Theological Origins of Modernity

hobbes’ fearful wisdom 233
all exemplars. Words are essential to reasoning but oft en lead to reifi cation.
As we saw in chapter 1, Ockham’s razor was designed to minimize such reifi
cation. Hobbes is equally aware of this danger. Every error in philosophy,
he asserts, is the result of too much freedom in the use of tropes. Th is is especially
true in philosophy that abuses abstract names in its confusion about
the diff erence between the universality of names and things.
Like Descartes, Hobbes believes philosophy must begin with epistemological
destruction. In Descartes this is his famous path of doubt by which
he thinks away the material world, leaving only the bare cogito ergo sum.
Hobbes too begins by imagining the world to be annihilated. 89 Both thinkers
in this respect build on the nominalist method for eliminating reifi ed
universals by asking what would still exist if the rest of the world were
destroyed. 90 Such a method reveals the truly individual things. Instead of
accepting the world as it appears to us, we construct it anew in the imagination
on this foundation. We thereby come to know things not by nature
or sense but by ratiocination.
Knowing for Hobbes is the connecting of names into propositions
that are essentially forms of computation (either addition or subtraction)
by means of which we recognize the similarities and diff erences among
things. Th ese propositions are connected into syllogisms, and syllogisms
are linked together to form demonstrations. Such a capacity for reasoning
is naturally available to all men, but where a long series is necessary
most fall into error. Th e reason for this, according to Hobbes, is the want
of method. 91 Using the correct method is the most effi cacious means of
discovering eff ects by their known causes or causes by their known effects.
Method is thus essential. 92 Previous philosophy lacked a method and
constantly found itself entwined in contradiction. Hobbes thought he had
found such a method in Euclidean geometry.
Hobbes’ geometric method is oft en compared with Descartes’ but they
are quite diff erent. For Descartes, thinking is not limited to what we can
imagine. Indeed, the ideas are altogether nonrepresentational. Th e example
that he employs to make this point is a chiliagon (a thousand-sided
polygon), which can be known but not imagined. Hobbes rejects this way
of thinking. Th ere is no knowledge except through the imagination. 93 We
may not be able to imagine a chiliagon but we can construct one, and it
is only because we can thereby imagine it piece by piece that it is knowable.
Th e infi nite in his view (and contrary to Descartes) is thus completely
unknowable. Moreover, speaking about infi nite numbers is misguided.
However large a number is, it is still fi nite. What is infi nite (including God)
is inaccessible and incomprehensible.