An Isle Near Terra Australis Incognita: Henry Neville’s Mental Experiment and Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

The paper analyzes the ideas of H. Neville’s philosophical novel “The Isle of Pines”. The scope of the research is to make sense of its place within the context of Early Modern political philosophy, and especially its linkage with the Hobbesian theories of human nature, sovereignty and inevitable conflict engaging pre-political communities into bellum omnium contra omnes. Rethinking Hobbesian views on the natural state Neville replaces his mechanical interpretation of human’s passions and behavioral patterns with a historical perspective. Taking into his account contemporary ethnographical knowledge Neville set a mental experiment and found out that a Hobbesian trap before the emergence of a state was not inevitable as well as the lack of social norms. We argue that Neville’s novel was an attempt to escape Hobbesian pessimism and to describe the emergence of social and political structures as a historical and evolutionary proces

Hobbes and Spinoza on Sovereign Education

Most comparisons of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza focus on the difference in understanding of natural right. We argue that Hobbes also places more weight on a rudimentary and exclusive education of the public by the state. We show that the difference is related to deeper disagreements over the prospect of Enlightenment. Hobbes is more sanguine than Spinoza about using the state to make people rational. Spinoza considers misguided an overemphasis on publicly educating everyone out of superstition—public education is important, but modes of superstition may remain and must be offset by institutions and a civil religion. The differences are confirmed by Spinoza’s interest in the philosopher who stands apart and whose flourishing may be protected, but not simply brought about, by rudimentary public education. Spinoza’s openness to a wisdom-loving elite in a democracy also sets up an interesting parallel with Thomas Jefferson’s own commitment to the natural aristocracy needed to sustain republicanism. In demonstrating the 17th century philosopher’s skepticism toward using the state exclusively to promote rationality, even as he recognizes the importance of a sovereign pedagogical role and the protection of philosophy, we move to suggest that Spinoza is relevant to contemporary debates about public education and may reinvigorate moral and political discourse in a liberal democracy.

Autorité, sociabilité et passions - La philosophie de la famille de Thomas Hobbes à John Millar

La famille a longtemps été considérée comme une unité sociale composée de trois relations simples : mari-femme, parent-enfant et maître-serviteur. Mais à la fin du dix-huitième siècle, la dimension affective de la famille devient prépondérante, ce qui en exclut progressivement les serviteurs. Cette étude se penche sur le moment crucial de l’histoire des idées où le paradigme familial est en train de changer, en s’intéressant aux discours sur la famille d’une série de penseurs issus de la tradition du droit naturel moderne et des Lumières écossaises. Dans un effort constant de replacer chaque relation analysée dans le cadre de la famille, et la famille dans l’argument politique et philosophique plus général défendu par ces auteurs, cette étude montre que la famille, loin d’être une question subsidiaire, joue un rôle important dans la compréhension des rapports sociaux à cette époque.

The Long Arc of Legality

The Long Arc of Legality breaks the current deadlock in philosophy of law between legal positivism and natural law by showing that any understanding of law as a matter of authority must account for the interaction of enacted law with fundamental principles of legality. This interaction conditions law's content so that officials have the moral resources to answer the legal subject's question, 'But, how can that be law for me?' David Dyzenhaus brings Thomas Hobbes and Hans Kelsen into a dialogue with H. L. A. Hart, showing that philosophy of law must work with the idea of legitimate authority and its basis in the social contract. He argues that the legality of international law and constitutional law are integral to the main tasks of philosophy of law, and that legal theory must attend both to the politics of legal space and to the way in which law provides us with a 'public conscience'.

Gain, Fear and Glory

This paper analyses the three causes of war identified by Thucydides and his most eminent translator, Thomas Hobbes. Looking beyond the circumstantial occasions through which wars begin, the chief motives of belligerents have been to pursue material gains, to respond to fears, and to obtain glory and prestige for a doctrine. Wight calls ‘simple Thucydidean fear … the prime motive in international politics’ because it involves ‘a rational apprehension of contingent evil’, not simply ‘some unreasoning emotion’. Wight discusses how fear may be a cause of preventive war, and he labels the great difficulty of building trust between former adversaries ‘the Hobbesian predicament’. Wight defines this predicament as follows: ‘communities of honest and decent men, when they have suffered a long series of mutual injuries, and have a rational apprehension each that its own existence is at stake, and when moreover they live in inescapable juxtaposition, cannot transpose themselves into an attitude of mutual trust’. He also explores the tension between freedom and necessity: the circumstances at hand may seem to be tractable, with choices available between possible decisions and their likely consequences; yet the factors leading to war may prove inescapable.

The Body of Light in Renaissance England

This chapter engages with the first Anglophone attestations of the term “subtle body.” It appears first in the contentious correspondence between Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes between whom there was some disagreement over who plagiarized the idea from whom. Most of the chapter is taken up with the Cambridge Platonists who came in their wake, who formulated complex philosophical and mythological views of the Neoplatonic vehicles of the soul, now under the English name “subtle body.” It ends with Lady Anne Conway, who fuses the Platonism of the Cambridge group with Kabbalah to create a new form of spiritual monism. This chapter is significantly about how the subtle body concept was employed by Renaissance Platonists arguing against the reductive materialism of Cartesian mechanical philosophy.

Introduction

This introduction presents the project of the book, to examine the seventeenth-century debate about materialism that began with the work of Thomas Hobbes. Among those who responded directly to Hobbes, the book focuses on Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. The introduction and book then look at John Locke’s discussion of materialism in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which draws on and responds to that earlier discussion. A central question for all these philosophers is whether human minds are material. They also consider whether animal minds are material, and whether God is. Other philosophical issues, including theories of substance and of the nature of ideas, are repeatedly involved in the discussion. The relation of these discussions to the work of René Descartes is noted.

Materialism from Hobbes to Locke

Are human beings purely material creatures, or is there something else to them, an immaterial part that does some (or all) of the thinking, and might even be able to outlive the death of the body? This book is about how a series of seventeenth-century philosophers tried to answer that question. It begins by looking at the views of Thomas Hobbes, who developed a thoroughly materialist account of the human mind, and later of God as well. All this is in obvious contrast to the approach of his contemporary René Descartes. After examining Hobbes’s materialism, the book considers the views of three of his English critics: Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. Both More and Cudworth thought Hobbes’s materialism radically inadequate to explain the workings of the world, while Cavendish developed a distinctive, anti-Hobbesian materialism of her own. The second half of the book focuses on the discussion of materialism in John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, arguing that we can better understand Locke’s discussion if we see how and where he is responding to this earlier debate. At crucial points Locke draws on More and Cudworth to argue against Hobbes and other materialists. Nevertheless, Locke did a good deal to reveal how materialism was a genuinely possible view, by showing how one could develop a detailed account of the human mind without presuming it was an immaterial substance.

Auctoritas facit legem: o problema da justificação da autoridade em Hobbes

Este texto objetiva tratar da relação entre ciência e autoridade na filosofia de Thomas Hobbes. O problema fundamental que motiva o trabalho está nas constantes afirmações de Hobbes segundo as quais é a autoridade e não a verdade que faz a lei. Tais afirmações, que revelam a adesão à concepção voluntarista de lei, parecem comprometer o projeto de instituição da scientia civilis por parte de Hobbes, uma vez que a decisão do soberano seria de caráter meramente arbitrário e não fundada racionalmente, portanto. Desta perspectiva, o projeto de fundar uma ciência da moral e da política parece perder grande parte de sua força, o que por sua vez torna problemático o estabelecimento de uma base normativa adequada para a autoridade política, uma vez que a justificação dos enunciados normativos que a fundamentam deveria necessariamente derivar do conhecimento científico. A intenção é elencar alguns elementos que possam demonstrar que a tese da auctoritas facit legem não implica o abandono da racionalidade, argumentando que não apenas a justificação da autoridade, mas a própria instauração da lei civil segue um conjunto de princípios racionais.