Hobbes & his Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Theory of Human Nature

English civil wars	Hobbes fled to France
	31-32
	1647-1651: Lev Read thyself with the Dreadful name of Leviathan 159, 272

	HOBBEs’ Metaphysics
New science
First metaphysical axioms: Materialism And Mechanism, ie Matter in motion	39, 41
Galileo Galilei on planetary motion
Gabriel Harvey on the circulation of blood
Man too, as a particular embodied phenomena, is but matter in motion, like everything else Eg optics Descartes

	Hobbes’ Epistemology
Nominalism 54	No categories or universals out there in the world other than those we as humans give to the world through the names we impose on it. We know what we know through a consistent system of naming.
Deductive reasoning, proceed logically from initial premises or axioms, so that if the premises are true then the conclusion must be true. 56, 61, 64. v. inductive reasoning 50
On the model of Euclid (365-275 BCE) and Euclidean geometry.

	Socio-political problems are rooted in 3 misuses of words
1. invention of absurd or inconsistent words, ie Chy and Aristotle 40-1, 46, 63-64
65
2. radically subjective experience, 69, 78,
ie verbal anarchy
reflects individual ‘madness’ 84-6
happiness 76, 102-3

3. socially endorsed fantasies, ie customs, but esp god, religion and other superstitions 51, 72, 79, 80, 108-9, 110, 120-1

	Hobbes’ Theory of Human Nature
not natural harmony but ‘WAR of all against all’. 103 / 123-5

	Hobbes’ Solution? Absolutism
Adequate Authority -- Leviathan -- King over ‘sons of pride’. 61

v. critique of Hobbes’s Leviathan

- if we are all like Calvin why would it make sense to ...