These essays are the fruit of many years' research by one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars. Noel Malcolm offers not only succinct introductions to Hobbes 's life and thought, but also path-breaking studies of many different aspects of his political philosophy, his scientific and religious theories, his relations with his contemporaries, the sources of his ideas, the printing history of his works, and his influence on European thought.

Noel Malcolm, one of the world's leading experts on Thomas Hobbes, presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of aspects of the life and work of this giant of early modern thought. Malcolm offers a succinct introduction to Hobbes's life and thought, as a foundation for his discussion of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic world-view, and his subversive Biblical criticism. Several of the essays (...) pay special attention to the European dimensions of Hobbes's life, his sources and his influence; the longest surveys the entire European reception of his work from the 1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking new discoveries about Hobbes's life, his manuscripts, and the printing history of his works. Aspects of Hobbes will be essential reading not only for Hobbes specialists, but also for all those interested in seventeenth-century intellectual history more generally, both British and European. (shrink)

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes : a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state".

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most important philosophical texts in the English language, and one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. This is the first critical edition based on a full study of the manuscript and printing history. It is also the first edition to place the English text side by side with Hobbes's later Latin version of it, complete with a set of notes in which the many passages that differ in the Latin (...) are translated into English. So, for the first time, readers of Leviathan will be able to see clearly every stage of the development of the text. Both texts are fully annotated with explanatory notes. The editor's Introduction, which takes up the whole of the first volume, gives a path-breaking account of the work's context, sources, and textual history. This definitive edition will set the study of Hobbes's masterwork on a new basis. (shrink)

Noel Malcolm presents his long-awaited critical edition of one of the most important philosophical works ever written. Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) is a classic of political theory and of English prose, studied at every university in the world. The English and Latin versions of the text are fully annotated, with a book-length introduction.

_ Source: _Volume 28, Issue 2, pp 77 - 102 Hobbes has long been associated with the sexual ‘libertinism’ of the Restoration period. The connections that are commonly made are crude, misrepresenting his philosophy; moreover, the attitude to sexual matters expressed in many of his published works was quite puritanical. Yet there are elements of his thought that could be taken to support a libertine agenda: hostility to Augustinian teaching on lust and chastity; the idea that marriage laws are merely (...) human; a recognition of self-regarding elements in sexual psychology; and the idea that desires in themselves are not sins. On this last point, however, Hobbes’s distinction between desires and intentions to act, combined with his account of the role of imagination in desire, does make it possible to attribute to him a distinctly non-libertine theory of how sexual behaviour is modified in civil society. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most important philosophical texts in the English language, and one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. This Introduction accompanies Noel Malcolm's long-awaited critical edition, and gives a path-breaking account of the work's context, sources, and textual history.

This is the first critical edition of Hobbes's Leviathan based on a full study of the manuscript and printing history, and the first to place the English text alongside Hobbes's later Latin version of it. Both texts are fully annotated with explanatory notes. Noel Malcolm's definitive edition sets the study of Hobbes's masterwork on a new basis.

Wenig ist bekannt über Leibniz' Reise 1676 nach Holland, und der wichtigste Teil dieser Reise -sein Treffen mit Spinoza im Haag -bleibt ziemlich im Dunkeln. Ein erst kürzlich veröffentlichter Brief von Leibniz an Oldenburg, verfasst kurz nach seinem Besuch bei Spinoza, liefert nicht nur mehr Information über Leibniz' Aufenthalt in Holland (und seiner vorrangegangenen Reise nach England), sondern er wirft auch etwas mehr Licht auf seine Haltung zu Spinoza in dieser Zeit. In diesem Aufsatz wird dargelegt, wie Leibniz' Versäumnis, einen (...) Brief von Oldenburg an Spinoza zu übermitteln, wahrscheinlich verursacht wurde durch einige Bemerkungen in diesem Brief, die Leibniz als einen Sympathisanten der Philosophie Spinozas darstellten. Es wird weiterhin diskutiert, welcher Art diese Sympathien hätten sein können und worin das Widerstreben auf Leibniz' Seite bestand, als Anhänger Spinozas erkannt zu werden. (shrink)

In 1677-8 Robert Boyle fell victim to a French confidence trickster, Georges Pierre des Clozets, who claimed to belong to a secret society of alchemists, 'the Asterism'; the leader of the Asterism was described as the 'Patriarch of Antioch', resident in Constantinople. New evidence shows that Georges Pierre had contrived to publish two short articles about this 'Patriarch' in a Dutch newspaper, and that one of these was given to Boyle to corroborate Pierre's claims. These articles provide further information about (...) the nature of Pierre's invention. Most importantly, they show that his 'Patriarch of Antioch' was modelled on, and explicitly connected to, a contemporary alchemist in whom Boyle already had an interest: Francesco Giuseppe Borri. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes is one of the most important figures in the history of European thought. Although interest in his life and work has grown enomrously in recent years, this is the first complete edition of his correspondence. The texts of the letters are richly supplemented with explanatory notes and full biographical and bibliographical information. This landmark publication sheds new light in abundance on the intellectual life of a major thinker.

Thomas Hobbes is one of the most important figures in the history of European thought. Although interest in his life and work has grown enomrously in recent years, this is the first complete edition of his correspondence. The texts of the letters are richly supplemented with explanatory notes and full biographical and bibliographical information. This landmark publication sheds new light in abundance on the intellectual life of a major thinker.

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most important philosophical texts in the English language, and one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. This is the first critical edition based on a full study of the manuscript and printing history. It is also the first edition to place the English text side by side with Hobbes's later Latin version of it, complete with a set of notes in which the many passages that differ in the Latin (...) are translated into English. So, for the first time, readers of Leviathan will be able to see clearly every stage of the development of the text. Both texts are fully annotated with explanatory notes. The editor's Introduction, which takes up the whole of the first volume, gives a path-breaking account of the work's context, sources, and textual history. This definitive edition will set the study of Hobbes's masterwork on a new basis. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most important philosophical texts in the English language, and one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. This is the first critical edition based on a full study of the manuscript and printing history. It is also the first edition to place the English text side by side with Hobbes's later Latin version of it, complete with a set of notes in which the many passages that differ in the Latin (...) are translated into English. So, for the first time, readers of Leviathan will be able to see clearly every stage of the development of the text. Both texts are fully annotated with explanatory notes. The editor's Introduction, which takes up the whole of the first volume, gives a path-breaking account of the work's context, sources, and textual history. This definitive edition will set the study of Hobbes's masterwork on a new basis. (shrink)

In a previous study the author proposed that the second edition of Leviathan arose from an abortive attempt to print the text in London in 1670, and consisted partly of sheets salvaged from that attempt, and partly of new sheets printed in Amsterdam later in the 1670s. This article defends and amplifies that account of the printing. It responds to the alternative account presented by the late Karl Schuhmann, noting some problematic features of his theory; it considers the evidence of (...) misprints and typographical changes in the Bear; it offers an analysis of the skeleton formes, which, combined with the evidence of misprints, confirms the scenario previously presented; and it also presents some new external evidence which helps to identify the publishers of the Bear edition. (shrink)

In a previous study the author proposed that the third edition of Leviathan was produced not long before 1702 . An alternative view, dating the edition to 1670 and suggesting that it incorporated corrections by Hobbes, was put forward by the late Karl Schuhmann; it was based on both typographical and textual evidence. This article considers Schuhmann's arguments and finds them unconvincing. It also adduces some new evidence , on the basis of which it proposes that this edition was produced (...) in the period 1695-1702, probably by the printer John Darby. (shrink)

Hobbes's manuscript refutation of Thomas White bears no title. Some modern scholars have proposed, on the basis of references to it by Mersenne, that the work was entitled 'De motu, loco et tempore', and the abbreviated version of this, 'De motu', has become current in modern scholarship. This research note analyses Mersenne's references, and concludes that this apparent title was a descriptive phrase introduced by Mersenne himself. The full description included the term 'philosophia' ; this suggests a double focus, not (...) only on the manuscript text, but also on Hobbes's 'body' of natural philosophy more generally. (shrink)

The phenomenological effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on the self of the patient remains poorly understood and under described in the literature, despite growing evidence that a significant number of patients experience postoperative neuropsychiatric changes. To address this lack of phenomenological evidence, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 17 patients with Parkinson's disease who had undergone DBS. Exploring the subjective character specific to patients' experience of being implanted gives empirical and conceptual understanding of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (...) Our study concluded that (1) the more patients preoperatively felt alienated by their illness, the more they experienced postoperative self-estrangement, and (2) the notion of self-estrangement seems to exist in association with certain common qualitative characters, namely, loss of control, which reflects a deteriorative estrangement, and distorted perception of capacities, which reveals a restorative estrangement. These findings indicate that subjective self-reports help us to understand some aspects of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (shrink)

A superb work of scholarship on the seventeenth century mathematician John Pell, containing new and detailed biographical material and the first complete edition of the Pell-Cavendish correspondence.

In his article “Notes on the Sight Gag” from 1991, the philosopher Noël Carroll proposed a taxonomy of sight gags that recur throughout the genre of comedian comedy in cinema. This article revisits and augments Carroll’s taxonomy by analyzing the sight gags found in the films of Jacques Tati. Tati worked in a very different context than that of the silent Hollywood filmmakers from whose comic films Carroll largely derives his categories. He began making films in the sound era, and (...) five of his six feature films were made in color. As a French filmmaker, he also sought to adapt the genre of comedian comedy in cinema to his culturally specific concerns. This article shows that he drew on at least three of the types of sight gag identified by Carroll. But he modified some of them and innovated several other kinds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Historical Significance and Structure of Monroe Beardsley's AestheticsAn AppreciationNoël Carroll (bio)IntroductionMonroe C. Beardsley's Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, published in 1958 by Harcourt, Brace and World Inc.,1 was a watershed event in the history of analytic aesthetics—a climax of sorts with respect to what preceded it and, at the same time, the opening of a new, more intricately developed and defended research program in aesthetics (...) than what had been previously on offer. Beardsley's Aesthetics, and developments therefrom,2 consolidated and crystallized a tendency in aesthetics that had begun to emerge at least by the time of the publication of Francis Hutcheson's An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design,3 which tendency, following Beardsley, we can call the aesthetic theory of art. Assembled out of parts and suggestions from Hutcheson, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bell, among others, the aesthetic theory of art—of which Beardsley's version is one of the most accomplished, if not the most accomplished—has shown remarkable resilience, continuing to command allegiance from many distinguished, contemporary proponents, including Nick Zangwill, Gary Iseminger, and, with certain important modifications, Alan Goldman and Malcolm Budd.Part of what I would like to do in this essay is not only to trace the evolution of the aesthetic theory of art from its origins through to Beardsley's Aesthetics (and his subsequent tinkering with this masterwork) but also to show how the structure of the aesthetic theory of art, as crafted by Beardsley, is simultaneously so elegant, comprehensive, and systematic that it is understandable that Beardsley preferred constantly to repair it after each attack rather than to abandon it for the kinds of alternatives being proffered by Goodman, Danto, Wollheim, Dickie, Wolterstorff, and then Walton. In other words, Beardsley's reluctance to give up was genuinely motivated. [End Page 2] For, if only the kinks could have been smoothed out of it, the aesthetic theory of art, of the sort initiated in Aesthetics and elaborated subsequently by Beardsley, was itself a thing of beauty: exceedingly economical in its foundational principles and powerful in its reach. Thus, whereas typically I address the shortcomings of the aesthetic theory of art, in this essay I would like to talk about its strengths, strengths that I believe encouraged Monroe Beardsley to stick with it through thick and thin—that is, through a thick swarm of often thin counterexamples.In the next part of this essay, I will try to place Aesthetics historically in the course of Western aesthetics. Then in the final section, I shall attempt to explain how the structure of the sort of aesthetic theory of art incipient in Beardsley's Aesthetics and pursued by him in later works is so almost irresistibly attractive that virtually no number of anomalies can shake its friends out of the faith that such problems can be ultimately controlled, if not entirely overcome.On the Historical Significance of Beardsley's AestheticsBeardsley's Aesthetics is the culmination of certain tendencies that had been coalescing in various ways in Western aesthetics since the eighteenth century. One of Beardsley's most significant and influential twentieth-century predecessors was Clive Bell, who in his book Art, as is well known, defined art as that which possessed significant form. Significant form, in turn, was characterized as that which caused an aesthetic emotion. Bell's notion of an aesthetic emotion, I conjecture, derived from Schopenhauer's claim that what an artwork does is to lift us out of our everyday concerns—out of the world of striving. The aesthetic emotion, according to Bell, is a matter of being carried "out of life into ecstasy."4 The aesthetic experience, according to the Schopenhauer-Bell line of thought, involves the release of the individual from the pressures of life—from the pursuit of an endless process of desiring in Schopenhauer's lingo.This notion of aesthetic experience as detachment owes something to Kant's hypothesis that an authentic aesthetic judgment is disinterested, which, of course, itself is descended historically from Hutcheson's contention that beauty amounts to an experience of disinterested pleasure. However, whereas for Hutcheson and Kant disinterestedness is a... (shrink)

The Printing and Editing of Hobbes's De Corpore: A Review of Karl Schuhmann's Edition - ABSTRACT: In a careful and appreciative review of Karl Schuhmann’s edition of De corpore, Noel Malcolm points out some shortcomings stemming from what he takes to be a flaw in interpretive perspective, namely, the adoption of editorial standards and procedures better fitted for authors of the period of classical antiquity than for those of the early-modern period.

Eric G. Forbes, Lesley Murdin and Francis Willmoth , The Correspondence of John Flamsteed, First Astronomer Royal. Volume 1: 1666–1682. Bristol and Philadelphia: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1995. Pp. xlix+955. ISBN 0-7503-0147-3. £140.00, $280.00.Heinz-Jurgen Hess, James G. O'Hara and Herbert Breger , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Dritte Reihe, Mathematischer, naturwissenschaftlicher und technischer Briefwechsel: Volume 3, 1680–1683; Volume 4, 1683–1690. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1991, 1995. Pp. lxx+895; lxvi+747. ISBN 3-05-000766-4, DM 490.00 ; 3-05-002602-2, DM 490.00 .Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann , (...) Samuel Pufendorf. Gesammelte Werke, Band 1: Briefwechsel . Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996. Pp. xxix+453. ISBN 3-05-001920-4. DM 298.00.The editing of the correspondence of major figures in intellectual history is an essential scholarly activity. Yet in this country in recent years it has neither been the priority it should be, nor has it received the support that it deserves. Of course there have been exceptions to this, perhaps notably – for the early modern period – the epic one-man effort of Esmond de Beer in his later years in producing The Correspondence of John Locke . A further exception, the edition of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg by A. R. and M. B. Hall, was unfortunately flawed by the need to change publishers midway in the series, which has led to a marked disparity in the availability of the latter part of the set compared with its early volumes. In any case, like the Locke edition, this was conceived in the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, and few have ventured such enterprises since. Virtually the only exception is Noel Malcolm's edition of the manageable-sized Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes . Moreover, it is revealing of the acute need to justify the publication of such material felt by editors and publishers alike that the promotional leaflet for this edition went so far as to claim that it was ‘one of the most important scholarly publications of the twentieth century’ – a claim that is the more ironic in view of the quite significant shortcomings in its method of presenting the material that it contains. (shrink)

Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...) a practical way when treating these phenomena, focusing on examples of climate change scepticism. (shrink)