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Mixing Bodily Fluids: Hobbes’s Stoic God

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Abstract

The pantheon of seventeenth-century European philosophy includes some remarkably heterodox deities, perhaps most famously Spinoza’s deus-sive-natura. As in ethics and natural philosophy, early modern philosophical theology drew inspiration from classical sources outside the mainstream of Christianized Aristotelianism, such as the highly immanentist, naturalistic theology of Greek and Roman Stoicism. While the Stoic background to Spinoza’s pantheist God has been more thoroughly explored, I maintain that Hobbes’s corporeal God is the true modern heir to the Stoic theology. The Stoic and Hobbesian gods are necessitarian, entirely corporeal, and thoroughly intermixed with ordinary bodies, while also supremely intelligent, providential, and good. And both gods serve as the ultimate source of diversity and change in a material world divested of Aristotelian forms and causes. Unfortunately, scholars on both sides of the long debate about the sincerity of Hobbes’s theism have not taken very seriously his late articulation of a corporeal theology. One probable reason for this dismissive attitude is a lack of thorough investigation of the historical precedents for such an unusual godhead available to Hobbes. The first part of this article attempts to establish a close congruence between the Stoic and Hobbesian gods. The second part traces the likely sources for Hobbes’s Stoic theology in his intellectual context.

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Notes

  1. See the recent collection of Brooke and Maclean 2005.

  2. For discussion, see Osler 1991, Miller and Inwood 2003. Epicureanism (or Democriteanism) was, of course, another materialist school of pagan philosophy that found favor in the seventeenth century, its greatest champions being Gassendi 1964, on the continent, and Charleton 1654, in England. For good recent discussion, see Lennon 1993, Lüthy 2000, and Wilson 2008. There are a number of reasons Stoicism would be more appealing to Hobbes. Most importantly, he rejected the Epicurean metaphysics of atoms and the void. Like Descartes and the Stoics, he took the world to be a material plenum with parts divisible ad infinitum. Furthermore, the immanent, pantheistic God of the Stoics suited his philosophical program much better than the removed, anthropomorphic gods of the Epicureans. Modern Epicureans like Gassendi were compelled to partly repudiate and/or ‘Christianize’ epicurean theology (Johnson 2003); but, as we will see below, Hobbes was happy to embrace the Stoic god in more or less pristine form. Nevertheless, a compelling case for Hobbes’s theology as Epicurean has recently been made by Springborg 2012.

  3. Kristeller 1984; James 1993; Lagrée 1994; Brooke 2006.

  4. The Stoic aspect of Hobbes’s corporeal theology is mentioned, but only in passing, by Martinich 2007, 379, and Weber 2009, 206–7. Kassler also notes the Stoic character of Hobbes’s God—correctly noting that ‘if Hobbes is understood as a neo-Stoic then the problematical nature of Hobbes’ God quickly comes into focus’ (1991, 54) —but goes on to discuss fatalism and human responsibility rather than theology per se.

  5. For a detailed account and defense of the role of Hobbes’s God in his natural philosophy, see Gorham 2013; cf. Foisneau 2004, Springborg 2012.

  6. See, for example, Descartes, Third Meditation, CSM 2, 23; Aquinas Summa Theologica Part I, Q. 12, art. 7. For good recent discussions of divine incomprehensibility in Hobbes, see Martinich 1992, Chap. 7, Duncan 2005 and Springborg 2012.

  7. ‘We have no idea or image corresponding to the sacred name of God.’ Third Set of Objections, CSM 2 127. See also: De Motu IV.3, 54; Leviathan IV, xlv, 15, C 444.

  8. De Corpore 4.26.1, EW i 412, OL i 336. See also Leviathan III, xxxi, 20, C 239 and IV, xlv, 15, C 444.

  9. Ibid. See also De Motu, II.8, 38 (infinite size) and XXVIII.9, 347 (infinite duration).

  10. Leviathan I, iv, 21, C 20. See also Elements of Law I.XI, 42; EW iv, 61. Thus, sincere theists ‘choose rather to confess he is incomprehensible, and above their understanding, than define his nature by spirit incorporeal, and then confess their definition to be unintelligible’ (Leviathan I, xii, 7, C 65).

  11. EW iv, 384.

  12. ‘Affirmat quidem Deus esse Corpus’ (Leviathan, Appendix iii, C 540).

  13. For a detailed account of the long, multi-fronted ‘quarrel’ between Hobbes and Bramhall, see Jackson 2007.

  14. WB iv, 525.

  15. EW iv, 313. Hobbes endorses a corporeal God in at least two other places: An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy, EW iv, 398; Considerations Upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners and Religion of Thomas Hobbes, EW iv, 427. The corporeal God doctrine might have been expounded privately much earlier. Descartes’ 1641 letter to Mersenne dismisses Hobbes’s mention (in a lost letter to Descartes) of ‘the corporeal soul and God’ (anima & Deo corporeis). AT 3, 287. See Curley 1995 and Springborg 2012.

  16. Curley 1992, Jesseph 2002, Strauss 1952, 76.

  17. Martinich 1992, 198. Glover 1965, 146; Stephen 1904.

  18. Oakeshott 1975, Hepburn 1972, Geach 1993; Foisneau 2000, 2004; Wiley 1967, Berman 1988; Tuck 1992.

  19. Fortunately, a number of authors have very recently presented detailed discussions of the corporeal God doctrine, but they do not investigate in much detail its likely sources. Lupoli 1999, Leijenhorst 2004; Weber 2009; Ross 2009. Springborg 2012 is the exception; she argues forcefully for an Epicurean interpretation (but see note 2 above).

  20. See recently, for example, Tuck 1993, Burchell 1999, Leira 2008, and Brooke 2012.

  21. See, for example, Hobbes, Leviathan I, ix, C 47–9; Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers Bk. 7, 39–41, LS 158.

  22. Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers Bk. 7, 134, LS 268–9, 275. See also Alexander of Aphrodisias’ similar complaint against the Stoics for ‘claiming the existence of two universal principles, matter and God, of which the latter is active and the former passive; and with saying that God is mixed with matter and pervades the whole of it, in this way shaping and forming it and creating the universe’ (On Mixture XI, 224–5, T 139, LS 273, 275).

  23. EW iv, 310.

  24. Hobbes Leviathan IV. xlvi, 15, C 459. Alexander, On Aristotle’s Topics, 301, 19–24, LS 162; Plotinus Enneads 2.4.1, IG 174. Beyond the universe, but not within, the Stoics admitted a really existing infinite void or empty space. See Galen, On Incorporeal Qualities, 19, 464, LS 294. But Hobbes insists that space is only ‘real,’ rather than ‘imaginary,’ when it corresponds to the magnitude of body. De Corpore 2.8.4; OL i, 93; EW iv, 105.

  25. Hobbes, De Corpore 2.8.4; OL i, 105; EW i, 118. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 7, 150, IG 137; Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors 9, 75–6, LS 269; Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions, 1053f, LS 284.

  26. Alexander, on Mixture III, 216, 14–20, T 115, LS 290.

  27. On pneuma in Greek physics and medicine, see Sambursky 1959, Long 1974, 152–8, Todd 1978, Baltzly 2003, 24–26. On the widespread appeal to pneuma-like subtle fluids and ethers in seventeenth-century natural philosophy, see Barker and Goldstein 1984, Lupoli 1999, 2006, and Springborg 2012.

  28. De Corpore 4.26.3; OL i, 340; EW i, 417.

  29. EW iv, 309.

  30. Ibid. See also Leviathan III, xxxiv, 3, C 242. So it is ironic that the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, in his decidedly anti-Hobbesian tome, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), diagnoses atheists as suffering from ‘pneumatophobia’: ‘an irrational but desperate abhorrence from spirits or incorporeal substances’ (TIS Vol. I, Bk. 1, Chap. xxx, 200). Cudworth goes on to concede that ‘all corporealists are not to be accounted atheists.’ Some ‘Corporeal Theists’ hold, for example, that ‘God to be a certain subtle and ethereal, but intellectual, matter pervading it [the world] as a soul. He mentions the Stoics as holding such a view, who are then derided not as atheists but rather ‘ignorant, unskilled and childish theists’ (TIS I, Vol. I, Bk. i, Chap. xxx, 202). Cudworth didn’t seem to realize Hobbes himself is a corporeal theist in this sense. For a more judicious, though still unsympathetic, contemporaneous treatment of Hobbes’s corporeal God doctrine, see Tenison 1670, 10–38. On the anti-Hobbesian aims of TIS, see Passmore 1951, Mintz 1962, and Sellars 2011.

  31. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 7, 135–6, 141, LS 275–6.

  32. Leviathan III, xxxiv, 5, C 263; III, xxxviii, 5, C 305.

  33. De Corpore 2.8.20; OL i, 103; EW i, 116

  34. De Motu, XXVIII.9, 337–47.

  35. De Corpore 4.26.1; OL i, 336; EW i, 412. Furthermore, since Hobbes’s corporeal God is actually infinite, he can avoid Aristotle’s objections to a self-moving, material first mover that ‘a finite thing cannot impart to anything an infinite motion’ and that ‘in no case is it possible for an infinite force to reside in a finite magnitude’ (Physics VIII, 10, 266a23-25; Barnes 1, 444). Thanks to a referee for emphasizing this point. On the sense in which Hobbes’s God is ‘self-moving,’ see further Gorham 2013, 16.

  36. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods I, 39, LS 323.

  37. See further Gould 1970, 155–6.

  38. Lives of the Philosophers 7, 137–8, IG 133, LS 270.

  39. Against Celsus, 4.14, LS 276.

  40. Baltzly argues that for the Stoics the matter on which God operates to produce the elements, animals, etc., is not really distinct from God, before or after conflagration. He points out, for example, that for the Stoics individuation depends on qualitative difference, but ‘matter qua matter has no qualities’ (Baltzly 2003, 10). This seems to me hard to square with the passages just cited, not to mention the Stoic obsession with the metaphysics of mixing (see Mixing). But even if Baltzly is right, the parallel with Hobbes is un-weakened since he also considers matter apart from all particular bodies and their accidents a ‘mere name’ (De Corpore 2.8.4; OL i, 105; EW i, 118).

  41. Leviathan II, xxxi, 15, C 259. It is worth noting, as Curly does (C 239 n8), that the explicit censure against those ‘who said the world (or the soul of the world) was God’ is dropped from the 1668 Latin edition (OL iii, 259). See also note 60 below.

  42. EW iv, 349. I have been tacitly assuming pantheism to be the view that God is identical to the world. One might prefer, on philosophical and historical grounds, a weaker conception requiring only that everything that exists makes up a unity in such a way that this unity is rightly considered divine. On such a conception, Stoicism is rightly considered a form of pantheism, as Baltzly (2003) argues. But then Hobbes is also a pantheist, in virtue of his omnipotent, all-pervasive corporeal God, and in spite of his denial that the world simply is God.

  43. EW iv, 310.

  44. Leviathan III, xxiv, 2, C 261.

  45. De Corpore 2.11.2; OL i, 118; EW i, 133.

  46. EW iv, 309.

  47. For discussion, see Sambursky 1959, Chap. 1.3 and especially Sorabji 1988 Chaps. 5–7.

  48. Generation and Corruption 1, 10; 328a17; Barnes 1, 537.

  49. Physics 4, 6. 213b5-12; Barnes 1, 363.

  50. Generation and Corruption, 1, 10; 328a28; Barnes 1, 537.

  51. Alexander , Of Mixture, III-IV, 217, LS 290–91, T 117–19. See also VI, 220; T 125. On the literal blending of the Stoic God with the world, see Of Mixture, XI, 224, 226; T 139, 143.

  52. Ibid.

  53. See Frede 2002, Baltzly 2003, 14–20. On the theory of providence according to the sixteenth-century Neo-Stoic Justis Lipsius, also touching on Hobbes and Spinoza, see Lagrée 1999.

  54. Lives of the Philosophers 7, 147, LS 323. See also Plutarch, On Common Conceptions 175E, LS 327.

  55. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, I, 39, LS 323. See also Plutarch, On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1052 C-D, LS 275 and Origen, Against Celsus 4.14, LS 276.

  56. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, II, 37–9, LS 326, IG 148.

  57. Hymn to Zeus, LS 326–7, IG 149–50.

  58. The providentialism of Stoic theology is considered one of its crucial differences from Epicureanism in both the classical and modern versions of these systems. Thus, Plutarch observes that the Stoics ‘are unceasingly busy in crying woe against Epicurus for ruining the preconception of the gods by abolishing providence’ (On Common Conceptions 1075, LS 327). This was a major embarrassment for modern Epicureans, such as Gassendi and Charleton (see Johnson 2003).

  59. EW iv, 310.

  60. In the English Leviathan Hobbes bluntly declares that ‘God has no ends’ and in the same section that it is ‘unworthy’ of God to say the world is his soul (Leviathan II, xxxi, 13, 15, C 239). However, both remarks are excised from the later Latin edition. On the first remark, he makes clear in the revision that God specifically has no interest in being worshipped by us, leaving it open whether he may have other ends (OL iii 259, C 239 n7,8).

  61. Leviathan I xi, 25, C 62. Compare Tertullian: ‘All portions of creation attest the excellence of the creator’ (Ad Marcion, I, xiv; RD 281).

  62. De Corpore 4.27.1; OL i, 364; EW i, 447. On such ‘teleological’ reasoning in Hobbes, see Brown 1962, 341–2.

  63. EW iv, 313.

  64. See Leviathan I, i–vi.

  65. Leviathan II, xxxi, 25–7; C 240. See also EW v, 14: ‘that which we call design, which is reasoning, and thought after thought, cannot be properly attributed to God.’ Hobbes is not denying that God acts by will, and for a purpose, but only that he deliberates about how to achieve future ends. Thus, in the same paragraph he asserts that ‘whatsoever is done comes into God’s mind, that is into his knowledge, which implies a certainty of the future action, and that certainty an antecedent purpose of God to bring it to pass’ (Ibid.). God has purposes but never needs to think through (design) how to achieve them. The failure to appreciate this dis-analogy leads Cudworth, after quoting this chapter of Leviathan, to charge that Hobbes ‘must needs deny the first principle of all things to be any knowing, understanding nature’ (TIS III, V, i, 60). Cudworth also attributes to the Stoics, at least the later ones, a ‘Cosmic-Plastic’ kind of atheism (Cudworth thinks there are four kinds) for holding that the whole universe is ‘a body endowed with one plastic or spermatic nature, branching out the whole, orderly and methodically, but without any understanding or sense’ (TIS I, iii, xxvi, 194). For discussion of Cudworth on the Stoic theology, see Giglioni 2008 and Sellars 2011.

  66. ‘Questions Concerning Liberty,’ Sect. 38; EW v, 450.

  67. EW iv, 384.

  68. Leviathan I, vi, 7, C 28.

  69. Stobaeus L 394.

  70. Baltzly 2003, 18.

  71. Ibid. 18–19.

  72. EW viii and x.

  73. Leviathan IV, xlvi, 7–8, C 455–6.

  74. Leviathan I, v, 7, C 24; I, xvi, 3, C 101; II, xxiv, 5, C 160; II, xxviii, 21, C 207, etc.

  75. Leviathan, II, xxvii, 21, C 197.

  76. Leviathan, Appendix i, 24, C 503. See also Elements of Law II.vi.9, 121.

  77. See Barker and Goldstein 1984, Lagrée 1994, Long 2003, and Brooke 2012.

  78. It is not surprising that Cavendish objected to Hobbes’s principle that ‘when a thing lies still it will lie still forever’ (L I, ii, 1; cf. De Corpore 2.8.19; OL i, 102; EW i, 115) because it seems to make self-motion impossible (Cavendish 1664, 21). Hobbes’s corporeal God doctrine was not yet formulated; indeed, I am suggesting that Cavendish and her Stoic circle pushed Hobbes towards accepting self-motion, at least in the special case of God.

  79. O’Neill, ‘Introduction’ to Cavendish 2001, xxi. On Cavendish’s concerns viz. the foundations of natural philosophy, see Clucas 1994, James 1999, Detlefson 2006, and Sarasohn 2010.

  80. While in exile, the Cavendishes occupied the former residence of Peter Paul Rubens, who was sympathetic to Stoicism and whose brother, Philip, was a follower of Lipsius. See O’Neill, ‘Introduction’ to Cavendish 2001, xi–xiv. On the Rubens’ involvement in the Neo-Stoic circle at Antwerp, see Morford 1991.

  81. EW viii, xxxii.

  82. PS I, 8, 16. See also II, 4, 78.

  83. PS I, 9, 20. The dominant view among the Stoics, that anything which can truly act is corporeal, he concedes, is ‘ridiculous on its face’ (in fronte haec ridicula) from a Christian point of view and unworthy to be ‘taught nor heard in our schools’ (in nostris scholis non audita) PS II, 4, 75–8. For discussion of Lipsius’ version of stoic physics, see Saunders 1955, Chap. Iv, and Lagrée 1994, ‘Introduction.’

  84. De Anima v, RD 185. ‘The soul certainly sympathizes with the body, and shares in its pain, whenever it is injured by bruises, and wounds, and sores: the body, too, suffers with the soul, and is united with it (whenever it is afflicted with anxiety, distress, or love) in the loss of vigour which its companion sustains, whose shame and fear it testifies by its own blushes and paleness. The soul, therefore, is (proved to be) corporeal from this inter-communion of susceptibility.’ See also De Anima vii, RD 187.

  85. EW iv, 429. Tertullian, de Carne Christi xi, RD 531. See also Ad Hermogenes xxxvi; RD 498; Cf. Ad Marcion V, xv; RD 463.

  86. Leviathan, Appendix, iii, C 540; EW iv, 307, 383; EW iv, 398.

  87. Leviathan, Appendix, iii, C 540.

  88. Quis enim negabit deum corpus esse, etsi deus spiritus est? Spiritus enim corpus sui generis in sua effigie. Ad Praxeas vii, RD 602. As with finite souls, Tertullian emphasizes the Stoic objection to dualism that an incorporeal substance cannot act on body: ‘How could He who is empty have made things which are solid, and He who is void have made things which are full, and He who is incorporeal have made things which have body?’ (Ibid.). In the preceding chapters, the corporeal God’s activity in designing, creating and sustaining the world is said to embody reason, logos, intelligence, and wisdom. Ad Praxeas v, vi, RD, 600–1. See Evans 1948, pp. 234–7, for discussion of the Stoic background to these texts. On Hobbes’s appeal to these texts in support of materialism, see Riverso 1991, 92.

  89. Hobbes hints at a broader reading of Tertullian in Answer to Bramhill, mentioning that De Carne Christi is ‘now extant among his other works’ (EW iv, 307).

  90. Ad Hermogenes xliv; RD 501.

  91. ‘Discourse of Liberty and Necessity,’ Sect. xviii. Bramhall, WB iv, 116. See also ‘Defence of True Liberty,’ WB iv, 119. In his Introduction to the defence or ‘vindication,’ Bramhall labels Hobbes’s position ‘sublimated stoicism’ (EW iv, 20). Kassler (1999, 54) incorrectly suggests that it was Hobbes who originally invoked and drew upon Lipsius in the debate with Bramhall.

  92. EW iv, 260–1; See also EW v, 244–5.

  93. See Hobbes EW v, 329–30.

  94. WB iv, 426.

  95. For examples of both sorts of account, see the references in notes 16–18 above.

Abbreviations

OL:

Thomas Hobbes. Opera philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia. 5 vols. Edited by W. Molesworth (London, 1845). Citation by volume and page number.

EW:

Thomas Hobbes. English Works. 11 vols., edited by William Molesworth (London, 1839–1845). Citation by volume and page number.

De Motu:

Thomas Hobbes. Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White. Edited by J. Jaquot and H. Jones (Paris: Vrin, 1973). Citation by Chapter, section, and page number of Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined, edited by. H. Jones (London: Bradford University Press, 1976).

De Corpore:

Thomas Hobbes. Elementorum Philosophiae, Sectio Prima: De Corpore, edited by Karl Schuhmann (Paris: Vrin, 1999). Cited by part, chapter, section; OL volume and page number; EW volume and page number.

C:

Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan with Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668. Edited by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994). Citation by part, chapter, paragraph number and Curley’s edition page number.

Elements of Law:

Thomas Hobbes. Elements of Law, edited by F. Tönnies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928). Citation by part, chapter, paragraph and page number.

Answer to Bramhall:

Thomas Hobbes. An Answer to a Book Published by Dr. Bramhall. (London, 1682). Cited by EW volume and page number.

WB:

John Bramhall. Works of John Bramhall. Four Volumes (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1842–4)

LS:

The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translation of the Principles Sources with Philosophical Commentary. Edited by A.A. Long and D.N Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Cited by page number.

IG:

Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings. 2nd. Edition. Edited by B. Inwood and L.P. Gerson. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997). Cited by page number.

T:

Robert C. Todd. Alexander of Aphrodisias on Stoic Physics: A Study of the De Mixtione with Preliminary Essays, Text, Translation and Commentary. (Leiden: Brill, 1976). Cited by page number.

RD:

The Anti-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III: Tertullian. Edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Buffalo: The Christian Library, 1885). Cited by page number.

PS:

Justis Lipsius. Physiologiae Stoicurm libre tres. (Antwerp, 1604) Cited by book, chapter and page number.

Barnes:

Complete Works of Aristotle. 2. Vols. Edited by J. Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). Cited by volume and page number.

CSM:

René Descartes. Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 2 vols. Edited by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985)

AT:

René Descartes. Oeuvres de Descartes. 11 Vols. Edited by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1976). Citation by volume and pager number.

TIS:

Ralph Cudworth. True Intellectual System of the Universe. Three Volumes. (London: Thomas Tegg, 1845). Cited by volume, book, chapter and page number.

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    Geoffrey Gorham

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Gorham, G. Mixing Bodily Fluids: Hobbes’s Stoic God. SOPHIA 53, 33–49 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-013-0377-x

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