Rationalist or empiricist?
Although Hobbes is usually considered within the group of English empiricism (from Bacon to Hume, with the exception of Beckerley), the method he proposes is rationalist (Padua method): “resolution and composition”, used by Galileo and Descartes.
Perhaps drawing inspiration from Euclid and Harvey's studies of biology will use the method in a particular way. Analysis allows you to discover the parts that make up the object to be studied, so that those parts are causes that in synthesis make up the whole. It is therefore a geneticmethod, since it explains how the whole is generated by its components.
The method will justify Hobbes the exusion of all theology of philosophy, because God is not something composed or begotten, he is outside the field of study.
Hobbes defends a materialistic conception while only bodies are generable and therefore only they are possible objects for reason. For everything that exists is corporeal, because only what can act or suffer the action of another is real. Even God, it must be corporeal. There is a closed mechanicism here, since everything is explained from extension and movement and deterministic since everything when it happens is due to an absolute necessity.
Hobbes' physics will be mathematic-deductive regardless of experience, though, what he intends is only a probableexplanation.
“ Nature (Art with which God has made and governs the world) is imitated by the Art of Man in many things and, among others, in the production of an artificial aminal. Seeing that life is nothing but a movement of limbs, whose origin is found in some main part of them, why could we not say that all atomattes (artifacts moved by themselves by springs and wheels like clockwork) have artificial life? Well, what is the heart but a pier? And what is a nerve but as many strings? (...) But Art goes even further, limiting the most rational and excellent work of Nature that is man. Because through Art is created that great Levitan, which is called a republic or state, and which is but an artificial man, although of stature and forces superior to those of the natural, for whose defense and protection was thought” Leviathan, Hobbes
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Hobbes' concern for the state is influenced by the events that triggered the Puritan revolution of 1642. Indeed, Hobbes' objective was to defend the necessity of absolute authority while demonstrating to the Puritans that every law is neceasriously just insofar as it emanates from authority and that therefore no one can be obligated to obey it conscientiously.
“ Sovereignty is an artificial soul that gives strength and movement to the whole body, magistrates and other officials of the judiciary and execution, are the joints” Levitan, Hobbes
“ Just as the grate, or in any other tiny device, the matter, shape and movement of the wheels can be well known only if they are broken down into their parts and each of them is examined, for a more thorough study of States and the duties of subjects it is necessary not to decompose them, but to consider them as if they were already decomposed”
Hobbes will thus study the components of society and then the society recomposed in the state.
It begins by considering a hypothetical situation, that of men in a state of “nature”, which (if it had existed) would have had the following characteristics:
All men are equal and have no need to “be together” (egalitarianism and natural non-sociability).
Every man has the right to everything, without any limitation (natural right coincides with power)
Moved by competition, unsafety and glory, they live in permanent war.
Consequently, security, industry, agriculture (pre-cultural situation) is not possible.
Since there is no law yet, there is no injustice.
Consequently, if power is equally distributed, chaos and war ensues.
The state generates a contract. If “natural law” implies absolute freedom, the laws impose obligations:
The first law requires seeking peace and following it.
The second law is to renounce the natural right and freedom in favor of peace, to the extent that other men are also willing.
The third law requires compliance with the established covenants
Hobbes points out that the laws are not enough to guarantee the pz, it is necessary to give all power to a man or assembly of men who can reduce all wills to one will. Then, the social contract that originates the state is established: “it is a true unity of all men in one identical person, made by covenant of each man with every man” Levitan, Hobbes.
In principle, the theory of the social contract refers only to the origin of power, not to the form of government, and its intention is to replace the medieval doctrine of divine orgien of power to othergargle it a popular foundation, although it does not necessarily represent a defense of democracy, in effect, through it, Hobbes justifies the absolutism and denies the desirability of sharing powers. On the other hand, the pact is made between the subjects rather than between the subjects and the sovereign and involves an irrevocable transfer of rights.