Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

220 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
in other respects surpassed, those of the corporeal part. Hobbes denied that there
were such things as incorporeal souls, and he would have doubted the
conceivability of an incorporeal part of the soul. His theory of knowledge
invoked no purely psychological capacities and he recognized no purely spiritual
entities. The different materialisms of Hobbes and Gassendi also fit into rather
different systems of philosophy. Both systems were motivated by a repudiation of
Aristotle and a desire to provide philosophical grounding for the new science of
the seventeenth century, but Gassendi’s provides that grounding in the form of a
theory attributed to, or at least inspired by, an ancient authority, while Hobbes’s
does not. The ancient authority in question was Epicurus. Probably Gassendi
revised Epicurean thought to a greater degree than he revived it; nevertheless, he
took himself to be engaged in a humanist enterprise of bringing back to life a
badly understood, unfairly maligned and long-discredited way of thinking.
Hobbes’s system was in no sense intended to rehabilitate traditional thought. It was
supposed to lay out the new elements of a new natural philosophy and an even
newer and largely Hobbesian civil philosophy.
INTRODUCTION
The different intellectual development of the two writers makes it surprising that
the philosophies of Gassendi and Hobbes converge as much as they do. Gassendi
was the younger of the two by about four years, born in Provence in 1592. At
Digne, Ruez and Aix he received a thorough scholastic education in
mathematics, philosophy and theology during which, at the age of 12, he began
to train for the priesthood. He was a very talented pupil, even something of a
child prodigy. At the age of 16 he was a teacher of rhetoric at Digne. He received
the doctorate in theology from Avignon six years later, and in 1616, when he
was 24, he won competitions for two chairs at the university of Aix, one in
theology and one in philosophy. He chose the chair in philosophy. Though his
career as a teacher was cut short when the university was transferred to the
control of the Jesuits in 1622, Gassendi was occupied for virtually the whole of his
working life with theological, philosophical, historical and scientific studies. He
conducted these to begin with as a member of the chapter, and eventually as
provost, of the cathedral at Digne, and at intervals under the patronage of
wealthy and powerful friends in Provence and Paris. By the time he came into
regular contact with Hobbes in the early 1640s he had already lectured and
written extensively about the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, had carried out a
number of astronomical observations, as well as investigations in biology and
mechanics, had corresponded with and travelled to meet some eminent
Copernicans, had read widely in natural philosophy and had engaged in numerous
erudite researches concerning the lives and thought of Epicurus and other ancient
authorities. He had also worked on reconciling the scientific theories that he
admired with his Catholicism.