Abstract
In a brief passage at the beginning of Leviathan, Hobbes wrote about ‘artificial life’ by comparing the heart to a spring, the nerves to strings and the joints to wheels.1 From this comparison some commentators suppose that Hobbes regarded living creatures as automata and that from such a mechanistic model his commonwealth was constructed. Other commentators, perhaps the majority, believe that Hobbes’ mechanism is based on materialistic atomism of the Epicurean variety and that, accordingly, he was an advocate of egoistic individualism. When consideration is paid to the original cause of the motion of automata, commentators are widely divergent, some holding that Hobbes is an atheist and others, that Hobbes’ God is the same as Aristotle’s prime mover.2
...Love mankind. Walk in God’s ways. ‘All under law,’ quoth the sage...
Marcus Aurelius
To enter into these bonds is to be free
John Donne, Elegy XIX
The first draft of this paper was given at the Hobbes 1588–1988 Research Symposium, organized by Conal Condren and held at the University of New South Wales 9–10 July 1988. Thanks are due to Warren D. Anderson and Alan E. Shapiro for comments which have been taken into account when revising the paper. Upon completion of the final revision, a book was published that seemed to treat a theme common to my own: Herbert, G. B., Thomas Hobbes: The Unity of Scientific and Moral Wisdom, Vancouver (1989). Herbert’s interpretation, however, is very different from mine, for he makes Hobbes a precursor to Leibniz and Hegel. Since much of Herbert’s argument rests on his understanding of conatus, it is significant that he failed to consult the seminal work by Shapiro, A. E., ‘Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 11,143–72 (1973) (see n. 18 below), who clarifies Hobbes’ insight that a body and a pulse require different physical explanations.
NB: In those cases where I have had to rely on the Molesworth edition, Hobbes’ writings are identified first by short title and then by the abbreviations HLW and HEW. These abbreviations refer respectively to (1) Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae latine scripsit ed. William Molesworth, 5 Vols, London (1839–45) and (2) The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury; now first collected and edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart., 11 Vols, London (1839–45), reprinted, Scientia Aalen (1962).
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Notes
For the various positions of different ‘Hobbists’, see Sacksteder, W., Hobbes Studies (1879–1979): A Bibliography, Bowling Green, Ohio (1982).
For a recent study that assumes Hobbes’ deity is deus absconditus, see Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S., Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life . . . Princeton (1985).
Anderson, W. D., Matthew Arnold and The Classical Tradition, Ann Arbor (1965), p. 133. My reading of Hobbes has been influenced by Roger North (1651?–1734), a neo-Stoic critic of Hobbes.
See Kassler, J. C. ‘Man a la Mode: or, Re-interpreting the Universe from a Musical Point of View’, in Kassler, J. C. (ed.), Metaphor – A Musical Dimension, Sydney (1991) and sources cited there.
Lipsius helped to place Stoic ideas before a wide audience at the turn of the seventeenth century, according to Barker, P. and Goldstein, B. R., ‘Is Seventeenth Century Physics Indebted to the Stoics?’, Centaurus 27,148–64 (1984).
Gould, J. B., The Philosophy of Chrysippus, Leiden (1970), p. 152 and ‘The Stoic Conception of Fate’, Journal of the History of Ideas 35, 17–32 (1974).
For the changing relationship of political power, property and law, see Wilson, C, England’s Apprenticeship 1603–1763, London (1965), p. 9 et passim.
For the Stoic background, see Long, A. A., ‘Freedom and Determinism in the Stoic Theory of Human Action’, in Long, A. A. (ed.), Problems in Stoicism, London (1971), pp. 173–99.
Conception, in Hobbes’ sense, equals the Stoic apprehension, for which see Sandbach, F. H. ‘Phantasia Kataleptike’, in Long, A. A. (ed.), Problems in Stoicism, London (1971), pp. 9–21.
In 1657, the year of Harvey’s death, Cowley was created M.D. at Oxford, which was to become the leading centre for the study of physiology in the second half of the seventeenth century. Ralph Bathurst (1620–1704) was one of Hobbes’ contacts there. See Frank, R. G., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London (1980).
Shapiro, A. E., ‘Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 11,143–72 (1973).
Shapiro, A. E., ‘Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 11, pp. 181–8.
For the contact between the two men, see Brandt, F., Thomas Hobbes’ Mechanical Conception of Nature, Copenhagen and London (1928).
Body, HEW 1: pp. 426, 448, 474, 481, 504, 519. Hobbes first mentioned a medium on p. 215, where he distinguished between a fluid and a consistent medium. By the latter he denoted ‘a medium whose parts are by some power so consistent and cohering, that no part of the same will yield to the movent, unless the whole yield also’. And at p. 426 he indicated that there are degrees of coherence (consistency, tenacity); that is, a scale of degrees of rarity and density. This idea was present in the earlier Tractatus opticus, since, according to Shapiro, A. E., ‘Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 11. (n. 18), pp. 154–5, Hobbes was ‘the first to get the so-called “standard” velocity condition for a continuum theory of light, namely that the velocity of propagation is greater in a rarer than in a denser medium (e.g., it is greater in air than water)’. For Hobbes’ references to media, see Body, HEW 1: pp. 217, 321–4, 326–32, 334–5, 337–9, 341–2, 344, 374–83, 425–6, 509.
Body, HEW 1: pp. viii–ix, 407. For aspects of the development of Harvey’s thought, see Witteridge, G., William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood, London and New York (1971).
For the impact of Harvey’s ideas on the development of physiology after c. 1650, see Frank, R. G., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London (1980) (n. 13)
Davis, A. B., Circulation Physiology and Medical Chemistry in England 1650–1680, Lawrence, Kansas (1973)
Mendelsohn, E., Heat and Life: The Development of the Theory of Animal Heat, Cambridge, Mass. (1964).
See Harvey, W., The Anatomical Lectures (n. 39), p. 273 and Franklin, K. J. (tr.), The Circulation of the Blood: Two Anatomical Essays by William Harvey . . . , Oxford (1958), p. 60, hereafter referred to as Letters to Riolan.
For his treatment of muscles, see Harvey, W., De motv locali animalivm 1627 edited ... by G. Whitteridge, Cambridge (1959).
Harvey began to change his mind about the heart in the 1630s; see Harvey, W., Disputations touching the Generation of Animals translated ... by G. Whitteridge, Oxford (1981), 111 et passim., hereafter cited as De generatione animalium. Harvey commenced writing this manuscript in the 1630s and completed it by 1647–48. The Latin text was published in 1651, and an English translation appeared in 1653.
Frank, R. G., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London (1980) (n. 13), pp. 36–7, provides a tentative dating of the contents.
De generatione animalium, p. 239 (see also pp. 349–50, 351, 445–6, 452–3). The conception of the brain as an embryo is implicit in the terms ‘dura mater’ and ‘pia mater’ (derived from the Arabic), according to Onians, R. B., The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate . . . , 2d edn., Cambridge (1951), p. 111 n. 5.
See also Pagel, W., William Harvey’s Biological Ideas: Selected Aspects and Historical Background, Basel and New York (1967), pp. 270–6 et passim.
See Hahm, D. E. The Origins of Stoic Cosmology, Ohio State University Press (1977).
For Hobbes’ use of the terms ‘cohesion’, ‘coherence’ and ‘incoherence’, see Body, HEW 1: pp. 30, 57, 58, 215, 334, 388, 398, 399, 400, 445, 452, 476, 479; Human Nature, HEW 4: pp. 11, 14, 15, 25; De corpore politico: or the Elements of Law, HEW 4: pp. 155 et passim; Leviathan, pp. 90, 95, 602. Cognate terms include unity, agreement, concord, congruity, consistency, tenacity.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated ... by M. Staniforth, Harmondsworth (1974), p. 170.
In my opinion the chief text for Hobbes’ development of these principles is Galilei, G., Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuoue scienze ... , Leyden (1638), which contains a theory of music.
For the importance of this theory, see Cohen, H. F., Quantifying Music: The Science of Music at the First Stage of the Scientific Revolution, 1580–1650, Dordrecht (1984). The Stoics pictured tensional motion by analogy to water waves in a pool which expand in circles when a stone is thrown into the water.
According to Cohen H. F., Quantifying Music: The Science of Music at the First Stage of the Scientific Revolution, 1580–1650, Dordrecht (1984), this analogy was extremely fruitful for the development of the new science of musical acoustics.
Shapiro, A. E., ‘Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 11,143–72 (1973) (n. 18) suggests that Hobbes’ 1644 theory of light was modelled on musical acoustics.
For a summary of Hobbes’ epigenetic theory of knowledge, see ‘The Answer of Mr. Hobbes to Sr Will. D’Avenant’s Preface before Gondibert’, in D’Avenant, W., Gondibert: An Heroick Poem, reprinted by Scolar Press (1970), p. 78. The first edition was published at Paris in 1650; another edition appeared in London in 1651.
Hobbes defined habit in Body, HEW 1: pp. 348–50, where he also provided two examples, one of inanimate, the other of animate habit. In the inanimate example, he pointed out that a bow will become bent by the constant restraint of the string, an example that is reminiscent of the adage: ‘as the twig is bent, so is the tree’. In the animate example, he had recourse to a person learning music. Hobbes was not the first, nor the last, person to illustrate the transition of voluntary actions into automatic ones by recourse to the way in which a musician learns to finger a musical instrument. For other such illustrations, see Kassler, J. C., ‘Man — A Musical Instrument: Models of the Brain and Mental Functioning before the Computer’, History of Science 24, 59–92 (1984).
De corpore politico: or the Elements of Law, HEW 4: p. 110: ‘the habit of doing according to ... [the] laws of nature, that tend to our preservation, is that we call virtue; and the habit of doing the contrary, vice. As for example,... temperance is the habit by which we abstain from all things that tend to our destruction, intemperance the contrary vice ...’ This is the Stoic version of sophrosyne, for which see the masterly study by North, H., Sophrosyne: Self-knowledge and Self-restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, 1966). The Stoic proverb, that intemperance is the mother of passion, was quoted by Cicero, Tusculan disputations 4.9.22, who also pointed out that temperance quiets the appetites and causes them to obey right reason; that is, temperance defends the judgments of reason against the assaults of passion.
Tracy, T. J., Physiological Theory and the Doctrine of the Mean in Plato and Aristotle, Chicago (1969), p. 358.
The collection was published posthumously in 1668. I have used Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: pp. 377–459.
The collection was published posthumously in 1668. I have used Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: p. 377.
For a detailed study of Cowley’s work, see Rostvig, M.-S., The Happy Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal, 2d edn., 2 Vols, Oslo and New York (1962) 1st publd. (1954), who shows how the figure of the classical beatus vir., re-interpreted in terms which suited the religious sensibility of the age, was definitely established during the Civil War as a Royalist counterpart to the Puritan pilgrim/warrior.
Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), (n. 91), 2: p. 384.
Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: pp. 384–85. For the classical imagery related to sophrosyne, see North H., Sophrosyne: Self-knowledge and Self-restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, 1966). The Stoic proverb, that intemperance is the mother of passion, was quoted by Cicero, Tusculan disputations 4.9.22, who also pointed out that temperance quiets the appetites and causes them to obey right reason; that is, temperance defends the judgments of reason against the assaults of passion. (n. 86).
Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: p. 388.
Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: p. 383; for the source, also of Hobbes’ Leviathan, see the Book of Job 7:12, 41:1–34. Pan huper sebastus: pan(h)upersebastos, probably a nonceword and certainly Byzantine. It reflects the fact that the first teachers of Greek in England had come, as refugees from the Turks, from Constantinople (Anderson, W. D., personal communication).
Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: p. 459.
Cowley, A., The English Writings edited by A. R. Waller, 2 Vols, Cambridge (1905–1906), 2: p. 384. See also Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 161: ‘. . . the voluntary actions, and inclinations of all men, tend, not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life . . .’
Hobbes, T., Leviathan [1651] edited with an introduction by C. B. Macpherson, Harmondsworth (1968), pp. 129–30.
Cowley intended the Discourses as an explanation and defence of his retirement from public life after the Restoration. For evidence that his work embodies personal experience, see Rostvig, M.-S., The Happy Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal, 2d edn., 2 Vols, Oslo and New York (1962) 1st publd. (1954), who shows how the figure of the classical beatus vir., re-interpreted in terms which suited the religious sensibility of the age, was definitely established during the Civil War as a Royalist counterpart to the Puritan pilgrim/warrior (n. 93), 1: pp. 20–1, 35, 38, 212, et passim.
Hobbes used the term ‘light’ and ‘dark’ (the privation of light) as metaphors for knowledge and ignorance. According to Barker, B. R. and Goldstein, B. R., ‘Is Seventeenth Century Physics Indebted to the Stoics?’, Centaurus 27, (1984). , p. 159, this tradition derives from Augustine of Hippo, who ‘retained from the Stoicism of his pre-Christian period the metaphor of illumination as the causal mode connecting God and man’.
On this point, see Kieffer, J. S. (tr.), Galen’s Institutio Logica . . . , Baltimore (1964), pp. 1–18.
For the classical antecedents, see Anderson, W. D., Ethos and Education in Greek Music, Cambridge, Mass. (1966).
Hobbes defined study in Body, HEW 1: p. 395; but his method of study is only now coming to be understood, owing particularly to the careful readings of William Sacksteder. See, especially, Sacksteder, W., ‘Hobbes’ Logistica: Definition and Commentary’, Philosophy Research Archives 8, pp. 55–94, (1982).
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Kassler, J.C. (1991). The Paradox of Power: Hobbes and Stoic Naturalism. In: Gaukroger, S. (eds) The Uses of Antiquity. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3412-5_3
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