How was Hobbes influenced by Galileo?
Hobbes visited Galileo in 1636, and took from him the idea that the world is a mechanical system in which everything can be understood in terms of mathematically specifiable laws of motion (Jesseph 2004) .
Did Hobbes meet Galileo?
Aubrey claims that “When he [Hobbes] was at Florence … he contracted a friendship with the famous Galileo Galilei” (Aubrey 1696, 1.366), although curiously Hobbes’s autobiographical writings do not mention this, though they do mention meeting Mersenne.
How does Hobbes view reason?
According to Hobbes, every- one agrees that it is rational to preserve oneself, and everyone agrees that the dictates of reason should be followed. Once this claim of natural reason is accepted, instrumental and verbal reason can derive not only all of the laws of nature, but also the right of nature.
What is Thomas Hobbes political philosophy?
His political philosophy is chiefly concerned with the way in which government must be organized in order to avoid civil war. It therefore encompasses a view of the typical causes of civil war, all of which are represented in Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament (1679), his history of the English Civil Wars.
Did Hobbes believe in natural rights?
Hobbes asserted that the people agreed among themselves to “lay down” their natural rights of equality and freedom and give absolute power to a sovereign. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a person or a group.
What type of government did Hobbes believe in?
Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign could take. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued.
Who influenced Hobbes thinking?
Hobbes was a good pupil, and between 1601 and 1602 he went up to Magdalen Hall, the predecessor to Hertford College, Oxford, where he was taught scholastic logic and mathematics. The principal, John Wilkinson, was a Puritan and had some influence on Hobbes.
Did Hobbes believe in God?
Hobbes seems to have believed in ‘God’, perhaps in a God who wanted to be worshipped; he certainly disapproved of most ‘religion’, including virtually all forms of Christianity. Surprisingly few of his earliest and best-informed readers accused him of denying God’s existence.
What does Thomas Hobbes believe in?
Hobbes believes that moral judgments about good and evil cannot exist until they are decreed by a society’s central authority. This position leads directly to Hobbes’s belief in an autocratic and absolutist form of government.
Was Hobbes a rationalist?
Hobbes thought of himself as a scientist, but he was really more of a rationalist: Truth can be had if we only make sure to define our terms well and reason logically! But his conclusions were empiricistic: Nothing is in the mind that isn’t first in the senses.
Was Thomas Hobbes influenced by Galileo?
This has often been developed into a story about the particular influence on Hobbes of the works of Giacomo Zabarella, a sixteenth-century Aristotelian who studied and taught at the University of Padua, which influence is then often said to have been somehow mediated by Galileo.
How are Galileo and Aristotle similar to each other?
They are similar, though, in that each expressed the most advanced theory of physics that could be known in their day. Perhaps if Aristotle had been smarter, he might have come up with some of the physical experiments that Galileo tried, but he wrote down the best of Geek knowledge that existed.
Was Thomas Hobbes a political philosopher?
Hobbes was a widely read and controversial author. In many cases, the discussion of his philosophy was about his political philosophy (Goldie 1994, Malcolm 2002). However, Hobbes’s non-political views were also discussed.
What is the connection between Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Leibniz?
One important connection is that between Hobbes’s work and Leibniz’s. Of all the canonical philosophers in the period from Descartes to Kant, Leibniz is probably the one who paid most attention to Hobbes’s work, and had the most to say about different aspects of it.