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Hobbes's First Philosophy and Galilean Science

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09608788.2011.583423

1469-3526

Luc Foisneau,

History of Science and Medicine

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1Thomas Hobbes, Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White, edited with an introduction and notes by Jean Jacquot and Harold Whitmore Jones (Paris: Vrin-CNRS, 1973): abbrev. Critique du De Mundo. In connection with this edition, see J. Jacquot, ‘Notes on an Unpublished Work of Thomas Hobbes’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 9 (1952) No. 2: 188–95 and Hobbes, Critique du De Mundo, 12–13. 2Thomas Hobbes, Thomas White's ‘De Mundo’ Examined, translated by Harold Whitmore Jones (London: Bradford University Press, 1976). 3References to the text under review are abbreviated as Moto. 4A. Pacchi, Convenzione e ipotesi nella formazione della filosofia naturale di Thomas Hobbes (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1965) 30–9, cited in Moto, Introduzione, 15. 5In Ballistica et Acontismologia (1644), Mersenne declares that the extract he cites is ‘ex philosophia praedicti viri subtilis De motu, loco et tempore’: Cogitata physico mathematica (Paris: Bertier, 1644) 75. We use De motu when referring to the manuscript. 6 Moto, Introduzione, 16. See B. C. Southgate, ‘Covetous of Truth’: The Life and Work of Thomas White, 1593–1676 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993). See also the article by Southgate, ‘White, Thomas (Pseuds Blacklo, Albius, Anglus, Bianchi, Candidus, Vitius: 1593–1676)’, in The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers, edited by A. Pyle (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000) 879–84. 7During the Interregnum, from one of White's nicknames (Blacklo) this attempt was known as the Blackloist plot. 8 Moto, Introduzione, 26. Paganini adds with perspicacity that the study dedicated by Cees Leijenhorst to Hobbes's relationship with Aristotelianism (Hobbes and the Aristotelians: The Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes's Natural Philosophy, Ph.D. Dissertation, Utrecht University, 1998) curiously minimizes the first-hand testimony comprising Hobbes's discussion with the Aristotelian thinker, White, with whom Hobbes undoubtedly contended, and at some length (26). 9For the reservations expressed concerning the edition by Jacquot and Jones, see C. Leijenhorst, Hobbes and the Aristotelians, 13, note 22, which attributes the fact that Hobbes's commentators often omit De motu ‘to the partially illegible so-called critical edition of De motu by Jacquot and Jones’. Karl Schuhmann's premature death stopped him from finishing the new critical edition of De motu. 10It is appropriate to stress that the principles Paganini applies in his translation break with the somewhat flexible criteria adopted by Jones in his English translation, for which the reader can only be thankful. Whereas Jones, privileging elegance, ends up by falling into imprecision, translating one and the same notion with many equivalent English terms – for example, ‘phantasma’ is translated successively with ‘impression’, ‘fancy’, ‘conceit’, ‘fantasy’ – Paganini chooses rigour and exactness, using Italian equivalents that are close to the Latin original in their morphology (in the case above: ‘fantasma’). Furthermore, each time an important technical term of Hobbes's philosophy is introduced, a footnoted comment explains the choice of translation. 11Hobbes perfectly understood the critical and hermeneutic importance of translation. See L. Foisneau, ‘Hobbes et la traduction de la langue des scolastiques: L'invention d'un nouveau critère d'intelligibilité’, in Traduire les philosophes, edited by J. Moutaux and O. Bloch (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000) 337–49. 12On the link between astronomy and metaphysics in the modern age, see the suggestive remarks by P. Sloterdijk, In Weltinnenraum des Kapitals (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005) Chapter 4; and, naturally, the study by A. Koyré, Etudes galiléennes (Paris: Hermann, 1966), which sees in modern science a process of dissolution of the Aristotelian cosmos. 13See G. Paganini, Scepsi moderna: Interpretazioni dello scetticismo da Charron a Hume (Busento: Cosenza, 1991); G. Paganini (ed.), The Return of Scepticism: From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 184 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003); G. Paganini, ‘Hobbes among Ancient and Modern Sceptics: Phenomena and Bodies’, in The Return of Scepticism, edited by G. Paganini, 3–35; G. Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the “Continental” Tradition of Scepticism’, in Scepticism as a Force in Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Thought: New Findings and New Interpretations of the Role and Influence of Modern Scepticism, edited by Richard H. Popkin and José M. Maia Neto (Amherst: Humanities Press, 2004) 65–105; G. Paganini, Skepsis: Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme. Montaigne – Le Vayer – Campanella – Hobbes – Descartes – Bayle (Paris: Vrin, 2008). 14P. Rossi, La nascita della scienza moderna in Europa (Rome: Laterza, 1997) is most illuminatingly cited in note 133. 15 Moto, Introduzione, 55. 16‘From this definition it appears clear that being and body are the same thing’: ‘Est igitur ens in hoc sensu id omne quod occupât spatium, sive id quod aestimari potest longitudine, latitudine & profunditate. Ex qua definitione apparet idem esse ens & corpus; nam corporis quoque eadem ab omnibus definitio recipitur; pro ente igitur de quo loquimur dicemus semper corpus, nimirum utentes vocabulo Latino’ (Critique du De Mundo, XXVII, 1, 312; Moto, 462–3). 17‘The true philosophy is absolutely identical to a true, correct and accurate nomenclature of things, indeed it consists in the knowledge of the differences’ / ‘Philosophia vera, planè idem est quod vera, propria & accurata rerum nomenclatura, consistit enim in cognitione differentiarum’ (Critique du De Mundo, XIV, 1, 201–2; Moto, 289–90). 18G. Galilei, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nationale […] (Florence: Barbera, 1898) vol. 8, 51. My translation, cited in Moto, Introduzione, 66. 19‘Come si intuisce dalla Vita carmine expressa, fin dai suoi anni di apprendistato Hobbes aveva attribuito ai principi della materia e del movimento una valenza esplicativa in fondo pi[ugrave] potente di quella di cui aveva parlato il Dialogo’ (Moto, Introduzione, 35). 20M. Pécharman, ‘Le vocabulaire de l'être dans la philosophie première: ens, esse, essentia’, in Hobbes et son vocabulaire, edited by Y. Ch. Zarka (Paris: Vrin, 1992) 31–59. 21A. Koyré, Etudes galiléennes (Paris: Hermann, 1966). 22This observation is suggested to Paganini by the title of the work by Y. Ch. Zarka, La décision métaphysique de Hobbes (Paris: Vrin, 1987; 2nd edn 1999), but it would apply equally well, if not better, to the recent work by Dominique Weber, Hobbes et le corps de Dieu (Paris: Vrin, 2009), who reinterprets Hobbes's thesis of a corporeal God in the perspective of Heideggerian onto-theology. On this interpretative scheme, see also D. Weber (ed.), Hobbes, Descartes et la métaphysique (Paris: Vrin, 2005) for interesting references to De motu (45, 52) and, for an analysis of the debate between Hobbes and Descartes, J.-L. Marion, ‘Hobbes et Descartes: l'étant comme corps’, in D. Weber (ed.), op. cit., 59–77. 23‘In realtà, come vedremo, una simile “decisione” è piuttosto il risultato di una lunga riflessione e di una critica interna rivolte al sapere metafisico e alle sue vicende storiche essentiali’ (Moto, Introduzione, 49). 24See D. Weber, Hobbes et le corps de Dieu (Paris: Vrin, 2009) 137–42, which follows an outline proposed by Jean-Luc Marion in connection with Descartes (Dieu sans l'être [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002] 287) and concludes by including Hobbes's thesis of a corporeal God within the history of onto-theology. 25See J.-L. Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981) 17–23. 26G. Paganini, ‘Hobbes's Critique of the Doctrine of Essences and its Sources’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan, edited by P. Springborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 337–57, at 354. 27Th. Hobbes, Vita carmine expressa (OL I, LXXXIX), and in J. C. A. Gaskin (ed.), Human Nature and De Corpore Politico (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 28For another aspect of this interpretation, see L. Foisneau, Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000) 359–94 (Chapter X: ‘La triple critique de la théologie scolastique’). 29For this stiffening of Hobbes's position, see Paganini's clarification in Hobbes, Moto, XXXVI, 8, 608, note 6. 30On Hobbes's criticism of the political use of astrology and, in particular, on his criticism of the astrologer William Lily in Behemoth, see K. Hoekstra, ‘Disarming the Prophets: Thomas Hobbes and Predictive Power’, in New Critical Perspectives on Hobbes's Leviathan, edited by L. Foisneau and G. Wright (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004) 109–24; in connection with the definition of ‘astral influence’ in De motu, XXXVI, 2 and the scholastic theory, see ibid., 118, note 102 and, in connection with the criticism of astrology in De motu, see ibid., 119–20. 31 De motu, XXXVI, 2, 397/603. 32‘… efficitur omnia in omnia simul agere, hoc est ad quemlibet effectum producendum concurrere omnium astrorum influentias’ (De motu, 398). 33‘Ex quo sequitur collectionem omnium causarum quae sunt in astris esse collectionem omnium causarum quae sunt in universo’ (De motu, 398). 34‘Haec ergo ab authore contra astrologiam adducta argumenta, si firmum est quod ipse posuit de rerum necessitate ex causarum collectione, infirma sunt’ (De motu, XXXVI, 7, 400). 35This at least is what may be deduced from the following statement: ‘Eorum vero quae non dependent ab influentia, sed à conversione astrorum […] praedici aliqua possunt […] quae quidem praedictiones non astrologorum sunt, sed astronomorum.’ (De motu, XXXVI, 8, 400). Cf. K. Hoekstra, ‘Disarming the Prophets’, op. cit, 119. 36In reality, representations of the terrestrial globe had long failed to take into account the atmosphere, although it is indispensible for the development of life on earth. 37In this connection, a misprint on line 5 of paragraph 8 of Chapter XXXVI should be corrected: ‘predire’ has unfortunately replaced what should have been ‘produrre’ as the translation of ‘producendum’. 38Cf. De motu, XXXVI, 8, 400–1. 39 Moto, note 9, 610. 40However, may I refer readers to my analysis of the problem of Hobbes's return to a vocabulary sympathetic to Stoicism in Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu, 116–17. 41‘Questo ripensamento sub specie meccanistica dell'astrologia è tanto pi[ugrave] notevole in quanto costituisce un hapax nelle produzione filosofica di Hobbes: non ha precedenti nelle opere anteriori, ma neppure avrà un seguito in quelle pi[ugrave] mature, ove il filosofo prenderà una posizione pi[ugrave] netta, escludendo tout court l'astrologio dall'ambito del sapere. Nel De motu essa rimane come ai margini del sapere scientifico, proiettandolo nella dimensione (di fatto irragiungibile) della totalità del sistema fisico dell'universo’ (Moto, Introduzione, 40–1). 42For a reference to the major stages in the controversy, see Hobbes, Les questions concernant la liberté, la nécessité et le hasard, with Introduction, notes, glossary and index by L. Foisneau, translated by L. Foisneau and Fl. Perronin (Paris: Vrin, 1999) 7–10. 43Hobbes, Of Liberty and Necessity, in The Complete Works of Thomas Hobbes, English Works, edited by W. Molesworth (London: J. Bohn, 1839–1845) vol. IV, 246; English Works is abbreviated EW, the volume indicated in Roman numbers: EW IV. 44Ibid., 246–7. 45 Of Liberty and Necessity, 266–7. 46L. Foisneau, Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu, 113. 47Hobbes, The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, no. XXI, EW V, 303; abbrev. Questions. 48Ibid., 304. Behind this deliberately modest definition, Bramhall does not hesitate to recognize Hobbes's philosophical ambitions, and the style of what he calls most illuminatingly ‘our great undertakers’ (EW V, 302). The paradoxical style is that of the innovative philosophers of the early seventeenth century, who, while they did not discover new worlds, nevertheless contributed to radically transforming the human representation of the world. Bramhall's derision of these claims – ‘I can but smile to see with what ambition our great undertakers do affect to be accounted the first founders of strange opinions’ (EW V, 302) – clearly expresses his ignorance of the stakes attached to post-Galilean philosophers’ work: to change our way of seeing the world. 49‘There was not long since a scholar that maintained, that if the least thing that had weight should be laid down upon the hardest body that could be, supposing it an anvil of diamant, it would at the first access make it yield. This I thought, and much more the Bishop would have thought, a paradox. But when he told me, that either that would do it, or all the weight of the world would not do it, because if the whole weight did it, every the least part thereof would do its part, I saw no reason to dissent’ (Questions, no. XXI, 304). 50 Questions, no. XXI, 304–5. 51 Questions, no. XXI, 305. 52 Questions, no. XXI, 305. 53Lastly, I refer readers to the latest article published by G. Paganini, which bears on the Hermetic sources of Hobbes's thought: ‘Hobbes's “Mortal God” and Renaissance Hermeticism’, Hobbes Studies, 23 (2010): 7–28.