Hobbes on the function of evaluative speech

Abstract

Hobbes’s interpreters have struggled to find a plausible semantics for evaluative language in his writings. I argue that this search is misguided. Hobbes offers neither an account of the reference of evaluative terms nor a theory of the truth-conditions for evaluative statements. Rather, he sees evaluative language simply as having the non-representational function of prescribing actions and practical attitudes, its superficially representational appearance notwithstanding. I marshal the evidence for this prescriptivist reading of Hobbes on evaluative language and show how it sidesteps various textual and philosophical problems that bedevil the traditional interpretations.

Hobbes on the Signification of Evaluative Language

“…2 On Hobbes on absurdity, see among others Duncan (2016), Engel (1961), and Martinich (1981: 404-11). 3 Thus my approach to Hobbes's theorizing about moral language is quite different from that of, say, Holden (2016), who discusses Hobbes's work in terms of more recent notions such as error theory and prescriptivism.…”

Interpreting Hobbes’s Moral Theory: Rightness, Goodness, Virtue, and Responsibility

“…Today we have carefully argued interpretations by respectable scholars finding Hobbes to have no moral theory at all, but only a theory of long-run self-interest. 2 Equally carefully argued interpretations take Hobbes to be a moral subjectivist, 3 projectivist (Darwall, 2000), or prescriptivist (Holden, 2016), a moral contractarian (Gauthier, 1986), an ethical egoist (Gert, 2001), 4 a rule egoist (Kavka, 1986), a strict deontologist prefiguring Kant (Taylor, 1938), or a virtue theorist (Ewin, 1991;Boonin-Vail, 1994). We have interpretations according to which Hobbes's moral theory is derived from empirical psychology, 5 independent of psychological theory (Taylor 1938), or analytically derived from definitions of key concepts (McNeilly, 1968;Deigh, 1996;Lloyd, 2009).…”