A Companion to Hobbes. Группа авторов

In this chapter, I have argued that Hobbes’s philosophical method is integral to his project of separating philosophy and religion so as to put morals on a true scientific foundation. I have clarified what Hobbes means by “science,” “method,” and “demonstration,” showing that the common attribution of a mechanistic method of resolution to Hobbes is incorrect. Building on recent views regarding whether Hobbes has a unified method for theoretical and practical philosophy I add to available interpretations by drawing on Hobbes’s context. Like contemporaneous methods, Hobbes’s method comprises a universal and a particular method. This distinction sheds light on how analysis and synthesis function in each branch of Hobbes’s method in a way that serves to unify and place both theoretical and practical philosophy on a scientific basis.

      References

      1 Adams, Marcus P.2014. Mechanical Epistemology and Mixed Mathematics: Descartes’s Problems and Hobbes’s Unity. PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh.

      2 Adams, Marcus P.2017. “Natural Philosophy, Deduction, and Geometry in the Hobbes-Boyle Debate.” Hobbes Studies 30: 83–107.

      3 Adams, Marcus P.2019. “Hobbes’s Laws of Nature in Leviathan as aSynthetic Demonstration: Thought Experiments and Knowing the Causes.” Philosopher’s Imprint 19 (5): 1–23.

      4 Aristotle. 1984. “Nicomachean Ethics.” In The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. II, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

      5 Blancanus, Josephus. 1996. “De Mathematicarum Natura Dissertatio, Appendix to Aristotelis Loca Mathematica. Translated by Gyula Klima.” In Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical in the Seventeenth Century,edited by Paolo Mancosu, 178–212. New York: Oxford University Press.

      6 Burgersdijk, Franco. 1626. Institutionum Logicarum Libri Duo. Leiden: Apud Abrahamum Commelinum.

      7 Duncan, Stewart. 2003. Hobbes: Metaphysics and Method. PhD diss., Rutgers University.

      8 Gabbey, Alan. 1993. “Descartes’s Physics and Descartes’s Mechanics: Chicken and Egg?” In Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Descartes, edited by Stephen Voss , 311–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

      9 Hanson, Donald W. 1990. “The Meaning of ‘Demonstration’ in Hobbes’s Science.” History of Political Thought 11: 587–626.

      10 Hattab, Helen. 2009. Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

      11 Hattab, Helen. 2011. “The Mechanical Philosophy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, edited by Desmond Clarkeand Catherine Wilson, 124–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

      12 Hattab, Helen. 2014. “Hobbes’ and Zabarella’s Methods: A Missing Link.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (3): 461–85.

      13 Hattab, Helen. 2019. “Descartes’ Mechanical but Not Mechanistic Physics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, edited by Delphine Antoine-Mahut, Steve Nadler, and Tad Schmaltz, 124–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

      14 Hobbes, Thomas. 1999. De Corpore Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima, edited by Karl Schuhmannand Martine Pécharman. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.

      15 Hobbes, Thomas. 2012. Leviathan.3 vols., edited by Noel Malcolm. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [First published 1651].

      16 Hungerland, Isabel C.and George R. Vick. 1981. “Misinterpretations of Hobbes: The Correct View.” In Thomas Hobbes Computatio Sive Logica, edited by Aloysuis P. Martinich, Isabel C. Hungerland, and George R. Vick, 15–148. New York: Abaris Books.

      17 Jesseph, Douglas. 2004. “Galileo, Hobbes, and the Book of Nature.” Perspectives on Science 12 (2): 191–211.

      18 Keckermann, Bartholomaeus. 1613. Systema Logicae. Hanover: Apud Haeredes Guilielmi Antonii.

      19 MacPherson, C.B.1968. “Introduction.” In Leviathan, edited by C.B. MacPherson, 25–9. Hammondsworth: Penguin.

      20 Prins, Johan1990. “Hobbes and the School of Padua: Two Incompatible Approaches to Science.” Archiv für Geschichte de Philosophie 72: 26–46.

      21 Röd, Wolfgang. 1970. Geometrischer Geist und Naturrecht, Methodengeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Staatsphilosophie im 17. Und 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

      22 Sacksteder, William. 1980. “Hobbes: The Art of the Geometricians.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 18 (2): 131–46.

      23 Sacksteder, William. 1988. “Notes and Discussions: Hobbes and Talaska on the Order of the Sciences.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (4): 643–7.

      24 Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. 2001. “Die Schulphilosophie in den reformierten Territorien.” In Die Philosophie des 17.Jahrhunderts, Vol.4: Das Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation Nord- und Mittelosteuropa, editedby Helmut Holzeheyand Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, 390–474. Basel: Schwabe & Co AG Verlag.

      25 Schuhmann, Karl. 1987. “Methodenfragen bei Spinoza und Hobbes: Zum Problem des Einflusses.” Studia Spinoziana 3: 47–86.

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      28 Talaska, Richard A.1988. “Analytic and Synthetic Method according to Hobbes.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (2): 207–37.

      29 Watkins, John N.1973. Hobbes’s System of Ideas. London: Hutchinson University Library.

      30 Zabarella, Jacobus. 1597. Opera Logica. Cologne: Sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri.

      Notes

      1 ¹ Hobbes exhorts those with a sincere desire to be philosophers to “let your reason move upon the deep of your own cogitations and experience; those things that lie in confusion must be set asunder, distinguished, and every one stamped with its own name set in order; that is to say your method must resemble that of the creation. The order of the creation was, light, distinction of day and night, the firmament, the luminaries, sensible creatures, man; and after the creation, the commandment. Therefore, the order of contemplation will be, reason, definition, space, the stars, sensible quality, man; and after man is grown up, subjection to command” (EW I. xiii). Hobbes echoes the appeal to two parallel, but separate, sources of insight into truth prevalent in seventeenth-century Calvinist Scholastic textbooks and Francis Bacon’s work: the book of nature and Holy Scripture. Schmidt-Biggemann explains that for seventeenth-century Calvinist Scholastics, “Knowledge was understood as an inventory of the Revelation made available to humankind, as knowledge found in the Bible, History, and Nature. These three ‘books’ were the field of experience which according to God’s creation plan is inventoried in knowledge” (Schmidt-Biggemann 2001, 394; translation mine).

      2 ² Meteorology, Optics, and Music were all mixed mathematical sciences in the Scholastic tradition; logic was considered the instrument of philosophy, not part of natural philosophy proper.

      3 ³ See Hattab (2009, 93–8).

      4 ⁴ Hobbes’s division most resembles that of early seventeenth-century Calvinist Scholastic textbooks in which “The framework of metaphysics was theological, not the other way around. Hence one counted metaphysical concepts within natural theology and in this way, natural philosophy and metaphysics were made broadly coextensive” (Schmidt-Biggemann 2001, 394, translation mine). For Hobbes, likewise, topics of traditional Aristotelian metaphysics, like