Thomas Hobbes

O intento do presente artigo é analisar o pensamento de Thomas Hobbes, tendo como textos-base de análise, “Do cidadão” e “Leviatã”, a fim de sistematizar a tese de que, em última análise, a filosofia de Hobbes é a ciência da paz. Trata-se de demonstrar tal propósito em dois momentos. No primeiro momento, mostram-se alguns argumentos de por que Hobbes pode ser considerado um dos autores que melhor concentra o projeto de fundação da política moderna. Por sua vez, no segundo momento, (...) trata-se de sistematizar os argumentos que levam Hobbes a conceber como necessária a passagem do estado de natureza ao estado civil, considerando, por isso, a filosofia hobbesiana como a ciência da paz. (shrink)

O presente artigo emerge com a proposta de explicitar como, a partir da teoria política do filósofo inglês Thomas Hobbes, engendra-se a necessidade da instauração do Estado, isto é, do Leviatã. Essa perspectiva vai perpassar todo o curso da obra Leviatã, na medida em que o filósofo mostra os fundamentos e as razões pelas quais o Leviatã deve terminantemente exercer a força, autoridade, influência, juízo, poder sobre os súditos, visto que, sem esse exercício de poder coercitivo pelo Estado a humanidade (...) entraria em estado de guerra constante. Assim, imbuído nesse escopo, o autor legitima a expressa e urgente necessidade de efetivação do Estado. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes é um defensor do direito de resistência. O posicionamento do filósofo aparece em diversas passagens de seus escritos em torno da condição política do homem. Resistir é o mesmo que não acatar determinada vontade; é recusar-se a prática ações mesmo que justamente ordenadas. Conforme o modelo hobbesiano, um soberano tem direito de ordenar aquilo que bem entender aos seus súditos. Diante disso, a resistência deve ser analisada a partir de duas linhas principais: o uso da resistência em relação (...) ao gládio da justiça e em relação à espada da guerra. Em vista disso, Hobbes no leva a indagar: como é possível que o uso do direito de resistência do súdito não se configure em injustiça diante do poder ilimitado do soberano? (shrink)

In this essay, I contend that the usually neglected Fundamental Law of the Commonwealth, which commands that the essential rights of the sovereign be retained by the sovereign, imposes substantial...

As a child in Malmesbury, Thomas Hobbes had an opportunity to observe many of the social and political phenomena that he considered in his later work. Contemporary sources reveal that Hobbes lived in a community that was wracked by marked animosity between different social groups, frequent disorder and a lack of consensus about the legitimacy of local political institutions. There was tension between the town’s elite and a proletariat of impoverished workers. Different members of the elite clashed, sometimes violently, as (...) they competed for local ascendancy. Hobbes’s extended family was heavily involved in these events. His hometown was deeply troubled. It was also a place where people had access to some “political” vocabulary which they used when describing their discontents and conflicts. The possible influence of Hobbes’s early experiences on his intellectual development has attracted little previous attention. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Leibniz’s engagement with Thomas Hobbes’s political anthropology in the Mainz-period writings, and demonstrates that Leibniz tried to construct an alternative to the English philosopher by conceiving of a physically- and ontologically-grounded psychology of actions. I provide textual evidence of this attempt, and account for Leibniz’s rejection of Hobbes’s political theory and anthropological assumptions. In doing so, I refer to diverse aspects of Leibniz’s work, thereby highlighting his aspiration to congruity and consistency between different areas of investigation. (...) Furthermore, Leibniz’s political writings and letters will reveal another—sometimes neglected—aspect of the issue: his concern to defend and legitimize the existence of pluralist and collective constitutional political systems like the Holy Roman Empire by providing the theoretical ground of their ability to last. (shrink)

This paper aims both to tackle the technical issue of deciphering Hobbes’s derivation of the sine law of refraction and to throw some light to the broader issue of Hobbes’s mechanical philosophy. I start by recapitulating the polemics between Hobbes and Descartes concerning Descartes’ optics. I argue that, first, Hobbes’s criticisms do expose certain shortcomings of Descartes’ optics which presupposes a twofold distinction between real motion and inclination to motion, and between motion itself and determination of motion; second, Hobbes’s optical (...) theory presented in Tractatus Opticus I constitutes a more economical alternative, which eliminates the twofold distinction and only admits actual local motion, and Hobbes’s derivation of the sine law presented therein, which I call “the early model” and which was retained in Tractatus Opticus II and First Draught, is mathematically consistent and physically meaningful. These two points give Hobbes’s early optics some theoretical advantage over that of Descartes. However, an issue that has baffled commentators is that, in De Corpore Hobbes’s derivation of the sine law seems to be completely different from that presented in his earlier works, furthermore, it does not make any intuitive sense. I argue that the derivation of the sine law in De Corpore does make sense mathematically if we read it as a simplification of the early model, and Hobbes has already hinted toward it in the last proposition of Tractatus Opticus I. But now the question becomes, why does Hobbes take himself to be entitled to present this simplified, seemingly question-begging form without having presented all the previous results? My conjecture is that the switch from the early model to the late model is symptomatic of Hobbes’s changing views on the relation between physics and mathematics. (shrink)

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed, and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still his criticism may (...) have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work. (shrink)

ResumenEl siguiente artículo es un intento teórico de análisis sobre el tema de las fobias y el temor expresado en la paradoja profesional. En efecto, nuestro tiempo es testigo del surgimiento de una cantidad insoslayables de miedos y terrores que deben ser discutidos a la luz del interesante trabajo El Leviatán de T. Hobbes. Aún a pesar de haber sido escrito hace mucho tiempo atrás, Hobbes continúa siendo uno de los autores que mejor explica la estructuración social del miedo y (...) su acción en las conductas humanas.Palabras claveMiedo, fobias, paradoja profesional, HobbesThe present article intends to analyse theoretically the fears and phobias dealt with in the professional paradox theory. In fact, our time is witnessing the emergence of many more fears and panic episodes which deserve to be approached following the interesting contributions by T. Hobbes in his Leviathan. Hobbes is still one of the scholars who more successfully explained the basis and action of fears on modern societies.KeywordsFear, phobia, professional paradox, Hobbes. (shrink)

RESUMENEl objetivo de este artículo es analizar las relaciones entre Moral y Política en el pensamiento de Hobbes. En nuestra opinión, Hobbes no fue un pesimista antropológico, sino un buen conocedor del hombre y de sus posibilidades, Por ello, fue un decidido defensor de la razón práctica, cuyo concepto se construye sin perder de vista a los otros, tanto en la acción moral como en la política.PALABRAS CLAVEHOBBES-MORAL-POLÍTICA-RAZÓN PRÁCTICAABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to examine the relation between morals and (...) polithics in the thought of Thomas Hobbes. My point is that Hoobes was not an anthropological pessimist, buy a deep thinker of man and his possibilities. Therefore, he was a etermined defender of practical reason, the concepto f wich is baed upon the experience of human interaction, both moral and political.KEYWORDSHOBBES- MORALS-POLITICS-PRACTICAL, REASON. (shrink)

This article compares two philosophical traditions and their attitudes to war and violence within the context of international relations. The first refers to Hobbes’ political realism, the second to the Grotian idea of international community. Each of these traditions understands the role of violence and war at an international level differently. From the perspective of political realism, violence is part of anarchistic relations between states and a means for achieving their goals. From the perspective of international community, violence is a (...) factor that needs to be minimized via the mechanisms of peaceful international cooperation between states. Based on the analysis of these two approaches, it is claimed that the Hobbesian perspective can be partly included in the perspective of the English School, which is based on the Grotian tradition. (shrink)

This paper consists of three parts. The first is devoted to the role of the Athenian plague in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. There are indications that the civil war that broke out in the country, weakened by plague, was not simply the result of a historical and degraded human nature. Instead of using evil human nature as the key for understanding each social conflict, I suggest interpreting the Athenian civil war as a symptom of non-egalitarian social relations. The (...) second part of the paper is devoted to the birth of modern capitalism and the analysis of Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy. An English philosopher, Hobbes not only translated The History of the Peloponnesian War, but was also an author who treated the reality of modern civil wars as a principal point of reference. Hobbes created his philosophy mainly as a result of fearing a conflict that could undermine the existing division of power and wealth. The result of this fear was a mechanism that I refer to as the paradox of sovereign power. It was a process during which the authority that had been established to defend society against lawlessness and chaos dominated the social life, not respecting existing laws and customs, and thus creating the very world it was supposed to protect the people from. The third part is devoted to Walter Benjamin’s criticism of sovereign power. Observing the same processes as Hobbes did, the German philosopher viewed them from the inside. Benjamin argued that the social order established at the threshold of modernity was built on unlawful violence and that the condition for its duration was the permanent reproduction of this lawlessness. According to Benjamin, this vicious circle of violence can only be escaped by recovering the memory of folk traditions, past class struggles, lost revolutions and social systems that, like the Paris Commune, pose the possibility of life liberated from the yoke. (shrink)

This entry describes the semiotic thought in the Early Modern Period through three groups of authors: Late Scholastics who developed original theories within a traditional Aristotelian and Augustinian framework; John Locke and the authors of Port-Royal who follow the lines of a linguistic paradigm; Thomas Hobbes, Pierre Gassendi, and Pierre Bayle who built a renewed semiotic theory headed towards epistemology.

The notion of indivisibles and atoms arose in ancient Greece. The continuum—that is, the collection of points in a straight line segment, appeared to have paradoxical properties, arising from the ‘indivisibles’ that remain after a process of division has been carried out throughout the continuum. In the seventeenth century, Italian mathematicians were using new methods involving the notion of indivisibles, and the paradoxes of the continuum appeared in a new context. This cast doubt on the validity of the methods and (...) the reliability of mathematical knowledge which had been regarded as established by the axiomatic method in geometry expounded by Aristotle’s younger contemporary Euclid. The teaching of indivisibles was banned within the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. In England, indivisibles were used by the mathematician John Wallis, and there was an acrimonious and extended feud between Wallis and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes over legitimate methods of argument in mathematics. Notions of the infinitesimal were used by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and were attacked by Bishop Berkeley for the vagueness of the concept and the illegitimate reasoning applied to it. This article discusses aspects of these events with reference to the book Infinitesimal by Amir Alexander and to other sources. Also discussed are wider issues arising from Alexander’s book including: the changes in cultural sensibility associated with the growth of new mathematical and scientific knowledge in the seventeenth century, the changes in language concomitant with these changes, what constitutes valid methods of enquiry in various contexts, and the question of authoritarianism in knowledge. More general aims of this article are to widen the immediate mathematical and historical contexts in Alexander’s book, to bridge a gap in conversations between mathematics and the humanities, and to relate mathematical ideas to wider human and contemporary issues. (shrink)

La scolastique tardive, au début du XVIIe siècle, est le théâtre d’un débat sur la définition du signe, qui se traduit par la division entre signum formale et signum instrumentale. Le premier est l’écho de la tendance médiévale à comprendre les concepts comme des signes. Le second correspond à une définition qui remonte à Augustin, selon laquelle le signe est une chose sensible qui doit être connue pour porter à la connaissance de quelque chose d’autre. Se démarquant de la voie (...) qui avait fait de la seule Logique de Port-Royal le paradigme de la pensée sémiotique de l’Âge classique, cet ouvrage montre, à partir de ce débat scolastique, que le XVIIe siècle se caractérise globalement par une translatio, visible notamment chez Bayle, Gassendi et Hobbes, d’un modèle linguistico-psychologique à une sémiotique emblématique d’une mutation de la logique désormais ordonnée vers l’épistémologie. (shrink)

While Thomas Hobbes is not typically cited as a philosopher concerned with economic inequality, there is a great deal of evidence in his writings to suggest that he was aware of inequality and worried about its effects on the commonwealth. This essay first contextualizes Hobbes in the development of the 17th-century English political economy to understand the mercantilist milieu that might have shaped Hobbes’s thoughts. Second, it then explores Hobbes’s thoughts on wealth, poverty, and inequality, as outlined in his major (...) political works – revealing distinctively Hobbesian grounds for understanding these phenomena. Third and finally, it explores Hobbes’s constructive political philosophy for means by which he might offer prescriptions for addressing them. (shrink)

This paper considers three accounts of the relationship between personal immortality and materialism. In particular, the pagan mortalism of the Epicureans is compared with the Christian mortalism of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. It is argued 1) that there are significant similarities between these views, 2) that Locke and Hobbes were, to some extent, influenced by the Epicureans, and 3) that the relation between mortality and materialism is not as straightforward as is commonly supposed.

Hobbes treats individual property as regulated by stable law, yet dependent on the arbitrary will of the sovereign. In this paper I catalogue the different definitions of property present in his main political and legal works – The Elements of Law, De Cive, Leviathan and A Dialogue between a philosopher and a student – with the aim of showing how he attempted to square those commitments. I record how the definitions of property affect his views about how sovereigns hold property, (...) the nature of the liability of subjects to having their property confiscated by the sovereign, and the legal conflicts that may arise between subjects and their rulers regarding such confiscations. (shrink)

O objetivo do presente artigo é apresentar e confrontar os pressupostos de duas tradições interpretativas _Leviatã _de Thomas Hobbes. Pretendo demonstrar como, a partir dos pressupostos e dos critérios de interpretação de cada uma delas, teremos não apenas duas abordagens diversas, mas resultados e soluções distintas para problemas políticos e morais que o próprio Hobbes buscou solucionar com essa obra. Na primeira parte do artigo, apresentarei os aspectos inovadores da nova interpretação do _Leviatã_ em contraposição às interpretações tradicionais ou ortodoxas. (...) Na segunda parte, confrontarei essa abordagem com a abordagem tradicional sobre um problema específico, mas central na filosofia de Hobbes: o problema da desordem social. Apresentarei a tese tradicional segundo a qual a solução para o problema da desordem seria criar um poder capaz de impor sanções que não permitissem que o interesse racional egoísta atuasse de forma irrestrita. Em seguida, apresentarei a solução revisionista segundo a qual a solução seria produzir uma estável e apropriada reconfiguração dos diversos interesses morais e religiosos dos cidadãos através de um processo de educação contínua responsável pelo consenso social. (shrink)

Neste trabalho, explicamos de que maneira a teoria do filósofo inglês do século XVII, Thomas Hobbes, pode ser aproveitada e aplicada, com as devidas proporções e limitações, ao atual contexto de pandemia no que circunscreve o Brasil. Mais especificamente, analisaremos a situação atual a partir de casos concretos do fenômeno definido como bolsonarismo, termo utilizado para se referir às políticas e à ideologia do atual Presidente da República Federativa do Brasil e seus filhos. Os seguidores do bolsonarismo são conhecidos por (...) tratarem o presidente como uma espécie de herói que irá salvar a nação. Levando em consideração a teoria hobbesiana de origem contratual do Estado Moderno – visto que este último é a base política do Ocidente – em nossa investigação, iremos recorrer aos princípios propostos pelo filósofo seiscentista para avaliar as possíveis causas que levariam ao esfacelamento do Estado brasileiro frente à atual crise governamental agravada e gerada pela pandemia do novo coronavírus. Além disso, abordaremos a necessidade de dois elementos hobbesianos basilares para assegurar a soberania estatal plenamente: a autoridade política e a liberdade republicana. A posição defendida pelo autor será estudada a partir do _Leviatã_, obra que concentra a maior parte das discussões hobbesianas acerca da desobediência civil, em conjunto, certamente, com outros comentadores de peso e demais referenciais teóricos pertinentes. Por fim, trata-se de um convite à desobediência civil, associado a um autor que constrói a sua teoria a partir da submissão de súditos a um poder soberano. (shrink)

O aparecimento do coronavírus fez ressurgir um antigo debate no âmbito da filosofia política: o debate entre liberdade e segurança. A maioria dos países atingidos precisou adotar medidas que restringiram a liberdade dos cidadãos para conter o avanço da doença. Esse artigo tem o objetivo de apresentar a posição do filósofo inglês, Thomas Hobbes exposta no _Leviatã_, para enfrentar esse problema. O texto está dividido em três partes. Em um primeiro momento, apresento a tese de Hobbes sobre a segurança e (...) contra a liberdade irrestrita para evitar o estado de natureza. Em um segundo momento, apresento a tese de Hobbes sobre a liberdade limitada no estado político. Por fim, apresento uma possível solução para conjugar liberdade e segurança a partir do conceito hobbesiano de razão pública. (shrink)

O presente ensaio tem por finalidade abordar filosoficamente o cenário de medo e desconfiança instaurado no Brasil e no mundo durante a recente pandemia do COVID-19, a partir de algumas considerações sobre os fundamentos políticos da moderna filosofia de Thomas Hobbes. A questão central tratada pelo trabalho é a influência do medo sobre as ações humanas e políticas dentro de uma situação de desarmonia social avessa aos princípios democráticos. Em primeiro lugar, buscaremos mostrar como o medo é considerado pela filosofia (...) hobbesiana como sendo um sentimento religioso capaz de regular as ações e o entendimento dos indivíduos tanto fora quanto dentro do Estado civil. Em segundo lugar, buscamos mostrar como a maximização do medo social pode resultar em uma desconfiança generalizada entre as pessoas e entre os poderes políticos que apenas promove as crenças e superstições dos discursos religiosos e ideológicos mais radicais. Partindo das considerações de Hobbes sobre os fundamentos da soberania civil, investigaremos algumas relações fundamentais entre o medo, a política e a religião nas bases da moderna política estatal. Podemos dizer que, em linhas gerais, este ensaio busca mostrar como um desentendimento do Estados civil consigo mesmo e com seus poderes constitutivos instaurou na população brasileira, desnorteada politicamente pela crise causada pela pandemia do novo coronavírus, uma condição de medo e desconfiança semelhante ao estado de natureza bélico, descrito por Hobbes no _Leviatã_. (shrink)

Hobbes clearly and consistently maintains that we have a duty to love and fear God. However, he also problematizes love of God and, by implication, other passions putatively directed “to Godward.” We lack any conception of God, and therefore cannot love God in any literal sense. Moreover, even if love of God were psychologically possible, it is not clear that it would be appropriate, since love is apt only when someone is good to us. Love also requires wishing for the (...) well-being of the beloved, which is absurd in the case of God. Similar arguments apply to fear of God. (shrink)

This essay argues that Hobbes’s work as a translator was fundamental to his mature political philosophy. A proper appreciation for the significance of Hobbes’s lifelong engagement with the politics of translation clarifies both the relationship between Hobbes’s humanist and scientific work, and the meaning of his simultaneous critique and use of rhetoric in his political writings. Against the interpretation held by many scholars that Hobbes simply traded his early humanist interests for his mature political and scientific views, I demonstrate that (...) Hobbes was consistently concerned with the political instability generated by the vernacular translation of classical Greek and Roman texts. In responding to this instability, Hobbes developed his geometrical approach to speech while also, through his analysis of the relationship between translation and metaphor, finding ways to employ humanist rhetorical techniques consistent with this approach. Yet I show that Hobbes continued to rely on translation in areas of speech where he thought science alone could not provide persuasive answers. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show the reasons, presentin Hobbes’ philosophy, that force us to conclude that God, as sufficientreason that necessitate the entire causal chain, is incompatible with themechanistic system presented by Hobbes in works such as Concerningbody [1655-6] and Leviathan [1651]. For this, I present the foundations ofHobbes’ doctrine of causality, as well as its connection with the mechanicalcausal influx of nature, with the aim of showing that: since all thatexists is body, or God must be (...) corporeal and, thus, not be God — i.e.,does not satisfy the demand of self-sufficient sufficient reason —, or Godis not corporeal and, therefore, does not exist. (shrink)

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – in (...) modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

It is the fate of most great political thinkers for their works to be the subject of controversy and contestation. Hobbes is a pre-eminent example of this generalisation. Though a comprehensive sur...

Este artigo visa examinar os limites da liberdade de ação do homem, isto é, de seu direito natural, levando-se em consideração a finalidade última desse direito nos Elementos da lei natural e política de Hobbes. Essa finalidade seria a auto-preservação do homem. Entretanto, para que esse direito seja efetivamente respeitado, Hobbes alega ser necessário a constituição de um poder soberano. Não basta assim uma simples convenção entre os homens para garantir a paz. Ou seja, se faz necessário a existência de (...) uma ordem política regida por um poder soberano absoluto para que a preservação da vida tenha efeito jurídico. Hobbes entende que somente o estado civil é o único capaz de estabelecer as condições efetivas para que esse objetivo seja atingido. (shrink)

O escopo do artigo é examinar a tese hobbesiana de que todo efeito possui uma causa necessária, indicando como o filósofo a demonstra de modos diferentes, mas complementares: em primeiro lugar, tanto por meio da identificação entre causa integral, causa suficiente e causa necessária, como pela redefinição dos conceitos de potência e ato; em segundo, através da subordinação do princípio de bivalência à determinação necessária dos eventos; e, por fim, pela defesa de que só por meio de uma causa necessária, (...) causa que opera mecanicamente por meio de contato, é possível dar a razão pela qual os eventos possuem tais determinações espaciotemporais ao invés de outras, de modo que a causalidade mecânica necessária se estabelece como o único tipo legítimo de explicação dos fenômenos em Hobbes, transformando-se, então, na forma geral da inteligibilidade. (shrink)

Many analysts have attempted to make sense of the unexpected election of Donald Trump, but the thinker who offers perhaps the best explanation is Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ name has been invoked to warn of a threat to free government in an imperial presidency or a return to tribalism. But Hobbes himself is seldom read and widely misunderstood. His diagnosis of political disorders, and his remedy, can help to shed light on the diseases of the American body politic, the rise of (...) Trump, and the cure. This essay begins with an unorthodox treatment of Hobbes as a classical liberal in Part I; its application to American politics follows in Part II. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes bequeathed to us a comprehensive system, the interpretation of which remains a matter of disagreement even today. In his political theory, he pays most attention to the state community. He deliberates over the reasons for its origin, its decline and fall. Among the more detailed issues dealt within his reflections, the more important ones are the following: the concept of the state of nature, human motivation, the state of war and peace, as well as considerations concerning the social (...) contract. In order to be consistent in his argument, Hobbes also deals with the analysis of the structures of the state, the division of power and with the functions a state should perform. Due to these deliberations, he finally arrives at the secret of the state’s durability. Though it is certainly the case that, since his times, the socio-political situation and circumstances have changed, many of the solutions postulated by Hobbes have not lost their value. (shrink)

The overall goal of the article is to reexamine Hobbes’s concern to respond to the challenges of the republican perspective on the relationship between the liberty of subjects and the political power. If, according to Skinner, republican theorists appealed to sources of classical antiquity, I argue that Hobbes chooses to offer a blend of classical and theological ideas in order to generate a “science” of the political life within the confines of a postlapsarian world dominated by passion and the fear (...) of death. If the image of God is maintained in the Hobbesian politics, it is because Hobbes needed a model of imitation of a stability that the individuals dominated by passions failed too often to have. Hobbes also needed a model of omnipotence and providence to be imitated by the sovereign. This complex relationship between the theological heritage of the past and the novelties inaugurated in political thought by Hobbes’s accent on human passions triggers a series of changes in Hobbes’s understanding of the law of nature and natural right. The article brings to discussion Hobbes’s indebtedness to Lactantius in reading Lucretius’s materialism, Augustine’s model of God as a Creator and the theological controversy between intellectualism and voluntarism when formulating his own anthropological perspective on “natural” and “civil” law and right. (shrink)