Great Ideas of Philosophy

D. Society is a fit subject for scientific study, but first, the absurdities must be identified and eliminated.Hobbes gives central importance to speech. Although speech confers power and aids memory, it also lendsitself to abuses.1. We reason with terms that have no settled meaning. Something about the way in which we representproblems to ourselves in words makes them soluble or not, clear or obscure.2. We fail to distinguish between real bodies and spirituous, immaterial things; we speak of “infusingfaith” into somebody, thus signaling profound ignorance of what can do the infusing and be infused.3. We remain tied to that old Platonic mistake, according to which “universals” are granted realexistence. Only particular things have existence.4. We treat metaphors as if they were real, and we complacently adopt terms for which there are no realworldreferents. The Scholastics are to blame for this.E. Reality is physical reality, material reality. If we are to have a scientific understanding of man, then manmust be accepted as a material entity.F. Society, composed of such entities, is then understood as a complex system made up of (human) matter inmotion.1. Motion is either involuntary and reflexive (“vital”) or intentional.2. Our motives and desires prompt intentional movements; we move toward what we want and awayfrom what we fear or dislike. The root motives are grounded in pleasure versus pain.3. The most fundamental desire is that of survival.4. All our moral and ethical standards inherited from philosophy and religion are actually grounded inconsiderations of personal survival. Good and evil are not devoid of meaning, but they mean simply“pleasure” and “pain.”G. It is fear of a violent death that moves us to enter civil society.1. Men gather in groups to prevent their destruction by other men.2. Within society, members differ in ability but are sufficiently equal that no one of them could singlyresist the power exerted by a combination of them.3. Therefore, they invest a protector with such power as is necessary to protect each of them from theothers in the same group. This monarchical power is the “leviathan”—the state.4. We give up enough of our power to the monarch that he will have sufficient options to protect us. Butour allegiance to the leviathan—and, hence, the monarch’s power—lasts only as long as he is able toprotect us, our interests, and our lives.III. Hobbes’s entire thesis is based on a hedonistic psychology, and Hobbes is not at all sheepish about stating asmuch.A. In a nutshell, the sovereign has the power of reward or punishment. It is by that power that we move—away from punishment and toward reward. What passes for altruism or Christian charity is itself anexpression of self-regard and self-preservation, based either on a desire for honor or eternal reward or on afear of reprisal.B. Concord in the state is the equivalent of health in the body. Sedition is sickness. Ultimately, sedition leadsto civil war, and civil war is death—it kills civic life. These are not metaphors but exact correspondences.IV. Hobbes’s critique of Descartes is cogent, and Descartes’s extended reply is not entirely convincing.A. Asked by Marin Mersenne to offer (along with Pierre Gassendi, now known chiefly as the 17 th -centurywriter who revived Epicurean philosophy, and Mersenne himself) a critique of Descartes’s work, Hobbestook issue with Descartes’s rationalistic mind/body distinction.B. Instead, Hobbes offers a view of human nature as a part of nature, subject to the same governing laws. Thetools developed to study and discover the laws and principles of nature can be applied to human nature.V. The age of Newton came to host increasingly mechanistic conceptions of the body politic and of society atlarge. Hobbes’s Leviathan illustrates this turn of mind vividly. Thus, in this age, the prospects for a socialscience are recognized and considered optimistically. Science now begins to take on a “scientistic” flavor suchthat statements and judgments, in order to be credible, must be rendered in ostensibly scientific fashion. TheEnlightenment is at hand.10©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership