Critique of Hobbes on the Human Soul

Interpreting Hobbes's Political Thought, ed. Sharon Lloyd. Cambridge University Press, 2019

Ultimate Reality and Meaning

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.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2016

Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. 'Matter in motion' may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?

ABSTRACT Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?

Metaphilosophy, 1991

Essay on Hobbes' philosophy as a system highlighted by a material-corporealist ontology, an empiricist epistemology and an analytic-synthetic methodology. Within this framework, human reason emerges as the self-regulation of instinct in the face of the fear of violent death.

2 "Materialism: reality for Hobbes is just material, to the point that he saw a contradiction in the concept of an incorporeal substance. The spirit would be a corporeal body, but one that is so subtle that it cannot be perceived by the senses. The spirit, then, is 'a colorless figure, a body without dimensions.'(T. HOBBES, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, I, 11, 4). From this radical materialism, it is logical to exclude from the purview of philosophy any reality that cannot receive an explanation from the point of view of its generation."(M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, A History of Modern Philosophy, Scepter, New York, 2017, p. 142). "Materialismo: la realtà, per Hobbes è solo materiale, fino al punto di considerare contraddittorio il concetto di sostanza incorporea. Lo spirito sarebbe un corpo naturale, ma così sottile che non viene percepito dai sensi. Lo spirito è pure una 'figura incolore, corpo senza dimensione' (T. HOBBES, Elementi di diritto naturale e politico, I, 11, 4), ecc. A partire da questo materialismo radicale, come abbiamo appena detto, esclude dall'interesse della filosofia ogni realtà che non sia suscettibile di essere spiegata dal punto di vista della sua generazione."(M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, Introduzione alla storia della filosofia moderna, Apollinare Studi, Rome, 1994, p. 144). 3 "Mechanicism: any change that occurs in reality was explained by Hobbes in a quantitative way. Movement is the universal cause. Matter and motion, understood as change of quantity, can explain any sensible phenomenon, all human knowledge and voluntary acts."(Ibid.) "Meccanicismo: ogni cambio che si produce nella realtà viene spiegato in un senso quantitativo. Il movimento è la causa universale. La materia e il movimento spiegano ogni fenomeno sensibile, ogni conoscenza umana ed ogni atto volontario."(Ibid.). 4 "Sensism and nominalism: Hobbes said that our thoughts are just images or representations of bodies expressed by names. Thoughts are produced in us by sensations, 'the source of all thoughts is what we call sense, because there is no conception of the human mind that has not been before, in whole or in part, generated in the sense organs'(T. HOBBES, Leviathan, I, 1). "In Hobbes's perspective there is no room for universal concepts: there are only common names. The name is a word used arbitrarily by man. Universal is just the name of a name, since there are only individuals and individual names. Common names do not refer to reality, but only to what we think of it: the representation that the senses have of reality. "Since sensitive knowledge is individual and contingent, the foundation of science lies in a rationalization of experience through language, which replaces things by their names. Language is the guarantee and foundation of science. Consequently, science is reduced to names, and thus Hobbes establishes a discontinuity between real truth and scientific truth. For Hobbes, the theory of science thus becomes a mere convention."(M. FAZIO and D. GAMARRA, op. cit., p. 143). "Sensismo e nominalismo: Hobbes afferma che i nostri pensieri, espressi dai nomi, sono immagini o rappresentazioni dei corpi. Si producono in noi tramite la sensazione: 'l'origine di tutti i pensieri è ciò che noi chiamiamo senso, poiché non c'è alcuna concezione della mente umana che non sia stata dapprima, in tutto o per parti, generata negli organi del senso.'(T. HOBBES, Leviatano, I, 1). "Del resto, non ci sono concetti universali, solo nomi comuni. Il nome è una voce umana usata arbitrariamente dall'uomo. Universale è solo il nome di un nome, giacchè soltanto esistono individui e nomi di individui. I nomi comuni fanno riferimento non alla realtà ma solo a ciò che noi pensiamo di essa: alla sua rappresentazione tramite i sensi. "Siccome la conoscenza sensibile è individuale e contingente, il fondamento della scienza risiede in una razionalizzazione dell'esperienza, attraverso il linguaggio, che sostituisce le cose con i nomi. Il linguaggio è

Hobbes Studies 24 (2011)

2024