Journal Article

Materialism and right reason in Hobbes’s political treatises: A troubled foundation for civil science

Abstract

After abandoning the approach taken in The Elements of Law, Hobbes used De cive to establish his new civil science on a materialist basis, thus challenging the dualist foundations of Descartes’s mechanical philosophy. This shift is analysed here with close reference to the discontinuity in Hobbes’s use of the concepts of ‘laws of nature’ and ‘right reason’. The article argues that, the descriptive nature of mechanics notwithstanding, De cive’s foundational aim left civil science with the normative task of producing its own material conditions of possibility until, in Leviathan, Hobbes went as far as reconsidering Plato’s philosophical commitment to political pedagogy.

Attached files

Authors

Bardin, Andrea

Oxford Brookes departments

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\Department of Social Sciences

Dates

Year of publication: 2019
Date of RADAR deposit: 2018-03-14

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of MATERIALISM AND RIGHT REASON IN HOBBES'S POLITICAL TREATISES: A TROUBLED FOUNDATION FOR CIVIL SCIENCE