On Counsel
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Text length: 1,775 words
Excerpts from Chapter 25 of Leviathan
By Thomas Hobbes
, 1651
Contributed by Holger Gottstein and Ulrich Blessing
Images used by courtesy of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
Advice and orders are clearly differentiated - orders are to the advantage of the one commanding, whereas advice benefits the recipient and cannot be forced upon him
A good advisor - shares the interests of the advice seeker, states advice concisely and clearly, is familiar with the advice seeker's affairs and the matter at hand
Good advice appeals to reason - passionate displays and convoluted explanations are inappropriate and suggest motives other than delivering sound, beneficial advice
Keywords:
Counsel, command, advice, advisor, governance, communication, conflict of interest, leadership, passion, reason, consulting, experience, expertise, honesty
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Summary
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, published in 1651, became world-renowned for its theories on how to establish and govern a state. Hobbes famously describes the state of nature, in which the authority of the monarch is absent, as a "war of every man against every man." In this natural state, humans live in conditions of "continual fear, and danger of violent death and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The book explains the emergence of government as an escape from this dangerous condition.
Proper governance requires proper advisors. In Chapter XXV, Hobbes describes what comprises good 'counsel' or advice, and what distinguishes a good advisor from a bad one. He distinguishes 'counsel' from 'commands', noting that counsel should properly be intended for the good of the recipient, rather than the good of the counsellor. He also expresses his distrust of advisors who rely on passionate rhetoric to communicate. The best advisors, Hobbes says, share the interests of those they advise, communicate clearly, and have deep experience and expertise in the matter on which they give counsel.
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Counsels and commands
HOW fallacious it is to judge of the nature of things by the ordinary and inconstant use of words appeareth in nothing more than in the confusion of counsels and commands, arising from the imperative manner of speaking in them both, and in many other occasions besides. For the words do this are the words not only of him that commandeth but also of him that giveth counsel and of him that exhorteth and yet there are but few that see not that these are very different things... To avoid which mistakes and render to those terms of commanding, counselling, and exhorting, their proper and distinct significations, I define them thus:Command is where a man saith, "Do this," or "Do not this," without expecting other reason than the will of him that says it. From this it followeth manifestly that he that commandeth pretendeth thereby his own benefit: for the reason of his command is his own will only, and the proper object of every man's will is some good to himself.
Counsel is where a man saith, "Do," or "Do not this," and deduceth his reasons from the benefit that arriveth by it to him to whom he saith it. And from this it is evident that he that giveth counsel pretendeth only (whatsoever he intendeth) the good of him to whom he giveth it.
Therefore between counsel and command, one great difference is that command is directed to a man's own benefit, and counsel to the benefit of another man. And from this ariseth another difference, that a man may be obliged to do what he is commanded as when he hath covenanted to obey: but he cannot be obliged to do as he is counselled, because the hurt of not following it is his own or if he should covenant to follow it, then is the counsel turned into the nature of a command. A third difference between them is that no man can pretend a right to be of another man's counsel because he is not to pretend benefit by it to himself: but to demand right to counsel another argues a will to know his designs, or to gain some other good to himself which, as I said before, is of every man's will the proper object.
This also is incident to the nature of counsel that whatsoever it be, he that asketh it cannot in equity accuse or punish it: for to ask counsel of another is to permit him to give such counsel as he shall think best and consequently, he that giveth counsel to his sovereign (whether a monarch or an assembly) when he asketh it, cannot in equity be punished for it, whether the same be conformable to the opinion of the most, or not, so it be to the proposition in debate...
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