Oakeshott's Hobbes and the fear of political rationalism

Political Theory

Volumn 29, Issue 6, 2001, Pages 806-832

  Miller, Ted H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035540181     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591701029006005     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Bernard Crick, In Defense of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Eulau and Crick debated at a roundtable discussion at the 1996 annual meeting of the American Political Science Assocation (APSA) in San Francisco.
2. Michael Oakeshott, "The New Bentham," reprinted in Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, expanded ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1991).
3. See, for example, Barry's defense of impartiality in Brian Barry, Justice As Impartiality (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).
4. William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, 2d ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
5. William Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, 2d ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
6. Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon, 1971).
7. Sheldon Wolin, "Political Theory As a Vocation," Machiavelli and the Nature of Political Thought, ed. Martin Fleisher (New York: Atheneum, 1972).
8. Most recently, the controversy started with the "Mr. Perestroika" e-mail. See PS: Political Science & Politics 4 (December 2000): 735-41.
9. See, for example, Marcuse's observations on the status of philosophy and social science in Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964).
10. Hubert Dreyfus is a key proponent of this reading of Heidegger and of those Heideggerian-influenced thinkers such as Foucault. See Hubert Dreyfus, Michel Foucault, beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Jacques Derrida's work, particularly the earlier works and his own critique of Foucault, are illustrative of the efforts to resist lapses into metaphysics. See, notably, Jacques Derrida, "Cogito and the History of Madness" in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
11. Hubert Dreyfus is a key proponent of this reading of Heidegger and of those Heideggerian-influenced thinkers such as Foucault. See Hubert Dreyfus, Michel Foucault, beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Jacques Derrida's work, particularly the earlier works and his own critique of Foucault, are illustrative of the efforts to resist lapses into metaphysics. See, notably, Jacques Derrida, "Cogito and the History of Madness" in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
12. Steven A. Gerenscer, The Skeptic's Oakeshott (New York: St. Martin's, 2000).
13. Michael Oakeshott, "Introduction to Leviathan," [hereafter, "Introduction"] reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 240. Oakeshott here quotes J. S. Mill's Autobiography, but more proximal sources for this claim included Ferdinand Tönnies, Thomas Hobbes: Leben und Lehre (Stuttgart, Germany: Friedrich Frommanns Verlag, E. Hauff, 1896);
14. Michael Oakeshott, "Introduction to Leviathan," [hereafter, "Introduction"] reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 240. Oakeshott here quotes J. S. Mill's Autobiography, but more proximal sources for this claim included Ferdinand Tönnies, Thomas Hobbes: Leben und Lehre (Stuttgart, Germany: Friedrich Frommanns Verlag, E. Hauff, 1896);
15. Harold Hoffding, A History of Modern Philosophy; a Sketch of the History of Philosophy, trans. B. E. Meyer (London: Macmillan, 1900).
16. see Michael Oakeshott, "Thomas Hobbes," Scrutiny, 4 (1935-36): 263-77. Leo Strauss also wishes to distance Hobbes the moral philosopher from Hobbes the social scientist, but he allows for greater affinities between Hobbes and social scientific techniques.
17. See Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis, trans. Elsa Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1936] 1963).
18. Michael Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics" in Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, esp. 31; Michael Oakeshott, "Political Education," in ibid., 54.
19. Michael Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics" in Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, esp. 31; Michael Oakeshott, "Political Education," in ibid., 54.
20. "Introduction," 235-39. Thus, Hobbes's enthusiasm for Kepler, Galileo, and Harvey should not outweigh his antipathy toward the Royal Society. When we see "what Hobbes was about" we realize that this confusion, this "internal tension" in his thought arose from an attempted but imperfectly achieved distinction between science and philosophy. The distinction, well known to us now, is that between knowledge of things as they appear and enquiry into the fact of their appearing, between a knowledge (with all the necessary assumptions) of the phenomenal world and a theory of knowledge itself . . . his concern as a philosopher was with the second and not the first. (Ibid., 239)
21. Ibid., 236.
22. Ibid., 236-37.
23. Ibid., 236.
24. Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. Philip P. Wiener (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954).
25. "Introduction," 227-28, 233, 276-78, 280. The important distinction for Oakeshott is that Hobbes is a part of - indeed the fruition of - a break from an earlier tradition of "Reason and Nature," which rooted obedience in natural law, and natural law in the obligatory force of reason's dictates.
26. Ibid., 236.
27. Ibid., 246-47.
28. Ibid., 244.
29. Ibid., 244-45.
30. It is also, notably, a part of an argument that stresses a picture of the individual that stresses willfulness over reason, but I will not be addressing this part of Oakeshott's interpretation here. See, for example, ibid., 280.
31. Ibid., 242.
32. Ibid., 243.
33. Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, bk. I, chap. 3, sections 1-2, 7, Opera Philosophica (vol. 2), ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839) [hereafter, De Corpore, book, chapter, section]. See also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 4, sections 11-12, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994) [hereafter, Leviathan, chapter, section]; Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law, bk. I, chap. 5, section 10, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1889).
34. Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, bk. I, chap. 3, sections 1-2, 7, Opera Philosophica (vol. 2), ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839) [hereafter, De Corpore, book, chapter, section]. See also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 4, sections 11-12, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994) [hereafter, Leviathan, chapter, section]; Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law, bk. I, chap. 5, section 10, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1889).
35. Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, bk. I, chap. 3, sections 1-2, 7, Opera Philosophica (vol. 2), ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839) [hereafter, De Corpore, book, chapter, section]. See also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 4, sections 11-12, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994) [hereafter, Leviathan, chapter, section]; Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law, bk. I, chap. 5, section 10, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1889).
36. Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, bk. I, chap. 3, sections 1-2, 7, Opera Philosophica (vol. 2), ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839) [hereafter, De Corpore, book, chapter, section]. See also Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 4, sections 11-12, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994) [hereafter, Leviathan, chapter, section]; Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law, bk. I, chap. 5, section 10, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1889).
37. In De Corpore, I, 3, 10, he writes, "truth adheres not to things, but to speech only, for some truths are eternal; for it will be eternally true, if man, then living creature; but that any man, or living creature, should exist eternally, is not necessary." This assertion is explained by the fact that Hobbes defines "living creature" as one of the accidents that are necessary to "man"; in his terminology, a cause of man. Thus, it is true that "man" entails the notion of "living creature," but it could be that men, and all living creatures, will one day be gone. Nonetheless, the formal truth that "man" is a "living creature" will nonetheless remain true. In Leviathan, 4, 11, Hobbes writes, "For True and False are attributes of Speech, not of Things. And where Speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood."
38. Reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism and Politics.
39. Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics," 6.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 7.
42. Ibid.
43. Michael Oakeshott, "Rational Conduct," reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, esp. 102-15.
44. Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics," 9.
45. Ibid., 27. Oakeshott makes this point in the context of a more specific critique of "the politics of the book." Here, one imagines that he is not merely speaking of political rationalism generally but the political rationalist ideologies that generated books. None too specific, Oakeshott may be thinking of manuals such as Mao's little red book. In any case, this argument is an extension of his more general point about the inherent inadequacies of technique in the realm of politics.
46. Gerencer, The Skeptic's Oakeshott. Other instances of "strong readings" - and perhaps it is no accident that strong readings are often Hobbes interpretations - include Wolin's "epic theorist" interpretation of Hobbes, at once an explanation for strong reading and a strong reading in itself. Sheldon Wolin, Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory, (Los Angeles: Clark Memorial Library, 1970). See also Richard Flathman's account of his purposes in Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), xxi.
47. Flathman, Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics and Richard Flathman, Willful Liberalism: Voluntarism and Individuality in Political Theory and Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).
48. See the preceding discussion. See also "Introduction" 232-33, 237, 276 ff.
49. De Corpore, I, 1, 6.
50. For example, Habermas, Theory and Practice; Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Stephan Salkever, "'Lopp'd and Bound': How Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods of Liberal Practices," Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. Bruce Douglas, Gerald Mara, and Henry Richardson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 167-202.
51. For example, Habermas, Theory and Practice; Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Stephan Salkever, "'Lopp'd and Bound': How Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods of Liberal Practices," Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. Bruce Douglas, Gerald Mara, and Henry Richardson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 167-202.
52. For example, Habermas, Theory and Practice; Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Stephan Salkever, "'Lopp'd and Bound': How Liberal Theory Obscures the Goods of Liberal Practices," Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. Bruce Douglas, Gerald Mara, and Henry Richardson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 167-202.
53. These boasts are made in De Corpore, Epistle Dedicatory; see also the Dedicatory and the Preface to Readers of De Cive, Opera Philosophica.
54. Habermas, Theory and Practice; Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes.
55. Habermas, Theory and Practice; Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes.
56. Leviathan, 5, 5.
57. Hobbes's illustration of the difference between prudence and science in terms of the distinction between the merely prudent fencer and the scientific fencer (Leviathan, 5, 21) reinforces this point. He is not merely concerned with the knowledge of the scientific fencer but with the fact that he is "infallible" in his capacity as a fencer.
58. Leviathan, 13, 9.
59. Ibid.
60. De Corpore, I, 1, 7. See also De Cive, Dedicatory.
61. De Corpore, I, 1, 7. See also De Cive, Dedicatory.
62. Gregory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
63. Two contributors to the recent Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) confront this question (and also answer no). See Alan Ryan, "Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in ibid., 208-45, esp. 212-14, for the analogy between Hobbes's science and normative aspects of modern economics. See also Douglas Jesseph, "Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science" in ibid., 86-107, esp. 100-101, where it is claimed that Hobbes had a commitment to "uncover the mechanical causes of natural phenomena"; this commitment is said to mitigate the force of his claims concerning the restriction of philosophic truths to true propositions (and therewith a conventionalist theory of natural science). These very recent interpreters are hardly alone. Even among earlier interpreters, who have been mindful of the distinction between Hobbes's work and contemporary social scientific enterprises, there is recognition that his science is concerned with describing the world. See, for example, David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22-24, 52-54; J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1965) esp. 8-11, 47-81, 121-25.
64. Two contributors to the recent Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) confront this question (and also answer no). See Alan Ryan, "Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in ibid., 208-45, esp. 212-14, for the analogy between Hobbes's science and normative aspects of modern economics. See also Douglas Jesseph, "Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science" in ibid., 86-107, esp. 100-101, where it is claimed that Hobbes had a commitment to "uncover the mechanical causes of natural phenomena"; this commitment is said to mitigate the force of his claims concerning the restriction of philosophic truths to true propositions (and therewith a conventionalist theory of natural science). These very recent interpreters are hardly alone. Even among earlier interpreters, who have been mindful of the distinction between Hobbes's work and contemporary social scientific enterprises, there is recognition that his science is concerned with describing the world. See, for example, David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22-24, 52-54; J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1965) esp. 8-11, 47-81, 121-25.
65. Two contributors to the recent Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) confront this question (and also answer no). See Alan Ryan, "Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in ibid., 208-45, esp. 212-14, for the analogy between Hobbes's science and normative aspects of modern economics. See also Douglas Jesseph, "Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science" in ibid., 86-107, esp. 100-101, where it is claimed that Hobbes had a commitment to "uncover the mechanical causes of natural phenomena"; this commitment is said to mitigate the force of his claims concerning the restriction of philosophic truths to true propositions (and therewith a conventionalist theory of natural science). These very recent interpreters are hardly alone. Even among earlier interpreters, who have been mindful of the distinction between Hobbes's work and contemporary social scientific enterprises, there is recognition that his science is concerned with describing the world. See, for example, David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22-24, 52-54; J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1965) esp. 8-11, 47-81, 121-25.
66. Two contributors to the recent Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) confront this question (and also answer no). See Alan Ryan, "Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in ibid., 208-45, esp. 212-14, for the analogy between Hobbes's science and normative aspects of modern economics. See also Douglas Jesseph, "Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science" in ibid., 86-107, esp. 100-101, where it is claimed that Hobbes had a commitment to "uncover the mechanical causes of natural phenomena"; this commitment is said to mitigate the force of his claims concerning the restriction of philosophic truths to true propositions (and therewith a conventionalist theory of natural science). These very recent interpreters are hardly alone. Even among earlier interpreters, who have been mindful of the distinction between Hobbes's work and contemporary social scientific enterprises, there is recognition that his science is concerned with describing the world. See, for example, David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22-24, 52-54; J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1965) esp. 8-11, 47-81, 121-25.
67. Two contributors to the recent Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996) confront this question (and also answer no). See Alan Ryan, "Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in ibid., 208-45, esp. 212-14, for the analogy between Hobbes's science and normative aspects of modern economics. See also Douglas Jesseph, "Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science" in ibid., 86-107, esp. 100-101, where it is claimed that Hobbes had a commitment to "uncover the mechanical causes of natural phenomena"; this commitment is said to mitigate the force of his claims concerning the restriction of philosophic truths to true propositions (and therewith a conventionalist theory of natural science). These very recent interpreters are hardly alone. Even among earlier interpreters, who have been mindful of the distinction between Hobbes's work and contemporary social scientific enterprises, there is recognition that his science is concerned with describing the world. See, for example, David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22-24, 52-54; J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson, 1965) esp. 8-11, 47-81, 121-25.
68. Ted H. Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints That Enable the Imitation of God," Inquiry 42 (1999): 149-76.
69. For an Oakeshott-inspired classification and evaluation of the secondary literature (written in the early 1970s) that affirms this division and critique of Hobbes interpretation, see W. H. Greenleaf, "Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation," Hobbes and Rousseau, ed. Maurice Cranston and Richard Peters (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1972).
70. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
71. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
72. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
73. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
74. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
75. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
76. I discuss this at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Some of the most sustained claims along these lines occur in De Cive, Dedicatory and Preface to the Readers. Some of the more important works on mathematics pertinent to Hobbes's own include Peter Dear, Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Peter Dear, Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Paolo Mancosu, "Aristotelian Logic and Euclidean Mathematics: Seventeenth-Century Developments of the Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23 (1992): 241-65 (Mancosu briefly discusses Hobbes's conflict with John Wallis); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Nicolas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's 'A Defence of Tycho against Ursus' with Essays on Its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert Westman, "The Astronomer's Role in the Sixteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," History of Science 18 (1980): 105-47; A. C. Crombie, "Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy," Prismata, Naturwissenschaftgeschichtliche Studien, ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Slatzer (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977), 63-94.
77. I discuss this conflict in Making Certain: Thomas Hobbes and the Fashioning of States, Citizens, and Mathematicians (book manuscript in preparation). See also Douglas Jesseph, Squaring the Circle: The War between Hobbes and Wallis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Hobbes's mathematical works include Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematiques (1656); ΣTIΓMAI or MARKES of the Absurd Geometry, Rural Language, Scottish-Politics, and Barbarism of John Wallis (1657); Examinatio et Emedation Mathematicae Hodiernae (1660); Principia et Problemata Aliquot Geometrarum (1666); Lux Mathematica (1672). All are reprinted in the English Works (11 vols.), ed. Sir William Molesworth (London: John Bohn, 1839-45) or in Opera Latino (5 vols.), ed. Sir William Molesworth (1839-45).
78. Leviathan, 1, 5; 4, 4; 5, 5-16; 8, 27; 12, 31, throughout; De Corpore I, 5, 1-9.
79. Leviathan, 1, 5; 4, 4; 5, 5-16; 8, 27; 12, 31, throughout; De Corpore I, 5, 1-9.
80. Leviathan, 1, 5; 4, 4; 5, 5-16; 8, 27; 12, 31, throughout; De Corpore I, 5, 1-9.
81. Leviathan, 1, 5; 4, 4; 5, 5-16; 8, 27; 12, 31, throughout; De Corpore I, 5, 1-9.
82. Leviathan, 1, 5; 4, 4; 5, 5-16; 8, 27; 12, 31, throughout; De Corpore I, 5, 1-9.
83. Leviathan, 1, 5; 4, 4; 5, 5-16; 8, 27; 12, 31, throughout; De Corpore I, 5, 1-9.
84. Leviathan, 4, 12.
85. See discussion of "maker's knowledge" in Antonio Pérez-Ramos, "Francis Bacon and Man's Two-Faced Kingdom," Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, ed. G.H.R. Parkinson (London: Routledge, 1993); Antonio Pérez-Ramos, Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); Arthur Child, "Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico, and Dewey," University of California Publications in Philosophy 16 (1953): 271-310. Child, however, shies away from more interesting conclusions concerning Hobbes's civil science.
86. See discussion of "maker's knowledge" in Antonio Pérez-Ramos, "Francis Bacon and Man's Two-Faced Kingdom," Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, ed. G.H.R. Parkinson (London: Routledge, 1993); Antonio Pérez-Ramos, Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); Arthur Child, "Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico, and Dewey," University of California Publications in Philosophy 16 (1953): 271-310. Child, however, shies away from more interesting conclusions concerning Hobbes's civil science.
87. See discussion of "maker's knowledge" in Antonio Pérez-Ramos, "Francis Bacon and Man's Two-Faced Kingdom," Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century Rationalism, ed. G.H.R. Parkinson (London: Routledge, 1993); Antonio Pérez-Ramos, Francis Bacon's Idea of Science and the Maker's Knowledge Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); Arthur Child, "Making and Knowing in Hobbes, Vico, and Dewey," University of California Publications in Philosophy 16 (1953): 271-310. Child, however, shies away from more interesting conclusions concerning Hobbes's civil science.
88. Norman Jacobson's reading of Hobbes in Norman Jacobson, Pride and Solace (London: Methuen, 1978) makes light of the God-like claims that Hobbes makes for his philosophy. I find that Jacobson's assertions are in many respects similar to my own conclusions, although the two studies have different purposes.
89. De Corpore, I, 1, 5.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
92. De Homine, chap. 10, section 5, trans. Charles Wood, T.S.K. Scott-Craig, and Bernard Gert, in Man and Citizen (New York: Anchor, 1972). See also Hobbes's concluding remarks in De Corpore, IV, 30, 15.
93. De Homine, chap. 10, section 5, trans. Charles Wood, T.S.K. Scott-Craig, and Bernard Gert, in Man and Citizen (New York: Anchor, 1972). See also Hobbes's concluding remarks in De Corpore, IV, 30, 15.
94. The doctrine of natural causes hath not infallible and evident principles. For there is no effect which the power of God cannot produce by many several ways. But seeing all effects are produced by motion, he that supposing someone or more motions, can derive from them the necessity of that effect whose cause is required, has done all that is to be expected from natural reason. And though he prove not that the thing was thus produced, yet he proves that thus it may be produced when the materials and the power of moving are in our hands: which is as useful as if the causes themselves were known. (Thomas Hobbes, Seven Philosophical Problems, Dedicatory, in English Works [vol. 7])
95. I discuss this distinction at length in Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints."
96. De Homine, 10, 5. In the Latin, Hobbes writes of these things, "ipsi fecimus" (i.e., from "facere," to make), Opera Latino (vol. 1 ), 94.
97. De Homine, 10, 5. In the Latin, Hobbes writes of these things, "ipsi fecimus" (i.e., from "facere," to make), Opera Latino (vol. 1 ), 94.
98. Leviathan, 17, 2.
99. Oakeshott in fact argued this characteristic of Hobbes's laws of nature. See "Introduction," 256-57. He only does so, however, after having neutralized the practical implications of this reading - noting that in civil philosophy, "the generation [of effects] is rational and not physical" (ibid., 248).
100. This assertion may seem to cut against Oakeshott's professed liberalism. Oakeshott was in fact a liberal. He was particularly concerned with protecting the individual and with cultivating circumstances that allowed the virtues of individuality to flourish. See, for example, Michael Oakeshott, "The Masses in Representative Democracy," reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, and Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991). See also Flathman, Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics. One need not deny his liberalism to acknowledge that this liberalism, and his other stands, were defended with the tools of a rather aristocratic habit of mind. In fact, it is the preference for trading in critiques that emphasize habits of mind, of character revealed through practice (habitus), that make Oakeshott's intellectual tools so aristocratic in nature.
101. This assertion may seem to cut against Oakeshott's professed liberalism. Oakeshott was in fact a liberal. He was particularly concerned with protecting the individual and with cultivating circumstances that allowed the virtues of individuality to flourish. See, for example, Michael Oakeshott, "The Masses in Representative Democracy," reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, and Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991). See also Flathman, Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics. One need not deny his liberalism to acknowledge that this liberalism, and his other stands, were defended with the tools of a rather aristocratic habit of mind. In fact, it is the preference for trading in critiques that emphasize habits of mind, of character revealed through practice (habitus), that make Oakeshott's intellectual tools so aristocratic in nature.
102. This assertion may seem to cut against Oakeshott's professed liberalism. Oakeshott was in fact a liberal. He was particularly concerned with protecting the individual and with cultivating circumstances that allowed the virtues of individuality to flourish. See, for example, Michael Oakeshott, "The Masses in Representative Democracy," reprinted in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, and Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991). See also Flathman, Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics. One need not deny his liberalism to acknowledge that this liberalism, and his other stands, were defended with the tools of a rather aristocratic habit of mind. In fact, it is the preference for trading in critiques that emphasize habits of mind, of character revealed through practice (habitus), that make Oakeshott's intellectual tools so aristocratic in nature.
103. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), a more distanced, scientific study of habitus in the pursuit of a fundamentally different political goal.
104. A good example is Richard Peters, Hobbes (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1956).
105. Two good examples of such critiques are Habermas, "Theory and Practice"; Jürgen Habermas, "Technology and Science As Ideology," in Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society; Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1970), 81-122; and Hans Georg-Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
106. Two good examples of such critiques are Habermas, "Theory and Practice"; Jürgen Habermas, "Technology and Science As Ideology," in Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society; Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1970), 81-122; and Hans Georg-Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
107. Two good examples of such critiques are Habermas, "Theory and Practice"; Jürgen Habermas, "Technology and Science As Ideology," in Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society; Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1970), 81-122; and Hans Georg-Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
108. One finds, for example, citations to Oakeshott's arguments in the recent work of James Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
109. One finds, for example, citations to Oakeshott's arguments in the recent work of James Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
110. One finds, for example, citations to Oakeshott's arguments in the recent work of James Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
111. One finds, for example, citations to Oakeshott's arguments in the recent work of James Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
112. Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics," 28-29.
113. Ibid., 28, 32-33. The reference to old parchment is Alexander Hamilton's, here cited by Oakeshott.
114. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold Stone (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 6; Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, trans. Donald Cress, The Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987), 53.
115. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold Stone (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 6; Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, trans. Donald Cress, The Basic Political Writings (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1987), 53.
116. I discuss this in Making Certain: Thomas Hobbes and the Fashioning of States, Citizens, and Mathematicians (book manuscript in preparation), particularly the common feelings of political disillusionment and stoicism among the British political elite in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
117. To suggest that it is nothing but misery and fear that animates the politics of an artificer, however, is too one-sided. Hobbes also wrote to tempt and/or appease those likely to become sovereign over the order that he would found. He did so by appealing to their desire for glory. It was not the glory of scientific discovery, but a glory that would allow them to see themselves as imitators of God. See Ted H. Miller, "Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints." Hobbes promises to make those who follow his philosophical advice concerning the a priori sciences imitators of God as a creator. Hobbes's creators do not create out of nothing, but, still like the divine, they create order where there was once none.
118. Carl Schmitt's temporary, but influential, admiration for Hobbes also bespeaks his credentials as a theorist familiar with 'the political'. A discussion of Schmitt, however, is outside the scope of this essay.
119. James Scott, cited in Shannon Stimpson, "Rethinking the State: Perspectives on the Legibility and Reproduction of Political Societies," Political Theory, 28 (2000): 822-34.
120. Stimpson, "Rethinking the State," 826.