Abstract
The paper uses the controversy about liberty between the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and Archbishop John Bramhall to illustrate the conflict between the rhetoric of philosophy and the rhetoric of religion. The first part of the paper introduces initial definitions of these two types of rhetoric. The following three parts deal with three distinct parts of the controversy, as Hobbes and Bramhall define them: to the reader, arguments from scripture, and arguments from reason. The fact that Hobbes and Bramhall themselves divide the arguments into those from scripture and those from reason makes this controversy a good illustration of the conflict between rhetoric of philosophy and rhetoric of religion.
The rhetorical perspective exposes the epistemological conflict between philosophy and religion that the philosophical discourse often blurs. It is a conflict that concerns the basic attitude of an individual towards the truth as a believer or as a thinker. The rhetoric of philosophy assumes that human understanding defines the truth and therefore gives priority to arguments from reason as they address that understanding. The rhetoric of religion assumes that truth is beyond human understanding and can only be revealed by faith and therefore gives priority to arguments from scripture as they address human faith. The reader may join the opponents in asking whether human liberty is a philosophical issue and therefore subject to arguments from reason or a theological one, subject to arguments from scripture.
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Notes
It began in 1645 during a meeting at the Marquess of Newcastle’s house in Paris and went on until 1658 in books where Hobbes and Bramhall responded to each other’s claims (Hobbes et al. 1999, ix-x).
For a more comprehensive discussion, see my book The rhetoric of philosophy (Frogel 2005)
Damrosch argues that Hobbes was more probably an idiosyncratic believer than a hidden atheist (Damrosch 1979, 340). Taylor argues that he was religious by thought but not in his heart and adds that “it is not very different from that of many worthy persons of to-day who would be sincerely shocked if they were to be accused of atheism.“ (Taylor 1938, 422). These awkward views about Hobbes’s faith indicate the difficulty in determining whether he was a believer or not, but also that such questions remain part of modern philosophical discourse.
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Fogel, S. Bramhall Versus Hobbes: The Rhetoric of Religion vs. the Rhetoric of Philosophy. Argumentation 36, 481–491 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-022-09582-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-022-09582-6