ABSTRACT
Now there are three respects in which the method of civil philosophy, as described in De Cive and reflected in the content of the other political treatises, diverges from the method just outlined. First, and to touch upon what I have emphasized already, the method just described is all about reconstructing a sensory experience from its causes; the method of civil philosophy is not like this. Rather than being primarily concerned with saying why bodies politic are as they are or present the appearances they present, civil philosophy has a method appropriate to saying how they ought to be. Second, and relatedly, there is Hobbes's restriction of causes sought for in natural philosophy to efficient causes. He explicitly denies that final causes have any bearing on investigations in natural philosophy, and says that they only come into moral philosophy (DP, ch. 2, E VII 82). In civil philosophy, on the other hand, the proper distribution of rights and duties in the polity is wholly deduced from a final cause, namely the purpose that people would have if their belonging to a commonwealth came about by mutual agreement in the state of nature.
