Journal•ISSN: 0921-5891
Hobbes Studies
Brill
About: Hobbes Studies is an academic journal published by Brill. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Intellectual history & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 0921-5891. Over the lifetime, 211 publications have been published receiving 1076 citations. The journal is also known as: HOBS.
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TL;DR: The authors argues that the universal prescriptive force of natural law is instead grounded in some desire (or set of desires) which all rational agents share, i.e., the desire for self-preservation, as death is considered the worst possible evil that can befall Hobbesian agents.
Abstract: This article challenges the orthodoxy that Hobbes’s laws of nature, considered as dictates of reason, ceaselessly oblige agents in virtue of the general desire for self-preservation. Hobbes is an internalist about reasons, who refuses reason independent motivational efficacy. The universal prescriptive force of natural law is instead grounded in some desire (or set of desires) which all rational agents share. On the Orthodox Interpretation, this is the desire for self-preservation, as death is considered the worst possible evil that can befall Hobbesian agents. I argue that this interpretation is untenable. A plethora of passages attests that at least one thing is worse than death: loss of eternal life. It is therefore rational, according to Hobbes, to choose to die if doing so is necessary to procure salvation. This article sketches a non-preservationist reading of the psychological underpinnings of Hobbes’s moral philosophy which can account for (but does not presuppose) the superior disvalue of damnation. Three psychological laws, I submit, structure Hobbesian deliberation and desire-formation. The third and perhaps most controversial law states that humans cannot help caring about their own welfare. My contention is that the inescapable desire for bonum sibi better explains the universal normativity of natural law than self-preservation does.
31 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors deal with the notion of conatus (endeavor) and the role it plays in Hobbes's program for natural philosophy and argue that, in the end, there are important limitations in the Hobbesian conatus, but that Leibniz adapted the concept in important ways in developing his science of dynamics.
Abstract: This paper will deal with the notion of conatus (endeavor) and the role it plays in Hobbes’s program for natural philosophy. As defined by Hobbes, the conatus of a body is essentially its instantaneous motion, and he sees this as the means to account for a variety of phenomena in both natural philosophy and mathematics. Although I foucs principally on Hobbesian physics, I will also consider the extent to which Hobbes’s account of conatus does important explanatory work in his theory of human perception, psychology, and political philosophy. I argue that, in the end, there are important limitations in Hobbes’s account of conatus, but that Leibniz adapted the concept in important ways in developing his science of dynamics.
31 citations
30 citations
TL;DR: The date of the publication of the Short Tract on First Principles was confirmed by Ferdinand Tonnies as mentioned in this paper, lui-meme, who concerne l'auteur de this manuscrit anonyme.
Abstract: Depuis la decouverte et premiere publication par Ferdinand Tonnies en 1889 du manuscrit qu’il intitula de maniere peu appropriee1 «Short Tract on First Principles », faible a ete le souci de confirmer la paternite de Hobbes et la datation du texte vers 1630, elements avances par Tonnies lui-meme. En ce qui concerne l’auteur de ce manuscrit anonyme, Tonnies se contenta d’affirmer qu’« un court regard suffit pour rendre claire la paternite de l’ouvrage a quiconque est familier des autres ouvrages de Hobbes ». Et il «se risque a suggerer» la date de 1630 «parce que notre auteur nous assure a plusieures reprises qu’a cette epoque il avait deja mis en avant l’opinion» defendue dans ce texte de la subjectivite des qualites sensibles2.
29 citations