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Chapter 4: Of Speech
Explanation and Analysis:
Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most famous works written in the genre of political philosophy. Though many of Hobbes’s methods and arguments are philosophical in nature, his primary concern is to make practical suggestions for how a state should be run. In Leviathan, Hobbes comments directly on the goals of political philosophy, drawing comparisons to different fields of learning including arithmetic, geometry, and logic.
For as Arithmeticians teach to adde and substract in numbers; so the Geometricians teach the same in lines, figures (solid and superficiall,) angles, proportions, times, degrees of swiftnesse, force, power, and the like; The Logicians teach the same in Consequences of words; adding together two Names, to make an Affirmation; and two Affirmations, to make a Syllogisme; and many Syllogismes to make a Demonstration [...] Writers of Politiques, adde together Pactions, to find mens duties; and Lawyers, Lawes, and facts, to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men.
Hobbes’s language here emphasizes the close relationship between political philosophy and science. Just as the field of arithmetic uses numbers to arrive at a solution and geometry uses various numerical values related to shape, speed, time, force, etc., so too must “Writers of Politiques” attempt to think mathematically, taking into account the law in order to “find what is right and wrong.” Throughout Leviathan, Hobbes distances political philosophy from classical philosophy, especially as practiced in Ancient Greece and Rome. Instead, he thinks of political philosophy as a social science that can and must use reason and facts to overcome what he considers to be the unhelpful abstractions of philosophers and theologians.
Related Themes:
