Table provides the reader without any explanation for why it is legitimate to use geometry in optics, as Hobbes does, for example, in De homine 2. Using geometry within optics, or in other investigations such as astronomy, music, or geography, would require one to cross from one terminating point of the Table into another, but the reason why such a move would be legitimate, as Hobbes’s practice implies, is not at all evident from the Table.
Similar difficulties arise in taking the Table to show the structural dependence relationships of civil philosophy to other parts of philosophy. Indeed, the “Science of just and uniust” follows from “physiques” and not civil philosophy on the Table, showing that the line between natural bodies and political bodies may not be as precise as the Table seems to indicate. Given these difficulties in thinking of the Table as indicative of the structure of Hobbes’s philosophy, I suggest the Table is only an outline of subjects to be treated. In other words, the right-most side of the Table shows the order of subjects to be presented and not the dependence relationships among the parts of philosophy.11
Even if Hobbes did not intend the Table to display how the parts of his philosophy fit together with one another, the Table does cohere with the overall manner of presentation in his major works. The two parts of Elements of Law (1640) fit this general structure, being divided into “Humane Nature” and “De Corpore Politico,” and the Leviathan’s first two parts, Part I (“Of Man”) and Part II (“Of Common-wealth”), likewise mirror that same general structure. However, in the Elements of Philosophy trilogy, Hobbes covers much more ground than he does in Elements of Law or Leviathan. As a result, we can view the right-hand-side terminating points of the Table in Leviathan 9 as a guide to many of the additional subjects that one finds in Elements of Philosophy, and they appear in roughly the same order as they are presented on the Table. In Figure I.1, the parenthetical additions show where the right-hand-side terminating points of the Table from Leviathan 9 correspond to parts within the three sections of Elements of Philosophy, i.e., De corpore, De homine, and De cive.
Figure I.1 The order of presentation in Hobbes’s Philosophy: The Table of Leviathan 9 compared to the Elements of Philosophy trilogy.
This alignment of the right-hand side of the Table of Leviathan 9 with parts of the three sections of Elements of Philosophy leaves out some of the disciplines mentioned in the Table, such as “Science of ENGINEERS” and “ARCHITECTURE” (2012, 131), but the present aim has been to show the broad overlap in the manner of presentation among Hobbes’s major works. The next section discusses the organization of this Companion.
2 The Organization of A Companion to Hobbes
The ordering of chapters in the present volume has been modeled after the manner in which Hobbes presents his philosophy in his major works, and so it has four sections devoted to Hobbes’s thought itself: Part I (First Philosophy, Mathematics, and Natural Philosophy), Part II (Human Nature and Morality), Part III (Civil Philosophy), and Part IV (Religion). The chapters in Part V (Controversies and Reception) consider the reception of Hobbes’s ideas by his contemporaries and by later figures. The diversity of the topics discussed by the chapters of Part V reflects the engagement of critics with the different parts of his philosophy, as well as the fact that many of his interlocutors saw those parts as deeply interconnected with one another.
Considering Hobbes’s presentation of topics exposes a key fault-line present in his thought: the line between natural bodies and political bodies. If readers attend just to the Table of Leviathan chapter 9, discussed already, and to the distinctions between the parts of Hobbes’s works, this line between the natural and the political may seem clear and unproblematic. But the line between these two kinds of bodies is not precise, for even if the “Science of just and uniust” is part of the consequences from natural bodies, justice and injustice themselves do not result from human bodies considered on their own, unlike sensation or digestion. Indeed, Hobbes declares that “Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body nor the Mind” but are instead “Qualities, that related to men in Society, not in Solitude” (Hobbes 2012, 296; 1651, 63). This fault line in Hobbes’s thought figures in the discussions of a number of the chapters of the volume: Abizadeh (Chapter 6), Slomp (Chapter 7), Field (Chapter 8), Lloyd (Chapter 9), Green (Chapter 10), Brito Vieira (Chapter 11), and Rhodes (Chapter 12).
2.1 First Philosophy, Mathematics, and Natural Philosophy
Helen Hattab’s chapter “Hobbes’s Unified Method for Scientia” contrasts Hobbes’s goal of a unified method for theoretical and practical science with his Scholastic predecessors. Hattab shows that Hobbes uses ‘demonstration’ equivocally and argues that this has led scholars to think Hobbes had a single form of method in mind. Hattab argues that in fact, for Hobbes and others, there are two types of method at play: first, a universal method concerned with the ordering of concepts and definitions before one begins the work of discovery or teaching in a subject; and second, a particular method used to demonstrate conclusions. The former method provides principles that are drawn upon in applications of the particular method. However, unlike the differences that Hobbes claimed existed between him and Scholastic Aristotelians, Hattab locates this distinction within Zaberella and shows that it was continued by Keckermann and Burgersdijk, Scholastic Protestant philosophers influential in England during Hobbes’s time.
There has been interest in the Stoic influences upon Hobbes’s political philosophy, but less attention has been devoted to the relationship of Stoic ideas to Hobbes’s first philosophy and natural philosophy. Geoffrey Gorham’s chapter “The Stoic Roots of Hobbes’s Natural Philosophy and First Philosophy” shows how Hobbes’s first philosophy was influenced by Stoic thought and how that influence impacted his natural philosophy, focusing in particular on Hobbes’s views of space, time, causality, and God. These areas of Hobbes’s philosophy were especially pressing for his materialism since they seem to be concerned with incorporeal entities. Indeed, as a result some have attempted to understand Hobbes as an idealist, a subjectivist, or an atheist. Gorham shows that Hobbes’s solution, in line with Hobbes’s goal of providing a materialism that cohered with mechanical philosophy, was to understand the conceptions that grounded first philosophy as having two aspects: realist and subjectivist.
Hobbes’s exalted view of himself as a mathematician did not align with the opinions of his contemporaries. Douglas Jesseph’s chapter “Hobbesian Mathematics and the Dispute with Wallis” examines Hobbes’s philosophy of mathematics and Hobbes’s continual disagreements with John Wallis. Jesseph focuses on Hobbes’s attempts to understand geometrical objects and geometrical definitions in accordance with his materialism and furthermore on Hobbes’s disdain for analytic geometry. Their exchanges relating to mathematics can be seen as originating in 1655 with the publication of De corpore and continuing until Hobbes’s death, and beyond issues in mathematics they also concerned broader issues in theology and politics.
Continuing the focus on the unity of Hobbes’s philosophy begun in Helen Hattab’s chapter, Marcus Adams’s chapter “Explanations in Hobbes’s Optics and Natural Philosophy” examines how Hobbes’s optics and
