History of Philosophy II Lecture Notes

Phil A212

William Jamison

Lecture 3 Notes:

Hobbes, "Leviathan"

Biographical material: IEP.

In the beginning of the selection we have from the Leviathan we see the groundwork for what will be the British Empiricist view. In our terms today we would say Hobbes is a behaviorist. We can read him as saying all our conceptions start from sense data. Locke will give this theory of the mind as empty before our senses write everything in our minds as the tabula rasa.

Many will consider Locke the first empiricist because of several aspects of his thought that introduce difficulties for the empiricist view but the view itself seems right here in Hobbes.

In a way, I think it also seems that Hobbes follows the logic of this viewpoint better than Locke. The very difficulties Locke introduces strikes me as there in his work precisely because he does not follow the logic of the view as well.

What is the logic of this view?

A close reading of the Leviathan gives us this progressive logic. Note its relationship to Galileo’s concern with motions and the view of the universe as mechanical. Hobbes is going to do the psychology, sociology – politics associated with the idea that motion is not only the way nature works, but the way mind and society works as well.

See Euclid for the work that first turned Hobbes’ interest towards philosophy and mathematics.

Next assignments:

Descartes and Hobbes, Rationalism versus Empiricism             

Spinoza, "Ethics"