would advance a pedagogical model that strips people of their private
judgment and weakens their ability to critically question authority, religious or civil.
This process would allow the sovereign to effectively define what ideals are worthy
of sacrificing one’s life for and mobilize the population according to his own
supreme judgment, which is for Hobbes an expression of the will of the people. A
detailed discussion of Hobbes’s view of education and private judgment will be

24
Thomas Hobbes. The Complete Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol. 5, ed. William Molesworth
(London: John Bohn, 1839), 180.
26
presented in chapters 6 and 7. But on Hobbes’s model, dogmatic education would in
my opinion render people obedient and thereby would turn them into the kinds of
obedient creatures that can be activated for dysfunctional reasons, thereby cultivating
a breed of individuals that the state itself can not control.
Hobbes’s goal is to guide transcendent interests such that they are not
disruptive or dysfunctional but through his construction of the reformation of
education, he may actually strip the element of private judgment from the minds of
people, leading to narrowly focused followers who, through their polarized thinking
are only capable of viewing the world in oversimplified terms and unable to
appreciate the complexities necessary to decipher between correct and misguided
transcendent interests. Over time, such a group of followers could be diverted to die
for misguided transcendent interests that the state itself can not control similar to the
jihadists in Afghanistan who have become an obstacle to the sanctity of the state
rather than its protectors. My position is that rulers are served by rightly guided
transcendent interests and not misguided ones.
There are a variety of types of transcendent interests and reasons that
motivate them. Two in particular will be addressed for the purpose of our
discussion. The first kind of transcendent interest that will be delineated would
relate to ideals that are deemed worthy of dying for – based on individual interests.
The content and nature of these interests invariably fluctuate depending upon the
interpretation and translation of individual interests and how those are calculated to
be worthy of sacrifice in order to gain a particular goal. For example, an individual
27
may feel that s/he is willing to do anything including die, for the purpose of bringing
a killer to justice for the murder of one’s family member. In this case, one may
believe that the killer should pay for his crime even if costs one’s life in making sure
that this happens. The loss of one’s own life would be justified since God rewards
those who serve as his agent on earth and those who transgress and take the life that
God has given, must be punished. In this case, an individual may have a
transcendent interest to exact justice for the murder of their loved one and feel
confident that will be rewarded by God in the hereafter for their valiance and
heroism, since murder is wrong and upholding justice and the laws of God is a good
deed, despite the civil laws of the state that may call for leaving it to the authorities
to handle and to trust the outcome whether it was what one hoped for or not.
What if the sovereign were willing to die for an ideal and profess that the
nation as a whole would be worthy of sacrifice for this goal? Interests that the state
itself is willing to be annihilated for would constitute national transcendent interests.
What if it is in the interests of the state to kill innocents? Will the moral judgment
take precedence for Hobbes or will ensuring the security of the state always overrun
moral claims? We recall that for Hobbes, moral claims, religious precepts are
subject to the sovereign’s interpretation so that the will of the sovereign is propelled
by that of God and not vice versa. Therefore, the state could potentially harness
transcendent interests such that citizens do die for principles that uphold the sanctity
of the state even at the cost of innocent life. These interests are not tied to
individuals who may be willing to die for say freedom of speech so that people can
28
express themselves as they will or for the economic mobility of the lives of their
children. National transcendent interests are attached to the state’s interests. When
there is a threat that will potentially cause the state to disintegrate into a state of
nature, then all those who must be annihilated to achieve this purpose become
legitimate targets.
Could an example of such individuals holding national transcendent interests
be jihadists in Afghanistan who believe that they are right to dispose of their
individual lives as a kind of political currency in order to gain what they believe to
be freedom and autonomy from occupation forces who instead of bringing security
and stability are imposing Western ideals on their Islamic culture? This would cause
the downfall of the current sovereign, President Karzai, who is viewed by jihadists as
a figurehead who represents the strategic interests of a foreign country at
Afghanistan’s expense. In this case, preservation of territorial integrity and the
Islamic way of life is deemed worthy of dying for even if it kills others who are
noncombatants in the process. Such transcendent interests would be correct for
Hobbes as he believed it to be the duty of all citizens to protect the state and under
the threat of foreign aggression or internal rebellion, citizens should be willing to
defend the state with their lives. For Hobbes, it is every Christian’s duty to uphold
the sanctity of the state and citizens should be willing to die for the cause of
protecting their state. But this can not take place by forcing control of the beliefs of
people, which is what the standard interpretation attributes to Hobbes. I believe
Hobbes looked at education as a place to unify public judgment with the sovereign’s,
29
but I take issue with this approach as a tool or vehicle to serve the sovereign instead
of the preservation of long run interests of the state. This is evidenced by Hobbes
disallowing the practice of the inquisition on the grounds that people’s internal
beliefs should not be inquired into.
25

Would Hobbes agree that this fight continue even after the collapse of the
Taliban or should they now give up arms to the new sovereign? The demarcation of
where the foreign aggression lies and where the true gravity of power lies (i.e. with
the Karzai administration or Taliban) is somewhat murky in Afghanistan and
continues to become increasingly difficult to distinguish. In other words, it has
become controversial as to who the sovereign of the state is.
For Hobbes, the will of the state can be reduced to the will of the people such
that the individual wills collectively add up to one single will of the sovereign. The
sovereign holds the ability to express the will of its people and it is also incumbent
upon the people to uphold the will of the sovereign even if one does not believe that
it will advance one’s personal goals since it will inevitably promote the sanctity of
the society as a whole and therefore it will ensure one’s own personal benefit since
the inviolability of the state will be in everyone’s individual benefit as well. When
those interests are in alignment with the transcendent interests of its citizens, then we
have a unique case as illustrated above. Hobbes defined civil war as the death of the
state. The definition of civil war can be considered to be the war of all against all,

25
S.A. Lloyd, “Coercion, Ideology, and Education in Hobbes Leviathan”, in Reclaiming the History
of Ethnics, Eds. Andrew Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine M. Korsgaard (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 41. (L 91)

30
meaning a group of people who inhabit the same geographic location turning on each
other and each maximizing his/her own interest at the cost of others.
When therefore these two powers oppose one another, the common-wealth
cannot be in great danger of civil war, and dissolution. For the civil authority
being more visible, and standing in the clearer light of natural reason cannot
choose but to draw to it in all times a very considerable part of the people;
And the spiritual, though it stand in the darkness of schoole distinctions, and
hard words; yet because the fear of darkness, and ghosts, is greater than other
fears, cannot want a party sufficient to trouble, and sometimes destroy a
common-wealth.
26

The importance of civil obedience is of monumental significance to Hobbes
because of his belief that it is only through ensuring this and therefore security (since
for Hobbes a society without civil obedience leads to chaos and eventually
disintegrates into a war of all against all) that the effective state remains enforced
and intact so that the society will not plunge into chaos. Therefore, the will of the
head of state and the people must be in alignment. In other words, the will of the
sovereign expresses the will of the people even if they are too foolish to realize this.
The citizens of a state are compelled to obey their sovereign and align their will with
the will of the sovereign such that there is no divergence from his will and when
called upon by the sovereign, should be willing to die in order to expel internal or
foreign aggression. On this view, the Taliban, the head of the state of Afghanistan, a
force that was able to bring security to the lawless state, would have been right to
declare national transcendent interests. This would secure the seat of the Taliban but
not perpetual order in the form of the preservation of the state as was demonstrated

26
Hobbes, Leviathan, 371-72. (L 171-72)
31
by the people’s uprising against the Taliban regime upon their first opportunity to
rebel and overthrow.
What role does God and religion play in transcendent interests? The
Hobbesian fool is an atheist who does not believe in God, someone who will not
hold transcendent interests since Hobbes does not take account of those who could
have transcendent interests that are not attached to God. The Hobbesian fool in
contrast to the Hobbesian zealot (discussed below) is a short-sighted individual who
foolishly works to evade the state in order to maximize his self interest even though
he causes long term loss to himself as well as the state, due to the erosion that he
incurs in society. A more in-depth discussion of the fool will be addressed in chapter
5, in the context of the short term gains of rulers versus the long-term sanctity of the
state. Hobbes does not take account of individuals who hold transcendent interests
that are not tied to God. Instead, those who do believe in God are the individuals
who Hobbes is concerned with since they are moved by promises of otherworldly
rewards and punishments, thereby leaving the state ineffective in bridling the actions
of such religious-minded individuals – such as zealots.
In the case of Islamic militants, they act upon the transcendent interests of the
state which are in alignment with their personal interests and these transcendent
interests are tied to and motivated by religious promises of otherworldly success. In
Afghanistan, those who practice acts of terror do so as a transcendent interest of the
entire state (all of its citizens) to remove what they believe to be a foreign aggressor
from within their land.
32
The Zealot in Hobbes’s Leviathan, S.A. Lloyd’s account
Although the fool does not hold transcendent interests attached to God for
Hobbes, the zealot is the type of character who does and therefore poses an
especially difficult challenge to the attainment of civil obedience in the state.
According to S.A. Lloyd, Hobbes’s zealot “believes that he and like thinking others
alone have God’s truth in hand, relying for proof either on the authority of others or
on his belief that God is in direct communication with him, either through the
Scriptures or Supernaturally.” The Zealot is willing to die for what he believes to be
true and right for society.
The distinction between types of fools will be highlighted in the account of
the fool in Chapter 5 as the silent and explicit fools delineated by Kinch Hoekstra.
The explicit fool will overtly and outwardly pursue in both words and especially with
actions what he short-sightedly believes to be right, to maximize what he mistakenly
calculates to be in his own best interest. Hobbes does acknowledge that human
beings will have transcendent interests and thereby does not seek to undermine this
propensity. Rather, he believes that this inclination should be redirected by the state
so that it is aligned with the interests of the state. This comports with Hobbes’s
belief that religious interpretation should be dictated by the sovereign, and the
definition or interpretation of religious principles should be controlled by the state.
Reconciliation of Transcendent Interests
Hobbes’s solution to competing and disruptive transcendent interests is to re-
describe transcendent interests such that the religious authority (i.e. the sovereign)
33
dictates disruptive and correct transcendent interests as they relate to the fulfilling of
duties to God. The readily accepted sources of knowledge on one’s duty to God
were recognized as: 1) Holy Scriptures, 2) personal revelation and 3) natural reason.
Since God does not speak to man directly, we must rely on human judgment when it
comes to the three aforementioned sources of religious knowledge, for interpretation.
The question under consideration is whose judgment will take precedence?
Hobbes’s strategy on scriptures as a key instrument to understanding one’s duty to
God is to require three conclusions:
1) that one’s duty to God is properly identified by the appropriate religious
authority, and thus that everyone ought to profess and practice religion as the
appropriate religious authority dictates,
2) that a given group of Christians is subject to only one authority in both civil
and religious matters, and
3) that the appropriate authority in both secular and religious matters is one’s
national civil sovereign (political authority).
27

In effect, Hobbes argues on the basis of scripture that God requires us to obey our
national civil sovereign in all of its commands including those concerning religion
such that Hobbes’s principle would run “One is to obey one’s extant effective
political authority in all of its commands not repugnant to one’s duty to God as it is
specified by the same political authority.”
28
Thus, the sovereign has authority over
both the Kingdom of God (in the temporal sense of God governing the daily lives of

27
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 129.
28
Ibid., 130.
34
his creation) and the Kingdom of Man. For Hobbes, body and soul are one entity
and therefore need one authority. Hobbes states that “The soul in Scripture signifieth
always, either the life, or the living creature and the body and soul jointly, the body
alive.”
29

Hobbes believes that nothing true about God can contradict natural reason
and that we must exercise our empirical senses and natural reason since:
…they are the talents which He hath put into our hands to negotiate till the
coming again of our blessed Saviour, and therefore not to be folded up in the
napkin of an implicate faith, but employed in the purchase of justice, peace,
and true religion. For though there may be many things in God’s word above
reason, that is to say, which cannot by natural reason be either demonstrated,
or confuted; yet there is nothing contrary to it; but when it seemeth so, the
fault is either in our unskillful interpretation, or erroneous ratiocination.
30

Natural reason is a process of extrapolating definitions of words, unpacking their
logical implications and arguing based on self-evident truths. Natural reason is
therefore one of the ways in which we discover the laws of God. For Hobbes, the
laws of God are simply the laws of nature (based on Hobbes’s practical approach
described previously) and through natural reason, Hobbes believed that everyone
will not only reach the same conclusion through natural reason but also accept the
conclusions of natural reason. These uncontroversial conclusions can be utilized as
assumptions for further arguments about our duty to God. What can be concluded
from natural reason about our duty to God? Hobbes argued that our duty to God was
not expressed as having a particular kind of worship which would cause obedience to

29
Hobbes, Leviathan, 637-38. (L 339-40)
30
Ibid., 409. (L 195)
35
the sovereign to infringe upon. Instead, we are to acknowledge the existence of our
creator, and care for his creation, namely our environment and all that is in it,
especially human life. In other words, our worship of God is in our expression of
thanks for his bounty and sacrifice in that we will abstain from certain wrongs in
order to maintain the straight path of obedience to God. For Hobbes, worship to God
should be uniform in that there should be one way in which all citizens worship God
in public since there is no conflict with what God has said in this regard.
But seeing a commonwealth is but one person, it ought also to exhibit to God
but one worship, which then it doth, when it commandeth it to be exhibited
by private men, publiquely. And this is public worship, the property
whereof, is to be uniforme: For those actions that are done differently, by
different men, cannot be said to be public worship. And therefore, where
many sorts of worship be allowed, proceeding from the different religions of
private men, it cannot be said there is any public worship, nor that the
commonwealth is of any religion at all.
31

There is nothing that our natural reason can tell us about being compelled to worship
God in any particular fashion. As such, there is no reason not to obey the
sovereign’s decision on how everyone should worship in public.
What we believe depends on whom we believe. For instance, the scriptures
are subject to interpretations that are incompatible with one another and what leads
one to accept one over the other would be interpretive authority. Disagreement on
scripture is debated upon based on the interpretive authority attached to the scriptural
interpretation. Thus, it is the person behind the interpretation that determines the
merit of the interpretation. If the authority is considered weak, then so is the

31
Ibid., 405. (L 192)
36
interpretation. So, who should the religious authority be? In Chapter 15 of
Leviathan, Hobbes states”
…because, though men be never so willing to observe these Lawes [of nature
or God] there may nevertheless arise questions concerning a man’s action;
First, whether it were done, or not done; Secondly (if done) whether against
the Law, or not against the Law; the former whereof is called a question of
Fact; the latter a question of Right; therefore unless the parties to the question
covenant mutually to stand to the sentence of another, they are as far from
peace as ever.
32

Since there is so much diversity in the expression of principles of religious duty such
that we may agree in principle on the same thing and yet disagree on how that
translates in our individual lives and how we express this principle in real terms – it
becomes necessary to have an authority who can articulate the right course of action
and this authority, for Hobbes, is the sovereign. In order to determine whose
interpretation matches up with God’s intentions in the scriptures, Hobbes moves to
resolve the debate by handing the authority to the sovereign in order to decide on
what transcendent interests are correct in our duty to God and which are misguided.
This would revise Hobbes’s principle such that “One is to obey one’s extant effective
political authority in all of its commands not repugnant to one’s duty to God as
specified by the appropriate (one and only, authorized by God, and universally
recognized) religious authority.”
33
This is not to say that what is deemed to be the
proper expression of religious belief is determined by authority and not by natural
reason. Natural reason gives us access to the laws of reason (nature) and those laws

32
Ibid., 213. (L 78)
33
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 110.
37
ask us to accept as authoritative the judgment of our sovereign.
34
Citizens must take
it as a matter of duty and religious duty that they defer to their sovereign on these
matters. Of course, people will reason correctly and some incorrectly and that leads
to divergence. Nothing can ultimately rest on authority until people have a
principled commitment which comes in Hobbes’s case from the laws of nature which
people arrive at through natural reason

34
On Hobbes’s “Self-effacing” “natural law theory” S.A. Lloyd
38

CHAPTER 3: RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION

Focus on scriptures rather than institution of religion (mullah structure/church)
If it be lawful then for subjects to resist the King when he commands
anything that is against the Scripture, that is contrary to the commands of
God, and to be judge of the meaning of Scripture, it is impossible that…the
peace of any Christian kingdom can be long secure.
35

In this passage, it is clear that Hobbes is targeting the Christian religion as
opposed to the representation of the religion, namely the institution of the church.
This is further illustrated by the following quote “How we can have peace while this
is our religion, I cannot tell…”
36
Hobbes embarks upon a process of methodically
re-describing Scriptural text in order to achieve the political goals that he believed
were necessary to gain social order. But to what extent Hobbes is willing to actually
challenge the Christian religion? It is clear from his writings that Hobbes is a
believer of Christianity. He further realizes that his readership constitutes Christian
followers. Hobbes certainly would not be well placed to completely reject the
religion as it would surely fall on deaf ears and it is evident that this is not his project
nor does it comport with his beliefs. Instead, he moves to harness the power that the
religion offers in favor of the sovereign so that the sovereign’s efficacy in controlling
the state is propelled by the religion rather than its power serving to bolster the
church, Divines or any other entity or institution. According to S.A. Lloyd, Hobbes

35
Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, Source Works Series, No. 38, ed. William Molesworth (New York:
Burt Franklin Research, 1962), 63-64.
36
Ibid., 73.
39
believed that there were three main abuses of the Scripture that have led to
misinterpretation:
37

1) interpreting it to assert that the kingdom of God is the present church,
2) transforming consecration, the separation of ordinary objects to God’s
exclusive use, into conjuration or magic, and
3) interpreting such scriptural terms as “everlasting death” and “eternal life” so
as to support the view that people have by their nature immortal souls
separable from their bodies.
Of these three main misinterpretations of Scripture, the one that we will spotlight
is the first, which is a move to establish the institution of the church as an entity
that holds power under Christ and is to some extent immune from the sovereign’s
rule and entitled to sharing some of that rule. Hobbes asserts that this has in the
past (when taxes were to be paid to the Levites) allowed the clergy to also stake a
claim to taxes citizens were compelled to pay to the state:
…the people everywhere were obliged to a double tribute; one to the state,
another to the clergy; whereof that to the clergy, being the tenth of their
revenue, is double to that which a king of Athens exacted of his subjects for
the defraying of all public charges.
38

This proved to be a monumental move for the church since they managed to
ingeniously establish their financial autonomy, thus gaining even greater
strength. Furthermore, through the creation of Canon laws, the church was able
to gain exemption for ecclesiastics from the civil laws, from taxes, and from the

37
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 170.
38
Hobbes, Leviathan, 632. (L 336)
40
jurisdiction of civil courts.
39
This communicates tangibly to the citizenry of the
state that the clergy are a power to be reckoned with and given their ability to
promise eternal rewards and punishments, the church can easily be perceived as a
far more superior force than the sovereign. In order to combat this element,
Hobbes cites Peter’s admonition to “obey the king and his governors, for this is
God’s will,” and Paul’s instruction to “put men in mind to be subject to their
principalities and powers, and to obey magistrates.” Hobbes further moves to
argue for an interpretation of Scripture where God really intended eternal death
and not damnation. This was intended to remove the motivating fear from the
hearts of people who would obey the church to avoid the endless torture in
hellfire. This also eliminates the frightening supernatural notions of ghosts and
goblins that would haunt one in hellfire and be a certain cause of torment.
The fire, or torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna, Tophet, or in what
place soever, may continue for ever, and there may never want wicked men
to be tormented in them; though not every, nor any one eternally. For the
wicked being left in the state they were in after Adam sin, may at the
resurrection live as they did, marry, and give in marriage, and have grosse
and corruptible bodies, as all mankind now have; and consequently may
engender perpetually, after the resurrection as they did before…which is an
immortality of the kind, but not of the persons of men…to the reprobate there
remaineth after the resurrection, a second, and eternall death, is but a time of
punishment, and torment; and to last by succession of sinners thereunto, as
long as the kind of man by propagation shall endure, which is eternally.
40

The last two abuses of Scripture point to Hobbes’s strategy to re-describe
religious text. Based on his own natural reason, Hobbes concludes that hell is

39
Lloyd, Ideals As Interests, 171.
40
Hobbes, Leviathan, 647-48. (L 345-46)
41
actually a metaphor for final death and interprets Scripture to mean that human
beings do not have souls that are separate from their bodies (which can be
tortured for all of eternity). “The soul in Scripture signifieth always, either the
life, or the living creature and the body and soule jointly, the body alive.”
41
At
the Second coming all human beings will be physically resurrected to live on
earth for an eternity. Thus, there is no separation between this world and the
hereafter – the eternal life or death will be in this world. This notion fuels
Hobbes’s project of giving the sovereign full authority since this is the only
world that there currently is, and the sovereign presides over it – leaving the
church impotent in their promises of eternal reward or punishment.
It is true that the bodies of the faithful, after the resurrection, shall be not
onely spiritual, but eternall: but in this life, they are grosse and corruptible.
There is therefore no other government in this life, neither of state, nor
religion, but temporall.
41

By targeting divine words Hobbes placed himself in the difficult position of
being seen as a critic of God’s word, lending himself the license to re-write and
edit the Scripture. Hobbes may have been able to win over his audience more
easily had he focused on the human representation of religion which can more
easily be debunked through swaying popular opinion away from it. But Hobbes
was considered by many to be a believing and faithful Christian who is simply
anticlerical. In the Leviathan, Hobbes defines religion as: “Feare of powers
invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publiquely allowed,

41
Ibid., 637-38. (L 339-40)

42
religion: not allowed, superstition.” The imagination of the people and the
psychological evolution of each group is relative to particular times and contexts.
As such, Hobbes directly addresses the people of his time and the matters he was
seriously concerned with, noting that they must follow their natural reason which
dictates that they submit their private judgment to the sovereign who would
manage the society of presumably less sophisticated individuals who would
otherwise destroy each other.
Shifting opinion about fundamentally accepted religious beliefs such as
afterlife and souls – is an almost impossible feat for Hobbes to tackle given his
mainstream Christian audience. Hobbes realized the danger in the institution of
the church as being seen as the pre-eminent authority is that in effect it creates a
parallel shadow government by setting up a parallel institution with the feigned
ability to render citizens worthy of mercy or punishment independently of the
sovereign’s opinion. By creating this kind of duplication, the sovereign’s power
is undermined and weakened since citizens will obey not one but two authorities
and as a result will choose based on their own reasoning and individual
calculation, which serves their best interest. Here, private judgment with all of
its perils reemerges. However, the danger lies in the instances where serious
conflicts arise of the nature that can threaten the authority of the state and in this
case splitting loyalty can lead to the downfall of the state. Hobbes illustrates an
example:
43
The mischief proceeded wholly from the Presbyterian preachers, who, by a
long practiced histrionic faculty, preached up the rebellion powerfully…to
the end that the State becoming popular, the Church might be so too, and
governed by an assembly; and by consequence, as they thought, seeing
politics are subservient to religion, they might govern…(201) Our late King,
the best King perhaps that ever was, you know, was murdered, having been
first persecuted by war, at the incitement of Presbyterian ministers; who are
therefore guilty of the death of all that fell in that war. (120)

This approach mirrors the process set forth by the Taliban. During their
reign, with the professed goals of bringing security and sanctity to the state, the
Taliban set about re-describing Qur’anic text so that they could maintain civil order
by telling the Afghans that they must obey their rule as a matter of religious
obligation.
The creative choice of some Muslim political leaders to re-describe these
particular principles of the Qur’an in order to serve the political force of the state
further protracted their demise by leading to civil order where the citizens fought
each other and disintegrated. This led to a war of all against all in Afghanistan. To
serve to alleviate the problem, the educational, scholarly approach to Islam should be
instituted where the Islamic scholars are found in the universities, learned individuals
who rigorously grapple with the fine nuances, distinctions and contextual variations
within the Qur’an. A diverse group of Islamic scholars would serve the state and the
religion, located at the university where this diverse group will challenge, serve as a
counterforce to one another and balance the religious expression of opinion of the
state.
44
It is worth noting that Hobbes did not intend to attack the Christian religion
but rather to re-define it from the realm of supernatural ideals that would serve mere
religious ends into the realm of rationality – which would serve to help civil order
and further strengthen the authority of the sovereign. He does not find Christianity
to be inherently disruptive to social disorder but does believe that it is inclined to do
so when it is not authoritatively regulated by the state.
42
As such, Hobbes does not
favor toleration in religion, or the celebration of private judgment and divergence of
opinion in matters of religion. Instead, he prefers authoritarianism in religion, as
necessary to peace.
Religious Tolerance
Hobbes’s approach to tolerance stems from a realistic conception of human
nature and he has chosen to lead people towards obedience to the sovereign by
means which he thinks people will be willing to accept because they want to since it
serves their lives to do so. Similarly, he does not believe that the people that he was
targeting actually would believe in religious tolerance; and so he holds that to create
a theory of religious tolerance that would not gain buy in would be worthless.
Hobbes states: “…for every man desireth that the sovereign authority should admit
no other opinions to be maintained but such as he himself holdeth”
43
From this
passage it is clear that Hobbes believes that people hold true to their beliefs and are
not willing to render others’ religious notions valid or true when they differ from
their own.

42
Lloyd, Ideals as Interests, 272.
43
Tönnies, Elements of Law, 2.6.13.
45
And so we are reduced to the independency of the primitive Christians to
follow Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos, every man as he liketh best : Which, if it
be without contention, and without measuring the doctrine of Christ, by our
affection to the person of his minister…is perhaps the best: First, because
there were ought to be no power over the consciences of men, but of the word
itself, working faith in every one…according to the purpose…of God
Himself…and secondly, because it is unreasonable in them, who teach there
is such danger in every little errour, to require of a man endued with reason
of his own, to follow the reason of any other man.
44

The religious toleration that would allow mutual respect for disagreement would not
be a practical endeavor since there was no consensus between the groups mentioned
above to be able to make this kind of a paradigm shift, letting go of the pride they
held in their own beliefs. Even further, Hobbes did not believe that this kind of
religious tolerance would be feasibly achieved within every religious group such as
with certain sects of Protestants since individuals took their private judgments to be
authoritative and this pride of beliefs would not allow the possibility for religious
tolerance even within religious sects.
But the truth is apparent, by continual experience, that men seek not only
liberty of conscience, but of their actions; nor that only, but a farther liberty
of persuading others to their opinions…
45

Oneness of God
Attributing God’s authority to human beings challenges the monotheistic conception
of the oneness of God. In order to diffuse the authority of individual religious
leaders, Hobbes moves to carefully interpret the delicate matter of idolatry as it

44
Hobbes, Leviathan, 711. (L 385)
45
Tönnies, Elements of Law, 2.6.13.
46
relates to believing in mediators between man and God such as saints. This is in fact
an extension of the discussion of the misinterpretation of scriptures, particularly the
third form of misinterpretation “interpreting such spiritual terms as ‘everlasting
death’ and ‘eternal life’ so as to support the view that people have by their nature
immortal souls separable from their bodies.” Hobbes traces this impact upon the
Christian religion through the influence of Greek philosophy.
For men being generally possessed before the time of our Saviour, by
contagion of the demonology of the Greeks, of an opinion that the souls of
men were substances distinct from their bodies, and therefore that when the
body was dead, the soul of every man, whether godly or wicked, must subsist
somewhere by virtue of its own nature, without acknowledging therein any
supernatural gift of Gods; the doctors of the church doubted a long time, what
was the place which the church doubted a long time, what was the place
which they were able to abide in, till they should be re-united to their bodies
in the resurrection; supposing for a while, they lay under the altars; but
afterward the church of Rome found it more profitable, to build for them this
place of purgatory.
46

S.A. Lloyd has identified Hobbes’s definition of idolatry as the worship of images
involving either the belief that God, or some other spirit, is present in the physical
object worshipped. Thus, based on this definition idolatry depends on demonology.
Hobbes does not limit the scope of idolatry to worshipping idols, statues, etc.
Instead, he believes that idolatry presents itself in atypical scenarios such as the
personification of God in the form of saints and priests as constituting a form of
idolatry. In particular, it is anthropomorphizing God such that there is a belief that
some of the characteristics of God such as His wisdom, ability to perform miracles,
etc. is present in individual religious leaders. The danger is that this allows private

46
Hobbes, Leviathan, 639. (L 340)
47
judgment to undermine the authoritarian view of religion that Hobbes believes is
essential to social order. Since each saint could espouse his own views, this would
lead to dissent and difference in opinion which would be entirely harmful and
destructive to he commonwealth. Hobbes writes:
if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are
representations of their own fancies), they had had no farther dependence on
the true God, of whom there can be no similitude; nor on his prime ministers,
Moses, and the high priests; but every man had governed himself according
to his own appetite, to the utter eversion of the common-wealth, and their
own destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was,
“They should not take for gods ‘alienos deos’ ”…and the second was that
“they should not make to themselves any image to worship, of their own
invention.” For it is the same deposing of a king to submit to another king,
whether he be set up by a neighbor nation, or by ourselves.
47

A leader who is in a state of self-worship, believing that he is the sole source of
mediation between man and God – can be considered idolatrous on Hobbes’s
definition of idolatry. In particular, such a leader can be a Hobbesian fool who is
absorbed in a state of I-centered self worship, foolishly pursuing what he believes to
be in his own best interest,
and as worldly ambition creeping by degrees into the pastors, drew them to
an endeavor of pleasing the new made Christians; and also to a liking of this
kind of honor, which they also might hope for after their decease, as well as
those that had already gained it; so the worshipping of the images of Christ
and his apostles grew more and more idolatrous; save that somewhat after the
time of Constantine, divers emperors and bishops, and general councells
observed and opposed the unlawfulness thereof; but too late or too weakly.
48

47
Ibid., 665-66. (L 356-57)
48
Ibid., 678. (L 364)
48

Critique of Hobbes’s view of Idolatry
There is an inherent contradiction in Hobbes’s belief that individuals such as saints
and priests should not be viewed as reverent figures – and his belief that the
sovereign should be the sole supreme authority on religious matters. Just as Hobbes
believes that creating a mediator between man and God constitutes a form of
idolatry, his placement of the sovereign as having sole authority to make the
scriptures into law could contradict his own theory. Granted Hobbes does not
position the sovereign to be God nor to make God’s laws but by giving him sole
authority to interpret and placing him above all others in relation to God could in fact
create the same kind dynamic that he steered clear from with saints and the like.
Analogously, the supreme leader of the Taliban mullah Omar was seen as a kind of
“ultimate” leader through which the success of both worlds could be attained. In
effect, through gaining his pleasure, one could ensure social stability and tranquility
in the hereafter. This is seen as association of partners with God, or shirk, in the
Islamic context.
Furthermore, naming religious individuals as “friends of God” after their
death or Wali Allah has caused millions of Muslims to gather at their grave sites in
order to ask them for intercession. In effect, they believe that God will take mercy
on them if they use a mediator who was a friend of God who God Himself could not
refuse. During the time that these Muslim Saints are alive, depending on their
following, they are viewed as having foreknowledge of what is to come (being able
49
to predict the future). They have the authority as a result of their wisdom to act upon
that foreknowledge in any way they deem fit even if it is in a manner that appears to
be immoral. The followers trust that it is in fact to get rid of an evil that could
develop in the future. There is a verse in the Qur’an where a prophet by the name of
Khider was followed by an average person who wanted to figure out what the
prophet did in order to attain such an elevated status with God. When he did, he saw
him do a series of peculiar things like destroying a wall and killing someone.
Afterwards, the prophet explained to him that he knew what evil would have come
had he not done these things and as a result of his spiritual wisdom, he acted in what
may appear to someone who is not as religiously elevated – to be an immoral act.
Such individuals were further strengthened by rulers who would consult with them
prior to making decisions or embarking upon travels. The former King of
Afghanistan, Zahir Shah would consult with an individual named Munajim
Kandahari who was known for his ability to anticipate the future. Before the King
would take a trip or decide on something serious, he would consult with Munajim
Kandahari for guidance. This clearly indicated the higher status of those with
religious prowess over the head of state. Since his death, people do not visit his
gravesite for help since he had a profession in addition to being a religious leader –
but certainly during his life he influenced the decision-making process of the head of
state of Afghanistan. Many verses in the Qur’an and in the Prophetic tradition or
Hadith, illustrate the sin attached to fortune telling, believing in it or becoming
50
involved in witchcraft or black magic.
49
However, these groups interpret the verses
from the Qur’an mentioned previously (about Khider) to support and justify their
views and behaviors. Similar to Hobbes’s view that the canonization of saints is not
an indigenously Christian practice, but instead an influence of Greek philosophy –
many Muslim scholars protest against the Muslim saints and argue that it is the
Hindu influence from India that has spilled over into the lands of Afghanistan and
Pakistan in particular, creating a compatiblist view of Islam and Hinduism when it
comes to the reverence of mediators in the form of these individual human icons.
Such individuals were asked to pray to God on behalf of the heads of state to attain
God’s favor and were also asked to pray when they were in crisis. Such Muslim
Saints held this very important influence over heads of state. This is quite similar to
the canonization of saints and naming of authorities in religion such as the “pontifex
maximus.”
This was the name of him that in the ancient common-wealth of Rome had
the supreme authority under the senate and people of regulating all
ceremonies and doctrines concerning their religion; And when Augustus
Cesar changed the state into a monarchy, he took to himself no more but this
office, and that of tribune of the people (that is to say the supreme power
both in state, and in religion) and the succeeding emperors enjoyed the same.
But when the Emperor Constantine lived, who was the first that professed
and authorized Christian religion, it was consonant to his profession to cause
religion to be regulated (under his authority) by the Bishop of Rome: though
it does not appear they had so soon the name of Pontifex; but rather, that the
succeeding bishops took it of themselves, to countenance the power they
exercised over the Bishops of the Roman provinces. For it is not any
privilege of St. Peter, but the privilege of the city of Rome, which the
emperors were always willing to uphold, that gave them such authority over
the bishops; as may be evidently seen by that; that the Bishop of

49
The Holy Qur’an, trans. Yusuf Ali. (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2001), Chs. Nas and
Falaq.
51
Constantinople, when the Emperour made that city the seat of the empire,
pretended to be equal to the Bishop of Rome; though at last, not without
contention, the Pope carried it, and became the Pontifex Maximus.
50

Through this process, the church in effect gained supremacy to not only govern the
church itself, but government as well. Excommunication became a simple tool to be
able to render Christians obedient or not and the social and psychological stigma
carried such an impact on the lives of citizens that they would go to great lengths to
obey the authority of the Pope in order to dodge such a branding.
By this title it is that the Pope prevailed with the subjects of all Christian
princes to believe that to disobey him, was to disobey Christ himself; and in
all differences between him and other princes…to abandon their lawful
sovereigns; which is in effect an universal monarchy (considering the desire
of men to bear rule) is a sufficient presumption, that the popes that pretended
to do it, and for a long time enjoyed it, were the authors of the doctrine by
which it was obtained.
51

Hobbes must strategize to weaken the authority of religious leaders in favor of
authority for the sovereign. However, his argument if taken must be treated equally
to all including the sovereign himself. Therefore, the sovereign’s supreme religious
and social authority would deem him a kind of idol (as with saints) since Hobbes
gives him reign over the interpretation of scriptures and expects citizens to follow,
dogmatically, without exercising private judgment to challenge the ideas of the
sovereign king. This hypocrisy on Hobbes’s part is compounded when he refers to
those who usurp authority from the sovereign in the name of God by stating:

50
Hobbes, Leviathan, 680. (L 365)
51
Ibid., 704. (L 381)
52
the ecclesiastiques take from young men the use of reason, by certain charms
compounded of metaphysiques, and miracles, and traditions, and abused
Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else, but to execute what they
command them.”
52

The sovereign, the religious authority, is a form of civil or public authority. This is
the view that Hobbes works to get away from with his criticism of the saints – the
convergence of religious and civil authority. Hobbes seems to contradict his prior
view of wanting to extract private judgment when it comes to matters of religion and
to protect the authority of the sovereign and yet now blames those who will do the
same by stating:
that this spirit of Rome, now gone out, and walking by missions through the
dry places of China, Japan and the Indies, that yield him little fruit, may not
return, or rather an assembly of spirits worse than he, enter and inhabitate this
clean swept house and make the end thereof worse than the beginning? For it
is not the Roman clergy only, that pretends the kingdom of God to be of this
world, and thereby to have a power therein, distinct from that of the civill
state.
53

52
Ibid., 713. (L 386)
53
Ibid., 714-15 (L 388)
53

CHAPTER 4: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC JUDGMENT
Hobbes discussed private judgment in great detail because he viewed it as a
source of conflict and error. As a result of the countless differences among people, a
principle of political obligation that leaves the least amount of room for private
judgment is what Hobbes would opt for, in order to eliminate a floodgate of
conflicting opinion in favor of a single unified and central focal point of judgment on
matters of domestic peace and common defense, a public arbitration of all disputed
matters. That single direction is provided by the effective sovereign and is to be the
expression of the entire state, a unified public judgment. Hobbes believes that
people can misjudge the basic differentiation between good and evil. Hobbes writes:
Another doctrine repugnant to civil society is that whatsoever a man does
against his conscience is sin; and it dependeth on the presumption of making
himself judge of good and evil. For a man’s conscience, and his judgment is
the same thing, and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be
erroneous.”
54

As a result, private judgment on what is good or bad, right and wrong can lead to
social disorder. Hobbes explains the reason why men cannot live harmoniously
without a public arbitration:
First, that men are continually in competition for honor and dignity…and
consequently amongst men there ariseth on that ground, envy and hatred, and
finally warre …Secondly, [that the common good differeth from the private,
and that} man, whose joy consisteth in comparing himself with other men,
can relish nothing but what is eminent …Thirdly…amongst men, there are
very many that thinks themselves wiser, and abler to govern the publique

54
Ibid., 366. (L 168)
54
better than the rest; and these strive to reform and innovate, one this way,
another that way; and thereby bring it into distraction and civil
war…Fourthly…men can represent to others that which is good in the
likeness of evil; and evil, in the likeness of good; and augment, or diminish
the apparent greatness of good and evil; discontenting men, and troubling
their peace at their pleasure…Fifthly…man is most troublesome when he is
most at ease: for then it is that he loves to shew his wisdom, and control the
actions of them that govern the commonwealth.
55

S.A. Lloyd links Hobbes’s views on natural religious impulse and prudence in order
to make his case for the need for a single common judge on matters of religion. For
Hobbes, the laws of nature are accessible to all through natural reason while
prudence (correct extrapolation from experience to predict future events or to
identify past causes of current events) depends on the degree of experience of each
individual. Natural reason coupled with our experiences “are the talents which He
hath put into our hands to negotiate till the coming again of our blessed Saviour, and
therefore not to be folded up in the napkin of an implicate faith, but employed in the
purchase of justice, peace and true religion.”
56
Since we are prone to erroneous
judgment regarding how we interpret the laws of nature, it is necessary that there be
an authorized public judge, expressing single uniform judgment on the interpretation
of the laws as they ought to relate to our daily lives.
This is not to say that the sovereign’s judgment is infallible. “There is no
judge, subordinate, nor sovereign, but may erre in a judgment of equity”
57
Hobbes
writes “Suppose that a Christian king should from this foundation Jesus is the Christ,

55
Ibid., 225-26. (L 86-7)
56
Ibid., 10. (L 195)
57
Ibid., 13 (L 144)
55
draw some false consequences…and demand the teaching of the same…Christian
kings may erre deducing a consequence, but who shall judge? Shall a private man
judge, when the question is of his own obedience?”
58
Lloyd argues that Hobbes
endorsed a hierarchy of responsibility: Since the sovereign is charged with the task
of public judgment, any error he made in identifying subjects’ duties would not
reflect negatively on the followers because their obedience is required both
religiously and morally to gain and maintain social order (to avoid individuals
encroaching upon each other’s lives and to ensure peace). The sin of sovereign error
would lie with the sovereign and not the follower since they should defer to the
sovereign’s judgment and leave the accountability with God to reconcile with the
sovereign. Our natural reason leads us to this because we want security and if we
were to empower individual right of expression on religious matters there would be
no uniformity in public worship nor in civil matters. Hobbes argues that Scripture
also does this. This would lead to any number of competing interpretations,
expressions of worship and interests. Further, the essence of correct Christian
interpretation obligates citizens as a matter of religious belief to submit private
judgment to the public judgment of the sovereign. Therefore, even if one were
compelled to denounce God’s very existence, as Hobbes illustrated in his Leviathan
by citing Naaman, a Christian who was depicted as guiltless for bowing in front of
his master’s heathen gods, with one’s tongue if that is what the sovereign dictated,
then one should obey the command based on the fact that both natural reason and

58
Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol. 3. (L 13)
56
scripture show us to be obligated to obey our sovereign first and foremost in all
matters relating to civil and religious life.
Natural reason instructs to form political communities by authorizing a
sovereign as the single authority to judge and interpret laws pertaining to temporal
and spiritual matters alike.
59
As a test of durability of our judgments, rational ability
requires justifying one’s own actions by committing to accept those same
considerations as justifying the similar actions of others. Hobbes argues that
Muslims living under Christian rule must enjoy the same protection as Christian
citizens based on this golden rule. It is precisely from this law of nature (Lloyd
terms this the reciprocity requirement of rational agency)
60
that Hobbes argues
citizens are required to submit to government since if we were to all have the right to
do whatever we wanted, all human beings mutually interfere with one another in
ways that undermine the effectiveness of their agency since the overlapping and
competing interests of the individual members of a society would overrun each other.
Therefore, it is from the law of nature “And that Law of all men, Quod tibi fieri non
vis, altleri ne fecris”
61
that people are compelled to obey their sovereign and submit
to his interpretation of laws and submit to his judgment on civil and religious
matters. “That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace
and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all

59
S.A. Lloyd, Unpublished Draft Article for forthcoming work. Eds. Graham Oppy and Nick
Trakakis.

60
Ibid.,
61
Hobbes, Leviathan. (L 65)
57
things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow
other men against himself…” Hobbes’s Second Law of Nature. Out of the
Scriptures, Hobbes seeks to prove that: 1) one’s duty to God is properly identified by
an appropriate religious authority, and thus that everyone ought to profess and
practice religion as that appropriate religious authority dictates; 2) that any given
group of Christians is subject to only one authority in both civil and religious
matters; and 3) that the appropriate authority in both secular and religious matters is
one’s national civil sovereign.

Unified Public Judgment
For Hobbes, citizens are required as a matter of Christian religious principle to
submit their private judgment to the public (whether they think it right or wrong):

For a private man, without the authority of the commonwealth, that is to say,
without permission from the representative thereof, to interpret the law by his
own spirit, is another error in the politiques…for none of them deny but that
in the power of making laws is comprehended also the power of explaining
them when there is need. And are not the Scriptures, in all places where they
are law, made law by the authority of the common-wealth, and consequently,
a part of the civill law?
62

Hobbes believes that private judgment poses a challenge to what he felt ought to be
achieved: unified public judgment. Specifically, he blamed the clergy for promoting
private judgment when it came to the very important matters of the state such as
obeying the sovereign and the laws of the state. Hobbes pinpointed the source of this

62
Hobbes, Leviathan, 700. (L 378)
58
error on the part of the clergy to their incorporating Aristotle’s views into
Christianity.
63

Aristotle, and other heathen philosophers define good and evil by the appetite
of men…But in common-wealth, this measure is false…And yet is the
doctrine still practiced; and men judge the goodness, or wickedness of their
own, and of other mens actions, and of the actions of the commonwealth
itself, by their own passions; and no man calleth good or evil, but that which
is so in his own eyes…And this private measure of good, is a doctrine, not
only vain, but also pernicious to the publique state.
64

This erroneous move on the part of the clergy, according to Hobbes, fostered private
judgment thereby leading to the lack of unified public judgment. In effect, Hobbes
was working to bring about a consensus of social opinion in four main areas:
1) necessity of having the sovereign as the single authority over the state,
2) necessity of preserving a secure and stable state,
3) laws of the state are for the good of the people and must be obeyed and
4) sovereign as the single authority also holds authority over religious interpretation.
To obey the sovereign is to obey God Himself and to disobey Him is to displease
God.
According to Hobbes, it is in the area of private judgment that the problem of
rebellion against the sovereign occurs and Hobbes attributes this to the education
delivered in universities. He writes,
As for the means and conduits by which the people may receive this
instruction, we are to search by what means so many opinions contrary to the

63
Hobbes attributed two doctrines from Aristotle’s Politics that were adopted by the school divines,
namely that government is tyranny, and pernicious error adopted from the incorrect ancient doctrines
makes laws lack efficacy without the decision of followers who willfully uphold it.
64
Ibid., 697. (L 376)
59
peace of mankind, upon weak and false principles, have nevertheless been so
deeply rooted in them…that men shall judge of what is lawful and unlawful,
not by the law itself, but by their own consciences; that is to say their own
private judgments: that subjects sin in obeying the commands of the
commonwealth; unless they themselves have first judged them to be
lawful…that it is lawful for subjects to kill such as they call tyrants that the
sovereign power may be divided, and the like, which come to be instilled into
the people by this means…and the divines and such others as make show of
learning, derive their knowledge from the universities and from the schools
of law, or from the books which by men eminent in those schools and
universities have been published…
65

Within Lloyd’s interpretation, Hobbes sensibly moves to begin from those
beliefs and opinions that people already hold. Rather than impose a set of beliefs
that are not grounded in the minds of people, which they will not be moved by,
Hobbes believes that it is through a process of re-education that those beliefs can be
re-described such that people are persuaded otherwise to embrace the laws of the
sovereign which require civil obedience. The potential problem with a re-
educational system is that once people have been rendered narrowly focused and
become dull in their mental and rational faculty to reflect and ponder conceptual
issues then the sovereign’s potentially shortsighted agenda can pervert and militarize
the entire population to serve a common, yet immoral end. Private judgment was not
allowed (on both and legal and moral grounds) by the Taliban because average
Afghan citizens who were subjected to wars were illiterate and had been reduced to a
vulgar state, and therefore were not deemed qualified spiritually or religiously to
draw inferences about Islam or the laws of the state. The righteous Taliban had the
strict discipline and elevated pious stature to command this kind of authority over

65
Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants, xxx.14.
60
religious interpretation and they had the might to enforce its laws. It was through
their re-description of religious ideals that they gained the ideological motivation and
in their heavy hand (being willing to crush any opposition) that the Taliban were able
to achieve their authority. Hobbes proclaims:
In the second place, I observe the diseases of a commonwealth that proceed
from the poison of seditious doctrines, whereof one is: That every private
man is judge of good and evil actions. This is true in the condition of mere
nature, where there are no civil laws, and also under civil government, in
such cases as are not determined by the law. But otherwise, it is manifest that
the measure of good and evil actions is the civil law, and the judge the
legislator, who is always representative of the commonwealth. From this
false doctrine men are disposed to debate with themselves, and dispute the
commands of the commonwealth, and afterwards to obey or disobey them, as
in their private judgments they shall think fit. Whereby the commonwealth is
distracted and weakened.
66

Hobbes emphasizes the danger of private judgment in relation to the security of the
state and reiterates that individuals should not be left to decide on their own what
they deem to be good and bad in the context of the state and religion does not give
this freedom either as the religious precepts must be re-described to compatibly
promote and support the sovereign who is charged with guarding the solidity of the
state. The natural faculties of the mind, passion and opinions require educational
guidance.
…For by education and discipline they may be, and are sometimes
reconciled. Judgment and fancy may have place in the same man – but by
turns, as the end which he aimeth at requireth. As the Israelites in Egypt were
sometimes fastened to their labor of making bricks, and other times were
ranging abroad to gather straw, so also may the judgment sometimes be fixed
upon one certain consideration, and the fancy at another time wandering

66
Ibid., xxix. 6.
61
about the world. So also reason and eloquence (though not perhaps in the
natural sciences but in the moral) may stand very well together. For
wheresoever there is place for adorning and preferring of truth, if they have it
to adorn. Nor is there any repugnancy between fearing the laws and not
fearing a public enemy; nor between abstaining from injury and pardoning it
in others.
67

Hobbes distinguishes between the public and private conscience and notes
that private judgment or private conscience is permissibly exercised in a state of
nature where there is no state or effective sovereign; but where there is a state, the
public conscience must take precedence and that conscience is grounded in the civil
laws as prescribed by the sovereign. Thus, the sovereign holds authority over what
the public conscience expresses and there is no room for private judgment in such a
state. Hobbes iterates:
Another doctrine repugnant to civil society is that whatsoever a man does
against his conscience is sin, and it dependeth on the presumption of making
himself judge of good and evil. For a man’s conscience and judgment is the
same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous.
Therefore, though he that is subject to no civil law sinneth in all he does
against his conscience, because he has no other rule to follow but his own
reason, yet it is not so with him that lives in a commonwealth, because the
law is the public conscience, by which he hath already undertaken to be
guided. Otherwise, in such diversity as there is of private consciences, which
are but private opinions, the commonwealth must needs be distracted, and no
man dare to obey the sovereign power farther than it shall seem good in his
own eyes.
68

Discouragement of private judgment leads to transcendent interests
A discussion of the underpinnings of transcendent interests is beyond the
scope of this project, but the question that is central is whether a closed system of

67
Hobbes, Leviathan, Review and Conclusion, 4.
68
Ibid., xxix. 7.
62
education and society where the sovereign dictates good and evil, eliminating
discourse – leads people to hold transcendent interests, which the state itself cannot
control. A critical education instills the reflective abilities to judge whether one’s
behaviors are reasonable or not, and the lack of such a function fosters people who
think in a polarized fashion. This cultivates individuals who hold transcendent
interests and such individuals eventually become a liability for the state as they
become easily manipulated by dogmatic ideologies. For Hobbes, transcendent
interests are a significant source of social disorder and education is the tool to correct
such misguided behavior. However, Hobbes ties this education to reigning
governments’ agendas and promotes a system of education that is rooted in dogma
rather than a process of free discourse such that the desired conclusions and
behaviors are freely arrived upon by the population.
63

CHAPTER 5: RE-DESCRIPTION OF RELIGION THROUGH
RE-EDUCATION

In passages 6-14 in Chapter 30 of the Leviathan, Hobbes lays out the process
of re-education and re-enforcement of the sovereign’s authority through a sequence
of teachings that are compatible with religious commandments.
(0) …I conclude therefore, that in the instruction of the people in the essential
rights (which are the natural and fundamental laws) of sovereignty, there is
no difficulty (whilst a sovereign has his power entire) but what proceeds from
his own fault to those whom he trusteth in the administration of the
commonwealth; and consequently it is his duty to cause them to be so
instructed; and not only his duty, but his benefit also, and security against the
danger that may arrive to himself in his natural person from rebellion.

Among the important tenets that Hobbes delineated to be ingrained on these
specially allocated times of remembrance follow:
(1) And (to descend to particulars) the people are to be taught, first that they
ought not be in love with any form of government they see in their neighbor
nations, more than with their own, nor to desire change…this desire of
change is like the breach of the first of God’s commandments; for there God
says Non habebis Deos alienos, Thou shalt not have the Gods of other
nations, and in another place, concerning kings, that they are Gods.

In the first passage, Hobbes specifically explicates that the desire to change
governments constitutes a violation of natural law which is God’s law. As such
citizens ought never to try and compare their government with those of other
countries nor should they aspire to emulate them. The push to change would clearly
lead to instability and possibly the eventual downfall of the sovereign. The antithesis
of instability and civil war is much worse and so the sovereign should be preserved
and no comparisons made to other governments. The sovereign in Afghanistan
64
maintained that he was not appointed through chance or coincidence but rather by
God’s will and to display love for other countries and/or their sovereigns would be
an outright challenge to the will of God and whosoever should find the audacity to
wage war against the will of God is a hypocrite and an enemy of the state.
(2) Secondly, they are to be taught that they ought not to be led with
admiration of the virtue of any of their fellow subjects, how highsoever he
stand, nor how conspicuously soever he shine in the commonwealth…for that
sovereign can not be imagined to love his people as he ought that is not
jealous of them but suffers them by the flattery of popular men to be seduced
from their loyalty as they have often been, so as to proclaim marriage with
them by preachers and by publishing the same in the open streets, which may
fitly be compared to the violation of the second of the ten commandments.

This second form of instruction requires not only that foreign governments should
not be admired but also that particular individuals within the state should not be
admired over and above the sovereign. These first two passages delve into the
intentions and personal opinions of the citizens and do not focus on explicit
behaviors. Thus, this form of instruction would ingrain values that would eliminate
private judgment in matters relating to the sovereign (matters of good and evil) and
essentially espouse a closed dogma that would kill any desire for change,
improvement or progress in the architecture of the leadership of the state. The
people in this state would be likened to bees who only know how to erect their
homes as beehives and have no ability, imagination or vision to aspire towards a
grander design or to build an elevated or alternate future. This would of course strip
the government of valuable suggestions, grievances and consultation on the part of
its subjects leaving the government with no reflective ability since they will have
65
weakened the critical ability of their sounding board which is the population it
governs.
(3) Thirdly, in consequence to this they ought to be informed how great a
fault it is to speak evil of the sovereign representative, or to argue and dispute
his power, or any way to use his name irreverently, whereby he may be
brought into contempt with his people and their obedience slackened. Which
doctrine the third commandment by resemblance pointeth to.

In the third passage, Hobbes begins to make expressions of verbal discontent with
the sovereign representative a blameworthy act, which is also a sin. This passage
eliminates the permissibility of open debate regarding the legitimacy of the
sovereign, the sovereign’s policies, decisions, and efficacy. This passage even
prohibits speaking his name in a manner that would be deemed irreverent and such
an obligation would lead to a society and media that is in a state of hollow tolerance
with all rational faculties, avenues of intellectual discourse deadened.
(4) Fourthly, seeing people can not be taught this, nor when it is taught
remember it, nor after one generation past so much as know in whom the
sovereign power is placed, without setting apart from their ordinary labor
some certain times in which they may attend those that are appointed to
instruct them, it is necessary that some such times be determined wherein
they may assemble together and hear those their duties told them, and the
positive laws, such as generally concern them all, read and expounded, and
be put in mind of the authority that maketh them laws.
69

In the fourth passage, Hobbes takes to creating an institutionalized mechanism in
order to ground this in a religious ritual or practice. On a daily or weekly (in a
regular fashion) basis, an authority of the state would reiterate all of these obligations
to the people and do so in a public gathering in which attendance would be

69
Ibid., xxx.10.
66
mandatory just as the observance of the Sabbath in the Jewish tradition is an
institutionalized religious ritual which must be observed by devout Jews. Those who
do not attend the public gathering would suffer social scrutiny and would thereby
make themselves to be easy targets of the state, who can be located for the purpose
of weeding out individuals who are defiant to the sovereign. In great similitude to
this prescription, the Taliban utilized the congregations at the five daily prayers as an
avenue to channel all communication about the laws of the Taliban, the importance
of civil obedience, the consequences for disobedience and the ultimate sacrifice of
the true Muslim, one who is willing to die for the preservation of the state. The
preservation of the state was defined to include legitimizing soft targets such as
noncombatants in this new definition of jihad such that killing innocents to preserve
the state would ensure great monetary rewards for the deceased person’s family and
of course eternal rewards for the martyr. Muslims themselves, specifically those
who opposed the sovereign Mullah Omar, were re-defined to be legitimate targets
due to the fact that they were re-described to be worse than unbelievers, hypocrites
(munafiq in Arabic). Since these opponents pose a special challenge to the state by
accepting membership and yet opposing the Islamic state, they can be subjected to
the harshest punishments including torture and execution.
It may be argued that the failure of the Taliban was not due to the methods
that they followed but rather due to the fact that they did not have the time to carry
them out before foreigners intervened. I draw the distinction between instilling
principled attachment to a regime and depriving citizens of the capability of
67
developing a principled, critical commitment to a form of regime upon reflection.
Unless citizens have the critical capability to think of the regime critically, the
regime will melt easily. No methods will lead to the principled commitment needed
for stability without the open capacity to think and arrive upon reflection – hence the
need for an open university. The mechanism that is needed for real, principled,
contentful, positive opinion is needed for stability and that is necessary to have
reason to commit. The inability to reason will not lead to a principled commitment.
The Leviathan is an example of giving reasons for people to have principled
commitment to a form of regime. Any unthinking, never critically scrutinized
attachment is not a commitment. Thus, the Taliban could never have succeeded even
if they had one thousand years of reigning power over Afghanistan.
Re-description of Islamic interpretation of jihad:
The medieval Sunni scholar Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328)
needed an argument that would rally Muslims behind the Mamluke rulers of Egypt in
their struggle against the advancing Mongols. Many objected that there could be no
jihad against the Mongols because the Mongol rulers had converted to Islam. Ibn
Taymiyya reasoned that because the Mongol ruler permitted some aspects of Mongol
tribal law to persist alongside the Islamic Sharia’a code, the Mongols were apostates
to Islam and therefore legitimate targets of jihad.
70
In alignment with this religious
re-description, the Taliban managed to make the annihilation of those who opposed
their political regime a great religious stature, which was worthy of the highest of

70
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terrorism: Radical Islam’s War Against
America (New York: Random House, 2003), 43-52..
68
eternal and mortal rewards. Conversely, challenging the state deserved the strictest
of punishment, which would be carried out in public for all to observe and suffer
open humiliation.
(5) And because the first instruction of children dependeth on the care of their
parents, it is necessary that they be obedient to them whilst they are under
their tuition, and not only so, but that also afterwards (as gratitude requireth)
they acknowledge the benefit of their education by external signs of honor.
To which end they are to be taught that originally the father of every man was
also his sovereign lord, with power over him of life and death, and that the
fathers of families, when by instituting a commonwealth they resigned that
absolute power, yet it was intended they should never lose the honor due unto
them for their education…and this accordeth with the fifth commandment.

Prior to the creation of a state, the heads of households, or in Hobbes’s words, “the
fathers of families” served as individual sovereigns, loyal to their individual
autonomous homes. When all of the fathers of families turned over their individual
authority to the sovereign with the trust that he would protect the state in its entirety,
these heads of households still maintained the care of their individual families by
providing financial sustenance and educational support in order to raise upstanding
individuals in the society and for this they are due honor and respect. Though the
sovereign took control of the state, the honor that parents enjoyed from their children
as the head of their homes was not meant to be relinquished. It is not to say that the
heads of households were to be celebrated by others in the society, as this would
constitute individual admiration within the state and negate the second passage
referenced above. Hobbes iterates “To which end they are to be taught that
originally the father of every man was also his sovereign lord, with power over him
69
of life and death…”
71
which instructs children to celebrate and honor their parents as
if they were in their original position and in the tradition of the self interest account
of the laws of nature, Hobbes asserts that there would be no incentive for people to
bear the arduous job of having and raising children if they were repelled by them and
left in a lonely state after those children had grown up and found their way in the
world. Parents serve a monumental role within the social framework of Afghanistan,
a country which has a longstanding tradition of revering the elevated status of
parents. It is believed that to honor one’s parents would lead to one’s being honored
by one’s children and that God would look kindly at those who respected and cared
for their parents especially in the twilight of their lives as they declined into old age.
This would translate into achieving God’s favor and that favor in turn would
manifest itself by injecting bounty and prosperity into the lives of those who express
adoration for their parents with right action.
(6) Again, every sovereign ought to cause justice to be taught, which
(consisting in taking from no man what is his) is as much as to say, to cause
men to be taught not to deprive their neighbors by violence or fraud of
anything which by the sovereign authority is theirs…all which things are
intimated in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments.

In the sixth passage, Hobbes considers it the duty of the sovereign to reiterate and re-
enforce the importance of the laws and this required that people in society desist
from acts of violence, exacting justice on their own or any such act which the
sovereign is empowered to tackle. Hobbes mandated the sovereign to dutifully
maintain a reminder of civil obedience and press it upon the forefront of public

71
Hobbes, Leviathan, xxx, 11.
70
consciousness. The Taliban utilized passages from the Qur’an and certain hadith
(sayings of the Prophet Muhammad that were recorded) in order to justify their swift
punishment that they would exercise in the event that citizens were to stray from
obedience to their sovereign and reinforced this in their daily public speeches.
(7) Lastly they are to be taught that, not only the unjust facts, but the designs
and intentions to do them (though by accident hindered) are injustice and
consisteth in the pravity of the will as well as in the irregularity of the act.
And this is the intention of the tenth commandment, and the sum of the
second table, which is reduced all to this one commandment of mutual
charity: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, as the sum of the first table
is reduced to the love of God, whom they had then newly received as their
king.

Finally, Hobbes reverts from discussion of overt and explicit action to the
inner depths of thought, private judgment. He restates the fact that even wrong
intention is impermissible and that only because people do not have the power to act
upon their thoughts or because their seditious plans go unrealized due to accidents or
other external factors, that people are nonetheless to be held accountable for this
behavior to God Almighty. This adds a dual force to the thrust of the sovereign’s
authority since he grounds his laws in people’s interest, is willing to act forcefully
against wrongdoers and re-aligns God’s wrath such that it is behind him, thereby
reconfiguring societal loyalty to the sovereign who expresses the will of God.
Muslims are supposed to be in submission to the will of Allah and align their will
with whatever His will may be, even if it inflicts pain and suffering since it is
believed that God is all wise and all knowing and human understanding is too limited
to grasp this realm and decides rather retreat into the dimension of counterfactuals
71
(how things could have or should have been). A Muslim sovereign who is also the
supreme religious leader who upholds the highest of moral orders, is therefore
worthy of the utmost respect, obedience and loyalty of his citizens. Defiance and/or
protest against the sovereign would also be defiance against the will of God to
appoint His chosen vicegerent on earth as the leader of the Islamic state. Hobbes
does not punish based on intention but rather on action alone. Only overt actions or
words can be punished by human beings.
no human law is intended to oblige the conscience of a man, but the actions
only. For seeing no man (but God alone) knoweth the heart of conscience of
a man, unless it break out into action, either of the tongue, or other part of the
body; the law made thereupon would be of none effect, because no man is
able to discern, but by word or other action whether such law be kept or
broken.
72

It is the duty of the sovereign to continue to guide and instruct the masses of their
obligation to their ruler and to guide their daily actions.
(8) As for the means and conduits by which the people may receive this
instruction, we are to search by what means so many opinions contrary to the
peace of mankind, upon weak and false principles, have nevertheless been so
deeply rooted in them…that men shall judge of sciences (by their own private
judgments); that subjects sin in obeying the commands of the
commonwealth; unless they themselves have first judged them to be lawful.
73

In this last thought, Hobbes links private judgment – with sin in disobeying the
commands of the commonwealth and opinions that are based upon false principles.
Hobbes traces the root of faulty reasoning and opinions that are based upon weak
principles to a variety of causes and errors including flawed private judgment. The

72
Hobbes, Elements of Law, xxv.3.
73
Hobbes, Leviathan, 130. (L 30)
72
importance of instruction is underlined in this passage as it is through the means of
instruction that private judgment is steered clear from being led astray. A process of
re-education is what Hobbes calls for in which seated governments dictate the
content of the education. Though scholars and others at the university can ponder
matters, their action must be guided by what is right, as prescribed by the sovereign
and through a systematic process of repetition, ingraining it into the minds of
citizens.
A re-education of the people was viewed as necessary to maintaining civil
obedience in Afghanistan such that people needed to understand that preserving the
authority was essential to each individual’s rights remaining in tact.
…If there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of
England, that these powers were divided between the King, and the Lords,
and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided and fallen
into this civil war, first between those that disagreed in politics, and after
between the dissenters about the liberty of religion, which have so instructed
men in this point of sovereign right that there be few now (in England) that
do not see that these rights are inseparable and will so be generally
acknowledged at the next return of peace; and so continue, till their miseries
are forgotten, and no longer, except the vulgar be better taught than they have
hitherto been.”
74

The Taliban asserted the religious view that one would be subject to sin if one were
to attempt to interpret the Qur’an without the help of a religious guide or spiritual
teacher. Thus, private judgment in religion was removed from the religious
framework and a kind of closed dogma was promoted by teachers, mullahs who were

74
Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants, xviii.16.
73
financially backed by the political regime, which held public authority, controlled
and protected the state.
He whose error proceeds from the authority of a teacher or an interpreter of
the law publicly authorized is not so faulty as he whose error proceedeth from
a peremptory pursuit of his own principles and reasoning; for what is taught
by one that teacheth by public authority, the commonwealth teacheth, and
hath a resemblance of law till the same authority controlleth it, and in all
crimes that contain not in them a denial of the sovereign power, nor are
against an evident law or authorized doctrine, excuseth totally; whereas he
that groundeth his actions on his private judgment ought, according to the
rectitude or error thereof, to stand or fall.
75

A process of re-education that would remind and re-enforce the authority of the
Taliban was instituted at the five times prayers where all Afghans, excluding women,
were required to drop the business they were conducting in order to pray together
and listen to the sermons, which would inculcate right civil and therefore moral
behavior. The five time daily prayers became a regular process of re-education or
reminder for Afghan citizens of their political obligation. Hobbes believed that just
as the Jews set time apart on the Sabbath where traditionally their laws were read to
them and be re-enforced, that such a process should be instituted by the sovereign in
order to ingrain the important tenets, which Hobbes lays out.
Fourthly, seeing people can not be taught this, nor when it is taught
remember it, nor after one generation past so much as know in whom the
sovereign power is placed, without setting apart from their ordinary labor
some certain times in which they may attend those that are appointed to
instruct them, it is necessary that some such times be determined wherein
they may assemble together and hear those their duties told them, and the
positive laws, such as generally concern them all, read and expounded, and
be put in mind of the authority that maketh them laws.
76

75
Ibid., xxvii.31.
76
Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants, xxx.10.
74

The Taliban regime did not allow any pondering or education at all, but they
did also require that all citizens act according to sovereign will and that unified
public judgment would take precedence over any private judgment. They exercised
a process of disallowing private judgment on the grounds that it is whimsical and
subject to flaws and favored in its stead a process of dictating what is right and
wrong, as defined by the sovereign of the state, Mullah Omar. This process crippled
the critical thinking skills of the population so much that even following the toppling
of their regime, the students at Kabul University became accustomed to a draconic
system of education in which they memorize and repeat what they are taught,
without reflecting on or pondering the issues they are presented. By bringing the
analytic abilities of the youth to such a shallow level of depth, it has become quite
easy to persuade them to participate in suicidal activities that involve targeting
unarmored and non-military noncombatants, including women and children. In
jihad, it is extremely important to limit the target of attack to those with whom one’s
quarrel rests. Targeting innocents and specifically women and children is expressly
banned.
A woman was found killed in one of these battles; so the Messenger of Allah
forbade the killing of women and children.
77

Despite the Islamic tradition of a code of conduct of war, which forbids the killing of
all innocents including plant and animal life, the re-description of Islamic ideals to

77
Hadith, Source Unknown.
75
propel political agendas coupled with the attachment of political interests to the
system of education led to the long-term downfall of the state and toppling of the
sovereign. The argument that jihadists have used in order to get around this has been
to re-describe verses from the Qur’an to legitimize noncombatants on the grounds
that the fact that they are citizens of a state that upholds wrong principles. Since US
citizens voted President Bush into power, they have endorsed his war on Muslim
countries and therefore all are legitimate targets of war and not just military targets.
Furthermore, the fact that Muslims may lack military ability causes them to justify
using themselves as a missile or instrument of war. Since Palestinians, for example
are militarily impotent against a sophisticated Israeli army, they claim to have no
choice but to use themselves as missiles by attaching firepower to their bodies and
detonating themselves in any area they can gain access to where Israelis occupy.
Since they cannot move about the country freely, any place they can manage to reach
is a legitimate target including say a coffee shop where students might be studying.
Israeli citizens are also members of the army and that adds to the jihadists’
justification that they are in fact legitimate targets of war. Even Muslims can be
considered legitimate targets of war since they are considered hypocrites who claim
to be Muslim but in fact practice the ways of the nonbelievers or side with enemy
nations by accepting citizenship and enjoying the benefits of their states.

76
Hobbes’s Foole: Conflicting short term and long run interests
The re-description of religious ideals that Hobbes prescribed took place in
Afghanistan under Taliban rule following the civil war, and led to short-term gains
for the Taliban regime that were to the ultimate detriment of the citizens and the
eventual removal of the sovereign. What appeared to the Taliban to serve their
goals, maximized short run gains that directly caused a fracturing of its diplomatic
relations with the international community and this eventually led to the external and
forceful removal of their government. Following their removal, a new government
was put into place, however, the interruption and difficult transition has caused civil
war in most provincial parts of the country. Hobbes realizes that when people are
conflicted between self-interest and keeping covenants, then they will most likely
violate their covenants.
because when men compare the benefit of their Injustice, with the harm of
their punishment, by necessity of Nature they choose that which appeareth
best for themselves….
78

Nevertheless, he deems this unreasonable behavior since he believes there
takes place a miscalculation of what self-interest really amounts to in the larger
scheme or on an aggregate level. Could a sovereign be a Hobbesian fool and act
shortsightedly pursuing what he believes to be in his interest in exchange for the
long-term demise of the state? It should be noted that Hobbes’s foole is an atheist
who does not believe in God, the Day of Judgment, etc. However, the analogy I am

78
Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants, xxvii.8, 9.
77
attempting to draw is in the foole’s folly or in his characteristic of being short sighted
in pursuing what he believes will serve his own interest when in fact he undermines
his own interests in the long run. If a foolish sovereign were to be seated with the
authority to control religious interpretation then the state would be directed by a
moral standard which would guide people towards behaviors that would serve the
sovereign’s short run interests rather than ensuring the long term sanctity of the state.
According to the self interest account of Hobbes’s laws of nature (laws of reason),
why would the sovereign be immune from shortsightedly acting on his own self
interest to protect his own position, rather than the long run interests of the state? In
chapter 15 of the Leviathan, Hobbes states:
The fool hath said in his heart: “there is no such thing as justice;” and
sometimes also with his tongue, seriously alleging that: “every man’s
conservation and contentment being committed to his own care, there could
be no reason why every man might not do what he thought conduced
thereunto, and therefore also to make or not make, keep or not keep,
covenants was not against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit.” He
does not therein deny that there be covenants, and that they are sometimes
broken, sometimes kept, and that such breach of them may be called
injustice, and the observance of them justice; but he questioneth whether
injustice, taking away the fear of God (for the same fool hath said in his heart
there is no God), may not sometimes stand with that reason which dictateth to
every man his own good; and particularly then, when it conduceth to such a
benefit as shall put a man in a condition to neglect, not only the dispraise and
revilings, but also the power of other men.
79

For Gregory Kavka, Hobbes’s foole’s foolishness lies in his shortsightedness
as well as in his acting unreasonably when he claims to be reasonable. The foole
violates agreements and promises and breaks covenants because he thinks that it is

79
Ibid., xv.4.
78
reasonable to do so when it serves his self-interest. However, the foole’s folly lies in
his shortsightedness since he only assesses his short run gains and immediate
payoffs, when in fact the long-term gains (removal from defense cooperatives)
would far exceed the shortsighted immediate benefits. What makes the foole
unreasonable is that he miscalculates his expected utility, maximin and disaster
avoidance probabilities such that he believes himself to be reasonably acting in his
own self-interest when in fact the foole is a self-defeating individual who
unreasonably works to his own detriment, while claiming to reasonably act to his
own advantage.
Kinch Hoekstra assigns the view to Hobbes that he defines a law of nature as
a precept that forbids man to do that which is “destructive of his life, or taketh away
the means for preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be
best preserved.”
80
Specifically, he defines the law of nature as a precept that forbids
man to do that which “appears to him to tend to his own loss.” The laws of nature
must accord with self-interest. But if the laws of nature accord with self-interest and
the foole believes it is reasonable to act in his own self-interest against justice (the
third law of nature) when it is advantageous to do so, then there appears to be a
conflict in terms since the third law of nature, justice, will be against one’s own self-
interest when Hobbes claims (on the standard interpretations) that it is always in
one’s interest to act according to the laws of nature. The divergence between one’s
self interest and one’s duty to uphold justice poses a weakness in Hobbes’s argument

80
Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter14, Part III.
79
since he has been criticized for being wrong about this matter and as a result
dismissed entirely. In order to save Hobbes from this apparent problem, Hoekstra
sets out to identify Hobbes’s position about the dictate to keep covenants and the
dictate to uphold self-interest as being in concurrence with that of the foole’s
position. Hoekstra assigns to Hobbes the view that the duty to uphold covenants and
the duty to uphold one’s self interest not only can diverge but in case of divergence
the duty to uphold self-interest overrides the duty to uphold covenants. The foole
says that when it conduces to one’s benefit, it is reasonable to break covenants; in the
case where the end of one’s covenant breaking is sufficiently valuable. Where
Hobbes disagrees with the foole is in his judgment of what he calculates to be in his
self-interest and when that is deemed to be sufficiently valuable for him. This
disagreement lies in the fact that the foole believes that all of one’s voluntary actions
tend to one’s own benefit, whereas Hobbes believes that one pursues one’s own
apparent good in one’s voluntary actions. The foole may fail in pursuit of his self-
interest and also pursue his own detriment even though he believes it to be
beneficial. In this sense, the fool is self-contradicting, since he claims to work to his
own advantage when in fact he is inching towards his own demise. For Hobbes,
what makes an action reasonable is not the actual outcome but rather the expected
outcome. Hoekstra terms the criterion of reasonably expected gain against what he
calls reasonable risk.
81
The probability of an action bringing gain as opposed to loss
alone does not suffice to settle its reasonability. Even though the act may be

81
Hobbes, Leviathan, 630. (L 334)
80
expected to be profitable, the cost of losing would be too high and we would hence
deem the assumption of such a risk to be unreasonable.
Most of Hobbes’s interpreters have attributed to him the belief that these two
not only do not diverge they cannot diverge – since for Hobbes it is always in one’s
self interest to obey the Laws of Nature which are the laws of God.
82

As for the instance of gaining the secure and perpetual felicity of heaven by
any way, it is frivolous; there being but one way imaginable: and that is not
breaking, but keeping of Covenant (justice).
83

For Hobbes, the existence of God is self evident to any reasonable individual
since the first mover argument indicates that by tracing the causal relationships in the
universe, one is led to a first uncaused cause or first mover. This is not a matter of
mere faith for Hobbes but a fact that any rational being should acknowledge.
Obedience to such a God is always to one’s own benefit since one will either reap
the consequences in this life, the next
84
or perhaps even in both.

Mechanism to Check rulers:

Hobbes contends that there are some reasons to prefer monarchy over
democracy but that whatever system you live under, you should not change or resist.
Hobbes does not believe that we can have competing sovereigns which is a risk that
a mechanism to check rulers could appear to pose. However, for Hobbes, we can

82
Hobbes says that people should keep their promises in the state of nature because that is the only
sure way “of gaining the secure and perpetual felicity of heaven.” For further discussion, see: A.P.
Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 118.
83
Hobbes, Leviathan, With Selected Variants, xv.6.
84
Not in the Judeo-Christian sense of heaven or hell for Hobbes.
81
have a complete system that checks power avoiding infinite regress of sovereigns’
authority one over the other so that the buck stops at one recognized stopping point.
It would not be feasible to have competing institutions of power that would defer to
each other’s power without a set point at which a decision is reached. Thus, a
mechanism to check rulers would be compatible with Hobbes’s views as long as it
does not set up competing sovereigns who with varying degrees of authority to
preside over matters of the state, leading to indecision, chaos and lack of finality in
sovereign rule.
Hobbes places a great deal of trust in rulers to either reason and calculate
correctly the long term interests of the state and not be short sighted, or not to
intentionally use their seat to maximize their own benefits. In either case, rulers are
given too much power without a system of checks and balances or a counterweight
to ensure that this authority is not misused to lead to the detriment of the state or the
seated government. In order to guard against unchecked power that can either
intentionally or unintentionally lead to the state’s disadvantage (citizens and/or
government collectively), a legion of learned and knowledgeable men who have
training in strong reasoning skills should be empowered to check the decisions of the
sovereign. Who would such characters be and why would they themselves not fall
prey to the same fate of the sovereign or could they not be influenced by the
sovereign to obey by either force or reward? In the Platonic tradition of philosopher-
kings, a group of seasoned and well-experienced university professors who do not
stand to gain from the government must be charged with this task and must answer to
82
the citizens about their counseling of the sovereign. Beyond this measure, the
sovereign should not be able to make any decision concerning the well-being of the
state if it causes conflict with its neighbors or the international community at large
unless he has the vote of the people. The people must hear from the Council of
Advisers, comprised of university professors and from the sovereign and vote
accordingly. This will force the sovereign to remain in compliance with the interests
of the state as the decision-making process will not be subject to his own reasoning
or intention alone. In the Platonic tradition of Philosopher kings, the Council of
Advisers will advise the sovereign on the best reasonable course of action and must
be immune to any form of kickback or political advantage, profit of any kind.
83

CHAPTER 6: EDUCATION
Hobbes’s view of right education at universities
Hobbes correlates right education with the peace and stability of the state
since he believes that passion coupled with wrong opinion lead to rebellion. The
view that open discussion would lead to rebellion is a bit hasty because for Hobbes
there are three ingredients for necessary conditions of rebellion: 1) discontent, 2)
hope of success, 3) just cause. On my solution, a principled commitment to the
political regime will not lead to the three conditions for rebellion for Hobbes as he
believes that we are better off to consider critically and reject bad ideas.
85
It is
through open debate that the best view will emerge as I take Mill’s approach on this
matter to be useful to Hobbes’s strategy :
Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is
suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by
most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little
comprehension of feeling of its rational grounds…the meaning of the
doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost…the dogma becoming a mere
formal profession, inefficacious for good…and preventing the growth of any
real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.
86

It is at the universities in particular that Hobbes believes this right education
starts or that erroneous views can be cultivated, as Hobbes blamed the universities
for the English Civil War and felt their reformation of great importance to the
stability of the state. Hobbes’s view of human nature is that humans are malleable

85
Hobbes, Leviathan, 233. (L 91)
86
J.S. Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), 59.
84
and begin as tabula rasa and that their opinions and judgments are formed by
education and socialization. Common people’s minds “unless they be tainted with
dependence on the potent, or scribbled over with the opinions of their doctors, are
like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by public authority shall be imprinted in
them.”
87
Once the opinions are formed, they become very difficult to retract unless
through a process of re-education. Hobbes refers to gaining control of the
universities so that they re-align their course of studies to include obedience to the
sovereign. For Hobbes, this would yield internal tranquility in the state:
I think it [reformation of the universities] a very good course, and perhaps the
only one that can make our peace amongst ourselves constant. For if men
know not their duty, what is there that can force them to obey the laws? An
army, you will say. But what shall force the army?...I am therefore of your
opinion, both that men may be brought to a love of obedience by preachers
and gentlemen that imbibe good principles in their youth at the Universities,
and also that we never shall have a lasting peace, till the Universities
themselves be in such manner, as you have said, reformed.
88

A strong core can be developed in the state through the universities since they
are the medium through which most citizens are processed and influenced. In other
words, the majority of the population of the state runs through the educational
system and this is where their beliefs are cultivated. Building a solid, harmonious
state in which its citizens are wholeheartedly passionate about upholding the laws of
the sovereign and acting in obedience to the sovereign and civil laws – is a necessary
ingredient to the perpetual success of the state. Even if the state were able to
maintain and preserve its territorial integrity and crush internal uprising, this would

87
Hobbes, Leviathan, 639. (L 176)
88
Ibid., 211. (L 75)
85
not constitute the true success of the state. The ability to ward off opposition is
markedly different and reactionary in contrast to proactively aligning the will of the
people with their sovereign. The former demarcates an absence of total weakness
whereas the latter indicates a presence of strength and success. Hobbes appears to
argue:

I despair of any lasting peace amongst ourselves, till the Universities here
shall bend and direct their studies…to the teaching of absolute obedience to
the laws of the King, and to his public edicts under the Great Seal of England.
For I make no doubt, but that solid reason, backed with the authority of so
many learned men, will more prevail for the keeping of us in peace within
ourselves, than any victory can do over the rebels.
89

Conversely, if the universities do not provide an avenue for right education and
instead misdirect the population, the peace and stability of the state will be
threatened. Misguided education is the root of social instability and the disease that
leads to the destructive symptom of civil disorder.

“Like enough; and yet the fault, as I have said, may be easily mended, by
mending the universities.”
90

In particular, it is the right education that will help people recognize and resist the
doctrines that will lead them away from obedience to the sovereign. Teaching
loyalty to religious figures would inevitably for Hobbes divide the power of the
sovereign and as a result it must fall under sovereign control – as has been discussed.
For ambition can do little without hands, and few hands it would have, if the
common people were as diligently instructed in the true principles of their

89
Ibid., 201. (L 71)
90
Hobbes, Behemoth, 90.
86
duty, as they are terrified and amazed by preachers, with fruitless and
dangerous doctrines.
91

Hobbes further argues that the content of university education should work to
synthesize civil and religious law such that obedience to God would require
obedience to the state first and foremost:
The core of rebellion as you have seen by this, and read of other rebellions,
are the Universities; which nevertheless are not to be cast away, but to be
better disciplined; that is to say, that the politics there taught be made to be,
as true politics should be, such as are fit to make men know, that it is their
duty to obey all laws whatsoever that shall by the authority of the King be
enacted, till by the same authority they shall be repealed; such as are fit to
make men understand, that the civil laws are God’s laws, as they that make
them are by God appointed to make them, and to make men know, that the
people and the Church are one thing, and have but one head, the King; and
that no man has title to govern under him, that has it not from him; that the
King owes his crown to God only, and to no man, ecclesiastic or other; and
that the religion they teach there, be a quiet waiting for the coming again of
our blessed Saviour, and in the mean time a resolution to obey the King’s
laws, which also are God’s laws; to injure no man, to be in charity with all
men, to cherish the poor and sick, and to live soberly and free from scandal;
without mingling our religion with points of natural philosophy, as freedom
of will, incorporeal substance, everlasting nows, ubiquities, hypostases,
which the people understand not, nor will ever care for. When the
Universities shall be thus disciplined, there will come out of them, from time
to time, well-principled preachers, and they that are now ill-principled, from
time to time fall away.
92

Hobbes’s strategy for gaining civil obedience includes a principle of political
obligation. “One is to obey the effective government of the commonwealth of which
one is a member in all of its commands not repugnant to one’s duty to God.”
93

Though Hobbes’s practical, self interest approach contends that it is always in the

91
Hobbes, Leviathan, 228. (L 90)
92
Ibid., 201 (L 74-5)
93
Ibid.,
87
interest of the citizens of the state to obey their sovereign, Hobbes realizes that
people must be persuaded and convinced of this so that they believe this to be true
since they will not otherwise act on a principle that they do not hold to be in their
interest in cases when their interest and the duties to the sovereign diverge.
Specifically, it is through a process of education that all of the citizens of the state
must be publicly instructed on a proper conception of their interests and those
interests must comport with the duty to obey the sovereign. For Hobbes, it is not
only in one’s narrow self interest to obey the sovereign but also a moral duty. In
fact, on nonstandard interpretations such as those held by Warrender and Taylor,
citizens have a moral obligation to obey their sovereign. This moral obligation stems
from either the moral duty to obey God or the moral duty to obey the laws of nature
or from their consent.
Based on Hobbes’s re-description of Christian ideals, it is every Christian’s
religious duty to obey the sovereign of the state. However, Hobbes believes that this
can only be ensured over time and throughout all of society by the right education.
Hobbes viewed as problematic the misguided education at the university which
poisoned the minds of the society by teaching loyalty to other entities such as an
independent religious authority first and foremost.
Hobbes blames the university for much of what he finds problematic on the
part of the clergy:
the metaphysiques, ethiques, and politiques of Aristotle, the frivolous
distinctions, barbarous terms and obscure language of the schoolmen, taught
in the universities (which have been all erected and regulated by the Popes
88
authority,) serve them to keep these errors from being detected, and to make
men mistake the ignis fatuus of vain philosophy for the light of the Gospell.
94

The university plays an exceptional role as it instills and ingrains the direction of
loyalty of the citizens of the state through a trickle down effect:
From the Universities also it was, that all preachers proceeded, and were
poured out into city and country, to terrify the people into an absolute
obedience to the Pope’s cannons and commands…
From the Universities it was, that the philosophy of Aristotle was made an
ingredient in religion, as serving for a salve to a great many absurd articles,
concerning the nature of Christ’s body, and the estate of angels and saints in
heaven; which articles they thought fit to have believed, because they bring,
some of them profit, and others reverence to the clergy…
95

As a result, the university is a subject of central focus since learned men at the
universities frame the sense of the state’s political obligation through a trickle down
effect.
The greatest part of Man-kind…received the notions of their duty chiefly
from Divines in the pulpit, and partly from such of their neighbours, or
familiar acquaintance, as having the faculty of discoursing readily and
plausibly, seem wiser and better learned in cases of law, and conscience than
themselves. And the Divines, and such others as make shew of learning,
Schooles of law, or from the books, which by men eminent in those Schooles,
and universities have been published. It is therefore manifest, that the
instruction of the people dependeth wholly on the right teaching of the Youth
in the universities. But are not (some man say) the Universities of England
learned enough already to do that? Or is it you [who] will undertake to teach
the Universities? Hard questions. Yet to the first, I doubt not to
answer…that though the Universities were not authors of those false
doctrines [which they taught], yet they knew not how to plant the true …But
to the latter question, it is not fit, nor needful for me to say either I, or No: for
any man that sees what I am doing, may easily perceive what I think.
96

94
Ibid., 708. (L 383)
95
Ibid., 168-75. (L 52-6)
96
Ibid., 384-85. (L 179-80)
89
The learned men or scholars at the university (who are well read and perhaps
published) as well as religious figures who are placed in the universities – are poised
to affect the youth at the universities and erroneously lead them to believe that they
should obey religious authority figures over the sovereign. Hobbes writes,
Common people know nothing of right or wrong by their own meditation;
they must therefore be taught the grounds of their duty, and the reasons why
calamities ever follow disobedience to their lawful sovereigns. But to the
contrary, our rebels were publicly taught rebellion in the pulpits; and that
there was no sin, but the doing of what the preachers forbade, or the
omission of what they advised.
97

Not only within the university but in fact most of the leaders of society are cultivated
in universities and upon leaving the university and engaging in mainstream society –
carry the intellectual authority to teach other than what the sovereign mandates
leading loyalties towards religion instead of the sovereign.
There they learned to dispute for him [The Pope], and with unintelligible
distinctions to blind men’s eyes, whilst they encroached upon the rights of
kings. And it was an evident argument of that design, that they fell in hand
with the work so quickly. For the first Rector of the University of Paris, as I
have read somewhere, was Peter Lombard, who first brought in them the
learning called School-divinity; and was seconded by John Scot of Duns,
who lived in or near the same time; whom any ingenious reader, not knowing
what was the design, would judge to have been two of the most egregious
blockheads in the world, so obscure and senseless are their writings. And
from these the schoolmen that succeeded, learnt the trick of imposing what
they list upon their readers, and declining the force of true reason by verbal
forks; I mean, distinctions that signify nothing, but serve only to astonish the
multitude of ignorant men…these schoolmen were to make good all the
articles of faith, which the Popes from time to time should command to be
believed; amongst which, there were very many inconsistent with the rights
of kings, and other civil sovereigns, as asserting to the Pope all authority
whatsoever they should declare to be necessary…in order to religion.
98

97
Hobbes, Behemoth, 181.
98
Hobbes, Leviathan, 168. (L 52)
90

For Hobbes, it is the duty of the sovereign to protect citizens from the peril of
misguided education by providing rightly guided instruction:
It is against his duty to let the people be ignorant, or misinformed of the
grounds, and reasons of those essential rights, because thereby men are easie
to be seduced, and drawn to resist him, when the commonwealth shall require
their use and exercise. And the grounds of these rights, have the rather need
to be diligently, and truly taught, because they cannot be maintained by any
civill law, or terrour of legal punishment.
99

Education and the stability of the state
Hobbes’s system of education is intended to embed the types of beliefs in
society that promote the stability of the state over time. Hobbes believes that
obedience to the sovereign not loyalty to religious authority should be taught in
universities. It is not the system of education that Hobbes blames but the function
that it has erroneously served.
…It is therefore manifest that the instruction of the people dependeth wholly
on the right teaching of youth in the universities. But are not (may some man
say) the universities of England learned enough already to do that? or is it
you will undertake to teach the universities?…till towards the latter end of
Henry the Eighth, the power of the Pope was always upheld against the
power of the commonwealth principally by the universities; and that the
doctrines maintained by so many preachers against the sovereign power of
the king, and by so many lawyers and others who had their education there, is
a sufficient argument that, though the universities were not authors of those
false doctrines, yet they knew not how to plant the true. For in such a
contradiction of opinions, it is most certain that they have not been
sufficiently instructed; and it is no wonder if they yet retain a relish of that
subtle liquor wherewith they were first seasoned against civil authority.
100

99
Ibid., 376. (L 175)
100
Hobbes, Leviathan, xxx.14.
91
Religious authority was bolstered by the universities during Hobbes’s era,
leading to the weakening of the authority of the sovereign. Hobbes re-defines
religious authority to fall in alignment with the sovereign such that the sovereign
holds sole authority to express the will of God and the interpretation of religion
comports with preserving the stability of the state.

However, by attaching the political agendas of the state to the system of
religious education one creates the danger of shortsighted and immoral religious
education that eventually undermines the state. Once religious scriptures are subject
to re-description by the sovereign and that re-description can continue to take place
over again by a number of sovereigns who hold variations in their judgment as to
what the interests of the state are and how they can be best served, an evolution of
re-description can occur whereby a definition that shortsightedly serves individual
rulers/regimes’ interests is produced and injected into the consciousness of society.
These re-descriptions create new brands of religion as well as they seek to re-define
scriptures to advance civil obedience. Suicide in jihad is illustrative of this process.
Hobbes concedes in Chapter 12 of Leviathan that people’s natural human
inclination toward religious belief can be channeled by those who wish to rule them.
This proves that people can be manipulated by education. And attaching the
religious education of the citizens to the state’s transient political agendas will
require a continuous re-description of religious ideals on the part of the sovereign
and this process is susceptible to falling into a pitfall of shortsighted and potentially
92
immoral (as in suicidal acts of jihad for instance) religious education which will
ultimately serve to implode the state with its synthetic doctrines. By immoral
religious brands I mean any practices that are justified when they run contrary to
basic and uncontroversial tenets of the religion such as stealing, murder, suicide, etc.
Education as source of discourse and remedy
Hobbes agreed that the remedy to misguided beliefs and opinions that were
based on weak principles - was a process of re-education in order to attempt to
correct the original faulty education that led to the faulty opinions and erroneous
private judgment, which led to social unrest and civil disobedience. Hobbes was
confident in the efficacy of this process since he believed that men were malleable
and easily moved by their passion to embrace new views. Since for Hobbes human
opinion is shaped by experience and instruction, education would be an instrument
that could very well inculcate the kind of ideals and beliefs that are necessary for
social order. However, the education that Hobbes wants to see must teach the
correct moral doctrine and move people such that they want to embrace these views.
From the contrariety of some of the natural faculties of the mind, one to
another, as also of one passion to another, and from their reference to
conversation, there has been an argument taken to infer an impossibility that
any one man should be sufficiently disposed to all sorts of civil duty…And to
consider the contrariety of mens opinions, and manners in general, it is they
say, impossible to entertain a constant civil amity with all those with whom
the business of the world constrains us to converse…To which I answer, that
by education, and discipline, they may be, and are sometimes
reconciled…There is therefore no such inconsistence of human nature with
civil duties as some think.
101

101
Hobbes, Leviathan, 717-18. (L 389-90)
93
As a result, the universities become a pivotal part of Hobbes’s agenda. In
particular, it is through the universities that Hobbes’s principle of political obligation
or civil duty will be taught through the process of carefully instructing the content of
the ideals necessary to gaining this order and through ensuring that the passions and
desires of citizens are taken into account such that they arrive at the belief through
their own cognitive and passionate processes. Hobbes asserts that “the passions of
men are commonly more potent than their reason.”
102
Educational institutions are
for Hobbes the single guiding instrument towards moving citizens closer to civil
order and a strong healthy state.
Therefore I think it may be profitably printed, and more profitably taught in
the Universities…For seeing the universities are the fountains of civil and
moral doctrine, from whence the preachers, and the gentry, drawing such
water as they find, use to sprinkle the same (both from the pulpit and in their
conversation) upon the people, there ought certainly to be great care taken, to
have it pure…And by that means the most men, knowing their duties, will be
the less subject to serve the ambition of a few discontented persons in their
purposes against the state; and be the lesse grieved with the contributions
necessary for their peace and defence; and the governours themselves have
the lesse cause to maintain at the common charge any greater army than is
necessary to make good the publique liberty against the invasions and
encroachments of foreign enemies.
103

As illustrated in my discussion, reformation of universities is paramount to Hobbes’s
strategy since it is from this point that the trickle down effect occurs where the
knowledge is passed systematically to the citizens of the state.
As for the means and conduits, by which the people may receive this
[correct] instruction, we are to search, by what means so many opinions,
contrary to the peace of man-kind, upon weak and false principles, have

102
Ibid., 483. (L 241)
103
Ibid., 728. (L 395)
94
nevertheless been so deeply rooted in them…They whom necessity, or
covetousnesse keepeth attent on their trades, and labour; and they, on the
other side, whom superfluity, or sloth carrieth after their sensuall pleasures,
(which two sorts of men take up the greatest part of mankind) being diverted
from the deep meditation, which the learning of truth …necessarily requireth,
receive the notions of their duty, chiefly from divines in the pulpit and partly
from such as their neighbors, or familiar acquaintance, as having the faculty
of discoursing readily and plausibly, seem wiser and better learned in cases of
law, and conscience than themselves.
104

Hobbes attempts to place the control of the content education in the hands of
the sovereign. It is not simply that the government should promote education which
will cultivate loyalty to the state but that the government would be in control and in
charge of what is studied, the content of the curricula, approving texts read by
students, even texts that are allowed to be published and made public for society to
read at their own will and what the faculty of the university could and could not
teach. Who is to say that the decision on the approved course of instruction will not
alter from one sovereign to another depending upon his particular belief set and what
s/he judges to be in the best interest of the citizens of the state? In effect, education
would be state funded, state run and state controlled.
It is annexed to the sovereignty, to be judge of what opinions and doctrines
are averse, and what conducing to peace; and consequently, on what
occasions, how farre, and what men are to be trusted withall, in speaking to
multitudes of people; and who shall examine the doctrines of all bookes
before they be published.
105

104
Ibid., 383-84. (L 179-80)
105
Ibid., 233. (L91)
95
The selection of individuals who would be entrusted to teach as faculty members
would be state controlled, meaning university professors must be willing to teach in
the state approved manner.
It is true, that the civil magistrate, intending to employ a minister in the
charge of teaching; may enquire of him, if he be content to preach such and
such doctrines; and in case of refusal, may deny him the employment…
106

S.A. Lloyd’ s account of Hobbes’s view of education:
In her article entitled Coercion, Ideology and Education in Leviathan, S.A.
Lloyd advances the view that the prima facie features of Hobbes’s system of
education that may appear troublesome in that it requires government control of
teachers, books and what is taught – but that it should only seem so if the system of
education were to enforce intentionally crafted false doctrines to uphold a defective
political regime that did not in fact express the will of the people. The government
could be well-intending to assert a system of education that is right, based on
doctrines that are true. However, if a political regime by mistake managed to set up
an educational system that encompassed errors when it was intended to uphold the
true interests of the people, it would be considered distinctly different from a
political regime that intentionally skewed the educational system against the human
interests of its citizens by deceptive methodology. As such, S.A. Lloyd draws the
distinction between mistaken systems and ideological systems. Ideological systems
use illusion or delusion about true human interests to gain compliance with their

106
Ibid., 700. (L 378)
96
ends. A proper Hobbesian sovereign judges according to what is truly in favor of
peace and these would be the doctrines taught through the educational system and
since the sovereign is also the religious authority, s/he has the right and ability to
make claims, interpretation and pass judgments about religion and how religious
scriptures should be followed in society. This is not to say that whatever the
sovereign judges in matters of justice, the law and religion will in fact be objectively
and infallibly true. Hobbes says “There is no judge subordinate, nor sovereign, but
may erre in a judgment of equity…
107
Rather, since the sovereign judges the views
taught to be true, and since it is designed to uphold peace and that is a foundational,
basic human interest necessary for human beings to realize all other interests the
education system is not objectionably ideological. Any doctrine that would be
against peace is fundamentally and principally false.
The sovereign is authorized to decipher between what is right and wrong
despite the fact that he may sometimes err in his judgment. But nonetheless, a
proper Hobbesian sovereign will not intentionally make a judgment that will lead to
instability, all judgments will be directed by an interest at gaining and preserving
collective peace.
And though in matter of doctrine, nothing ought to be regarded but the truth;
yet this is not repugnant to regulating of the same by peace. For doctrines
repugnant to peace, can no more be true, than peace and concord can be
against the law of nature.
108

107
Ibid., 323. (L 144)
108
Ibid., 233. (L 91)
97
Hobbes argues that “it is annexed to the sovereignty to be judge of what opinions and
doctrines are averse, and what conducing to peace…”. Hobbes validates this
authority on the part of the sovereign with the fact that s/he will work for peace and
that peace for the good of the people. Therefore, Hobbes’s educational system
would not be ideological since it would be incompatible with doctrines that are not
conducive to basic human interests such as peace and security. Hobbes is not
interested in the sovereign holding doctrines that are true and then enforcing them
upon the people --by force or by bogus arguments. Instead, he envisions a system of
education that would teach the doctrines so that they are understood by the masses
and agreed upon and willingly embraced and upheld. In fact, it is the duty of the
sovereign to offer such a system of education and to provide a clear process of
understanding the core principles and their supporting reasons and justifications so
that the citizens' attachment to those doctrines are robust and durable. Hobbes
writes,
It is against the sovereign’s duty to let the people be ignorant or misinformed
of the grounds and reasons of those his essentiall rights; because thereby men
are easy to be seduced, and drawn to resist him, when the commonwealth
shall require their use and exercise. And the grounds of these rights, have the
rather need to be diligently and truly taught; because they cannot be
maintained by any civil law, or terror of legal punishment…
109

There is an underlying assumption that Hobbes makes with respect to the
nature of people's minds being malleable and easily swayed and this supports his
argument for the need to have a system of education in place which will correctly

109
Ibid., 377. (L 175)
98
guide the masses towards the sorts of ideas that are conducive to their own interests
and the sanctity of the state - as prescribed by the effective sovereign.
Common people know nothing of right or wrong by their own meditation;
they must therefore be taught the grounds of their duty, and the reasons why
calamities ever follow disobedience to their lawful sovereigns. But to the
contrary, our rebels were publicly taught rebellion in the pulpits.
110

Hobbes would like to see political obligation taught like a science so that the
premises and conclusions would be evident, empirically known and accepted and
acted upon. The doctrines taught must be “the science of just and unjust” and as
such be both true and evident:
Why may not men be taught their duty, that is the science of just and unjust ,
as diverse as other sciences have been taught, from true principles and
evident demonstration, and much more easily than any of those preachers and
democratical gentlemen [during the civil war] could teach rebellion and
treason?
111

One may wonder how such a subjective, qualitative topic can be taught like a
quantitative science. S.A. Lloyd believes that since the doctrines are meant to truly
represent the best interest of the people and the overall best interest of the state, even
if they do prove to be mistaken or based on faulty inferences - it would still differ
greatly from an educational system that is designed to be a kind of concoction of an
ideological strategy to sway the opinion of the masses towards the presiding powers
of the state. Sincerity on the part of the government in espousing a doctrine that is
meant to be good for the people as opposed to that which is shrouded in a belief

110
Hobbes, Behemoth, 144.
111
Ibid., 39.
99
system designed to serve to strengthen the seated government - would appear to
present a problem since it would be nearly impossible to distinguish sincere versus
insincere governments. It would not be practical to base it on whether the doctrines
are really true given the qualitative nature and so instead what Lloyd proposes is that
"the interests of the doctrines that are being advanced are at least plausible
candidates of true human goods, and that the means it uses be fairly transparent to
those on whom they work, so that no wholesale illusion or delusion is needed for
their successful operation."
112

Critique of Hobbes’s construal of education:
The central feature of a dogmatic system of education is that it can render the
kind of obedience that actually leads to problematic transcendent interests (i.e. those
in tension with political obedience). In other words, it appears that Hobbes’s
construal of such a model of education might fall short of achieving its intended
purpose in the long run as it would perpetuate wrongly conceived transcendent
interests. Hobbes believes that such wrongly conceived transcendent interests pose a
danger for the state since individuals who hold such interests uniquely challenge the
sovereign’s ability to contain such people. This worldly rewards or punishment
would not bridle the actions of such individuals and since they have been stripped of
their faculty of reason, reflective abilities and exposure to competing doctrines that
would probe the skill to arrive at the most plausible conclusions - Hobbes
educational system might undermine his own goal. On John Stuart Mill's famous

112
Lloyd, Conflicts as Interest, 47.
100
view of a marketplace of ideas, in addition to the possibility of discovering truth he
also believes that it is through debate and diversity of ideas that individuals move
towards being progressively intellectual thinkers who can distinguish between the
most sophisticated or dense arguments and assess for themselves what is best and
what is not. In the absence of the elements of diversity and debate, human beings
become reduced to compressed and single dimensional thinkers who simply accept
what is presented to them as good and worthy of being embraced. This is in fact the
catalyst and essential ingredient for breeding the kinds of characters who will be led
to self sacrifice and activated for religion-based motivated doctrines.
According to Lloyd, Hobbes is most concerned with the overt actions of the
citizens, as was illustrated in the discussion of the explicit fool. In other words, he is
not concerned about regulating people's thoughts and what they believe in their
hearts as long as they behave with obedience and uphold the laws of the state. As
noted, the fool's folly lies in his shortsightedness and faulty reasoning since he
manages to trade long terms gains for short term benefits. In effect, he miscalculates
to maximize a short term victory when in favor of a long term loss. The fool thus
unwittingly pursues his own demise thinking that he is actually serving his best
interests.
For the use of Lawes…is not to bind the people from all voluntary actions;
but to direct and keep them in such a motion, as not to hurt themselves by
their own impetuous desires, rashness or indiscretion, as hedges are set, not to
stop travelers, but to keep them in the way.
113

113
Hobbes, Leviathan, 388. (L 182)
101
Hobbes is not concerned with a process of controlling people's thoughts, but
instead their overt behaviors.
By the captivity of our understanding is not meant a submission of the
intellectual faculty to the opinion of any other man; but of the will to
obedience, where obedience is due. For sense, memory, understanding,
reason and opinion are not in our power to change; but always and
necessarily such, as the things we see, hear, and consider suggest unto us; and
therefore are not effects of our will, but our will of them.
114

This may translate into both what people speak and their actions. As long as
what is said and what is acted upon is in alignment with sovereign rule, then on this
view Hobbes would be satisfied even if the people in their hearts believed otherwise.
Since Hobbes would like the teachings of the state to be taught like a science, it
becomes important to address the question of what will be allowed to be taught in
terms of what will be the test of what is right and what is wrong given the feature of
subjectivity that the matters of the state and civil obedience entail. In scientific
terms, teaching a false principle would lead to error in the application of chemistry,
biology and engineering. These errors might lead to grave consequences in the
world and even though false principles may sometimes yield true conclusions. It is
generally thought by Hobbes that the quantitative and not qualitative subjects would
train citizens to think about the world in more clear and simple terms, extracting
diversity of opinion in favor of a single right conclusion. There is no room for error
in the sciences and similarly, for Hobbes, if the teachings of the state were mistaken
then it too could lead to grave consequences for the state's stability and sanctity.

114
Ibid., 410. (L 196)
102
Hobbes views the process of teaching such doctrines that are thought to be true - a
necessary component to gaining civil obedience since it trains citizens to accept
certain assumptions and truths. The control of the state in the content of disciplines
being studied may seem too intrusive to a liberal and democratic society. The worry
in this may be counteracted by the fact that Hobbes does not opt to coerce or force
doctrines upon the people. Instead, he focuses on a process of persuasion not
coercion or force just as with faith, one must be persuaded about the certainty of
matters of religion and not be brought to faith upon force.
For Hobbes, there is no compulsion in religion or belief but the sovereign as
the religious authority, can require certain behaviors from citizens, including
professing and practicing publicly as settled by law. Inner thoughts that may not be
in alignment with the sovereign's laws would be a sin but not worthy of punishment
in society since the inner belief or faith cannot be changed by force.
[A Christian King] can not oblige men to believe, though as a civil sovereign
he may make laws suitable to his doctrine which may oblige men to certain
actions, and sometimes to such as they would not otherwise do, and which he
ought not to command; and yet when they are commanded, they are laws;
and the external actions done in obedience to them, without the inward
approbation, are the actions of the sovereign, and not of the subject, which is
in that case but as an instrument, without any motion of his own at all,
because God hath commanded to obey them.
115

Lloyd believes that since even in the liberal society certain teachings such as
racist or sectarian religious doctrines are ruled out of public teaching in schools in
order to uphold a basic standard of liberal democratic values of tolerance and

115
Ibid., 591. (L 309)
103
civility, this illustrates the justification to filter what is and what is not taught in
schools and instead re-directs our attention to the fact that what may seem
objectionable (to liberals) is that the state controls this teaching instead of leaving it
to private communities, parents etc. to cultivate. But Hobbes would not want private
control of education since this would conflict with Hobbes’s problem with private
judgment and diversity in opinion. There is so much difference in opinion and how
it is expressed that it becomes implausible to sieve through right and wrong with so
much subjectivity involved. Instead, one opinion should be authorized above the rest
and charged with advancing opinions that promote the best interest of the people and
the state. Hobbes believes that it is problematic to place authority on matters that
will impact the behaviors of the citizen of the state, affecting the overall condition of
the state, to individual whim. Instead, such an important role should be placed in the
proper care of the state.
And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must
by their own accord set up for right reason, the reason of some arbitrator or
judge, to whose sentence they will both stand, or their controversy must
either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right reason constituted
by nature; so it is in all debates of what kind soever; And when men that
think themselves wiser than all others, clamor and demand right reason for
judge, yet seek no more, but that things should be determined by no other
mens reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of men, as it is in
play after trump is turned.
116

Amy Kauffman
117
has delineated eight components to what she refers to as
“the educational theory of Thomas Hobbes” as follows: 1) Theory of value, 2) theory

116
Ibid., 111-12. (L 18-19)
117
Amy Kauffman, “The Education Theory of Thomas Hobbes,” New Foundations: Gallery of
Synopses (2000). http://newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Hobbes.html
104
of knowledge, 3) theory of human nature, 4) theory of learning, 5) theory of
transmission, 6) theory of society, 7) theory of opportunity, 8) theory of consensus.
In the last, which is the Theory of Consensus, Kauffman refers to S.A. Lloyd’s
account of Hobbes’s views on education as they relate to transcendent interests in her
book Ideals as Interests. Kauffman’s argument follows:
People are capable of forming and acting on transcendent interests.
Transcendent interests caused civil wars.
Any permanent solution to war would need to address the disruption
generated by such conflicts of transcendent interests.
The solution is to reduce people's conceptions and interests by a process of
education that continually generates consensus.
Education can cause consensus or destroy consensus.
I. Theory of Value
Morals surpass all else.
Education is crucial to prevent the reproduction of improperly conceived interests,
interests of the sort that disrupt social order.
People are powerfully moved by moral interests. Proper conception of these interests
is essential to the maintenance of civil order.
Pursuing a process of socialization, or of moral education, encourages properly
conceived interests to form.
II. Theory of Knowledge

Knowledge is power.

The only way to know is by definition.

No man can know by discourse.
105

The knowledge by which most men lived is knowledge gained from experience.

Experience is nothing more than remembering past actions and what consequences
followed them.

Contributed to rational knowledge
1. Geometry amended principles and solved problems that were baffling to people.
2. Physics (optics) first to discover the causes of sense perceptions.
III. Theory of Human Nature
Every man will dread and distrust each other.
All that is, is material.
The contents of the world could in principle be comprehensively described making
reference only to bodies and their motions.
The quest for security and peace is viewed as a human struggle.
Human beings are naturally sociable, as well as self-centered, with a desire for power
after power which ceases only in death.

Crime is largely caused by false teachers.

The fear of death explains the need for social order and not anarchy.
The behavior of men can be explained by the science of mechanics and the
geometrical deduction.

IV. Theory of Learning

The purpose of learning history of the past is to make the knowledge of the successes
and failures of the past available for our present and future action.

Education makes for social order.
Education is socialization.
106
Analysis can disclose universal things.
People learn by: problem-solving analysis.

The arts are learned by debating in the university.
V. Theory of Transmission
Education involves not only the presentation of ideas, but also their inculcation.
Educate people in their moral and civil duty. Instill in them a disposition to do what
they ought to do.

Curriculum should contain moral teachings.

Demonstration is Hobbes’s term for a syllogistic arrangement of truths, and also for
the activity of communicating in syllogisms. This act is more commonly known as
teaching.
Successful teachers proceed from most low and humble principles; and so on.
In the method of teaching, not the method of discovery or intervention, the
syllogisms are useful.
Public Ministers have the authority to teach or to enable others to teach the people
their duty to the Sovereign Power, and instruct them in the knowledge of what is
right and wrong.
Common-peoples are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by Public Authority
shall be imprinted in them.
VI. Theory of Society
A society has no substantial reality of its own.
The relations and actions of particular individuals are responsible for society's
attributes
The ills of a society on the edge of civil war might be cured if men could grasp a
rationale of society as clear and as forcefully convincing as a geometer's proof.
107
An all-inclusive theory could be constructed which would start with the simple
movements described in the postulates of geometry and culminate in generalizations
the movements of men towards and away from each others in political life.
The state of nature was a state of war, which could be ended only if men agreed to
give their liberty into the hands of a sovereign. All social disorder is the result of bad
education.
VII: Theory of Opportunity
Children should, after education is complete, acknowledge the benefit of their
education, by external signs of honor.
Common-peoples learn from those of Sovereign Power.
Breaking Hobbes’s view of education down to the aforementioned eight
factors provides the opportunity to explore Hobbes’s thoughts on education through
a prism that allows eight distinct focal points for individual areas that interested
Hobbes. Particularly, this breakdown allows us to hone in on the precise facet of
education that we are concerned with, namely the relationship between transcendent
interests and education. This is illustrative of Kauffman’s Theory of Consensus:
People are capable of forming and acting on transcendent interests.
Transcendent interests caused civil wars.
Any permanent solution to war would need to address the disruption
generated by such conflicts of transcendent interests.
The solution is to reduce people's conceptions and interests by a process of
education that continually generates consensus.
Education can cause consensus or destroy consensus.
The interesting feature of this theory is that it alludes to education as a consensus-
building institution. Hobbes has iterated on many occasions (that have been laid out
108
in the form of textual reference throughout this discussion) that he would like to gain
uniformity of opinion and move away from dissent, private judgment and diversity
of opinion – at least private opinion. To view education as a tool to gain consensus,
serving Hobbes’s overarching goal of civil peace in the state would address the
utility of education but not take into account that it is not mere consensus that is in
the strategy for Hobbes, but obedience to what the sovereign dictates. Kaufmann’s
point is that the state would form the education in such a fashion that would teach the
opinions of the sovereign and actually persuade and convince the people to gain their
“buy in”. By a process of education that is state controlled, consensus is not
necessarily built but inculcated, expected and propelled with passion since Hobbes
realizes that it is through their passions that people are moved. So what is it that will
ensure the consensus of the citizens of the state to obey the opinions of the
sovereign, which may change over time – requiring the public to continue to adapt to
these changes over time?
This is where I find danger of “national transcendent interests” emerging.
We have previously discussed that having a transcendent interest to defend the state
is a well-guided transcendent interest and that citizens of a state should be willing to
die for their nation’s integrity. But it is up to the sovereign to declare the state of war
and activate those transcendent interests. The definition of when the state has come
under fire rests with the sovereign and this can pose a danger if the sovereign moves
nationalistically motivated transcendent interests that are meant to serve the long run
interests of the state – for his own end. It is generally through their sense of
109
nationalism that citizens are moved to feelings of passion for the opinions, decisions
and laws of the sovereign even if they may not serve his or her own narrow interests.
They can be persuaded by appeal to their love for their nation, ideals that are by
themselves susceptible to dangerous transcendent behaviors that include dying for to
uphold the state. It is in this moment of nationalism-motivated obedience to the
sovereign that the sovereign can rally and mobilize the entire population to serve to
benefit his own regime (according to his own calculation and reasoning) under the
guise of the nation’s integrity.
A wave of acts of suicide terrorism swept through Afghanistan since the rule
of the Taliban. Prior to their rule in Afghanistan, such acts of suicide terrorism were
foreign to the country’s cultural framework and expression of Islam. This new
phenomena had taken place in Afghanistan but was carried out by non-Afghan Al
Qaeda members who were Arab, Chechnyan, Pakistani - no Afghans. Despite
Afghanistan's turbulent history and its recent three-decade long conflict, the first
recorded suicide attack in Afghanistan did not occur until Sept. 9, 2001 - just two
days before the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in the United States. Two Al Qaeda
members posing as members of the media blew themselves up and assassinated
Ahmad Shah Masoud, leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. The second
suicide terrorist attack in Afghanistan took place in 2002, followed by two such
attacks in 2003, six in 2004, and 21 in 2005.
118
However, the latest research on
terrorism in Afghanistan indicates that Afghans are now identifying themselves as a

118
Hekmat Karzai, “Why is Afghanistan Facing a Serious Insurgency?” Centre for Conflict and
Peace Studies (9/26/2006). http://www.caps.af/detail.asp?Lang=e&Cat=3&ContID=100
110
part of the worldwide jihadist movement
119
. This movement aligns the plight of the
Afghans with that of the Palestinians and other oppressed Muslim groups across the
globe.
A second form of vulnerability that could be taken advantage of (in addition
to nationalistic transcendent interests) would be ideologically based so that for
instance all of Christendom must be willing to die if any nation or community of
Christians falls under attack. This willingness to die is not nationalistic but rather as
a result of religious pride and in viewing the entire population of fellow worshippers
as part of a single empire or global nation. By attaching political motivation to
religious duty, the transient political problems of individual nations become attached
to Islam, a religion which is intended according to the scriptural references in the
Qur’an for all times and all peoples and not individual political contexts, times or
geographies. However, this process of attachment of political motivation to Islam
universalizes the cause of individual groups and obligates all people throughout the
Muslim population to participate, support and sympathize with their struggle since it
is deemed an Islamic jihad. The jihad is interpreted by sovereigns who will have
their cause universalized to benefit from a worldwide community instead of only
their own citizens. As a result of this new wave of jihad in Afghanistan, the country
has been infused with a community of non-Afghans including Arabs, Pakistanis and
Chechnyans who are there with the express goal of supporting the Afghan jihad as
proclaimed by Mullah Omar (the perceived leader who was forcefully removed by

119
Ibid.
111
non-Muslim aggressors). The Taliban closed the schools and endorsed a new system
of education, which would create a trickle down effect, espousing their edicts and
ideologies.
Reformation of the Universities
The importance of the university is clearly illustrated by Hobbes. Now that
the importance has been established, Hobbes must manage to reconfigure the
education that is provided in universities to teach civil obedience since, of course
obedience is what is needed to keep the sovereign in office and not the mere
allegiance that force would command.
…It is not the right of the sovereign, though granted to him by every man’s
express consent, that can enable him to do his office; it is the obedience of
the subject, that must do that. For what good is it to promise allegiance and
then by and by to cry out, as some ministers did in the pulpit, To your tents,
O Israel!?
120

Hobbes is greatly concerned with ensuring the success of his project to
reform universities and bring about right education. Hobbes is even willing to use
force in order to annihilate chance of failure in this endeavor.
The two great virtues, that were severally in Henry VII and Henry VIII, when
they shall be jointly in one King, will easily cure it. That of Henry VII was,
without much noise of the people to fill his coffers; that of Henry VIII was an
early severity; but this without the former cannot be exercised…I would have
him [the king] have money enough readily to raise an army able to suppress
any rebellion, and to take from his enemies all hope of success, that they may
not dare to trouble him in the reformation of the Universities; but to put none
to death without the actual committing such crimes as are already made
capital by the laws.
121

120
Hobbes, Behemoth, 181.
121
Hobbes, Leviathan, 203. (L 73-74)
112
It may be argued that force is a necessary ingredient to suppressing rebellion which
is bad for states. However, a sovereign that couples intellectual sanctions with force
stands vulnerable to dense followers that he will not be able to guide since they can
easily fall prey to charismatic leaders who will activate them to die for misguided
transcendent interests. On the standard interpretation of Hobbes using force to crush
any opposition, it may be thought that a Hobbesian sovereign would deter any
charismatic opposition. But on the standard interpretation itself, if force is enough to
crush opposing views and threaten individuals such as charismatic leaders, then an
open university as I have posed it should be no problem. Hobbes realizes the need to
focus on the university in order to gain people’s principled attachment or agreement
to a form of regime. But the only way to gain principled attachment would be to
have free and open discussion and hence an open university in order to avoid hollow
obedience and compel robust, firm obedience.
Religious education to occur at university
Hobbes will contend that religious education should occur at the university
but that it should also be sovereign controlled. In other words, it is obedience to the
sovereign that should be taught at the universities and religious education should be
described to bolster this program to foster civil obedience. In so doing, Hobbes
shifts authority away from the religious authorities and towards the head of state
through the religious education that is to be taught at universities.

Can any minister now say, that he hath immediately from God’s own mouth
received a command to disobey the King, or know otherwise than by
113
Scripture, that any command of the King, that hath the form and nature of
law, is against the law of God, which in divers places, directly and evidently,
commandeth to obey him in all things?...where the King is head of the
Church, and by consequence (to omit that the Scripture itself was not
received but by the authority of Kings and States) chief judge of the rectitude
of all interpretations of the Scripture, to obey the King’s laws and public
edicts, is not to disobey, but to obey God.
122

Mill too believes in a system of mandatory education that should be state
funded though not operated -- not that its content should be controlled by
government.
A general state education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be
exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that
which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a
monarch, a priesthood ,an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing
generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a
despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.
An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it
exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the
purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard
of excellence.
123

I agree with Mill in that the government should fund education so that it is accessible
to all and should require that all citizens of the state acquire the education, but to
allow diversity in its outlets and not to advance a particular opinion through
education. In fact, Mill believes that facts about religion (its sociology) can be
taught through critical, open public education and that the content of private
education can be open to a marketplace of ideas. However, governmental tests are
needed to certify factual knowledge for employment and other purposes.

122
Hobbes, Behemoth, 67-68.
123
Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings, 106.
114
To prevent the State from exercising, through these arrangements, an
improper influence over opinion, the knowledge required for passing an
examination (beyond the merely instrumental parts of knowledge, such as
languages and their use) should, even in the higher classes of examinations,
be confined to facts and positive science exclusively. The examinations on
religion, politics, or other disputed topics, should not turn on the truth or
falsehood of opinions, but on the matter of fact that such and such opinion is
held, on such grounds, by such authors, or schools, or churches. Under this
system, the rising generation would be no worse off in regard to all disputed
truths, than they are at present; they would be brought up either churchmen or
dissenters as they now are, the State merely taking care that they should be
instructed churchmen, or instructed in religion, if their parents chose, at the
same schools where they were taught other things…and there is no
reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of Christianity,
provided he is not required to profess a belief in them…It would be giving
too dangerous a power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any one
from professions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency
of qualifications…
124

On Mill’s view, government should take responsibility for providing education to all
of its citizenry and should further ensure that all are enrolled but it would give them
too much authority to move towards Hobbes’s view that the state would actually
have control over validating who the instructors can or should not be. The types of
principles that affect the security and stability of the state require a level of
intellectual maturity that can be found at the young adult age.
Interestingly enough, much of the education that breeds jihadist movements
takes place in the pre-college years through madrasas, or government-run schools
designed to teach theology, which school their students in the basic precepts of
radical Islam. It is in the younger years that many of these institutions work to
inculcate memorization rather than an understanding of the Qur’an and acceptance of

124
Ibid., 107-108.
115
extreme religious notions of Islam as an exclusive religion encompassing the
Muslims as the only worthwhile dwellers of paradise, thus the only group to receive
God’s grace. Jihad is taught at these madrasas in its most militant interpretation to
be the noblest Muslim practice. This is an outwardly directed jihad against non-
Muslims which strictly prohibits even interacting or sharing a meal with anyone who
is not a Muslim. The age of these youth is significant because they become
indoctrinated into a hateful and intolerant world view which is then activated into
terrorist behavior later in their lives. The destabilizing effect is most visible within
the Afghan state by the fact that they interpret those Muslims who work with or even
mingle with non-Muslims to be considered hypocrites and these too become worthy
targets of jihad. This, of course, becomes a recipe for civil war under the
justification of jihad since Afghan citizens can turn against each other in war.
All impediments that would obstruct the creation of a utopian Islamic state
where the letter of the law is enforced should be destroyed. This clearly rules out
dissent and tolerance of diversity in opinion. In fact, it is through a variety of
opinion and intellectual discourse that human beings can avert the problem of being
prone to one particular view that will overshadow any other as in the case that
Hobbes mentions with the dupe whose prior prejudice fogs his ability to adopt new
and correct opinions.
If the minds of men were all white paper, they would almost equally be
disposed to acknowledge whatsoever should be in right method, and by right
ratiocination delivered to them: but when men have once acquiesced in
untrue opinions, and registered them as authentical records in their minds, it
is no less impossible to speak intelligibly to such men, than to write legibly
116
upon a paper already scribbled over. The immediate cause therefore of
indocibility, is prejudice, false opinion of our own knowledge.
125

By assuming that once the mind has acquired a certain position, it will be difficult to
re-teach and supersede prior learned prejudices, the system of education that some
might take Hobbes to suggest would be one that expresses a monolithic approach to
the problem of gaining civil obedience. One unified view expressed over time that is
re-described solely by the sovereign of each era runs the risk of employing views
that can be combative to the sovereign’s own best interest which is to maintain the
stability of the state. This is due in part to the fact that it cultivates a nation of
individuals with polarized thinking, lacking critical thinking ability and also leaves
no room for affirming a false or mistaken position. Dense and dull-minded citizens
who lack the ability to reason above all (due to their deprivation from an education
that would train them to build the critical thinking skills necessary to develop their
rational faculties) will be left without the rational capability to reason and accurately
calculate their best interest. Such individuals can be characterized as fools as in
Hobbes’s definition of such enemies of the state as they can easily be duped and
taught to have transcendent interests that are misguided.
On the educational front, the Taliban cited security for their decision to close
schools and stifle the educational arena, pushing the country into academic isolation.
Instead, they instituted an alternative system of education that espoused a brand of
Islam that had no roots in the cultural context of Afghanistan. The culture of

125
Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes,132-135.
117
Afghanistan under the 40 years of rule under King Zahir Shah, which spanned from
1933 through 1973, included a long-standing tradition of free expression at the
universities and a primary and secondary education that was critical, rigorous,
requiring that sixteen subjects be mastered by all students, including Qur’anic studies
that were taught by teachers educated in Islamic Studies. It was at the universities
that protests took place and students would take to openly asserting their opinions by
staging demonstrations about their views of the political state of affairs of the
country. A thirty year lull interrupted this tradition when the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan and the country dramatically shifted into a warring and conflict-ridden
nation. During these decades, the male youth took to guns and fighting while the
females stayed home and education became a lofty luxury from a nostalgic period
under the reign of the King. The first decade was consumed with warding of the
Soviet Red Army and the following two decades immersed the country in a brutal
civil war where ethnic clashes were fueled by wealthy and well-armed warring
factions. These clashes were silenced by a major force known as the Taliban who
disarmed and forced the citizens to obey their regime as they were upholding Islamic
Shariah law. Despite the promotion of knowledge in Islam, the Taliban did not
revert to the educational system that preceded the wars.
The Taliban counteracted this educational culture in Afghanistan.
Interpretation of Islamic precepts was entirely in the hands of the supreme leader of
the Taliban, Mullah Omar, the self-proclaimed Amir ul Mumineen who served as the
civil as well as religious sovereign of Afghanistan with full power and authority over
118
the definition of what it means to be a Muslim and what the Afghans should be
willing to live and die for. What it meant to be a good citizen and what it meant to
be a good Muslim were linked and essentially converged into the same thing such
that the highest of faith were those who would lay their life down for what they were
told (by the sovereign, Mullah Omar) to be for the sake of Allah in the struggle, or,
jihad against the apostates, nonbelievers and hypocrites to uphold the state.

J.S. Mill on Education of Women
The claim of women to be educated as solidly, and in the same branches of
knowledge, as men, is urged with growing intensity, and with great prospect
of success; while the demand for their admission into professions and
occupations hitherto closed against them, becomes every year more urgent.
126

In J.S. Mill’s essay The Subjection of Women
127
he argues that women should in fact
have access to a free and open education on the grounds that they constitute
approximately half of the population and as such would enhance the intellectual
disposition of society if they were properly included in all facets of society including
political and religious affairs. It is only through education that they would gain the
skills and the training to be able to formidably gain inclusion in society and to be
able to compete for professional positions. Furthermore, their role in matters of
religion can not be underestimated according to Mill who admits the important role
of women in religion as he states:

126
Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings, 131.
127
Ibid.
119
Women were powerfully instrumental in inducing the northern conquerors to
adopt the creed of Christianity, a creed so much more favorable to women
than any that preceded it. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and of the
Franks may be said to have begun by the wives of Ethelbert and Clovis.
128

Since women do play an important role in matters of religion in their ability to exert
influence in society as illustrated above, properly channeling their involvement by
extending the education necessary to equip women with the knowledge that they
need in order to be able to correctly persuade those who they wish to sway and
convert to their own ways –becomes a cardinal prerequisite. Since they obviously
have this ability, it becomes in the interest of men to harness and mobilize this force
to their own ends rather than strip themselves of the powerful impact that women can
have ideologically.
Women are the natural counterforce in response to men in that men are
moved to behave and act in certain manners that Mill calls “chivalry”
129
as a result of
their female counterparts in society. Mill believes that men are moved by women
and have primal dispositions towards wanting to attain the favor of women.
All men except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly
connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely,
but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave
their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience,
on fear; either fear of themselves or religious fears. The masters of women
wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of
education to effect their purpose.
130

128
Ibid., 201.
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid., 132.
120
Mill accounts for the process of conditioning and socialization that inculcates
submission in women to a deliberate manipulation of education that is designed by
men to elicit the kinds of behaviors that would not just gain simple obedience from
women since that could be achieved through instilling basic fear of men or of God by
perpetuating religious fears. Instead, men wanted women to be brought to
submission and to be able to gain true success in life only through a monogamous
relationship with a man who could satisfy her need for affection, social position or
privilege. Though Mill disapproves of this, he believes that this is the process that
causes women to acquire a subordinate societal position.
Female Islamic Scholars
Absence of education for women leads quite naturally to the suppression of
the knowledge of their rights and a subsequent absence of their ability to effectively
understand and exercise those rights under Islam. Presence of education that
encourages cultural and political interpretations of Islamic rights of women promotes
the undermining of their Islamic rights and further complicates the process of women
understanding and expressing their Islamic rights. The result is a process of
socializing women to submission and developing culturally accepted behaviors that
are desired by their male counterparts, as Mill contends. It pushes women into
submission, illiteracy and gross vulnerability to their unjust male counterparts.
One step further, legal systems have been created by such regimes as Taliban
to uphold political-cultural interpretations of women’s rights in Islam based on
religious authorities who are state-endorsed as opposed to learned scholars of Islam.
121
Women who are educated in Islam through diverse, critical university education
would be placed in the position of interpreting their own Islamic rights and not
relying on politically motivated interpretation by traditional mullahs (spiritual guides
who are usually paid by seated political regimes to espouse a brand of Islam that
comports with the goals of their regime).
Since females were forced into illiteracy by regimes such as the Taliban who
closed schools for girls and barred women from attending university, they depended
upon their male counterparts for the interpretation of their rights. Women were
stripped of their ability to comprehend, interpret and exercise their Islamic rights and
were left at the mercy of religious leaders who were appointed by the Taliban to
define what the role of women in Islam is and how they must behave in society and
in family life. Thus, it is in the removal of women from educational systems in
Muslim countries such as Afghanistan that women become subservient to politically
driven interpretations of women’s rights in Islam.
122

CHAPTER 7: JIHAD AND AFGHANISTAN
In discussing jihad as it relates to Afghanistan, it becomes necessary to begin
with a definition of the term since the notion of jihad has itself become subject to
controversy among both Muslims and others. Furthermore, the issues relevant to the
concept of jihad and its relationship to those who hold transcendent interests,
according to Hobbes’s definition, will be assessed in relation to 4 main principles: 1)
the concept of embracing or pursuing death in order to attain eternal bliss, 2)
tolerance of other religions, 3) treatment of infidels as objects of waging jihad
against and 4) the role of education in jihad.
The definition of the term jihad is subject to marked variation. The
dictionary definition commonly refers to jihad as a holy war undertaken as a sacred
duty by Muslims. However, jihad linguistically translates into struggle and that
struggle’s directionality can be pointed either inwards or outwards. On an inward
level, the American Heritage Dictionary defines jihad as “an individual’s striving for
spiritual self-perfection,” and on an outward level it is “a Muslim holy war or
spiritual struggle against infidels.” The Prophet Muhammad has stated that “the best
Jihad is (by) one who strives against (the evil of) his own self for Allah (Arabic word
for God) the Mighty and Majestic"
131
referencing the inner jihad taking precedence
over the outwardly directed jihad. The outward jihad against infidels hinges on two
main points: 1) what constitutes an infidel and 2) whether the jihad should be pre-

131
Hadith collected by Al-Tabernaee.
123
emptive or reactive. The first matter will be addressed in the proceeding discussion
about tolerance of other religions but I will mention here that the Christians and Jews
are clearly not among the infidels since Islam is an inclusive religion that recognizes
the Bible, Torah and Psalms as divine scriptures, along with the Prophets Abraham,
Ishmael, Moses, Jesus, Noah and others as legitimate prophets (all being noted in the
Qur’an).
Those who believe (in the Qur’an), and those who follow the Jewish
(scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians – Any who believe in Allah
and the last day and work righteousness shall have their reward with their
Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.
132

The second matter begs the question, do Muslims have the right to wage a war on
people of a different faith for the purpose of simply converting them or for the
purpose of expanding upon their empire or must they lay low in anticipation of a
strike against them and then take a reactive approach by reluctantly engaging in war?
“Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not commit aggression, for
God loves not aggressors”.
133

It is the duty of Muslims to ward off aggressors who pose a threat to the
security of one’s home, family and state. Failure to fight, and enduring persecution
passively, is considered sinful.
Permission (to fight) is given to those who are being attacked, because they
have been wronged. And surely God measures out help for them. (They are)
those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right,- (for no
cause) except that they say, "our Lord is Allah.. Did not Allah check one
set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down

132
Qur’an, 2: 62
133
Ibid., 2: 190
124
monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah
is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who
aid his (cause); for verily Allah is full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (able
to enforce His Will).
134

Though a response to attack is required, Muslims are also required to take the
high road and work to evade returning the poor behavior by being instructed to use
their rational judgment in trying to ensure that they work good to the extent possible.
Do not be people without minds of your own, saying that if others treat you
well you will treat them well, and that if they do wrong you will do wrong
to them. Instead, accustom yourselves to do good if people do good and not
to do wrong (even) if they do evil.
135

It is important to note, however, that there are verses that appear paradoxical
on this matter due to the nature of the actual revelations in terms of how they were
delivered and subsequently organized. The Qur’an was compiled and organized
following the completion of the final revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims
believe that the angel Gabriel, over the course of decades, delivered divine messages
or revelations, to the Prophet Muhammad. These revelations usually were
responsive in the sense that they were delivered to serve as divine guidance on
specific matters facing the Prophet Muhammad and his society. In this sense, certain
verses can be seen as contextually relevant to the time of the Prophet Muhammad or
any analogous situation that mirrors it in another context. Other verses have more
far-reaching, general direction and do not necessarily respond to a particular issue
the Prophet Muhammad was grappling with. It is the former rather than the latter,

134
Ibid., 22: 39-40
135
Hadith collected by Al-Tirmidhi.
125
which is used as evidence to support pre-emptive strikes against those who are not
Muslim and a lack of religious tolerance. These verses support the political and
military goals of Muslim states that struggle with non-Muslims. However, they are
not usually implemented in analogous situations since most Quranic verses that
permit or encourage the slaying of non-Muslims were delivered under circumstances
of oppression, betrayal of agreements and/or hardship for Muslims as follows:
“…fight and slay the idolaters wherever you find them, an seize them, beleaguer
them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)…”
136
This verse targets
idol worshippers whereas other verses that promote the killing of or distrust of
Christians and/or Jews refer to the resistance of aggression and betrayal or
disobedience of the Muslim state. In the case that the conflict is resolved where the
obedience is restored or aggression rescinded, then the Islamic state is obligated to
deal justly and in fairness and not war.
Fight in the path of God those who fight you, but do not aggress. Surely God
does not love the aggressors. And fight them where you come upon them, and
send them out from where they have sent you out, for persecution is a worse
thing than fighting. And do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque (in Mecca)
unless they fight you there, but if they fight you, then fight them back.
That is the reward of the rejectors. Then if they cease, so God is
All-Forgiving, Gentle. And fight them until there is no more persecution and
the religion is for God. But if they cease, so let there be no hostility
except against wrongdoers.
137

136
Qur’an 9: 5
137
Ibid., 2: 190-193
126
Afghanistan
Al-Qaeda had taken root in Afghanistan as a result of years of successive
wars, beginning with the foreign aggression of the former Soviet Union. The war
with the Soviet Union caused Afghans to group into clusters of political resistance
groups to combat the foreign aggressor. When the Soviet Union withdrew under
Gorbachev, who called the years of war in Afghanistan a “bleeding wound” for the
Soviet Union, years of internal fighting between the Afghan political factions who
were backed by neighboring countries ensued. This internal fighting between the
Afghan political factions constituted civil wars which were finally silenced with the
iron rule of the Taliban. Al-Qaeda members, over a process of decades, had inter-
married with Afghans and become an organic part of the cultural fabric of the
society. They originally entered the country to help fight in the jihad and support
their Afghan brethren. They stayed there and set up camps , created a base in
Afghanistan that would not be scrutinized by the watchful eye of any police, law
enforcement agency etc. since all of these institutions had been uprooted. They were
free to create their headquarters in Afghanistan without any fear of opposition.
These Al-Qaeda elements now reside within the country and over the years Al-
Qaeda lies within the state and is not a clear external aggressor. They had monetary
prowess and utilized it to back a sovereign who instead of expressing and upholding
the will of the population of the 25 million Afghans, worked to ensure and maximize
the narrow sectarian interests of Al-Qaeda which would fund and serve to strengthen
the political regime of the Taliban. According to their own calculation, the Taliban
127
believed that Al-Qaeda, and especially their leader Osama Bin Laden who was inter-
married with the family of Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban regime --were true
friends to the nation as they supported the Afghans during the jihad or struggle
against the former Soviet Union and continued to support the creation and
preservation of what they believed to be a true Islamic state. Through strong
financial support and familial ties, the Taliban led by Mullah Omar, became
subservient to the will of Al-Qaeda and as a result the head of state, worked to
preserve the interests of Al-Qaeda eventually at the cost of his own regime which
was ousted in 2001 after the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the U.S. and refusal to
hand over Osama Bin Laden.
The Taliban prided itself on being the only regime to bring the country out of
the lawless state of nature that it had disintegrated into as a result of the Soviet and
subsequent civil wars, and into a secure state in which all citizens were dictated the
laws and were expected to follow under threat of force which was exercised far too
often. The Taliban, through its links with Al-Qaeda, were willing to die for the true
Islamic state that they believed they had created and declared a jihad against those
who would oppose, such as the United States and by default the democratically
elected Government of Afghanistan led by President Hamid Karzai which was
formed after their toppling, as it is viewed as a foisted government representing
American, not Afghan interests. Karzai was brought in as the new leader following
the U.S. military campaign which removed the Taliban and he is viewed as a
hypocrite, puppet of the U.S. who is actually working for a foreign agenda to occupy
128
the nation. The sovereign, Mullah Omar declared a national transcendent interest
which continues to be a certain cause of failure for the international forces who
tirelessly work to revive security throughout the country but face relentless
insurgency from Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives. Thus, the former sovereign is a
current enemy and lies within the state as it is embedded in the people. The process
of extricating such an enemy continues to prove to be an internal struggle that lingers
for the Karzai administration or the Government of Afghanistan (GoA), since Al-
Qaeda gains sympathy in many parts of the country and gains greater support over
time for the notion that the United States and international forces are an occupying
entity and not in Afghanistan for reconstruction and professed goals of realizing
democratic ideals in the country. In response, the central government works to
massacre these Muslim Taliban and Al-Qaeda members on the basis of their inciting
rebellion, instability and insecurity. Since they are embedded within the society, the
process is complex and difficult to weed out without leaving roots behind that will
continue to spread and gain sympathy among Afghans who have adopted polarized
thinking and are not exposed to discourse on matters pertaining to Islam since they
have been taught this by the education provided by their sovereign. Though Karzai
held both doctrinal and educational control, and Mullah Omar has been removed and
disregarded by the current government, he is still able to incite rebellion on the basis
of the re-description of Islam that legitimizes Afghans as targets of jihad who work
with, side with or in any way consort with the non-Muslims. Afghans who work
with U.S. non-governmental organizations, humanitarian relief groups or other
129
agencies are kidnapping targets that are brutally massacred. Though Karzai works to
advance religious education, his alliance with the United States and the international
community causes him to be viewed as an agent who is being placed in front of an
agenda backed by the U.S. to exploit the country of its natural resources, establish
military presence in this strategic region and overhaul the religious culture by
wanting women to be “freed” of their burqas and to behave as American and
Western women do.

Love of Death
The eternal or other worldly reward for a person who dies in jihad is
martyrdom which is met with eternal dwelling in heaven or paradise where the
highest degree of bliss is perpetually enjoyed. This promise of heaven prompts
Muslims in some cases to embrace the opportunity to be a martyr as defined by the
Muslim rulers, backed by the Qur’an. These Muslims appear as people who love
death because of the promises of reward and bliss that they are offered in the Qur’an.
How does one deal with such individuals who actually seek out and pursue death as a
result of religious promises? This is a problem that is not unique to Islam alone but
in this context we will address the issue as it pertains to managing such individuals
into civil obedience.
The Qur’an (revelations which were revealed to Prophet Muhammad as
word of God through Angel Gabriel) and hadith (compilation of the sayings of the
Prophet Muhammad which were recorded by his companions and those who knew
130
him, heard him speak, etc.) are the two main sources of knowledge on Islam which
are relied upon for scholarship in areas that require debate. The Qur’an and hadith
both have referred to jihad, martyrdom and treatment of non-Muslims. The Prophet
Muhammad has spoken concerning the definition of a martyr, specifically in terms of
who qualifies to attain the status of martyrdom as recorded in the following hadith:
Whom do you consider to be a martyr among you? They (his
Companions)said:
Messenger of Allah, one who is slain in the way of Allah is a martyr.
He said: Then (if this is the definition of a martyr) the martyrs of
my Ummah (nation of followers) will be small in number. They asked:
Messenger of Allah, who are they? He said: One who is slain in the way of
Allah is a martyr; one who dies in the way of Allah is a martyr; one who dies
of plague is a martyr; one who dies of cholera is a martyr.
138

This particular hadith illustrates that those who suffer as a result of natural illness too
die as martyrs. The underpinning commonality that is illustrated by this more
comprehensive definition of martyrdom is that people who endure suffering and die
as a result of such acts of God will be rewarded by entrance into heaven. There is no
intentional pursuit on the part of these individuals at all. They do not try to achieve
martyrdom and in neither case do they actually wish for death, especially in the case
of illness the sick wish for life and health. Another hadith prohibits the pursuit of
death as follows:
None of you should long for death, for if he is a good man, he may increase his
good deeds, and if he is an evil-doer, he may stop the evil deeds and repent.
139

138
Hadith collected by Sahih Muslim, No. 4706.
139
Sahih Al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, no. 341.
131
The sorts of religious motivations that lead to radical behaviors and transcendent
interests are not necessarily rewarded as the Qur’an states that “No compulsion
should be [by any means allowed] in matters of faith."
140
There should be no
compulsion in matters of religion but what constitutes compulsion is interpreted by
Muslim religious leaders or by the sovereigns of Muslim states. The Qur’an, is
subject to interpretation by its readers but of course many Muslim states prefer an
illiterate citizenry who cannot read it for themselves, who lack the education and also
who fear being mistaken and must rely on the wisdom and knowledge of their
leaders. Compulsion in religion would be to delve into a complete state of worship
and forget the earthly obligations in favor of a state of constant prayer and focus on
the hereafter, in Farsi, “tarke donya.” The 55
th
Chapter in the Qur’an entitled
Rahman or “The Most Gracious” delineates all of God’s wonders which he has
created for mankind such as the beauty of the world, nature and repeatedly asks of its
reader “Then which of the favours of your lord will ye deny?” This chapter is
understood to view nature as God’s signature on the earth affirming the fact of His
existence but also that human beings should enjoy and relish his creation and not
deny it to themselves. It is considered worship for one to carry on with life in terms
of marriage, family and work while ensuring that all are in alignment with the will of
God by maintaining fidelity, generating an income through moral means and raising
children who are exemplary citizens. Doing all of these successfully and in a

140
Qur’an, 2: 256
132
balanced fashion is itself considered an important kind of worship of God, which one
is rewarded for in the hereafter.
Beyond the desire for death lies the overt act of taking one’s own life. The
Qur’an is quite explicit about the fact that the taking of one’s life not only does not
lead to eternal reward in heaven but instead seals off the possibility of it. “Indeed,
whoever (intentionally) kills himself, then certainly he will be punished in the Fire of
Hell, wherein he shall dwell forever)”.
141
No amount of human suffering can justify
the taking of one’s life.
There was amongst those before you a man who had a wound. He was in
[such] anguish that he took a knife and made with it a cut in his hand, and the
blood did not cease to flow till he died. Allah the Almighty said: My servant
has himself forestalled Me; I have forbidden him Paradise.
142

Muslims are obligated to defend their faith and their land against aggression and
persecution but suicide is not a justifiable practice to this end and is not in any way
commingled with war or viewed as an acceptable instrument of war as is evidenced
throughout Islamic history where suicide was never a mainstream method of war nor
was targeting innocents. This innovation or re-description has appeared in the past
several decades in response to military impotence and desperation on the part of the
Muslims.

141
Hadith collected by Al-Bukhari, No. 5778 and by Muslim Nos. 109 and 110.
142
Al-Bukhari
133
Tolerance and other religions
“The truth is from your Lord, let him who will believe and let him who will reject
it.”
143

On the matter of dealing with the Christians and Jews, the Qur’an seems to
advance a view of tolerance about these two groups in particular. Since the God that
the Christians and Jews worship is the same God of Abraham which is the God that
the Prophet Muhammad believed in, there is no cause for aggression, bloodshed or
disunity on account of religion – on Islamic grounds.
He has laid down for you the religion which He enjoined upon Noah, and
which We revealed to you, and which We enjoined upon Abraham, Moses
and Jesus: Establish the religion, and be not divided therein.
144

The way in which the Muslims are allowed to deal with these People of the Book is
quite particular: The Qur’an states:
And say, 'We believe in that which has been bestowed upon us, as well as
that which has been bestowed upon you, and our God and your God is one
and the same, and unto Him we submit ourselves'
145

Further than this, the Qur’an pronounces the fact that God could have created a
homogenous population that spoke the same language and believed in the same
religion. “We made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other not that
ye may despise each other.”
146
The very fact that diversity exists illustrates God’s
will that there be differences among people and that those differences serve to

143
Qur’an, 18: 29
144
Ibid., 42: 13
145
Ibid., 29: 46
146
Ibid., 49: 13
134
enhance the human condition by design, and that a homogenized world population
was not in God’s plans.

And had your Lord so willed. He could surely have made all humankind one
single community; but [He willed it otherwise, and so] they continue to have
differences [all of them], save those upon whom your Lord has be-stowed His
grace [as they follow His guidance in dealing with their differences); and for
such a test [in handling constructively their differences and maintaining their
good relations] He has created them all.
147

The Qur’an demands tolerance on the grounds that others do not act in aggression
and also that they believe in the same monotheistic God. Even if they do not believe
in the same God but do not act in aggression and obey the laws of the state then they
too must be dealt in fairness and their rights must be protected. The Qur’an does not
advance a Muslim world view in that the entire world population should be
practicing Muslims, nor do Muslims have the duty to Islamize the world.
Unto each of you [those who are following any of the successive divine
messages], we have appointed a law and a way of life: and if God had so
willed, He could surely have made you all one single community, but [He
willed it otherwise] in order to test you through what He has given you (of
His guidance]. Vie, then, with one another in good deeds. Unto God you all
must return, and then He will let you truly-know all that on which you were
wont to differ.
148

The dealings with the People of the Book (Christians and Jews) should be fair in that
any treaties or agreements should be done for mutual benefit and in fairness. The
Qur’an states “And dispute yet not with the People of the Book, except with means
better.”
149
The People of the Book, or Christians and Jews should be dealt with in a

147
Ibid., 11: 118-119
148
Ibid., 5: 48
149
Ibid., 29: 46
135
fashion by Muslims that is better than the way they behave. In other words, Muslims
should take the moral high ground in their dealing and be exemplary in their manner.
There is no compulsion in matters of religion and since the Christians and Jews
already believe in God, their acceptance of the last Prophet Muhammad and the
Qur’an would make them Muslim, but their lack of acceptance would mean that they
remain believers of God and followers of Holy scriptures (Muslims believe in the
Bible, Torah, Psalms and the Qur’an as the seal of these divine texts. It is an
inclusive religion that accepts Moses, Jesus, Abraham etc. with Muhammad being
the seal of the prophets or messengers of God).
The Qur’an prescribes the Muslims:
And say: 'I believe in whatever [divine] book God has bestowed, and I am
bidden to be just and fair with you. God is our Lord as well as He is your
Lord, to us shall be accounted our deeds, and to you your deeds. Let there be
no contention between us and you, God will bring us all together, for with
Him is all journeys' end.'
150

A discussion of the Islamic perspective towards atheists will be described in the
section below entitled waging jihad on infidels.

Jihad through Education
The Qur’an has referenced an educational jihad whereby Muslims are to make public
the teachings of the Qur’an in the form of a dialogue. They are not obligated to
convert non-Muslims but they are under duty to share the teachings of the Qur’an:

150
Ibid., 42: 15
136
“So obey not the disbelievers, but make a great Jihad against them (by preaching)
with it (this Qur’an)."
151
Muslims should not adapt to the moral ways of those who
do not believe but instead teach them about Islam. However, if the sovereign of the
state is a disbeliever, Muslims are not permitted to disobey as they are under
religious obligation to obey the laws of the land wherever they dwell. The
disobedience is in moral behavior since Muslims should not be socialized to the
ways of disbelievers who are free to engage in such acts as premarital sex, drinking
of alcohol, etc. This preaching is not intended to be overbearing or aggressive to
force the Qur’an upon people. The Qur’an says: “Invite all to the way of thy Lord
with wisdom and beautiful preaching.”
152
No responsibility lies on the Muslim who
is educating the non-Muslim that s/he accept Islam as a way of life since the Qur’an
states that God alone is the changer of hearts. The Prophet Muhammad has stated
that “the ink of the scholar is better than the blood of the martyr,”
153
further
emphasizing the important role of education and discourse on addressing matters of
conflict such that fighting with the pen becomes a jihad that is more elevated in value
than that of a combative one. When the Prophet Muhammad was returning from
war, he stated the following:
We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad, the far
more vital and crucial task of extinguishing transgression from one's own
society and one's own heart.
154

151
Ibid., 25: 52
152
Ibid., 16: 125
153
Ja’far Al-Sadiq, Misbah al-Shari’a.
154
Hadith Collected by Riyadh us Saliheen.
137
Madrasa Islamic education breeding jihad:
According to the International Crisis Group, Madrasas provide free religious
education, boarding and lodging and are essentially schools for the poor. These
seminaries run on public philanthropy and produce indoctrinated clergymen of
various Muslim sects. There is no centralization of religious authority in the Muslim
world such as a Pope or even a supreme sovereign. As a result, each state is left to
its own and individual Muslims may take to following whoever is in their opinion
the most charismatic leader who makes the best sense. Some sections of the more
orthodox Muslim sects have been radicalized by state sponsored exposure to jihad,
first in Afghanistan, then in Kashmir. However, the madrasa problem goes beyond
militancy. Students at more than 10,000 seminaries are being trained (in theory), for
service in the religious sector. But their constrained worldview, lack of modern civic
education and poverty make them a destabilizing factor in society. For all these
reasons, they are also susceptible to romantic notions of sectarian and international
jihads, which promise instant salvation.
155

Waging Jihad on Infidels:
Much of the controversy surrounding the verses in the Qur’an that refer to Jihad
wind up in a debate that can be reduced to the question of whether the verse was
intended to be relevant to a particular situation, meaning it was reveled in response to
an event during the time and life of the Prophet Muhammad or it is a verse that

155
“Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism, and the Military,” International Crisis Group, Asia Report No.
36, (July 29, 2002) http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1627&l=1
138
supersedes transient conditions and can be considered to be relevant across all times,
circumstances and all peoples. The verses of the Qur’an thus can be distinguished
between those that can be applied to all situations and those that are tied to a specific
sequence of events. Does this mean that the verses that respond to particular
instances are no longer relevant? The significance of these verses remains; however
they must be judged in relation to analogous situations so that their relevance
continues to match recurring historical events. As such, if a verse refers to pagans it
should not then be applied to the People of the Book who are referred to in the
Qur’an as Christians and Jews.
Say: We believe in God and in what has been revealed to Abraham, Ismail,
Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and in [the books] given to Moses, Jesus and
the prophets from their Lord: We make no distinction between one and
another
among them, and to God do we submit in Islam.
156

It therefore becomes necessary to note some of the verses that are quoted from the
Qur’an in support of jihad. One of the most commonly cited verses of the Holy-
Qur’an is the following verse:
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the idolaters
wherever you find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for
them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular
prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for God is
Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
157

This verse was revealed in response to the idolaters who were living in Mecca at that
time who were violating the peace treaties that they had entered in with the Prophet
Muhammad – expressly not meant for the People of the Book. Prior to this verse, it

156
Qur’an, 3: 84
157
Qur’an, 9: 5
139
is important to examine the very first verse of the ninth chapter of the Qur’an in
Chapter Taubah instead of reading the fifth verse alone.

A (declaration) of immunity from God and His messenger, to those of the
idolaters with whom you had made treaties.
158

The Prophet Muhammad had entered into peace treaties with different tribes of
Arabia, but many of them were violating those treaties. For this reason a declaration
for terminating these treaties is made as follows.
Go about in the land for four months, but know that you cannot overmaster
God (by your falsehood) and that God will humiliate the disbelievers.
159

These violators were given a time limit of four months so that they might come to a
final decision about themselves, either they might give up idolatry and polytheism or
might get ready to fight or might leave the city of Mecca. Once again, the time limit
of four months was given in case of those polytheists with whom the Muslims had
peace treaties that they were dishonoring.
And an announcement from God and His messenger, to the people
(assembled) on the day of the Great Pilgrimage, that God and His messenger
dissolve (treaty) obligations with the idolaters. If then, you repent (even
now), it will be better for you; but if you are averse, then know that you
cannot escape God. And (O Prophet!) give tidings of painful punishment to
disbelievers.
160

The meaning of Allah and His messenger's being free from the obligation is this that
hereafter there is no refuge for them in Allah's law nor is there any guarantee from
the Prophet about the safety of their lives; the period of treaty is over, if they do not

158
Qur’an, 9: 1
159
Ibid., 9: 2
160
Ibid., 9: 3
140
give up their polytheistic attitude, force will be used against them. This declaration
was made on the occasion of Hajj which is the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca where
the Kaba (cube-shaped building) is located, a symbol of the re-institution of the
monotheistic, Abrahamic tradition. The Kaba was built by Abraham and his son
Ishmael as a place of worship to the one God. However, it later became filled with
idols until the Prophet Muhammad restored the Kaba as a place of worship of the
God of Abraham. Millions of Muslims gather each year to the pilgrimage which is a
duty of all Muslims to perform at least once in their lifetime. The idolaters
performed Hajj according to their own rites and customs, and Muslims followed their
own rites. During that year the Hajj was performed under the guidance or leadership
of Abu Bakr, a companion of Muhammad who was his successor as a caliph and
the declaration was made that no polytheist would perform the Hajj after that.
(But the treaties are) not dissolved with those idolaters with whom you have
entered into alliance and who have not subsequently failed you in aught, nor
aided any one against you. So fulfill your engagements with them to the end
of their term: for God loveth the righteous.
161

The treaties of the polytheists with the Prophet Muhammad which were for a fixed
period (generally between fours month and eight months) and were properly upheld
and honored by them were allowed to stand until the expiration of their periods, as
ordained in the following verse.

161
Ibid., 9: 4
141

The fifth verse of chapter 9 of the Qur’an iterates:

But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the idolaters
wherever you find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for
them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular
prayers and practice regular charity, then open the way for them: for God is
Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
162

The ultimatum was given only to the polytheists of Arabia specifically, to settle
accounts with those polytheists with whom there was no treaty or to renew their
treaty.

162
Ibid., 9: 5
142

CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION
Hobbes perceived a serious danger in the clash between religious institutions
– which offer eternal rewards/punishments – and the state who offered only this
worldly reward or punishment since the religious institutions could seize the loyalty
of citizens in favor of eternal reward or damnation and as a result be moved to obey
the religious institutions – leading to loss of civil authority, eroding the establishment
of the state which was of paramount importance to Hobbes to maintain and uphold
civil peace. In order to re-align loyalty and civil obedience with the sovereign,
Hobbes called for re-description of religious ideals to be created and controlled by
the effective sovereign.
It is true that the law of God receives no evidence from the laws of men. But
because men can never by their own wisdom come to the knowledge of what
God hath spoken and commanded to be observed, nor be obliged to obey the
laws whose author they know not, they are to acquiesce in some human
authority or other. So that the question will be, whether a man ought in
matter of religion, that is to say, when there is question of his duty to God
and the King, to rely upon the preaching of his fellow-subjects or of a
stranger, or upon the voice of the law?
163

It is precisely this scenario that has taken place in the Islamic context of
Afghanistan. The re-description that the Taliban has prescribed leads to two main
problems: 1) the re-description has allowed permissibility of acts of terror that are
intended to gain the sovereign strength when in fact it serves to harm the long-term
interests of the state, and 2) the sovereign control of the content of education leads to

163
Hobbes, Behemoth, 59.
143
a breakdown of mental faculty and rational abilities by creating a lack of private
judgment among the citizens. This leads to a dense population of narrowly focused
followers who serve as an obstacle to the stability of the state since they become
easily activated towards misguided interests. Justification of dying for religious
ideals in order to protect the state even at the cost of innocents is permitted and
defined as martyrdom under the re-description of religion and encouraged as the
height of praiseworthy religious behavior, so valuable that it is worthy of eternal
bliss in heaven. However, I have argued that this will serve to preserve the seated
ruler’s short run goals but lead to the long term annihilation of the state and the
sovereign as was exemplified by the Taliban. In the long run, these narrowly
focused followers’ transcendent interests are activated to destabilize the state,
creating chaos and loss of security in an atmosphere of unpredictability due to
constant threat of attack. Thus, Hobbes’s strategy of re-description of religious
ideals by the sovereign would fail because he places the control of religious
definition into the hands of the seated sovereign rather than free dialogue and
intellectual discourse at the universities – where it should be debated upon in an open
and scholarly tradition of rigorous, critical and rational debate. Through a trickle
down process, these university educated citizens would, after receiving an open and
intellectually rigorous education, lead the religious interpretation free from the
political flavor of the day.
A system of education that is free from the political platform of governments
is necessary to create a marketplace of ideas, as in J.S. Mill’s tradition. This will
144
replace the mullah- based system of religious education that extracts private
judgment and is attached to the seated government or political regime and restore the
authority of universities to promote critical thinking, rigorous and scholarly
understanding of religion.
145

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Al-Sadiq, Ja’far, Misbah al-Shari’a

Ali, Yusuf, trans., The Holy Qur’an,. (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 2001)

Benjamin, Daniel and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terrorism: Radical Islam’s
War Against America (New York: Random House, 2003).

Bonandella, Peter and Mark Musa, eds., The Portable Machiavelli (New York:
Viking Books, 1979).

Esposito, John L. and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996).

Hobbes, Thomas The Complete Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol. 5, ed. William
Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839).

---, Behemoth, Source Works Series, No. 38, ed. William Molesworth (New York:
Burt Franklin Research, 1962).

---, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (London: Penguin, 1968).

---, Leviathan, With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. Edwin
Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994).

Karzai, Hekmat, “Why is Afghanistan Facing a Serious Insurgency?” Centre for
Conflict and Peace Studies (9/26/2006).
http://www.caps.af/detail.asp?Lang=e&Cat=3&ContID=100

Kauffman, Amy, “The Education Theory of Thomas Hobbes,” New Foundations:
Gallery of Synopses (2000). http://newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Hobbes.html

Kurzman, Charles, ed., Modernist Islam: 1840-1940, A Sourcebook (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002).

Lloyd, S.A., Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over
Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

146
---, “Coercion, Ideology, and Education in Hobbes Leviathan”, in Reclaiming the
History of Ethnics, Eds. Andrew Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine M.
Korsgaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

---, Unpublished Draft Article for forthcoming work. Eds. Graham Oppy and Nick
Trakakis.

Martinich, A.P., The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003)

Mernissi, Fatima, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World, trans. Mary Jo
Lakeland (Cambridge: Perseus Books, 1992).

Mill, J.S., On Liberty and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989).

“Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism, and the Military,” International Crisis Group, Asia
Report No. 36, (July 29, 2002)
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1627&l=1

Tonnies, Ferdinand, Elements of Law (London: Frank Case, 1969).

---Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University
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Rachid, Ahmed, Taliban (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Hobbes wrote Leviathan in response to the horrifying prospect of a civil war rooted largely in factions ' differing conceptions of religious duty. His proposed absolutist, authoritarian remedy and prophylactic for such disorders seeks to cause subjects through extensive education to internalize a settled, principled commitment to deferring to the judgment of a single sovereign arbitrator on all disputed matters. The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid 1990s may appear to model Hobbes' recommendation. However, the fall of the Taliban, unseated by the United States government in partnership with several European nations in 2001 reveals a serious fault in Hobbes' recommended strategy for building a stable state. Hobbes insisted that only pervasive and uniform education -- we might rather think of it as indoctrination -- could force the internalization of attitudes of willing deference needed to ensure stability. But mere deference is not a principled commitment, and sheepish followers beaten down by an "educational system " that compels them uncritically to parrot whatever they are told will not have the wherewithall to defend their regime against any threat, whether external or internal. The very sort of charismatic "seducers of the people" that so exercised Hobbes find easy prey in a society of sheepish Hobbesian followers. Hobbes ' educational system proves self-defeating.

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Creator Qudrat, Maryam (author)

Core Title Hobbes, education and the long run stability of nations: toward a Hobbesian model for contemporary religious theocratic socities

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Philosophy

Publication Date 06/06/2010

Defense Date 04/25/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Islam,jihad,OAI-PMH Harvest,Philosophy,political theory,Thomas Hobbes

Language English

Advisor Lloyd, Sharon (committee chair), Damnjanovic, Zlatan H. (committee member), Dekmejian, Richard (committee member), Dreher, John (committee member), Willard, Dallas (committee member)

Creator Email QUDRAT@USC.EDU

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