My Impression of the Intro:

I also read in the introduction the analogy of people as being like springs and cogs of a watch. Hobbes describes the state as an artificial man composed of citizens. The laws and equity are this being's artificial reason and will, and the wealth and riches of all the particular members are its strength. The Leviathan is born when men enter into the social contract.

Geo, that's a very interesting argument. I got a similar impression that you did from the Introduction but not to the degree you suggest. Although Hobbes was living in exile with King Charles II at the time he probably wrote this and was most likely written for his benefit, I don't think such a rigid hierarchical or Monarchic system is yet to be so firmly established. The degree of participation in government and law making, distribution of wealth, who rules and when, is not discussed. This can still be a rule and be ruled system.

That Man creates Leviathan for Man, is to exclude Divine right - a very important aspect of the Royalist argument.

Going back to the beginning of the Intro, I got the feeling from Hobbes' use of the word Automata and likening our existence within government to the inner workings of a machine to be rather dehumanizing. If we think in this way, which is the best or most noble part? If one gear or spring breaks, the mechanism ceases to function and is dead - Leviathan no more. There isn't a great organizer here. There is team effort... and he talks of a nation of laws yet fails to assign law making power.


I seemed to linger on this line for a while: "And though by mens actions wee do discover their designe sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with their own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himself a good or evil man."

I still am very concerned by this statement. I tried to pick it apart a little and what I ultimately got was that it is an attack on people with book learning and no practical experience and possibly no right to it. I reached this opinion after thinking about:

1. man as an inadequate judge of himself
2. it's truly impossible to know another man's motives, reasoning, or goals but it's possible to gain a clearer idea through empathy and consideration of their circumstances
3. man's tendency to stereotype
4. Man's adaptation of instinctive behavior or threat aversion, and ability to recognize/relate/puzzle solve... and our laziness to want to reach conclusions quickly and move on.
5. If man is a bad judge of other men, how can one man be an adequate judge of man-kind?



Heledd: Hobbes and Descartes both accepted the sceptic's argument that we can have no direct and truthful experience of the external world. All we can perceive is the internal activity of our own brain (Tuck, 1992). Both dreams and perceptions are caused by the motion of external bodies. "Is it possible to think without thoughts?" Without these experiences of the motion of external bodies? I think that... yes, but you'd probably have nothing to think about beyond your emotions and desires (like hunger).



CW: "I follow the theory of dreams being closer to reality due to the lack of confusing input from the senses. But isn't it having had the experience of sensations, and therefor the memory of sensations, that allows us to dream in the first place?"

I agree with both statements. Limiting inputs helps us to think more clearly. Our flawed perceptions are what we dream about. We dream about our flawed perceptions more clearly when we're dreaming.

Your question about the dream is awkward. You asked if we are capable of imagining - not our ability to imagine or create while dreaming. I'm going to assume that this is what you meant. That the question is: Are we capable of creating an imaginary external body in a dream that we have not experienced while awake? And.... I have no idea. I'll ask someone and get back to you. I'll also ask if we have the ability to imagine at all.

I agree about the mathematics.


Dave: give me time to catch up and I'll respond at a later date. Please keep adding your thought on what you've read. That's the easiest way of remembering and then we'll all be able to discuss when we get to it.

I emailed some professors regarding the question of imagination but they haven't responded.

This comes from the book: "Wee have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense, in whole, or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the life before our sense."


Combining these imaginations into what we think of as imaginations is possible. You can imagine a combination of observed things like a human with a head on top of his head (a double header) because you have seen people and have seen heads. If you have seen a horn, you can then add that horn to your imagination and combine it to your double headed person.

Imagination is tricky here because what we think of as imagination and what Hobbes describes it as are two different things - even my explanations of it have mixed them up in this post. Hobbes' view of imagination is partly inclusive of what we commonly think of it to be. In his strictest definition, though, Hobbes says that imagination is "decaying sense". Therefor you would have to have sensed something to have imagination.

The idea that you can create new imaginations based on sensed imaginations is only briefly touched on through combinations and 'seeking' (if you had an axe - what you could do with that axe).

I probably edited this 10 times so far. I hope I got it right.

Hobbes suprised me when he states that whatever we imagine is finite, and that when we try and imagine the incomprehensible and unconceivable, we call it God. Would this have been heresy at the time he wrote? Incidentally, am really enjoying this discussion. Though I have a tendency to think that philosophy should be in the fiction category.

That jumped out at me too. My book's notes say that Hobbes added this paragraph later. Such an idea seems rather audacious for the time period, although it helps to remember that this is about 50 years after Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and well into a period called the English Renaissance.

Whatsoever we imagine is ‘finite.’ Therefore there is no idea or conception of any thing we call ‘infinite.’ No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the things named; having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive Him, for He is incomprehensible, and His greatness and power are unconceivable; but that we may honour Him.

I get a sense that Hobbes may have been more inclined to hold his tongue early in the writing of Leviathan than he was later. I think the extent of Hobbes' atheism is a matter of scholarly debate. Certainly his ideas during this time were considered unorthodox and blasphemous. But he's not simply trying to raise the hackles of the religious establishment and he doesn't seem to be an atheist in the modern sense of the word. This paragraph goes along with the idea that all ideas are "fancies" derived from the five senses. It follows that God would be incomprehensible to us being that he exists in an entirely different realm, outside of sensory perception. Hobbes always assumes the existence of God and says here we only name God so as to honor Him.

My book's notes indicate that the 'Whatever we imagine is finite' line is a "potentially devastating argument against making God the subject of any comprehensible or coherent statement whatsoever." (If you've read any of the ongoing religious discussions on BookTalk it seems that Hobbes was right.) If God exists than we would have no way of comprehending him and when we try we only diminish him. My book's notes go on to quote from another Hobbes' work: Thomas White's De mundo examined: ". . . the way in which God understands passes our understanding. Yet, we must believe [that he understands] as faithfully as we believe that he exists."

Religion thread has been made.

President Camacho, after reading your analysis of this sentence I took a fresh looka at it.

"And though by mens actions wee do discover their designe sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with their own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himself a good or evil man."

1. That sometimes we discover the designs (I think he means motives) of others but often we are wrong
2. But that we cannot know all their circumstance which would alter their design (possibly)
3. Since we dont know all their circumstance it is like trying to decyper something without the key
4. That we are often deceived because either we trust the person to much and thus give them good motives or we don't like them and assign them bad motives (this could be stereotyping)
5. This he compares to a person who reads a book they are either "good" or "evil" implying that they will draw conclusions based on their preconceived notions.

I could very well be wrong but I think it's also another attack on learned men of the day who put too much faith in Greco-Roman philosophers.


What do you think of Hobbes' departure from Greek thinking?

Hobbes begins Leviathan by quantifying and defining words in a scientific fashion. Throughout Plato's Dialogues of Socrates, you'll notice that seeking to define particular words is usually what each dialogue develops (regresses?) into. Socrates shows how whole arguments can be shattered because their foundation of the definitions of justice or virtue were found to be insufficient or inaccurate.

So I see that Hobbes has immediately sought to quantify his words so that they may be more accurately weighed and to obviate or close doors to any possible point of entry in which his argument may be compromised and overturned. That's the first thing I notice.

The second, are these little tidbits like the one above that every now and again seek to negate the value of ancient philosophy.

Hobbes says, "For there is no such finis ultimus, (utmost ayme) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the old morall philosophies."

Greek moral philosophy was based on finding and securing the greatest good in all things. A polis needed to be self sufficient, stable, able to defend itself, and it was held in some fashion to be responsible for molding its citizens.

Hobbes deviates but retains some very Greek traits such as his constant use of analogy, similes, and metaphors, and also his view on Power. Power is a virtue to the Greeks. Might is Right is most all cases.

Another notable departure is how the argument is presented to the reader. This book is a lesson, not a discussion insomuch as a book can be. While reading Aristotle, a person feels he is joining the author on a journey to seek truth - climbing difficult arguments, noticing dead-ends, turning back and finding agreeable paths and firm philosophical footing. While reading Hobbes, the reader feels as if he's being beaten over the head.

Honour is another point of discussion and contention for me. Wealth is power, power is honour, and power is seeking in itself. It's its own end and it looks like it can never be satisfied.

Does government or the constitution of a nation affect the constitution/personality/virtuosity of the people in that nation? Is there a difference between a man who has been raised in a relatively democratic society and one that has been accustomed to servitude or slavery? The Greeks thought so.

What's your take?

How do you think someone living under Hobbes' philosophy would stack up against someone living under the Constitution of the United States?

In reference to the last question: How would someone living under Hobbes' philosophy stack up against someone living under the Constitution of the United States?

I don't necessarily think this is an apt comparison simply because the Constitution is not a philosophy but a system to organize a government although the underlying foundation is philosophically based. One thing that sticks out to me is Hobbes leaves all (or most moral decisions) to the sovereign and further states that if the sovereign tells you to do something, it is not up to you to question the rightness or wrongness and that (if you are a believer which Hobbes was)if it was morally wrong the sovereign would be the one held to account and you would be morally innocent. So the difference is in where this lack of personal moral responsibility might lead, and I believe we have an example of where it could possibly go in Nazi Germany where many stood by and allowed a human tragedy. The Constitution of the United States in no way abducates personal moral responsibility.

I do agree with you that his idea of defining words at the outset is certainly the opposite of what the Greeks such as Plato and Aristotle. Now, we almost need to do the same thing to keep people from twisting what we say into such a pretzel as to make it say exactly the opposite.

I'm just going to come out and say it. I made it to pg. 45. I was going to stick it out at least to the end of Of Man, but it's just not very readable. Maybe I'll pick it up again some day.

My apologies to all.

Here's the last paragraph I read:

And this difference of quickness is caused by the difference of men’s passions, that love and dislike, some one thing, some another; and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another; and are held to and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of men’s thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be ‘like one another,’ or in what they be ‘unlike,’ or ‘what they serve for,’ or ‘how they serve to such a purpose;’ those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a ‘good wit,’ by which in this occasion is meant a ‘good fancy.’ But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called ‘distinguishing’ and ‘discerning’ and ‘judging’ between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a ‘good judgment;’ and, particularly in matter of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons, are to be discerned, this virtue is called ‘discretion.’ The former, that is, fancy, without the help of judgment, is not commended as a virtue; but the latter, which is judgment and discretion, is commended for itself, without the help of fancy. Besides the discretion of times, places, and persons, necessary to a good fancy, there is required also an often application of his thoughts to their end, that is to say, to some use to be made of them. This done, he that hath this virtue will be easily fitted with similitudes that will please not only by illustrations of his discourse, and adorning it with new and apt metaphors, but also by the rarity of their invention. But without steadiness and direction to some end a great fancy is one kind of madness; such as they have that, entering into any discourse, are snatched from their purpose by everything that comes in their thought, into so many and so long digressions and parentheses that they utterly lose themselves—which kind of folly I know no particular name for, but the cause of it is sometimes want of experience, whereby that seemeth to a man new and rare which doth not so to others, sometimes pusillanimity, by which that seems great to him which other men think a trifle; and whatsoever is new or great, and therefore thought fit to be told, withdraws a man by degrees from the intended way of his discourse.