Theological Origins of Modernity

222 chapter seven
account of the Civil War (1672, published posthumously in 1682). In 1672
he also wrote both his prose and verse autobiographies. Unable to publish
polemical work, Hobbes returned to translation, producing an English
Iliad and Odyssey in 1675 at the age of eighty-seven. He died peacefully
at Hardwick in 1679, probably from the Parkinson’s disease that had long
affl icted him.
hobbes’ project
Given the character of his age, it is perhaps not surprising that from his
translation of Medea at age 14 to his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey at
the age of 87, Hobbes demonstrated a concern with the impact of violence
on political institutions and practices. Th e preeminent example of such
violence in his mind was civil war, which was the subject of his early translation
of Th ucydides as well as his late Behemoth. In between, he developed
a science that he believed could eliminate violence, establish peace, and
promote prosperity. Th is science consisted in a physics that described the
nature of bodies and the laws governing their motions, an anthropology
that described human bodies and their motions, and a political science
that established a mechanism to minimize the violent collisions of human
bodies. 57
Th is science is similar to Descartes’ mathesis universalis but is both
broader and more ambitious. As we saw in the last chapter, Descartes
sought to develop an apodictic science that would enable us to understand
and control the motions of all bodies. Since humans are only partly bodily,
this science could only understand corporeal human processes and had
nothing to say about actions deriving from the free will. Descartes’ system
of science thus included only an abbreviated anthropology (Th e Passions
of the Soul) and did not include social or political science. As a result, his
science did not directly address the crisis of his time. As we saw in the last
chapter, he hoped to have a powerful indirect eff ect, but he knew this could
occur only in the long term.
Hobbes too seeks to make man master and possessor of nature, but in
contrast to Descartes, he denies that human beings have any special status.
Th ey are no diff erent than all other beings. A science that seeks to make
humans masters and possessors of nature by revealing the causes of motion
thus must necessarily consider the mastery and possession of other
human beings. Hobbes therefore had to consider the motives of human
action and the means to regulate and control such actions. Anthropology
and political science are thus a necessary part of Hobbes’ system. While