Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Article: Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism
/in Member Publications, New Publications /by Publication OfficerPatricia Springborg: ‘Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 24 (2016).
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?
First Biennial Conference of the European Hobbes Society
/in Events, Features, General, Member News /by Publication Officer“Of all Discourse, governed by desire of Knowledge, there is at last an End,
either by attaining, or by giving over. And in the chain of Discourse,
wheresoever it be interrupted, there is an End for that time.”
Hobbes, Leviathan, vii.1
From 20-22 Sept 2016, 25 scholars, based in 10 different countries, came together in the cosy college town of Leuven, Belgium, for the first biennial conference of the European Hobbes Society. It was a joy to see quite a few new faces amidst many familiar ones. With much judgment and wit, and some fancy, we discussed ten new papers, covering a range of aspects of Hobbes’s thought. The two splendid keynote speeches were delivered by Deborah Baumgold and S.A. Lloyd. While our academic discussions have not quite ended, at the conference, a resolute and final sentence was cast on our constitution, which was judiciously adopted by universal acclaim.
The full program can be found here.
We are very grateful to the magnanimous Fritz Thyssen Stiftung for having made possible this conference. Thanks also goes out to all participants, both for the fine social and intellectual virtues which they have brought to bear on the event, and for helping us relocate the conference to KU Leuven at short notice.
As the title of the conference boldly announced, we aspire to organise a larger conference every two years. We look forward to setting up smaller workshops, panels, and lectures series in the meantime, and we much encourage and support you to do the same. Our dialogue has not concluded, it has merely been interrupted.
Article: Democracy and the Body Politic from Aristotle to Hobbes
/in Member Publications, New Publications /by Publication OfficerSophie Smith: ‘Democracy and the Body Politic from Aristotle to Hobbes’, Political Theory, Published online: September 8, 2016 (doi: 10.1177/0090591716649984)
Abstract: The conventional view of Hobbes’s commonwealth is that it was inspired by contemporary theories of tyranny. This article explores the idea that a paradigm for Hobbes’s state could in fact be found in early modern readings of Aristotle on democracy, as found in Book Three of the Politics. It argues that by the late sixteenth century, these meditations on the democratic body politic had developed claims about unity, mythology, and personation that would become central to Hobbes’s own theory of the commonwealth. Tracing the history of commentary on the relevant passages in Aristotle reveals new perspectives not only on the political theories of both Aristotle and Hobbes but also introduces modern readers to the richness of early modern commentaries on classical political texts. The article ends with some thoughts on why attention to traditions of commentary might be valuable for political theorists today.
New book: Hobbes and the Artifice of Eternity
/in Member Publications, New Publications /by Publication OfficerChristopher Scott McClure, Hobbes and the Artifice of Eternity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
About this book: Thomas Hobbes argues that the fear of violent death is the most reliable passion on which to found political society. His role in shaping the contemporary view of religion and honor in the West is pivotal, yet his ideas are famously riddled with contradictions. In this breakthrough study, McClure finds evidence that Hobbes’ apparent inconsistencies are intentional, part of a sophisticated rhetorical strategy meant to make man more afraid of death than he naturally is. Hobbes subtly undermined two of the most powerful manifestations of man’s desire for immortality: the religious belief in an afterlife and the secular desire for eternal fame through honor. McClure argues that Hobbes purposefully stirred up controversy, provoking his adversaries into attacking him and unwittingly spreading his message. This study will appeal to scholars of Hobbes, political theorists, historians of early modern political thought and anyone interested in the genesis of modern Western attitudes toward mortality.
Article: The Monstrosity of Matter in Motion: Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes’s Political Epistemology
/in New Publications /by Publication OfficerAndrea Bardin: ‘The Monstrosity of Matter in Motion: Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes’s Political Epistemology’, Philosophy Today, 60,1 (2016).
Abstract: Along the path opened by Galileo’s mechanics, early modern mechanical philosophy provided the metaphysical framework in which ‘matter in motion’ underwent a process of reduction to mathematical description and to physical explanation. The struggle against the monstrous contingency of matter in motion generated epistemological monsters in the domains of both the natural and civil science. In natural philosophy Descartes’s institution of Reason as a disembodied subject dominated the whole process. In political theory it was Hobbes who opposed the artificial unity of the body politic to the monstrous multiplicity of the multitude. Through a parallel analysis of the basic structure of Descartes’s and Hobbes’s enterprises, this article explains in which sense Hobbes’s peculiar form of materialism is in fact to be considered a surreptitious reduction of materialism to its ideological counterpart, Cartesian dualism, and to its implicit political-pedagogical project.
Article: Hobbes’s Paradoxical Toleration: Inter regentes tolerantia, tolerans intolerantia inter plebem
/in New Publications /by Publication OfficerNicholas Higgins: ‘Hobbes’s Paradoxical Toleration: Inter regentes tolerantia, tolerans intolerantia inter plebes‘, Politics and Religion, 9,1 (2016).
Abstract: The source of Hobbes’s liberal view of toleration is a recognized paradox within his absolutist political sovereign. This article argues that Hobbes’s view of toleration is consistent with his overall political theory based upon his broader religious teaching, which leads to an epistemological skepticism on the veracity of religion, and as such among rulers toleration is not only allowed, but necessary. Further, this article argues that the inability of the sovereign to punish the private conscience of the citizen derives from natural right and the inherent limitation of law. Finally, this article examines Hobbes’s use of religious argumentation to support the inability of a believer to challenge or deviate from the religious commands of the sovereign.