ABSTRACT
Through an examination of Hobbes's moral epistemology according to Diodorus Cronus's Master Argument and some definite points of epistemological analysis, Hobbes appears rather an intuitionist than a nominalist. Indeed, Hobbes puts sensibility at the beginning of any thought, his moral epistemology is based on the "true Doctrine of the Laws of Nature" that men read in themselves, and is relative to a theory of passions, in addition to which there is some entanglement with the principle of excluded middle : all these features concern intuitionism more than nominalism.
Moreover, the Law of Nature obliges in foro interno and not in foro externo, therefore Hobbes distinguishes the imperative character of the Law of Nature from the real conditions of a social life for which covenants and contracts are necessary in order to conceive the future from the point of view of the consensus on the present. Like Epicurus's, Descartes's and Kant's, Hobbes' s moral philosophy rests on precepts and maxims, with an intimate knowledge about human soul. Hobbes relies the obligatory force of moral maxims on science defined as the knowledge of causes of everything as much as possible.
In order to examine the possible ways which can give us access to the truth conditions, we may distinguish six kinds of elementary sentences that correspond to the different types of predicative objectivity by which our language shapes the sensible world without involving any ontological issue for what there is. I refer (1) to Vuillemin's works (1984 & 1986) (2) in which he has given the conducting criterion of this classification. Vuillemin explains how he sought the minimal ontological bases by determining the minimum number of elementary sentences which are necessary and sufficient for building the highest principle of classification.
I recall briefly the sorts of systems according to this principle of classification. First, there is 'realism' with nominal sentences, pure predication and participation. Then, there is 'conceptualism' with a substantial composite predication and an accidental elementary predication. Then, 'nominalism of things' with a substantial elementary predication and an accidental composite predication. Then, 'nominalism of events' with a circumstantial predication. Together, realism, conceptualism and nominalism constitute a kind of dogmatic and indicative series in front of which there is now a subjective and reflexive series (subjective, that is to say: as by Kant, related to human thought) which includes the systems of examination. In this series we no longer observe sentences logically linked to one another, but reflected sentences that are judgments: either judgments of method - this is the case of 'intuitionism' that can be intellectual as by Descartes, or sensible as by Epicurus and Kant, and also, I think, by Hobbes - or judgments of appearance ( this is the case of 'scepticism').
My opinion is that Hobbes's philosophical system belongs to the systems of examination characterized by judgments of method ; and for that reason it can be classified in the same category as Epicurus's, Descartes's and Kant's. Indeed, Hobbes puts sensibility at the beginning of any thought even if science comes but with ratiocinatio; and he acknowledges
the universalia , abstracting from the starting point of the effect in us of our sensible experience (3) regulated through the methodical and logical uses of language (4).
The immediate relation to sense and to representation directly puts Hobbes in the company of Epicurus as to the senses being conceived by Epicurus like a criterion of knowledge, and in the company of Kant as to the sensibility ( Sinnlichkeit ) being conceived by Kant as the sensible starting point of knowledge in so far as a valid concept of knowledge is the one that can be held in the frames 0f a possible experience. Therefore Epicurus and Kant belong to the class of intuitionists. But Hobbes's philosophy also shows many other signs of this class of systems.
In Hobbes's studies as in any philosophical case, we must follow the method which subordinates all the themes to the whole construction, and particularly his moral philosophy to his system' architectonics. One cannot separate Hobbes's moral epistemology, or any part of his philosophy, from the whole system: indeed, the liking of all the elements to the resolute whole, or the deducing of elements from the constitutive whole, is a specific point of the Hobbesian method. His conception of the relations between the concept of generation and the concept of properties can also easily demonstrate it (5). The same idea was developed by Michael Oakeshott in the introduction to his edition of the Leviathan (6), and pursued by Tom Sorell in his book about Hobbes(7). My own purpose is to put up for a new reflection about the category in which we might classify Hobbes's philosophy by examining the properties of his system from the particular point of view of his moral epistemology.
Hobbes calls 'moral philosophy' "the Science of what is Good, and Evil, in the conversation, and Society of mankind" (8). 'Good' and 'Evil' are also terms signifying our appetites and aversions. When private appetite is the measure of good and evil, man is living in a state of mere nature, which is one of unrestricted warfare (9). But man knows the Law of Nature in as much as he has the use of reason (10), whose dictates he calls "laws" (11).
Subsequently, Hobbes may assert that "the true Doctrine of the Laws of Nature, is the true Moral philosophy"(12). And it is an a priori science because knowing these laws is possible as soon as we use our natural reason.
Therefore, as to knowing moral philosophy, men must simply read in themselves, although all what they can conceive thereafter is to be considered as being constructed and therefore artificial in that apparent contradiction between simply reading and shrewdly constructing, Hobbes principally refuses the principle of excluded middle. Human artificial contructions come from the original standpoint of natural reason. And although natural reason is of course given to men by God, it is nevertheless not innate, because reason needs to be accompanied by speech in order simply to be, and to be really efficient through the activity of language. God created men as reasonable beings and He inscribed in men's heart not to committing injustice (13). Here we can hardly distinguish 'experience' or 'prudence' or 'original knowledge' from 'reason' and 'science'. But we must remember that there is a relative difficulty which Kant does identify as his own when, on the one hand, he refuses an objective reality to the categories of speculative reason, exactly as Hobbes refuses an existence to universal entities or abstract essences (14), and, on the other hand, he recognizes to men the ability to give an objective reality to the objects of the pure practical reason - we know the 'fact of reason' settled in man and that is the moral formal law - exactly as Hobbes does with the moral laws of nature dictated to man by reason which are immutable and eternal (15).
Moreover, there is another difficulty in Hobbes's judgments as to the status of natural reason. And with Bertram Morris we may ask: "Does reason belong only to civil society or does it belong as well to the state of nature ?" (16). I think that Bertram Morris is right to verify what he calls "Hobbes's entanglement with the excluded middle". Indeed, Hobbes is used to defining a topic and then negating it by its opposite; but he does not eliminate totally the first one through the second one, and finally accepts them both. In that way, he shows the contradiction between the state of nature as universal warfare and the civil state as peaceful, but further, ho neither regards them as contradictory, nor does he regard as contradictory the direct a priori 'reading thy self' and the a posteriori derived from reckoning reason. This original negation of the principle of the excluded middle is but another sign of his 'intuitionism' and does appear also when Hobbes asserts that most of natural philosophy is not to be demonstrable, given that bodies are often moved with invisible motions which are not easily perceptible (17): like Epicurus (16), Hobbes thinks that opinion may not be coherent with experience. Vuillemin takes this particular point as being determining a property of the intuitionism: also what he writes about Epicurus's criteria of truth (19) could be asserted for Hobbes's demonstration (20).
Indeed, for Epicurus, there is a difference of certainty between a sensible experience which is near to us and a theoretic hypothesis which is far from us. It is somehow the same for Hobbes, who shows it with the instance of a native deaf and dumb man who is comparing, set before his eyes, a triangle and beside it two right equal angles, and who may find that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles standing by it; then, having no use of speech, when this man looks at another triangle described by Hobbes as "different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equall to the same" (21). For Hobbes, we receive from language something like a rational method in order to understand conceptually and universally that which the simple experience without speech cannot give us. So that the reckoning reason raised in man with the use of words, just as the understanding is imagination raised in man by words, is also presumed to be the same natural reason that God gave us but which is not innate in us.
In Leviathan 's Introduction (22), nature, the divine art, is presented as having made the world, then, by imitating nature, human art is able to make an artificial animal, and especially by imitating man, human art can also create an artificial man who is the Leviathan or the Commonwealth. We must observe that imitating is constructing again: "Nature (.) is by the Art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated"(23).
And constructing is already something like a method. All that is created by men is artificial, which means constructed by man and showing a method : and that statement is verified as being true not only for geometry (24), in which figures are made by a priori constructions, and for political science, which is more difficult than geometry (25), because it is at the same time a priori like geometry and a posteriori like physics , but it is also verified for all the marks and signs in our mental and verbal discourses: so that we are the authors of our truths (26), but also the actors (27) of them.
Knowledge about human nature is constructed by men from the starting point of their reading not of books, but of one another, so that the socratic precept translated at first in Latin 'Nosce teipsum' and then in English 'Read thy self' (28) is for Hobbes the right formula giving to all of us an experienced fundamental and similar knowledge about men. But the two Hobbesian maxims are in contradiction: on one hand, the intuitive 'Read thy self', and on the other hand, the imitating of the divine and constructive 'Let us make man' of which we may say it is the case everywhere in Hobbes's philosophy, and which may be thought of as appearing translated everywhere in some: 'Let us construct'. And Hobbes's logic offers a real difficulty by synthesising both of them, because it is in principle not possible to simply read in ourselves without what Hobbes asserts about usage or motion of reason that comes only with speech or the use of words, and without reckoning or computation that comes especially with a well truth regulated speech.
The first obvious point is that Hobbes uses the precepts of the Law of nature known according to an intuitive knowledge about men as we find it differently expressed by Epicurus, Descartes and Kant: the free will as pathologically affected is Kant's datum which is given to men. And at the beginning of Leviathan Hobbes uses the precept 'Read in order' to be able to formulate his moral and political philosophy which moreover effectively refers to a theory of passions , as it is in Epicurus, Descartes and Kant, even though not explicit. And there is indeed a speech about human passions which lies at the Hobbes's conception of natural law (29) : a law of nature is a precept or a general rule (30) which is given by natural reason. But the law of nature is itself conceived by Hobbes as implying even the most powerful of all passions: desire of power and fear of death, and the latter being as Leo Strauss pointed out: "the fear of violent death at the hands of others" (31).
Yet, if in the study of moral epistemology we are somehow really concerned "with questions about how one ought to live, about what could count as good reason for acting in one way rather than another"(32), then we could say that Hobbes's moral philosophy certainly gives us sufficient answers to these questions. Hobbes says what constitutes a good life for human beings and he looks for the proper place for morality in human life, because for him morality may belong to a good human life. Hobbes begins by facing state of nature situations, and he thinks of what human life would look like if everyone acted in that way. I may affirm that Hobbes's first moral intuition concerns these state of nature situations about which Marcus G. Singer can write: "Is one under any obligation to conform to ordinary moral rules in dealing with people who do not themselves observe them ?"(33).
The rule intended here is the same as the equivalent Hobbesian rule according to which we must not do to another what we would not have done to ourselves and subsequently according to which the laws of nature are in effect only where there is security (34). Singer is seeking a generalization principle which would be able to face these dangerous situations. As to Hobbes, if he tries to explain them precisely, ho does not justify human actions through those powerful passions which underlie human nature. Then Hobbes takes as true the intuitive knowledge about human passions that he personally has through his reading and experience with men, and he refers to a method of his own in order to face that deadly danger. He conceives this method as a scientific one according to Euclidian geometry (35) and remaining the same as much in natural as in moral and political philosophy.
It is possible to see now why the rationalistic materialism was the only efficacious way for Hobbes to manage these fundamental data which belong to his own personal knowledge about human beings. And we must say that science, also called philosophy and defined in the
Leviathan as "knowledge of consequences" (36), is what can be summing up, and on the other hand, the necessary rational issue about scientific knowledge aware of finding causes. First philosophy ( prima philosophia ) (37) consists of the premises of all philosophical and scientific consequences, that is to say of : "the definitions of Body, Time, Place, Matter, Form, Essence, Subject, Substance, Accident, Power, Act, Finite, Infinite, Quantity, Quality, Motion, Passion, and divers others" (38).
Science or philosophy can intervene only when speech and reason ( ratiocinatio ) are themselves actively moved in order to have the exclusively rational revelation of substance and to describe and compare to each other motions in bodies : "either of the mind or of the perceiver or of the bodies themselves which are perceived" (39). And we observe in the Leviathan that 'substance' and 'body' have the same meaning (40), and in the Short Tract that anyhow "Everything is either Substance or Accident" (41); which means that substances or bodies are conceived by us through accidents (42). Accordingly, the moral philosophy taken in a perspective opened out for catching the whole Hobbesian system, we must ask what virtues and vices are. They are nothing else than accidents which are inherent to a substance or - what is the same - which describe motions in bodies (43). Nevertheless, our sensible examination of bodies with their motions may be quite different from their physical composition, because it depends simply on a clarification of the vague which has nothing to do with a conceptual analysis. At all levels of senses and imagination our motion lets us see differently what we are seeing, because what we are particularly sensing and perceiving is changing with our changing motions and states (44): we perceive at first a body, then coming nearer, an animal and finally still nearer a man.
And we also must remember now that for Hobbes also thinking is acting (45). Then when we change our way of thinking, that is, our way of acting and moving, we also change for ourselves what may be known about what we are observing, that is to say, about "marking and signifying (...) our thoughts" (46) concerning external bodies or objects which are the causes of our senses and of our imagination which, when it is "raised in man (...) by words" (47) is called by Hobbes 'understanding'. Then, we may follow this argumentation:
It is in fact not so because it requires exactly what Hobbes himself wrote precisely in his Preface of De Civo that is, more than naming and combining of names with their right definitions: and it is even something else which is required moreover for the knowledge to be efficient or 'to produce effects'. Therefore we can notify that Hobbes tries not only to articulate propositions logically determined by one another in respect to well done name definitions, but at the same time to construct the truth according to a method which would be able to permit an effect production. His resolute and composite method needs more than to be included into whatever nominalism. Indeed, the cause is, after the body or the substance, a great Hobbesian principle in the precise sense of the efficient and material cause. Against Aristotle, Hobbes denies the final cause : for him it is the same as both will and senses which mean efficiency too. He also denies of course the formal cause: for him it is the same as a "cause of our knowledge" (51). And, finally, efficient cause is the same as power and is not a logical but a continual temporal progress (52).
Underlying those considerations of our possible standpoints in moving and thinking, there is nothing else than a judgment of method, the same judgment as with the establishing of premises which are always definitions as mathematicians use them: the conclusions in either case depend on the premises which are definitions of words correlated by man's choice with some standpoints of his thought and bound to his motion. For that reason, we can see that language in Hobbes's system may also be understood as a physics of speech like it will be later developed by Cordemoy (53). Language as translatio or as a really physical transfer is meant by Hobbes as an articulation and a motion between the natural and artificial man, and between his mental and verbal discourse.
Also, according to Hobbes, as much in Leviathan as in De Homine , we are using words which at every level are motions and serve us in order to mean the consequences of concepts ( seriem conceptum ) (54). For Hobbes names are signs of concepts which do not exist at all, but not signs of things or bodies which do really exist. And, as in mathematics, what counts in speech and thought is only computatio, that is the possibility of conceptual relations named and compared in order to operate intellectual constructions. And on Hobbes 's works we could say that they are such constructions based on his presumed 'true' definitions of names which he takes, as Hobbes himself says, "universally" (55). And also if they are presumed true definitions, they are necessary in order to find all the truth, because the truth consists precisely "in the right ordering of names in our affirmations" (56). Also, for Hobbes if man is capable of erring, it is only because he or she is able of speaking, and by speaking man can be reasoning, but unfortunately he or she does not always use the true definitions of names.
Therefore, constructing the "true philosophy" depends on "competent Judges of the truth"(57), and those judges are admitted as competent because of their objective (or social) "lawful authority" and their subjective (or personal) "sufficient study", both alike because of criteria legitimating for Hobbes what is true in their discourses. Now, we may say this is not surprising, because it is clear that both science and language obey in a way the common sense and may be called covenants (58). Inasmuch as they are signs, words are registering for ourselves and revealing to others "the Thoughts and Conceptions of our Minds" (59), and they are divided into four categories:
In language free process, words may be used as marks or as signs. Signs are constructed by
men at pleasure ( arbitrio nostro ) (61), and may be generally seen either as marks for the registration of our thoughts and fancies ( phantasma ) - then, they are according to our own use (gratia nostri ); or they may be seen as linguistic and mathematical signs for the communication with others ( gratia aliorum ).
Not all the signs of science are certain, some are uncertain and fall to render an account of all the events they try to apprehend (62). As noted by Martin B. Bertman (63), Hobbes does not encounter the nominalists' difficulty of confusing both problems of meaning and of designation. : or Hobbes, intellectual constructions named through the true names of definitions and consequences are intended to produce effects and actions.
And precisely according to mechanistic rationalism and as a neurological process, human will obeys the general physical laws, but it is also an important element in Hobbes's moral and political philosophy. Willing is first of all an action, not a faculty, and in addition is determined by desire and fear (64). Desire itself is also a mechanical physiological effect, but its object is even so called 'good'. Hobbes recognizes, first of all, the general inclination of mankind in acquiring "a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death" (65). Fear of death with "desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living ; and a hope by their Industry to obtain them"(66), all of that is what can incline men to peace. Also, through desire of power and fear of death, with an inclination towards peace and disposition towards war, men are experimenting that liberty is not else than the "absence of externall impediments"((67). Then, in spite of his passions, man is not a bad being, he is neither bad nor good even if human life in the state of nature is the scone of a ceaseless struggle for power and the war of each against all (68). In the situation of claiming everything, of having a right to defend himself, of believing that all men are his enemies, man is nevertheless but applying the right of nature, which is the "Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature" (69).
Beside this Jus naturale, there is a Lex naturalis, the Fundamental law of nature dictated by reason which commands at first the seeking of peace and, if peace is impossible, the defending of ourselves by all possible means. The second law of nature is logically derived from this first one, and goes further in the way of obligation by commanding that man should be willing to enter a covenant: to lay down his right to all things. Therefore man must not reason tell him its further dictates: through reasoning he discovers that he should have the intention to accept the act of submission to a common ruler.
In itself the act of submission implies intention which is another of Hobbes's meeting points with the intuitionism of Epicurus, Descartes and Kant. Through this covenant man should be content with the liberty which he allows to others. The whole of the Law of nature has been in Hobbes's system definite and precise compared to the ancient and medieval doctrines of natural law. The following laws are the consequences of the first two laws along with the act of submission, the third one as a necessary complement to the second one is "that men perform their Covenants made" (70), and consequently that they let injustice be "the not Performance of Covenant"(72) and justice be "the constant Will of giving to every man his own" (71). The obligation coming from the laws of nature being always in foro interno does not always lie in foro externo, this is the principal reason why men need reciprocal exchanges, and to be sure that every one is willing to perform them (72).
In Hobbes's moral epistemology there are even more meeting points with Kant's moral philosophy. At first, in Hobbes's moral intention is necessary for a man to be just and righteous and one man's intention is even not sufficient for applying the laws of nature. Hobbes distinguishes in Leviathan (73) justice of men from justice of actions, and in De Cive (74) the justice of a person from the justice of an act. In the Leviathan we read that just men have manners in conformity with reason and take care that their actions may be all just, whilst unjust men do not care. Just or righteous men may perform a few unjust actions and still remain just or righteous. But also unrighteous men remain what they are even when they perform a few just actions (75). In De Cive , a just act is an act which is done in accordance with right, but a man whose acts are in accordance with right is yet not ipso facto a just man : "Although a man should order all his action so much as belongs to external obedience just as the law commands, not for the law's sake, but by reason of some punishment annexed to it, or out of vain glory; yet he is unjust" (76). And I agree with A. E. Taylor who sees here "Kant's distinction between action done merely in accord with law and action done from law"(77). Hobbes differs in that he reduces the law from which the righteous man acts to the law that a premise once fulfilled must be kept (78). However the Hobbesian law of nature has the same imperative character as the Kantian moral law: indeed, Hobbes affirms explicitly that a law is "the speech of him who by right commands somewhat to others to be done or omitted" (79)
I have already mentioned that the Law of nature obliges in foro interno ; and if the laws of nature do not always oblige in foro externo , it is because Hobbes always regards the real conditions of a social life bound to the human passions, and among them he wants to see applied the particular condition of the law of reciprocity. As Taylor did, let us consider in Hobbes's moral philosophy that "the moral obligation to obey the natural law is antecedent to the existence of the legislator and the civil society"(80).
As we have seen, Hobbes's moral philosophy is not to be separated from his epistemology. We can even say that his moral philosophy is well coordinated with philosophy of science which presents a systematic unit. Indeed, Hobbes classifies ethics as a part of natural philosophy which consists of the consequences of the accidents of bodies, ethics particularly consisting of consequences of the passions of men, whilst politics or civil philosophy is the science directly opposite natural philosophy with which it constitutes nevertheless "science" or "knowledge of the consequence of words" (81), and also "philosophy"(82). The principle of the unity of the system is the knowledge of the causes, as far as this is possible (83). But by this logical consideration of possibility, Hobbes means that it is not always possible to determine a precise cause beyond experience. Both ignorance of the causes and ignorance of the meaning of words make men dependent on beliefs (84) or on customs (85). For Hobbes, method is more consistent than any doctrine that the most important for men is to have the possibility of constructing the scientific objet, which does not in any case exclude the representational starting point (86). It is why the "interior Beginnings of Voluntary Motions" (87) are the objects of the first philosophical analysis. And with the "Ends or Resolutions of Discourse" (88) added to these "Interior beginnings", we may then now consider ourselves as contemplating structure of the whole Hobbesian system, brought to light and verified with Hobbes's classification of sciences.
The relation to the future is important for a civil philosophy based upon covenants and contracts, and generally upon the fundamental premise of reciprocity, and even for a moral philosophy based on the knowledge of human passions in order to give them the necessary foundations for men to live a good life together. In another way the knowing of causes is also necessary to submit the close incertitude of the future and therefore the knowing of consequence of words is not absolute but conditional, as it requires not only the meanings of names, but also the considerations of bodies and of causes (89). Hobbes acknowledges the disjunction Socrates will die to-morrow I Socrates will not die to-morrow as being a necessary contradiction both de dicto and de re (90). But inasmuch as the truth of an assertion is necessary (91), it does not follow for Hobbes that it is necessary that it be necessary: it has at least to be necessary de cognitione causarum , because "No man can know by discourse, that this, or that, is, has been, or will be" (92), according to the cases of error or of absurdity and to the defect of method, inasmuch as science is not absolute but conditional and depends on "the first Items in every Reckoning"(93) which are the true definitions. Or simply according to the case of a discourse, because "no Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute knowledge of Fact, past, or to come (...). And for the knowledge of Consequence, which I have said before is called Science, it is not Absolute, but Conditional"(94).
Power is as conditional and as relative to the future as science, although being the nucleus of Hobbes's moral philosophy. Indeed, Hobbes defines the power of a man as "his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good" (95). But that "some future apparent Good" is for him a contingent future as long as this man does not own the actual power to obtain it, that is to say: "his present means" which will permit him to obtain this future apparent good. This last one is then twice contingent, both relatively to the condition of possessiveness and to the condition of appearance, because the whole perspective is set only on prudence which is "a Praesumptio of the Future contracted from the Experience of time Past " (96).
And there we can now test and verify Hobbes's assertions relative to Diodorus Cronus Master Argument, which is to Vuillemin a kind of canon used for his proper classification of philosophical systems. I recall the simultaneous contradictory positing of the three Diodorus principles as Vuillemin quotes them in his book (97):
A. Everything which is true and past is necessary;
B. From the possible the impossible does not follow;
C. There is a possible which is not the case and never will be the case.
We know from Epictetus that the one who admits two of these three assertions does not admit the third. Nominalists are accepting A and B, but they do not accept C: it was the case of Diodorus himself who professed a logical fatalism. Indeed, for Diodorus possible is what either is or will be true, impossible is what is neither true nor will be true, necessary is what is true and never will be false, and possible that not is what is false or will be false. The true assertion is then finite and decidable with a modality which is a subjective property of our objective knowledge.
Like all the other dogmatists Diodorus thought that the truth is an agreement between statement and facts. But Hobbes considered the universalia neither as transcendent nor as immanent, nor as abstracted from things, and then, like the intuitionists, he did not agree with the classical definition of truth. In his moral philosophy, Hobbes did not follow either the classical views according to which man must be perfected. For Hobbes as for Kant and Descartes, truth was but a methodological issue, and the universalia were more acts of the knowing subject. A statement is not necessarily false or true, since the matters of fact are dependent on every act of knowledge. Hence, we may presume that Hobbes would criticize the third premise in the Master Argument, because science must be constructed according to certain definite rules, the consequences of which contradict this premise. And this is the proper answer of the intuitionists, whilst the nominalists declare it dogmatically false: that could not have been Hobbes' case. For the intuitionists the third assertion is not good, because science conceived as a construction obeys rules denying it. That was for the third principle. Let us see the first principle : as Descartes may affirm that the divine power cannot make that which has been, not have been (98), Hobbes may likely affirm:
"as if it were an acknowledgement of the Divine Power to say, that which is, is not; or that which has been, has not been" (99).
And if we joined to this positing that Hobbes recognizes as possible only that which is, or that which God has chosen, we let the critics of the first and of the third principle correlate. And as to the second principle, Hobbes did proclaim its necessity with his conceiving of consequences of thoughts or of names and his searching of causes; but he did not think that he had to follow the principle of excluded middle for the major themes of his system: for him, the consequence deduced from the major themes was more important than the non contradiction itself between the themes together.
At any rate, neither a 'nominalist of things' since for him the elements of reality were not individual substances (100), nor a 'nominalist of events' since he was searching causes and not correlations between processes, Hobbes stressed on both language and the method with its effects on the fictitious man. Freed from bondage to revealed theology, Hobbes's moral philosophy still benefits from the Christian insight. Hobbes succeeded by giving an obligatory force to the moral rules although he enforces them with the scientific method.
DEPARTEMENT DE PHILOSOPHIE
UNIVERSITE DE PICARDIE,
AMIENS (France).
1 Angèle Kremer Marietti, L'Ethique. Collection 'Que sais-je?' Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987.
2 Jules Vuillemin, Nécessité ou contingence. L'aporie de Diodore et les systèmes philosophiques. Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac, Les Editions de Minuit, 1984; What are Philosophical Systems ?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
3 De Corpore VI, 5, Opera latina (O.L.) I, p. 62.
4 Elements of Law , Ed. bv F. Tönnies, London : Cass, 2ed ed.,e1969, I, 5; §4, p.19; §6 , p. 20.
5 Leviathan, Edited with an Introduction by C. B. .Macpherson, Pelican Books, 1968; reprinted in Penguin English Library, 1981; reprinted Penguin Classics, 1985, 1986, 1987: see ch. XLVI, p. 682. Also De Corporo , I, 8, English Works (E.W.) I; and De Homine , X, 4, (O.L. II).
6 Michael Oakeshott, Introduction to Leviathan , Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1945.
7 Tom Sorell, Hobbes , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. It was also the idea of G.A.J. Rogers, in Mind , July 1987.
8 Leviathan XV, p. 216.
9 Leviathan XIII, p.185.
10Leviathan XXVII, p.338.
11 Leviathan XV, p.216.
12 Ibid
13 De Homine XIV, 5.
14 Leviathan XLVI3 p.689.
15 De Cive III, 29.
16 Bertram Morris, "Hobbes's Entanglement with the excluded Middle in his Theory of Man and Politics", in Hobbes's 'Science of Natural Justice' , p.89-97, edited by C.Walton and P.J. Johnson, Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987 ; see p. 94. For the contradiction between the a priori and a posteriori nature of Hobbes's political science: see Patrick Tort, Physique de l'Etat. Examen du Corps politique de Hobbes. Paris: Vrin, 1978.
17Elements of Law , I, 7, § 2, p. 28. See De Corpore VI, 6, O.L. I, p.64.
18 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., VII, 213. Vuillemin has quoted the Letter to Herodotus (50-51) and Vita Epicuri (34) ; see in C. Bailey, Epicurus , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926,
p.29 and p. 173.
19 Vuillemin (1984) p. 200-201 : "Par conséquent, tandis que le vrai et le faux obéissent à un critère homogène et symétrique quand il s'agit de l'opinion sensible 'proche', et que, dans ce domaine, conformément aux canons de l'empirisme, vrai signifie 'vérifiable' et faux 'vérifiable que non', c'est-à-dire confirmé et infirmé, il en va autrement pour les hypothèses théoriques. Celles-ci peuvent être infirmées, quoiqu'elles ne puissent jamais être confirmées. Epicure a donc pressenti l'asymétrie de l'infirmation et de la confirmation en ce domaine. Sa canonique annonce Popper".
20 Leviathan IV, p.103-104.
21 Leviathan IV, p.103.
22 Leviathan, The Introduction, p.81.
23 Ibid.
24 Leviathan IV, p.105: "Geometry, (which is the onely Science that it had pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind".
25 Leviathan XXX, p.392.
26 De Cive XVIII,4, 0.L.II, p. 419.
27 Thinking is acting (0.L.V, p.253): see our note 44. But in Leviathan XVI, p.218, "Of Persons Artificiall, some have their words and actions Owned by those whom they represent. And then the Person is the Actor ; and he that owneth his words and actions, is the AUTHOR".
28 Leviathan, The Introduction, p.82. And previously 'Nosce teipsum' in the Elements of Law , 1969, I, 5, § 14, p.24.
29 See Leviathan, chapters X,XI, XII, XIII.
30 Leviathan XIV, p.189.
31 Leo Strauss, "On the Spirit of Hobbes's Political Philosophy", in Hobbes Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965, p.12.
32 Richard Norman, The Moral Philosophers.An Introduction of Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, p.1.
33 Marcus G. Singer, Generalization in Ethics. An Essay in the Logic of Ethics, with the Rudiments of a System of Moral Philosophy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961, p.153.
34 Leviathan XV, p.214 -215.
35 See Vita, O. L.I, p. XIV.
36 Leviathan IX, p.149.
37)Leviathan XLVI, p.688:"There is a certain Philosophia prima , on which all other Philosophy ought to depend; and consisteth principally, in right limiting of the significations of such Appellations, or Names, as are of all others the most Universall".
38 Leviathan XLVI, p.688.
39 De Corpore , E.W.I, p. 105.
40 Leviathan XXXIV, p.428: "The same also, because Bodies are subject to change, that is to say, to variety of appearance to the sense of living creatures, is called Substance, that is to say, Subject , to various accidents, as sometimes to be Moved, sometimes to stand Still". See p. 429: "And according to this acceptation of the word, Substance and Body , signify the same thing".
41 Court Traité des premiers principes . Le Short Tract on First Principles de 1630-1631. La naissance do Thomas Hobbes à la pensée moderne. Texte,Traduction et Commentaire par Jean Bernhardt, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, Epiméthée 1988, p.14.
42 De Corporo , E. W. I, p.104.
43 Ibid., p.105.
44 Ibid., p.4.
45 In the Third Objections against Descartes's Meditations (Opera latina V, p.253) Hobbes is objecting to Descartes : as it is the act of thinking, 'I think' can imply a subject or a substance (and consequently a body), 'I am' . But a thinking thing is for Hobbes a corporeal or material thing.
46 Leviathan V, p.111.
47 Leviathan Il, p.93.
48 Leviathan V, p.110.
49 Leviathan V, p.111.
50 Leviathan XLVI, p.682.
51 De Corpore , E.W . I, p.63.
52 De Corpore , E.W .1, p.123.
53 See André Robinet, "Pensée et langage chez Hobbes : Physique de la parole et translatio", in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Hobbes, 1979, 129, p.452-483.
54 De Homine, X, 1.
55 Leviathan, X, p.150.
56 Leviathan IV, p.105.
57Leviathan XLVI, p.703.
58 De Cive XVIII, 4, O.L.II,p.418.
59Leviathan XLVI, p.690.
60 Leviathan XLVI, p.690.
61 De Corpore Il, § 14, and De Homine , X.
62 Leviathan, V, p.117.
63 Martin A. Bertman, "Hobbes: Language and the Is-Ought", in Hobbes's 'Science of Natural Justice', op.cit, p.99-109; see p.106. Hobbes resolves the difficulty "in an interpenetrating functional relationship. The natural is fulfilled by the artificial. In the case of language, the natural is the denotative or designative relations between words and concepts in the minds, through the vehicle of memory".
64 The Elements of Law , 1969, I, XII.
65 Leviathan XI, p.161.
66 Leviathan XIII, p.188.
67 Leviathan XIV, p.189.
68 Leviathan XIII p.185.
69 Leviathan XIV, p.189.
70 Leviathan XV, p.201.
71 Leviathan XV, p.202.
72 Leviathan XV, p.215.
73 Leviathan XV, p.206.
74 De Cive III, 5.
75 Leviathan XV, p.206.
76 De Cive , IV, 21.
77 A. E. Taylor, "The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes", in Hobbes Studies, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1965; see p.38.
78 Ibid.
79 De Cive , III, 33.
80 A.E.Taylor, op. cit., p.41.
81 Leviathan VII, p.131.
82 Leviathan IX, p.149.
83 De Corpore , VI, 4.
84 Leviathan V, p.112.
85 Leviathan XI, p.164-165.
86 De Corporo XXV, 1.
87 Leviathan VI, p.118.
88 Leviathan VII, p.130.
89 Leviathan Il, p.147-148.
90 Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White. Paris: Vrin, 1973, p.393.
91 Elementae Philosophiae. Logica , I, 57.
92 Leviathan VII, p.131.
93 Leviathan V, p.112.
94 Leviathan VII, p.131.
95 Leviathan, X, p.150.
96 Leviathan III, p.98.
97 What are Philosophical Systems ? , p.112.
98 Letter to Morus on the 5th of February 1649.
99 Leviathan XLVI, p.694.
100 The Elements of Law, 1969, V, § 6, p.20.