HOBBES OF THE PANTHEON

(Maintaining the chronological order of my Philosophers postings, I am now returning to my Magnificent Shadows section, where only the most important philosophers are represented, with each of them getting more than one entry. With that criterion in mind, Aristotle is followed by Thomas Hobbes.)

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There is a yawning chasm of 1910 years (!) between my last multiple-entry philosopher in this section and the next, which says a lot about the so-called “Dark Age” of Western Civilization. To be fair, the multiple-entry principle is mechanistic, and some of the single-entry philosophers of the two intervening millennia (see the Significant Others section) have been of the highest caliber. But the simple fact remains that none of these have attained to the multiple-entry status, which proves the statement of Bertrand Russell, among others, that, since the death of Aristotle in 322 BC, the world was not to see another great like him for the next two thousand years.

It is conventional wisdom to name Dèscartes as the next Great One. But in my chronology, based on birth dates, rather than on the floruit, one particular philosopher, born before Dèscartes, although outliving him by three decades, has managed to sneak in, in front of him, and no matter how I love Dèscartes, this one is no less deserving to enter the Pantheon with him, even though some respectable authorities have seen him as a lesser figure. We are talking about one of my genuine favorites, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), and it is perhaps very proper to introduce him with Bertrand Russell’s preambular summary to the Hobbes Chapter in his History of Western Philosophy, with my annotations in red font interspersed throughout:

Hobbes is a philosopher whom it is difficult to classify. (What a sheer delight! I was also found difficult to classify, and so were my books, which difficulty I regard as a high compliment.) He was an empiricist, like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but, unlike them, he was an admirer of mathematical method not only in pure mathematics, but in its applications. His general outlook was inspired by Galileo, rather than Bacon. (This is particularly interesting, of course, because Bacon and Hobbes were compatriots, and Nietzsche does not hesitate to lump all Englishmen together, in order to display their general philosophical ineptitude.) From Dèscartes to Kant, Continental philosophy (Russell is making a rather significant differentiation between England and Continental Europe here!) derived much of its conception of the nature of human knowledge from mathematics, but it regarded mathematics as known independently of experience. It was thus led, like Platonism, to minimize the part played by perception and over-emphasize the part played by pure thought. English empiricism, on the other hand, was little influenced by mathematics, and tended to have a wrong conception of the scientific method. Hobbes had neither of these defects. It’s not until our own day that we find any other philosophers who were empiricists, and yet laid due stress on mathematics. In this respect, Hobbes’s merit is great. He has however grave defects, which make it impossible to place him quite in the first rank. He is impatient with subtleties, and too much inclined to cut the Gordian knot. His solutions of problems are logical, but are attained by omitting awkward facts. He is vigorous, but crude; he wields the battle-axe better than the rapier. Nevertheless, his theory of the State deserves to be carefully considered, the more so, as it is more modern than any previous theory, even that of Machiavelli.

Russell may have his reasons to exclude Hobbes from the Pantheon, on the basis of his shortcomings, but I am quite tolerant of these alleged shortcomings, as nobody among the philosophers is perfect in constructing a positive theory, and as for the sheer versatility of the raised questions and the liveliness of the ensuing debate, Hobbes is magnificent, in my estimation, and there is no doubt about his membership in the club of the best, at least “in the world of my own.”