Hobbes's Two Sciences: Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy
Seventeenth-Century Thinker Thomas Hobbes maintained that his philosophy constituted a unified system, but in what precise sense did he think that the branches of his philosophy were unified? This question has provoked extensive scholarship over the last half-century. Answering it is essential not only to understanding Hobbes's philosophy generally, but how one answers it significantly impacts our understanding of the Leviathan, his most influential work, and of the Laws of Nature, the foundation of his political philosophy.

Hobbes's Two Sciences answers the question of philosophical unificiation by situating Hobbes's politics within his account of scientific knowledge as constructed by humans—an epistemology founded on the idea that makers have special access to causal knowledge—and by demonstrating that the relationship between pure and mixed mathematics provided him with a model for thinking about relationships between geometry and natural philosophy and between politics and history. Marcus P. Adams explores how this understanding of Hobbes's systematic philosophy impacts three long-standing areas of scholarship on Hobbes and the History of Early Modern Philosophy and provides a new view on Hobbes's system .
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Hobbes's Two Sciences: Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy
Seventeenth-Century Thinker Thomas Hobbes maintained that his philosophy constituted a unified system, but in what precise sense did he think that the branches of his philosophy were unified? This question has provoked extensive scholarship over the last half-century. Answering it is essential not only to understanding Hobbes's philosophy generally, but how one answers it significantly impacts our understanding of the Leviathan, his most influential work, and of the Laws of Nature, the foundation of his political philosophy.

Hobbes's Two Sciences answers the question of philosophical unificiation by situating Hobbes's politics within his account of scientific knowledge as constructed by humans—an epistemology founded on the idea that makers have special access to causal knowledge—and by demonstrating that the relationship between pure and mixed mathematics provided him with a model for thinking about relationships between geometry and natural philosophy and between politics and history. Marcus P. Adams explores how this understanding of Hobbes's systematic philosophy impacts three long-standing areas of scholarship on Hobbes and the History of Early Modern Philosophy and provides a new view on Hobbes's system .
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Hobbes's Two Sciences: Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy

Hobbes's Two Sciences: Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy

by Marcus P. Adams
Hobbes's Two Sciences: Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy

Hobbes's Two Sciences: Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy

by Marcus P. Adams

Hardcover

$100.00 
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Overview

Seventeenth-Century Thinker Thomas Hobbes maintained that his philosophy constituted a unified system, but in what precise sense did he think that the branches of his philosophy were unified? This question has provoked extensive scholarship over the last half-century. Answering it is essential not only to understanding Hobbes's philosophy generally, but how one answers it significantly impacts our understanding of the Leviathan, his most influential work, and of the Laws of Nature, the foundation of his political philosophy.

Hobbes's Two Sciences answers the question of philosophical unificiation by situating Hobbes's politics within his account of scientific knowledge as constructed by humans—an epistemology founded on the idea that makers have special access to causal knowledge—and by demonstrating that the relationship between pure and mixed mathematics provided him with a model for thinking about relationships between geometry and natural philosophy and between politics and history. Marcus P. Adams explores how this understanding of Hobbes's systematic philosophy impacts three long-standing areas of scholarship on Hobbes and the History of Early Modern Philosophy and provides a new view on Hobbes's system .

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780198924685
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 06/27/2025
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.46(w) x 9.57(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Marcus P. Adams

Marcus P. Adams is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany and former Associate Editor of the journal Hobbes Studies. His research focuses on perception and natural philosophy in Early Modern Philosophy, in particular these areas in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and Margaret Cavendish. He has edited A Companion to Hobbes (2021), and his papers have appeared in journals such as British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, and Philosophers' Imprint.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Unity of Hobbes's Philosophy2. Prudential Knowledge from Sense and the Mechanical Mind3. Scientific Knowledge from Making and the Mechanical Mind4. Demonstrating Scientific Knowledge in Geometry and Civil Philosophy5. Hobbesian Natural Philosophy as Mixed Mathematics6. Experience in Hobbesian Civil Philosophy and Civil History
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