Review of Hobbes Moto, Luogo e Tempo, edited by Gianni Paganini

Hobbes Studies, 2017

The Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s De Corpore. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natu...

This paper takes as its starting point Hobbes’s first European grand tour, which the future philosopher and his pupil William Cavendish II made together during 1614-15. On this tour, while in Venice they met Fulgenzio Micanzio, and probably also the famous Servite friar Paolo Sarpi, ‘consultore in iure’ of the Venetian Republic. Hobbes scholars point to the similarities between some political and theological-political doctrines of Sarpi and Hobbes, but this paper focuses on the two writers’ natural philosophy, showing the analogies linking them. Firstly, the two thinkers have the same conception of the different epistemological status that separates mathematics (conventional and aprioristic) from the physical sciences (in which knowledge acquired can only be hypothetical and conjectural). However, the correlations also involve the genesis of human knowledge: in both authors we find the same model, which starts from the action of an external object on the senses of perception, to reach the ‘‘universals’’ which are none other than names: all objects that occupy space in the natural world are bodies, and the entire physical world must be interpreted solely in materialistic terms of matter and local motion. Finally, the two thinkers make the same effort, although to different extents, to adapt the Aristotelian vocabulary to the exigencies of a new natural philosophy, which contemplates the world as simply a mechanical system; thus they leave behind them the Aristotelian physics, founded on qualities and other concepts of the Aristotelian tradition.

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume VII, 2015

In the last ten years, discussion of Hobbes's 'theology' 1 has revolved around his provocative and very particular notion of a corporeal God, to be found especially in the  Appendix to the Latin Leviathan as well as in Hobbes's Answer to a Book Published by Dr. Bramhall Called 'Catching of the Leviathan'. The latter, according to what Hobbes says in his preface 'To the Reader', was written more than ten years earlier, but published only posthumously in . Hobbes's late theology has attracted the attention of scholars 2 because of two aspects in 1 Here are some comments on the texts and translations used, as well as some abbreviations used in this chapter, in addition to those listed at the front of this volume. DM is translated in Harold Whitmore Jones (ed. and trans.), Thomas White's 'De Mundo' Examined (London: Bradford University Press and Crosby Lockwood Staples, ). I have often modified the English translation to come closer to the Latin original. DM 'Introduzione' and DM 'Commento' stand respectively for the Introduction and the Commentary contained in: Hobbes, G. Paganini (ed. and trans. [Italian]), Moto, luogo e tempo (Turin: UTET, ). While I cite the Curley edition of Lev., I have also collated the new critical edition of the Leviathan by Noel Malcolm (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). Whenever possible (e.g. for DM, Lev., following Curley edn., DC, etc.), I quote Hobbes's works by part, chapter, section, without indicating the page number. 2 Recently the Springborg-Martinich debate has taken the place of the older one between Curley and the same Martinich; however, both debates focus on the theological positions of the later Hobbes.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1997

Hobbes Studies, 2017

Hobbes considered as unambiguous and unproblematic his demonstration in "De Corpore" that every effect past, present or future is necessary, since it always requires a sufficient cause that cannot be sufficient without being necessary, so that nothing is possible which will not be actual at some time. Now, this approach to necessity and possibility was received by his contemporary readers as missing its aim. Two immediate criticisms of "De Corpore" by Moranus and Ward exhibit from this viewpoint an interesting difference as to their common argument that only hypothetical necessity can result from Hobbes's premises. My essay relates this argumentative difference to the absence (Moranus) or presence (Ward) in the background of the free-will dispute between Hobbes and Bramhall. From there, I examine also different interpretations of the 'hypothetical necessity-argument' in the indirect critical reception of "De Corpore", when the target is Hobbes's necessitarianism in the controversy with Bramhall, based on significant material from his "De Corpore" project. Remarkably, although Leibniz agrees with Bramhall that Hobbes only proves a hypothetical necessity, Leibniz's understanding of hypothetical necessity is not that of Bramhall. Another striking difference is displayed in the use of the 'hypothetical necessity-argument' by More, which as it were blurs the connection of the free-will issue with Hobbes's general doctrine of causality.

Springborg “Hobbes’s Challenge to Descartes, Bramhall and Boyle: A Corporeal God”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20,4 (2012), pp. 903-34.

In a letter of November 1640, Hobbes issued a provocative challenge to Descartes to abandon metaphysical dualism and subscribe to a ‘corporeal God’; a provocation to which the Frenchman angrily responded, but was perhaps importantly influenced. Hobbes’s minimal realism was consonant with atheism, to which Descartes felt he was being forced. Moreover, Hobbes was unrelenting in his battle against Cartesian dualism, for which he saw Robert Boyle’s experimental science as a surrogate.

Hobbes Studies, 2013

The relationships between politics and religion have always been the focus of Hobbesian literature, which generally privileges the theme of the Christian State, i.e. the union of temporal and spiritual power in a sovereign-representative person. This essay presents other perspectives of interpretation, which analyze the relationships between politics and religion in Hobbes’ works by using specifically metaphysical and theological categories – liberty/ necessity, causality, kingdom of God, divine prescience, potentia Dei etc. – which allow us to reconsider the nature of political power (and the relevance of modern technology for the contemporary politics). The core of Hobbes’ argumentation concerns the theoretical status of determinism (i.e. the relationships between liberty and necessity) with regard to the reduction of «potentia» to «potestas» not only in political philosophy, but also in metaphysics and theology. In many passages of Hobbes’ works, then, it is possible to understand the role of God’s idea in the natural and political philosophy: God’s idea as first cause or as omnipotence is only a reassuring word useful to describe the necessary, mechanical and eternal movement of the bodies and useful to justify the materialistic determinism in anthropology and politics. Body and movement are the necessary fundaments of the universe which find in itself - without reference to the category of «possibility» in politics and in physics - the motives and the reasons of his own structure and function (from causes to effects).

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2012

A key theme in the classical debate between Hobbes and Descartes, in the Third objections and replies to the Meditations, is that of the status of ideas. But it is a debate that, officially, was soon over: Descartes did not enjoy this dialogue with a philosopher already suspected of heresy, and, in March 1641, he begged Mersenne to break off all relations with “the Englishman”. Thus Descartes, who trusted blindly in Mersenne, did not have the slightest suspicion when, barely a month later, the latter forwarded to him an anonymous letter in latin on the question of ideas, dated 19 May 1641. And yet it is this very letter—to which Descartes replied in two parts—that brought a secret tail-piece to the debate opened by Hobbes with his Third objections, and brusquely interrupted when it had barely started. The anonymous author, whose argumentative skill and philosophical acumen was initially appreciated, was indeed in all probability Hobbes himself, “the Englishman” whom Descartes so detested.

Hobbes Studies, 2014

Several recent commentators argue that Thomas Hobbes’s account of the nature of science is conventionalist. Engaging in scientific practice on a conventionalist account is more a matter of making sure one connects one term to another properly rather than checking one’s claims, e.g., by experiment. In this paper, I argue that the conventionalist interpretation of Hobbesian science accords neither with Hobbes’s theoretical account in De corpore and Leviathan nor with Hobbes’s scientific practice in De homine and elsewhere. Closely tied to the conventionalist interpretation is the deductivist interpretation, on which it is claimed that Hobbes believed sciences such as optics are deduced from geometry. I argue that Hobbesian science places simplest conceptions as the foundation for geometry and the sciences in which we use geometry, which provides strong evidence against both the conventionalist and deductivist interpretations.