Thomas Hobbes
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367 - 9 |
J.P.SOMMERVILLE
Thomas Hobbes
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367 - 9 |
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The English Civil War saw an explosion of religious and political radicalism, but many people were far from happy with this. They did not welcome illiterate women preaching or red-coated troopers proclaiming the Rule of the Saints. |
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Many gentlemen also had little taste for the growth in the power of the clergy - whether of Laudian Bishops or of Scottish Presbyterians. |
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Amongst the upper classes, education, science, reason, Erastianism and political order took on a new attraction. |
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The philosopher who best expressed these ideas was Thomas Hobbes. |
The Market Cross, Malmesbury
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Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire in 1588. (His mother was frightened into premature labor by the news of the Spanish Armada's impending arrival). His father was a minor clergyman, who apparently lacked religious fervor. |
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Hobbes was a bright young scholar and fortunately had a wealthy uncle, in the glove trade, willing to pay for his education. |
The library of Magdalen College, Oxford
| Hobbes was sent to Magdalen College Oxford, and on his
graduation in 1608 became tutor to the son of William Cavendish
(1552-1626) 1st Earl of Devonshire. William Cavendish was the second
son of Sir William Cavendish and
Bess of
Hardwick; in Hobbes' words "There was not any who more really and
less for glory's sake favoured those that studied the liberal arts
liberally, than My Lord …nor in whose house a man
should less need the university than in his."
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Hobbes traveled abroad with the Cavendish family, and
through them he met Francis Bacon whom he helped in writing his
Essays. | ||||
| Hobbes thought that "the faculty of writing history" was "at its highest" in Thucydides. "For the principal and proper work of history being to instruct, and enable men by the knowledge of actions past to bear themselves prudently in the present and providently in the future, there is not extent any other (merely human) that doth more fully and naturally perform it" than Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian Wars. |  |
In 1629, Thomas Hobbes published a translation of Thucydides' great History of the Peloponnesian Wars. Thucydides had argued that democracy produced disorder and instability. Democratic orators, he complained, appealed to their audiences' lowest instincts, and were indifferent to truth and reason. |
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Hobbes supported strong royal power and helped collect the Forced Loan in Derbyshire in 1627. | |
| In 1640, Hobbes (at the request of the Earl of
Newcastle) wrote a work on politics called The Elements of Law,
natural and politic. The book was directly aimed against the views
of the parliamentary opposition to Charles I. Hobbes (and Newcastle)
wanted to toughen Charles I's attitudes: then and later, Hobbes
believed that it was Charles I's vacillation and concessions that
caused the Civil War; an immediate crackdown would have blasted
opposition in the bud.
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In 1640, after eleven years of ruling alone, Charles I was forced to called Parliament. In the Spring of 1640, Hobbes stood as a candidate for election to the Short Parliament, but lost. In November, the Long Parliament began to investigate those who had written in support of absolutism. Fearful that he might be arrested, Hobbes fled to Paris, where he stayed until 1651. There he revised the Elements and in 1642 published De Cive, a Latin version of his political theory. | ||
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In Paris, Hobbes associated with the circle of thinkers surrounding Marin Mersenne, and along with others wrote some criticisms of the philosophical ideas of René Descartes. | ||
| The defeats of the Royalist party in the Civil War led
many other Royalists to flee to Paris, including Newcastle and Queen
Henrietta Maria. One of Henrietta Maria's main advisers was Henry
Jermyn who was also a close friend of Hobbes.
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The execution of Charles I was deeply resented in Scotland; and the Presbyterian leaders agreed to offer the throne to the young Charles II if he would accept Presbyterianism. A group of Royalists led by Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon warned against accepting the Scottish offer as it would infringe the traditional English constitution as well as breaking the promises made to the Bishops and their supporters. | ||
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However, Newcastle and Jermyn both advised Charles to
agree. (He could always renege on the agreement, they implied, when
back in power). Charles took their advice, swore the Covenant
accepting Presbyterianism, and went to Scotland. At just this
time Hobbes was writing
Leviathan in which he rejected the idea
that the Church must be ruled by Bishops.
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Hobbes believed that endless trouble and civil strife was caused by clerical pretensions - whether those of puritan fundamentalists, papal supremacists or divine right episcopalians. Hobbes wanted the clergy deprived of all independent power and kept on a short leash, strictly subordinate to the state. |
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Hobbes' views did not prevail at Charles' court and once banished from it, Hobbes decided to make his peace with Cromwell and return to England, where he lived quietly. |
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At the Restoration, Charles II granted Hobbes a small
pension, despite the continued hostility of Clarendon and the
clergy. Until his death Hobbes was protected by Charles and
by Clarendon's rival, Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington (to whom Hobbes
dedicated his history of the Civil War, Behemoth). |
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Hard-line royalism was not all that Hobbes and Newcastle had in common. Newcastle was also deeply interested in the new scientific ideas becoming current in Europe. |
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Hobbes had possibly met Galileo when he traveled to
Padua in 1635 and he was impressed by the certainty of scientific
demonstration - especially geometry: |
| "He was forty years
old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally.
Being in a gentleman's library Euclid's Elements lay
open, and 'twas the forty-seventh proposition* in the first
book. He read the proposition. "By God" said he, "this is
impossible!" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred
him back to such a proof; which referred him back to another,
which he also read. ... at last he was demonstratively convinced
of that truth. This made him in love with geometry."
(Aubrey
Brief lives) |
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Hobbes believed that the same sort of systematic, deductive thought should be applied to political theory. (At the same period, Descartes also wanted to base philosophy on systematic development from first principles: the two men disliked one another but in many ways their enterprises were similar). |
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Hobbes adopted the Galilean methodology of analyzing
complex phenomena by reducing them to their simplest elements. Hobbes
planned and eventually completed a series of works relating physics,
psychology and politics. De Cive was published earlier than
planned, but it too was based on the principles fundamental to all of
Hobbes thought: nominalism, materialism, voluntarism and determinism. |
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