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Thomas Hobbes

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

   Western Philosophers
   17th-century philosophy
   (Modern Philosophy)
   Thomas Hobbes
   Name: Thomas Hobbes
   Birth: April 5, 1588 Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England
   Death: December 4, 1679 Derbyshire, England
   School/tradition: Social contract, realism
   Main interests: Political philosophy, history, ethics, geometry
   Notable ideas: modern founder of the social contract tradition; life in
   the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
   Influences: Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus, Grotius, Galileo, Thucydides
   Influenced: All subsequent Western political philosophy

   Thomas Hobbes ( April 5, 1588– December 4, 1679) was an English
   philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan set the agenda for nearly
   all subsequent Western political philosophy.

   Although Hobbes is today best remembered for his work on political
   philosophy, he contributed to a diverse array of fields, including
   history, geometry, ethics, general philosophy and what would now be
   called political science. Additionally, Hobbes's account of human
   nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring
   theory in the field of philosophical anthropology.

Early life and education

   Hobbes was born in Wiltshire, England on April 5, 1588 (some sources
   say Malmesbury). His father, the vicar of Charlton and Westport, was
   forced to leave the town, abandoning his three children to the care of
   an older brother Francis. Hobbes was educated at Westport church from
   the age of four, passed to the Malmesbury school and then to a private
   school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, a graduate from Oxford
   University. Hobbes was a good pupil, and around 1603 he was sent to
   Oxford and entered at Magdalen Hall (see Hertford College). The
   principal of Magdalen was the aggressive Puritan John Wilkinson, and he
   had some influence on Hobbes.

   At university, Hobbes appears to have followed his own curriculum; he
   was "little attracted by the scholastic learning". He did not complete
   his degree until 1608, but he was recommended by Sir James Hussey, his
   master at Magdalen, as tutor to William, the son of William Cavendish,
   Baron of Hardwick (and later Earl of Devonshire), and began a life-long
   connection with that family.

   Hobbes became a companion to the younger William and they both took
   part in a grand tour in 1610. Hobbes was exposed to European scientific
   and critical methods during the tour in contrast to the scholastic
   philosophy which he had learned in Oxford. His scholarly efforts at the
   time were aimed at a careful study of classic Greek and Latin authors,
   the outcome of which was, in 1628, his great translation of
   Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, the first translation of
   that work into English from a Greek manuscript. Hobbes believed that
   Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian War showed that democratic
   government could not survive war or provide stability and was thus
   undesirable.

   Although he associated with literary figures like Ben Jonson and
   thinkers such as Francis Bacon, he did not extend his efforts into
   philosophy until after 1629. His employer Cavendish, then the Earl of
   Devonshire, died of the plague in June 1628. The widowed countess
   dismissed Hobbes but he soon found work, again as a tutor, this time to
   the son of Sir Gervase Clifton. This task, chiefly spent in Paris,
   ended in 1631 when he again found work with the Cavendish family,
   tutoring the son of his previous pupil. Over the next seven years as
   well as tutoring he expanded his own knowledge of philosophy, awakening
   in him curiosity over key philosophic debates. He visited Florence in
   1636 and later was a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris,
   held together by Marin Mersenne. From 1637 he considered himself a
   philosopher and scholar.

In Paris

   Hobbes's first area of study was an interest in the physical doctrine
   of motion. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained
   experimental work as in physics. He went on to conceive the system of
   thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life. His
   scheme was first to work out, in a separate treatise, a systematic
   doctrine of body, showing how physical phenomena were universally
   explicable in terms of motion, at least as motion or mechanical action
   was then understood. He then singled out Man from the realm of Nature.
   Then, in another treatise, he showed what specific bodily motions were
   involved in the production of the peculiar phenomena of sensation,
   knowledge, affections and passions whereby Man came into relation with
   Man. Finally he considered, in his crowning treatise, how Men were
   moved to enter into society, and argued how this must be regulated if
   Men were not to fall back into "brutishness and misery". Thus he
   proposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man and the State.

   Hobbes came home, in 1637, to a country riven with discontent which
   disrupted him from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan.
   However, by the time of the Short Parliament he had written not only
   his Human Nature but also De corpore politico, which were published
   together ten years later as The Elements of Law. This means his initial
   political doctrine was not shaped by the English Civil War.

   When in November 1640 the Long Parliament succeeded to the Short,
   Hobbes felt he was a marked man by the circulation of his treatise and
   fled to Paris. He did not return for eleven years. In Paris he rejoined
   the coterie about Mersenne, and wrote a critique of the Meditations on
   First Philosophy of Descartes, which was printed as third among the
   sets of "Objections" appended, with "Replies" from Descartes in 1641. A
   different set of remarks on other works by Descartes succeeded only in
   ending all correspondence between the two.

   He also extended his own works somewhat, working on the third section,
   De Cive, which was finished in November 1641. Although it was initially
   only circulated privately, it was well received. He then returned to
   hard work on the first two sections of his work and published little
   except for a short treatise on optics (Tractatus opticus) included in
   the collection of scientific tracts published by Mersenne as Cogitata
   physico-mathematica in 1644. He built a good reputation in philosophic
   circles and in 1645 was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and
   others, to referee the controversy between John Pell and Longomontanus
   over the problem of squaring the circle.

Civil war in England

   The English Civil War broke out in 1642, and when the Royalist cause
   began to decline from the middle of 1644 there was an exodus of the
   king's supporters to Europe. Many came to Paris and were known to
   Hobbes. This revitalised Hobbes's political interests and the De Cive
   was republished and more widely distributed. The printing was begun in
   1646 by Samuel de Sorbiere through the Elzevier press at Amsterdam with
   a new preface and some new notes in reply to objections.

   In 1647, Hobbes was engaged as mathematical instructor to the young
   Charles, Prince of Wales, who had come over from Jersey around July.
   This engagement lasted until 1648 when Charles went to Holland.

   The company of the exiled royalists led Hobbes to produce an English
   book to set forth his theory of civil government in relation to the
   political crisis resulting from the war. It was based on an unpublished
   treatise of 1640. The State, it now seemed to Hobbes, might be regarded
   as a great artificial man or monster (Leviathan), composed of men, with
   a life that might be traced from its generation under pressure of human
   needs to its dissolution through civil strife proceeding from human
   passions. The work was closed with a general "Review and Conclusion,"
   in direct response to the war which raised the question of the
   subject's right to change allegiance when a former sovereign's power to
   protect was irrecoverably gone. Also he took advantage of the
   Commonwealth to indulge in rationalistic criticism of religious
   doctrines. The first public edition was titled Elementa philosophica de
   cive.
   Frontispeice from De Cive (1642)
   Enlarge
   Frontispeice from De Cive (1642)

   During the years of the composition of Leviathan he remained in or near
   Paris. In 1647 Hobbes was overtaken by a serious illness which disabled
   him for six months. On recovering from this near fatal disorder, he
   resumed his literary task, and carried it steadily forward to
   completion by the year 1650, having also translated his prior Latin
   work into English. In 1650, to prepare the way for his magnum opus, he
   allowed the publication of his earliest treatise, divided into two
   separate small volumes ( Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of
   Policie, and De corpore politico, or the Elements of Law, Moral and
   Politick). In 1651 he published his translation of the De Cive under
   the title of Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society.
   Meanwhile the printing of the greater work was proceeding, and finally
   it appeared about the middle of 1651, under the title of Leviathan, or
   the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil,
   with a famous title-page engraving in which, from behind hills
   overlooking a landscape, there towered the body (above the waist) of a
   crowned giant, made up of tiny figures of human beings and bearing
   sword and crozier in the two hands.

   The work had immediate impact. Soon, Hobbes was more lauded and decried
   than any other thinker of his time. However, the first effect of its
   publication was to sever his link with the exiled royalists, forcing
   him to appeal to the revolutionary English government for protection.
   The exiles may very well have killed him; the secularist spirit of his
   book greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics. Hobbes fled
   back home, arriving in London in the winter of 1651. Following his
   submission to the council of state he was allowed to subside into
   private life in Fetter Lane.

Leviathan

   Frontispiece of Leviathan
   Enlarge
   Frontispiece of Leviathan

   In Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of
   societies and legitimate governments. This became one of the first
   scholarly works on Social contract theory. In the natural condition of
   mankind, while some men may be stronger or more intelligent than
   others, none is so strong and smart as to be beyond a fear of violent
   death. When threatened with death, man in his natural state cannot help
   but defend himself in any way possible. Self-defense against violent
   death is Hobbes' highest human necessity, and rights are borne of
   necessity. In the state of nature, then, each of us has a right, or
   license, to everything in the world. Due to the scarcity of things in
   the world, there is a constant, and rights-based, "war of all against
   all" ( bellum omnium contra omnes). Life in the state of nature is
   "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (xiii).

   But war is not in man's best interest. According to Hobbes, man has a
   self-interested and materialistic desire to end war — "the passions
   that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as
   are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to
   obtain them" (xiii, 14). He forms peaceful societies by entering into a
   social contract. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath
   an authority, to whom all individuals in that society covenant just
   enough of their natural right for the authority to be able to ensure
   internal peace and a common defense. This sovereign, whether monarch,
   aristocracy or democracy (though Hobbes prefers monarchy), should be a
   Leviathan, an absolute authority. Law, for Hobbes, is the enforcement
   of contracts. The political theory of Leviathan varies little from that
   set out in two earlier works, The Elements of Law and De Cive (On The
   Citizen). (A minor aside: Hobbes almost never uses the phrase " state
   of nature" in his works.)

   Hobbes's leviathan state is still authoritative in matters of
   aggression, one man waging war on another, or any matters pertaining to
   the cohesiveness of the state. It should say nothing about what any man
   does otherwise; so long as one man does no harm to any other, the
   sovereign should keep its hands off him (however, since there is no
   power above the sovereign, there is nothing to prevent the sovereign
   breaking this rule). In actuality, however, the extent to which this
   sovereign may exercise this authority is conditioned by the sovereign's
   obligations to natural law. Although the sovereign has no legislative
   obligations, it is more beneficial for him to abide by those laws which
   prescribe peace for security (the laws of nature.) Thus this conditions
   the authority of the sovereign with a prudential morality, or, more
   accurately, a moral obligation. A sovereign also maintains equality
   within the state, since the common people would be "washed out" in the
   glare of their sovereign; Hobbes compares this "washing out" of the
   common people in their sovereign's presence to the fading of the stars
   in the presence of the sun. In essence, Hobbes's political doctrine is
   "do no harm." His negative version of the Golden Rule, in chapter xiv,
   35, reads: "Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to
   thyself." This is contrasted with the Judeo-Christian golden rule,
   which encourages actively doing unto others: for Hobbes, that is a
   recipe for social chaos.

   Leviathan was written during the English Civil War; much of the book is
   occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority
   to avoid the evil of discord and civil war. Any abuses of power by this
   authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. In particular, the
   doctrine of separation of powers is rejected: the sovereign must
   control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers.

   In Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly states that the sovereign has authority
   to assert power over matters of faith and doctrine, and that if he does
   not do so, he invites discord. Hobbes presents his own religious
   theory, but states that he would defer to the will of the sovereign
   (when that was re-established: again, Leviathan was written during the
   Civil War) as to whether his theory was acceptable. Tuck argues that it
   further marks Hobbes as a supporter of the religious policy of the
   post-Civil War English republic, Independency.

Hobbesian

   The word "Hobbesian" is sometimes used in modern English to refer to a
   situation in which there is unrestrained, selfish, and uncivilised
   competition. This usage, now well-established, is misleading for two
   reasons: first, the Leviathan describes such a situation, but only in
   order to criticise it; second, Hobbes himself was timid and bookish in
   person. Other uses, popular immediately after Hobbes published, carry
   connotations of atheism and the belief that "might makes right."

Controversies

With Bramhall

   Hobbes now turned to complete the fundamental treatise of his
   philosophical system. He worked so steadily that De Corpore was first
   printed in 1654. Also 1654 a small treatise, Of Liberty and Necessity
   was published by Bishop John Bramhall addressed at Hobbes. Bramhall, a
   strong Arminian, had met and debated with Hobbes and afterwards wrote
   down his views and sent them privately to be answered in this form by
   Hobbes. Hobbes duly replied, but not for publication. But a French
   acquaintance took a copy of the reply and published it with "an
   extravagantly laudatory epistle". Bramhall countered in 1655, when he
   printed everything that had passed between them (under the title of A
   Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent or
   Extrinsic Necessity). In 1656 Hobbes was ready with his Questions
   concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, in which he replied "with
   astonishing force" to the bishop. As perhaps the first clear exposition
   of the psychological doctrine of determinism, Hobbes's own two pieces
   were important in the history of the free-will controversy. The bishop
   returned to the charge in 1658 with Castigations of Mr Hobbes's
   Animadversions, and also included a bulky appendix entitled The
   Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale. Hobbes never took any notice of
   the Castigations.

With Wallis

   Beyond the spat with Bramhall, Hobbes was caught in a series of
   conflicts from the time of publishing his De Corpore in 1655. In
   Leviathan he had assailed the system of the original universities. In
   1654 Seth Ward (1617–1689), the Savilian professor of astronomy,
   replying in his Vindiciae academiarum to the assaults by Hobbes and
   others (especially John Webster) on the academic system. Errors in De
   Corpore, especially in the mathematical sections, opened Hobbes to
   criticism from John Wallis, Savilian professor of geometry. Wallis's
   Elenchus geomeiriae Hobbianae, published in 1655 contained an elaborate
   criticism of Hobbes's whole attempt to put the foundations of
   mathematical science in its place within the general body of reasoned
   knowledge—a criticism which exposed the utter inadequacy of Hobbes's
   mathematics. Hobbes's lack of rigour meant that he spent himself in
   vain attempts to solve the impossible problems that often waylaid
   self-sufficient beginners, his interest was limited to geometry and he
   never had any notion of the full scope of mathematical science. He was
   unable to work out with any consistency the few original thoughts he
   had, and thus was an easy target. Hobbes took care to remove some of
   the worst mistakes exposed by Wallis, before allowing an English
   translation of the De Corpore to appear in 1656. But he still attacked
   Wallis in a series of Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in
   1656.

   Wallis had an easy task in defending himself against Hobbes's
   criticism, and he seized the opportunity given him by the English
   translation of the De Corpore to re-confront Hobbes with his
   mathematical inconsistencies. Hobbes responded with Marks of the Absurd
   Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish Church Politics, and Barbarisms of
   John Wallis, Professor of Geometry and Doctor of Divinity. The thrusts
   were easily parried by Wallis in a reply (Hobbiani puncti dispunctio,
   1657). Hobbes finally took refuge in silence and there was peace for a
   time.

   Hobbes published, in 1658, the final section of his philosophical
   system, completing the scheme he had planned more than twenty years
   before. De Homine consisted for the most part of an elaborate theory of
   vision, whose fundamental importance in relation to his political
   philosophy has often been overlooked. The remainder of the treatise
   dealt cursorily with some of the topics more fully treated in the Human
   Nature and the Leviathan.

   Wallis had meanwhile published other works and especially a
   comprehensive treatise on the general principles of calculus (Mathesis
   universatis, 1657). Hobbes, now with time on his hands, took it upon
   himself to re-spark their clash. He decided once more to attack the new
   methods of mathematical analysis and by the spring of 1660, he had
   managed to put his criticism and assertions into five dialogues under
   the title Examinatio et emendatio mathematicae hodiernae qualis
   explicatur in libris Johannis Wallisii, with a sixth dialogue so
   called, consisting almost entirely of seventy or more propositions on
   the circle and cycloid. Wallis, however, would not take the bait.
   Hobbes then tried another tack having solved, as he thought, another
   ancient problem, the duplication of the cube. He had his solution
   brought out anonymously in French, so as to put his critics off the
   scent. No sooner had Wallis publicly refuted the solution than Hobbes
   claimed the credit of it, and went more astray than ever in its
   defence. He republished it (in modified form), with his remarks, at the
   end of a 1661 Latin dialogue which he had written in defence of his
   philosophical doctrine. The Dialogus physicus, sive De natura aeris
   attacked Robert Boyle and other friends of Wallis who were forming
   themselves into a society (incorporated as the Royal Society in 1662)
   for experimental research. Hobbes saw this as a direct contravention of
   the method of physical inquiry enjoined in the De Corpore. The careful
   experiments recorded in Boyle's New Experiments touching the Spring of
   the Air (1660), which Hobbes chose to take as the manifesto of the new
   "academicians," seemed to him only to confirm the conclusions he had
   reasoned out years before from speculative principles, and he warned
   them that if they were not content to begin where he had left off their
   work would come to naught. To this ill-conceived diatribe Boyle quickly
   replied with force and dignity, but it was from Wallis that true
   retribution came, in the scathing satire Hobbius heauton-timorumenos
   (1662). Hobbes seems to have been "fairly bewildered by the rush and
   whirl of sarcasm" and wisely kept aloof from scientific controversy for
   some years.

   However, in response to the more personal attacks Hobbes wrote a letter
   about himself in the third person, Considerations upon the Reputation,
   Loyalty, Manners and Religion of Thomas Hobbes. In this biographical
   piece, he told his own and Wallis's "little stories during the time of
   the late rebellion" with such effect that Wallis did not attempt a
   reply.

With geometers

   After a time Hobbes began a third period of controversial activity,
   which he dragged out until his ninetieth year. The first piece,
   published in 1666, De principiis et ratiocinatione geometrarum, was an
   attack on geometrical professors. Three years later he brought his
   three mathematical achievements together in Quadratura circuli, Cubatio
   sphaerae, Duplicitio cubii, and as soon as they were once more refuted
   by Wallis, reprinted them with an answer to the objections. Wallis, who
   had promised to leave him alone, refuted him again before the year was
   out. The exchange dragged on through numerous other papers until 1678.

Later life

   In addition to publishing some ill-founded and controversial writings
   on mathematics and physics, Hobbes also continued to produce and
   publish philosophical works. From the time of the Restoration he
   acquired a new prominence; "Hobbism" became a fashionable creed which
   it was the duty of "every lover of true morality and religion" to
   denounce. The young king, Hobbes's former pupil, now Charles II,
   remembered Hobbes and called him to the court to grant him a pension of
   £100.

   The king was important in protecting Hobbes when, in 1666, the House of
   Commons introduced a bill against atheism and profaneness. On October
   17 of that year, it was ordered that the committee to which the bill
   was referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such
   books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in particular...
   the book of Mr. Hobbes called the Leviathan." ( House of Commons
   Journal Volume 8. British History Online. Retrieved on January 14,
   2005.) Hobbes was terrified at the prospect of being labelled a
   heretic, and proceeded to burn some of his compromising papers. At the
   same time, he examined the actual state of the law of heresy. The
   results of his investigation were first announced in three short
   Dialogues added as an Appendix to his Latin translation of Leviathan,
   published at Amsterdam in 1668. In this appendix, Hobbes aimed to show
   that, since the High Court of Commission had been put down, there
   remained no court of heresy at all to which he was amenable, and that
   nothing could be heresy except opposing the Nicene Creed, which, he
   maintained, Leviathan did not do.

   The only consequence that came of the bill was that Hobbes could never
   thereafter publish anything in England on subjects relating to human
   conduct. The 1668 edition of his works was printed in Amsterdam because
   he could not obtain the censor's licence for its publication in
   England. Other writings were not made public until after his death,
   including Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of
   England and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on
   from the year 1640 to the year 1662. For some time, Hobbes was not even
   allowed to respond, whatever his enemies tried. Despite this, his
   reputation abroad was formidable, and noble or learned foreigners who
   came to England never forgot to pay their respects to the old
   philosopher.

   His final works were a curious mixture: an autobiography in Latin verse
   in 1672, and a translation of four books of the Odyssey into "rugged"
   English rhymes that in 1673 led to a complete translation of both Iliad
   and Odyssey in 1675.

   In October 1679, Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, which was followed
   by a paralytic stroke from which he died in his ninety-second year. He
   was buried in the churchyard of Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England.

Hobbes in popular culture

     * Hobbes, the tiger in Bill Watterson's comic strip Calvin and
       Hobbes, who often makes remarks on human nature, was named after
       Thomas Hobbes, while his companion Calvin was named after the
       Reformation theologian John Calvin.

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