Hobbes, the universities and the history of philosophy

Serjeantson, Richard

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511490460.006

Cited by 8 publications

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“…"130 This may seem extreme but was fairly conventional, except the unusual view that sovereigns decide what universities teach, and the subtle but pointed attack on orthodox defences of universities. 131 Universities used classical texts which equated democracy with liberty and monarchy with tyranny; reading these books was like "the biting of a mad Dogge" producing rabies. 132 Hobbes's view of university education was outdated,133 but in his eyes the universities were like the wooden horse was to the Trojans, "infecting" students and citizens -the "coar of rebellion" before 1642,134 and still fomenting discontent under Cromwell.135 These "fits of Rebellion … may easily be mended, by mending the Vniuersities [Universities],"136 keeping punishment and the effect of crime on society, might rectify one's crimeinclining passions.…”

Section: Opportunity-based (Political) Approaches For Combating Corru...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hobbes’s Practical Politics: Political, Sociological and Economistic Ways of Avoiding a State of Nature

Blau

2019

Hobbes Stud.

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This paper offers a systematic analysis of Hobbes’s practical political thought. Hobbes’s abstract philosophy is rightly celebrated, but he also gave much practical advice on how to avoid disorder. Yet he is typically interpreted too narrowly in this respect, especially by those who only read him economistically. Other scholars supplement this economistic focus with sociological or political interpretations, but to my knowledge, no one stresses all three aspects of his thought. This paper thus examines each of Hobbes’s practical proposals for avoiding corruption and a state of nature. Hobbes clearly uses economistic, sociological and political approaches, which involve shaping incentives, desires/preferences, and opportunities, respectively. This intentionally anachronistic framework helps us see further, highlighting Hobbes’s rich and wide-ranging practical proposals for avoiding disorder – a crucial part of his theory.

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Section: Opportunity-based (Political) Approaches For Combating Corru...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Hobbes’s Practical Politics: Political, Sociological and Economistic Ways of Avoiding a State of Nature

Blau

2019

Hobbes Stud.

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“…135 For its more educated readers, as we have seen, the Anatomy presented a wealth of the best way of serving the common good is by attending to the minds of the well-educated, particularly those who attend universities. 139 Of course, the Anatomy would have been very different without its English translations and paraphrases, and its author had the consolation that he could still address himself to an audience comfortable in the fluent exchanges between Latin and vernacular language that had become prominent in late humanist culture. But there is good reason to suppose that Burton was being sincere in his complaint about English publishers.…”

Section: The Text and Its Readersmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘As Hunters find their Game by the Trace’: Reading to Discover in The Anatomy of Melancholy

Gowland

2018

The Review of English Studies

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The critical edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, published by the Clarendon Press between 1989 and 2000, provided an invaluable resource for Burton scholars in the form of a generally reliable reading text and extensive critical apparatus, including three volumes of commentary devoted to tracing Burton's sources, identifying historical persons, events and geographical locations mentioned in the text, and explicating obscure allusions and technical terminology. Since its publication, however, there has been little attention paid to the contents of the Clarendon commentary, which contains many lacunae and entries that invite alteration. This is particularly regrettable, because Burton aimed the Anatomy partly at scholarly readers who were expected to read his cento in a similar way to a modern literary commentator, primarily by identifying its sources and allusions, and interpreting their deployment and manipulation in the text. This article seeks to supplement the Clarendon commentary by extending and revising its treatment of bibliographical sources, persons, geographical locations, and textual explanation. In doing so, it exemplifies a mode of reading that Burton expected for his book. It concludes by considering the implications for our understanding of the intended readership of the Anatomy.3 The multiple errors in the fifth edition, which was partially printed in Edinburgh before being completed in London and Oxford, are the subject of further complaint in Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1638), sig. A a a a a 4r. 4 The honourable exception to the trend here is

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“…For Hobbes, England's troubles have been stirred up by "seditious Presbyterian Ministers, and ambitious ignorant Orators," who have been humanistically indoctrinated in the universities ("for the sake of Greek and Latin philosophy and eloquence") with rebellious opinions about democracy and religion. They have then disseminated these by rhetorical sophistry, producing a subversive, anti-Ciceronian union of "stupidity and eloquence" ([1647] 1998[1650] 1994[1679] 2009Serjeantson 2006). His solution is a radical "Reformation of the Universities," which by teaching the "true Polyticks" of demonstrative civil science would lead "well principled Preachers" to inculcate the principles of duty and obedience to the civil law in the massesthereby instantiating the rhetorical adornment of truth rather than error ([1651] 2012, 3: 1097, 1140; [1679] 2009: 182-3, 199).…”

Section: <4> Rhetoric and Absolutist Monarchymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rhetoric and Early Modern Politics

Gowland

2015

The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies

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This chapter examines the relationship between rhetoric and politics in early modern Europe, focusing on the impact and legacy of Renaissance humanism. After summarizing the background from which politically orientated humanist rhetoric emerged in the city-states of late-medieval Italy, it discusses the role of rhetoric and public speech in the works of two influential proponents of republican political thought: Leonardo Bruni and Niccolò Machiavelli; for both authors, civic rhetoric is both the lifeblood and the potential undoing of republics. It then presents the ways in which rhetoric was incorporated into humanistic theories of princely government, especially in exhortations to virtue and discussions of counsel. Finally, turning to the works of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, it illustrates the reconsideration—and the downgrading—of the political status of rhetoric in the era of monarchical absolutism.

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Hobbes, the universities and the history of philosophy

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Hobbes’s Practical Politics: Political, Sociological and Economistic Ways of Avoiding a State of Nature

Hobbes’s Practical Politics: Political, Sociological and Economistic Ways of Avoiding a State of Nature

‘As Hunters find their Game by the Trace’: Reading to Discover in The Anatomy of Melancholy

Rhetoric and Early Modern Politics

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