Abstract
Dimitrijević examines the political consequences of methodological naturalism, which presupposes the nonexistence of God’s will as the first principle of natural motion. Focusing on Hobbes’ application of mechanic interpretation of natural motion to the whole body politic and addressing a significant fragment of Plato’s Laws, the chapter draws attention to the fact that the atheistic peace, artificially produced by political art grounded in the mechanization of nature, does not mirror any idea of justice. Finally, Dimitrijevic searches for the way out of belligerent contraposition between convenience and justice by rethinking the concept of friendship and by making the tactical case for a moderate political atheism.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In the seventeenth century, when the idea of the state of nature was fully elaborated, it had three basic meanings: political, ethnographic, and theological. In the first sense, the state of nature is opposed to the political State, in the second one to the civility, culture, society, and in the third one to the state of grace. In this last meaning, the nature coincides with the state of original sin that only the baptism can remove. See Landucci (2004, 262).
References
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Aristotle. 2000. Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Auden, Wystan H. 2015. The Complete Works of W.H. Auden, Vol. 5: Prose 1963–1968. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Biral, Alessandro. 2016. Plato and the Political Knowledge. Trans. and with an Introduction by I. Dimitrijević. Saonara: il prato.
Esposito, Roberto. 2006. Communitas. Origine e destino della comunità. Nuova edizione ampliata. Torino: Einaudi.
Griffin, David Ray. 2000. Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflict. New York: State University of New York Press.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1998a. On the Citizen. ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1998b. Leviathan, ed. with an Introduction and Notes by John Charles Addison Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Landucci, Sergio. 2004. I filosofi e i selvaggi. Torino: Einaudi.
Lenoble, Robert. 1943. Mersenne ou la Naissance du mécanisme. Paris: J. Vrin.
Marin, Louis. 2001. On Representation. Trans. Catherine Porter. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mersenne, Marin. 1636. Harmonie universelle. Paris: Cramoisy.
Monod, Jacques. 1972. Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. New York: Vintage Books.
Plato. 1997. Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.
———. 2004. Gorgias. Trans. Walter Hamilton. London: Penguin.
Prodi, Paolo. 2016. Profezia, utopia, democrazia. In Occidente senza utopie, ed. Paolo Prodi and Massimo Cacciari, 11–59. Bologna: il Mulino.
Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen. 1993. Out of Revolution. Autobiography of Western Man, Abridged ed. Oxford/Providence: Berg Publishers.
Rossi, Paolo. 2002. I filosofi e le machine 1400–1700. Bologna: Feltrinelli.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dimitrijević, I. (2020). Beyond the Enmity: The Mechanization of Nature and the Moderate Political Atheism. In: Wróbel, S., Skonieczny, K. (eds) Atheism Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34368-2_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34368-2_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34367-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34368-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)