Hobbes's Science Research Articles

The Language of "Political Science" in Early Modern Europe.

Historians of early modern "scientia civilis" focus on two main understandings of that concept: the juridical and the rhetorical. This article focuses on another way of thinking about civil science in the early modern period, the origins and development of which are in the Aristotelian commentary tradition. This article begins with political science in Aristotle then turns to the works of commentators from Albert the Great in the thirteenth century, to the Oxford philosopher John Case in the late sixteenth. It ends on ways that this history offers new perspectives on Hobbes's science of politics, and on the broader historiography.

"Diversity and Felicity: Hobbes's Science of Human Flourishing." Science et Esprit, 68/1 (2016) 35-47

"Diversity and Felicity: Hobbes's Science of Human Flourishing." Science et Esprit, 68/1 (2016) 35-47

Hobbes and human irrationality

Hobbes's science of politics rests on a dual analysis of human beings: humans as complex material bodies in a network of mechanical forces, prone to passions and irrationality; and humans as subjects of right and obligation, morally exhortable by appeal to the standards of reason. The science of politics proposes an absolutist model of politics. If this proposal is not to be idle utopianism, the enduring functioning of the model needs to be compatible with the materialist analysis of human behaviour. In this article, I argue that Hobbes's attempts to render his science of politics compatible with his materialism are only partly successful; a fuller compatibility is achieved in the political writings of Spinoza.

The Conscientious Sovereign: Public and Private Rule in Thomas Hobbes's Early Discourses

In midcareer political treatises, Hobbes trades humanism for scientific method and minimizes distinctions between conquest and mutual covenant as grounds of sovereignty. From this, many conclude that arbitrary government is the goal, or the likeliest outcome of Hobbes's science of justice. Three early discourses, however, suggest that the perils of transition from the private rule of a conqueror to the public rule of a law‐bound sovereign are of primary concern. Whether the change is taken as proof of the independent activity of natural law, or as solely attributable to the skills of exemplary sovereigns, it destabilizes any law‐bound ruler who fails to reorient the passions motivating subjects to obey. Lasting stability and comfort can be achieved only when public rule is redefined as the preservation of a cognitive balance, setting fear of the destructive effects of unregulated self‐assertion against hope of the possibility of continuous peace through obedience to law.

Delicate Discriminations: Thomas Hobbes's Science of Politics

In the following, I argue that the Cold War image of Hobbes that presents him as a proponent of a state-centered conception of political power is misguided: it overlooks the aesthetic dimensions of 'representation' (a term that Hobbes infamously introduces in Leviathan, Chapter XVI) that, for someone writing in the seventeenth century, could not be distinguished from an account of 'political representation.' By focusing on Hobbes's scientific experiments in optics (within the Mersenne Circle) and the trompe-l'oeil artistic heritage whence these experiments derive, I show how Hobbes could not have been the kind of nominalist many historians of political thought make him out to be. Furthermore, Hobbes's persistent use of the theatre metaphor exemplifies a twinned aesthetic and political aspect of representation suggesting that citizens do not stop 'representing' once they consent to a sovereign. Rather, as the frontispiece Hobbes designed for Leviathan suggests, the sovereign is perpetually visible and hence subject to the spectator's ongoing discrimination and evaluation. In this regard, the sovereign is as much a subject of the citizen's opinion as she is a centripetal force guaranteeing stability; and, as an object of aesthetico-political evaluation, the sovereign occasions the perpetual production and circulation of opinions rather than merely unifying individual wills into a coherent and stable whole.

Hobbes's Science of Natural Justice (review)

Hobbes's Science of Natural Justice (review)

Hobbes's Science of Human Nature

Hobbes's Science of Human Nature

Analytic and Synthetic Method According to Hobbes

Analytic and Synthetic Method According to Hobbes RICHARD A. TALASKA IT IS UNIVERSALLYACKNOWLEDGEDthat Hobbes wanted to infuse into all of philosophy the kind of rigor he saw in geometry. Hobbes was particularly careful to explain and exemplify his understanding of geometric method, but these explanations and exemplifications are almost universally ignored. How is it possible to understand Hobbes's science, which is supposed to imitate geometric method in some way, without understanding Hobbes's interpretation of geometric method and his understanding of how something like geometric method can be applied to physics? The present article (1) explains Hobbes's concept of method and its kinds; (2) presents his formal understanding of geometric method and offers a translation of a Hobbesian text, ignored by the scholarship, wherein Hobbes openly states his intention to give a paradigmatic example of the analytics; (3) presents and exemplifies Hobbes's understanding of how the paradigmatic geometric analysis is applied with its own proper degree of rigor to physics; and (4) discusses the relationship between rigor in physical proofs and the role of hypothesis. 1o Lack of method for Hobbes implies lack of science. ~Method distinguishes the sciences of geometry, of "natural philosophy universal," of "man's body," and of politics from mere natural and civil histories." Method must be the essence SeeDe copore x-7(EW 1.8)and 6.6-7 (EW 1.71-75). Allreferences to EWand LWare to the Molesworthedition of Hobbes's English and Latin works (London: John Bohn, 1839-45). See also, C. B. Macpherson, ed., Leviathan (Baltimore: Penguin, x968), Introduction, pp. 8x-83; J. Weinberger, "Hobbes'sDoctrine of Method,"American Political ScienceReview 69 0975): t336. " De corpore, Epistle Dedicatory (EW s.viii-ix). Method transforms isolated moral and political sentences, however "wholesomeand choice," into moral and politicalscience,or "a true and certain rule of our actions,by whichwe might knowwhether that weundertake bejust or unjust" (De corpore, 1.7 JEW 1.9]).Just as the fencerwho uses not natural ingenuitybut scientificstudy of defense and attack overcomes the dichotomy between skilland theory by perfecting his skillby [2o7] 208 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:2 APRIL t988 of science. But the connectedness itself of the propositions comprising science distinguishes science from mere separated sentences.3 Either Hobbes contradicts himself or method is somehow connectedness. That the latter is true is clear from the very start of the chapter on method in De corpore where Hobbes says that to be understood the definition of method must be seen against the definition of philosophy itself. Philosophy is acquired by reasoning to appearances or apparent effects from known possible producers or generators, or from known effects to possible producers or generators. "It is common to all sorts of method, to proceed from known things to unknown; and this is manifest from the cited definition of philosophy."4 Method is the procedure of connecting propositions about causes with propositions about effects. It is "the shortest way of finding out effects by their known causes, or of causes by their known effects."5 The main reason for the ambiguity about whether means of theory, so also "for Hobbes, method properly understood unites the study of human action and the study of all things that are so as to abolish the traditional disharmony between theory and practice" (Weinberger, "Hobbes's Doctrine of Method," 1337).See also, Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes 0936; reprint, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953), 1-2; M. M. Goldsmith, Hobbes's Science of Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 228-29; Quentin Skinner, "The Ideological Context of Hobbes's PoliticalThought," The HistoricalJourna /9 (1966): 286-317- Weinberger needs to make distinctions, although his comment is fundamentallycorrect. The "traditional disharmony between theory and practice" is not present in Plato in exactly the same way that it is present in Aristotle. In Plato the disharmony can be considered under the general rubric of the disharmony between philosophy and the city, but the disharmonyrepresents an unfortunate fact of life. Although it cannot be overcome on the levelof the city, an approximation of overcoming it on the level of the city is possible by attempting to consider the perfect city...

Hobbes's Science of Politics.

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Hobbes’s Science of Politics. By M. M. Goldsmith. (New York & London : Columbia U.P. 1966. Pp. xv + 274. Price 56s). Antony Flew Antony Flew Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 17, Issue 67, April 1967, Pages 170–171, https://doi.org/10.2307/2217979 Published: 01 April 1967

Hobbes's Science of Politics

Hobbes's Science of Politics