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ABSTRACT
Thomas Hobbes transforms fear and curiosity from primarily theological to anthropological concerns. Fear and curiosity go from being, most centrally, part of religiousness, or part of worship of God, to part of the explanation for why we are talking about God at all. This transformation is some evidence for a greater naturalizing trend, a more explicit connection of religion to human passions and psychology, and a shift in approaches to understanding religion, including a turn to a more scientific perspective on religion.
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Notes
1. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:12, 166. All references to Leviathan are in the format part:chapter, page and are from the Clarendon edition, unless otherwise noted. I would like to thank the Research Foundation Flanders/FWO for their support and Paul Firenze, Jo Bervoets, and participants of the meetings of the European Hobbes Society in April 2015 and September 2016, of the conference ‘What were the early moderns afraid of’ in June 2017, and the 2017 meeting of the International Society for Intellectual History, where I presented earlier versions of this paper.
2. See Martinich’s Two Gods of Leviathan.
3. Calvin, Institutes, 1:1:1–2. All references from the Institutes will be book:chapter:section.
4. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:12, 164.
5. Aeschylus, “Prometheus Bound,” 28. See Michaelis, “Hobbes’s Modern Prometheus,” for an interpretation of his use of Prometheus in the realm of politics.
6. See note 4 above.
7. Aeschylus, “Prometheus Bound,” 20.
8. Hobbes, Human Nature, 16. Also see 37.
9. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:11, 160.
10. See note 4 above.
11. Ibid.
12. For recent defenses of the centrality of psychology to a reading of Hobbes on religion see Chen, “On the Definition of Religon in Hobbes’s Leviathan,” and Stauffer, ”‘Of Religon’ in Hobbes’s Leviathan.” See Barnouw, “Hobbes’s Psychology of Thought,” for a general treatment of Hobbes’s psychology.
13. Hobbes, Leviathan. 1:12, 170.
14. Ibid.
15. Hobbes, de Homine, XI.8–9.
16. Augustine, Confessions 10.35, 210–12.
17. For general discussions on curiosity and its transformation from the ancient to early modern period, see Ginzburg, “High and Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the 16th and 17th Century”; Newhauser, “Towards a History of Human Curiosity”; Blumenberg, The Legitamacy of the Modern Age; Walsh, “The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine)”; Daston and Park, Wonder and the Order of Nature 1150–1750; Harrison, “Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation”; Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry; and Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany. For a good, more popular treatment, see Ball’s, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. Also see Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, chapters 2 and 5.
18. For a case that Calvin is quite Augustinian and systematic in his critique of curiosity, see Meijering, Calvin wider die Neugierde. Thank you to Henk Jan De Jonge for this helpful reference.
19. Calvin, Institutes, 2:2:12.
20. Ibid.
21. Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.1–4. Also see 2:2:12 and 1:4.1–3.
22. Ibid., 1.4.1.
23. Ibid.
24. Tabb in “The Fate of Nebuchadnezzer” makes a fine case for the importance of curiosity in Hobbes’s account of human nature.
25. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:3, 40.
26. Ibid., 1:3, 42.
27. Daston, “Curiosity in early modern science,” 395.
28. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:6, 78–80.
29. Ibid., 82.
30. Ibid., 86. Also see de Homine, XII.12.
31. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:6, 86.
32. Ibid.
33. Hobbes, Human Nature, 50.
34. Ibid., 51. Also see de Corpore, 3.
35. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:6, 80–82.
36. See, for example, Calvin, Institutes, 3.21.2.
37. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:6, 86.
38. Ibid., 1:3, 42. In his edition of Leviathan, Curley defines lust as ‘pleasure, delight, desire,’ 555.
39. Hobbes, Leviathan, 2:27, 462.
40. Hobbes, Human Nature, 51.
41. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:8, 118. Thank you to Eva Odzuck for alerting me to the importance of these passages.
42. Hobbes, de Cive, 164.
43. See note 9 above.
44. Descartes 2008. See the third and fifth Meditations.
45. Descartes 2008. Fifth objection, 127.
46. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:12, 166.
47. Collins, “Thomas Hobbes, ‘Father of Atheists,’” 32. Also see Jesseph, “Hobbes’s Atheism,” for a strong defense of Hobbes’s atheism.
48. Delumeau, Sin and Fear.
49. Calvin, Institutes, 1.1.3.
50. Ibid., 1.1.1.
51. Ibid., 1.4.4.
52. Ibid., 1.2.2.
53. See note 51 above.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. See note 52 above.
58. Calvin, Institutes, 1.3.2.
59. See note 51 above.
60. Calvin, Institutes, 1.4.1.
61. Ibid., 1.2.1.
62. Ibid., 1.2.2.
63. Thanks to Winfried Schröder for pointing this parallel out to me.
64. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:13, 192.
65. Hobbes, Human Nature, 32.
66. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:6, 84.
67. Ibid., 96.
68. Ibid., 1:11, 154.
69. Ibid., 2:27, 464.
70. Ibid., 1:12, 166.
71. Ibid.
72. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1:14, 216.
73. Ibid. Also see de Homine XII:5.
74. Readings of Hobbes on religion, whether he is a traditional theological or early secular thinker, range in extremes which Curley and Martinich call ‘theological’ and ‘secular’ in, among other places, Curley’s “I Durst Not Write So Boldly: or how to read Hobbes theological-political treatise”, and in Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan and in an extended exchange on Curley’s claim to irony in Hobbes on religion, in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 34, 2 April 1996: Curley’s, “Calvin and Hobbes, or, Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian,” 257–71 and “Reply to Professor Martinich,” 285–7; and Martinich’s “On the Proper Interpretation of Hobbes’s Philosophy,” 273–83. This sum of these debates is in, among other places, Gauthier’s, The Logic of Leviathan, 195 and Abizadeh, “Hobbes’s Agnostic Theology Before Leviathan,” notes 1 & 2. Secular interpreters include Quentin Skinner, Leo Strauss, Gauthier, Curley, Richard Tuck, and Jesseph among others. Theistic or religious interpretations, meanwhile, with one of its more recent voices in the work of Martinich, are something of a revival and revision of views held from the 1930s to 1960s by A.E. Taylor, Howard Warrender, and F.C. Hood. The so-called “Taylor-Warrender thesis” reduces “all obligation in Hobbes to an ultimate obligation to obey God, from which all else must be derived.” For these readers, in varying forms, most basically, God and the truth of God lie at the very foundation of his political program.
75. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 161.
76. Hobbes, Leviathan, 2:28, 496.
77. Ibid., 2:17, 262; 2:18.
78. Ibid., 1:12, 166.
79. Ibid.
80. Hobbes, Leviathan, 2:31, 560–562.
81. Paul Firenze helpfully points to the work of Elizabeth Anderson, whose notion of the ‘impersonal authority’ of norms also sees religion as parasitic on this authority, or the human community. The gods themselves are not the norm-generating authorities. See “Beyond Homo Economicus,” for a clear articulation of her view.
82. Hobbes, de Homine, XIV:2.
83. Hobbes, Leviathan, 2:31, 568.
84. Collins, “Thomas Hobbes, ‘Father of Atheists,’” 29.
85. See note 76 above.
86. Hobbes, Leviathan, 3:37, 682–697.
87. Ibid., 1:11, 162.
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Alissa MacMillan
Alissa MacMillan is a Research Foundation Flanders/FWO Postdoctoral Research Fellow in philosophy at the University of Antwerp.