These two volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread (...) demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

Descartes's concept of the mind, as distinct from the body with which it forms a union, set the agenda for much of Western philosophy's subsequent reflection on human nature and thought. This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. Focusing on Descartes's view of the mind as intimately united to and intermingled with the body, (...) and exploring its implications for his philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Lilli Alanen argues that the epistemological and methodological consequences of this view have been largely misconstrued in the modern debate. Informed by both the French tradition of Descartes scholarship and recent Anglo-American research, Alanen's book combines historical-contextual analysis with a philosophical problem-oriented approach. It seeks to relate Descartes's views on mind and intentionality both to contemporary debates and to the problems Descartes confronted in their historical context. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes's thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests. (shrink)

"The well-known moral and political doctrines of Leviathan have tended to overshadow Hobbes's speculations in other fields. In this book doctrines familiar from the treatises on 'Policy', as well as less familiar empirical and metaphysical theories, are given balanced consideration against the background of his philosophy of science."--Bookjacket.

This paper analyses the relationship between Hobbes's theory of language and his theory of science and method. It is shown that Hobbes, at least in his Computatio sive Logica (1655), deviates in some measure from the traditional (Aristotelian) model of language. In this model speech is considered to be a fairly unproblematic expression of thought, which itself is independent of language. Basing himself on a nominalist account of universals, Hobbes states that the demonstration or assertion of universal propositions presupposes speech (...) (more especially, the use of names as marks). This insight turns out to be essential for Hobbes's (rationalist) view of scientific method. (shrink)

He has an astonishing range, and in this book he expands it still further. More than a mere introduction, Made with Words offers a coherent and well-argued picture of most of the main components of Hobbes's wide-ranging philosophy.

The author proposes that the anonymous letter dated May 19, 1641, which Mersenne delivered to Descartes, should be attributed to Thomas Hobbes. Although the text is known, it is usually considered not so much in itself as for Descartes’s two replies, which contain important clarifications on the proof of God’s existence. Hobbes’ hand is revealed by various thematic, conceptual, and lexical analogies and, above all, by the presence of two doctrines characteristic of his thought: 1) the denial of the existence (...) of intellectual ideas; 2) the assertion that the nature of God can only be described by the proposition “God exists”. Attribution to Hobbes of the May 19 th 1641 letter throws new light on the debate that followed Descartes’s Meditations as well as on Mersenne’s role. (shrink)

This is the first book to focus on Descartes's changing views, and it is welcome."--Roger Ariew, University of South Florida.

In part through correcting mistranslations of key passages in the "de logica" part of his "de corpore," hobbes is shown to have held a theory in which the intention to communicate enters into the definition of signification; and in which speech requires, In addition, (1) socially agreed-Upon correlations between kinds of utterances and kinds of things, And (2) an interrelationship of such utterances (or 'words') in what hobbes calls 'contexture'. It is shown that hobbes did not hold that for a (...) linguistic expression to have meaning is for it to stand for something, Or that what an expression means is what it stands for--Positions commonly, And mistakenly, Attributed to him. (shrink)

Originally published in 1889, Ferdinand Tonnies published versions of two works by Thomas Hobbes. His editions of The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic and of Behemoth: or The Long Parliament were the first modern critical editions, based on manuscripts of works by Hobbes. Completed in 1640, The Elements of Law was Hobbes's first systematic political work. The book helps us see Hobbes's mind at work, for it is the first version of his later political works.

I argue that Hobbes isn't really a materialist in the early 1640s (in, e.g., the Third Objections to Descartes's Meditations). That is, he doesn't assert that bodies are the only substances. However, he does think that bodies are the only substances we can think about using imagistic ideas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Did Hobbes Have a Semantic Theory of Truth? WILLEM R. DEJONG 1. INTRODUCTION THE qUESTIONRAISEDin the title of this article may strike the reader as a bit anachronistic. A phrase like 'semantic theory of truth' evokes associations with rather recent developments in logic, especially the work of Alfred Tarski. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that Hobbes made important observations of a semantical nature. Moreover, in an interesting article still (...) frequently referred to, R. M. Martin has argued that Hobbes "has in mind a clear-cut semantical concept of truth."' Examining Hobbes's semantical ideas somewhat more closely than Martin did, T6rnebohm has given a more precise characterization of Hobbes's view on truth and falsity; he speaks of Hobbes's comprehension theory of truth. ~One of the main purposes of this article is to investigate whether such a theory is correctly attributed to Hobbes. For Tarski 'true' and 'false' are predicates of (declarative) sentences) But this is not enough to speak of a semantic theory of truth: The leading idea behind Tarski's fundamental work in the field of semantics is (a restricted version of) the principle of compositionality. This principle, also known as Frege's principle, says that the semantic value of a (complex) expression is a function of the semantic values of the syntactic (and categorematic) parts it is ' R. M. Martin, "On the Semantics of Hobbes," Philosophyand PhenomenologicalResearch 14 095314): 2o5-11, esp. ~o7, 211. Cf. I. C. Hungerland and G. R. Vick, "Hobbes's Theory of Language, Speech and Reasoning," in ThomasHobbes:Computatwsire Logica--Logic, translated and commentary by A. Martinich, ed. and introduced by I. C. Hungerland and G. R. Vick (New York: 1981), 15--167, esp. 17, 121-22. 9 H. T6rnebohm, "A Study in Hobbes' Theory of Denotation and Truth," Theor~a26 (196o): 53-7o; see p. 66. 3 A. Tarski, "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics," Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch4 (1944): 341-375; see p. 342. [63] 64 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:1 JANUARY 199o composed of. Moreover, in the case of linguistic expressions which are (deciarative ) sentences this semantic value should be its truth-value. 4 As we shall see, Hobbes's theory of propositions is basically a theory of subject-predicate propositions. It is therefore reasonable to qualify his theory of truth as a semantic one only if it satisfies Frege's principle to a certain extent. Ideally, this means that the truth-value of subject-predicate propositions should be conceived as a function of the semantic interpretations of its subject and predicate. In the next three sections I will concentrate principally on the logicosyntactical aspects of language. I will then discuss successively the general structure of propositions, the various sorts of names, and the syntax of Hobbes's theory of propositions. Section 5 is devoted to Hobbes's theory of truth as interpreted by Martin and T0rnebohm. The outcome of this examination makes it necessary to break away from Martin's restricted conception of semantics. Martin, like Tarski, takes semantics as "semantics in the narrower sense," i.e., as the discipline Quine refers to as the theory of reference. 5 However, sometimes this term is used in a broader sense; the field of semantics is taken then to include the theory of meaning too. Although the wording differs frequently, the distinction between meaning and reference is almost a constant in the history of thinking about language. On the side of meaning one finds terms like connotation, intension, conception, signification and analyticity, while terms like naming, denoting, extension (and sometimes again signification) are ]inked to the notion of reference. In the Computatio sive Logica, the first part of De Corpore, containing Hobbes's most mature work on the philosophy of language, this opposition is displayed by way of a distinction between, on the one side, nominare, denotare and appellare and, on the other side, significare. Hobbes's view of the significative, as opposed to the denotative, role of linguistic expressions is treated in sections 6, 7, and 8. There it will be shown that Hobbes's radical nominalism is decisive for his doctrine of signification; moreover, this nominalism raises serious problems for the relation... (shrink)

This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, ...

Several recent commentators argue that Thomas Hobbes’s account of the nature of science is conventionalist. Engaging in scientific practice on a conventionalist account is more a matter of making sure one connects one term to another properly rather than checking one’s claims, e.g., by experiment. In this paper, I argue that the conventionalist interpretation of Hobbesian science accords neither with Hobbes’s theoretical account in De corpore and Leviathan nor with Hobbes’s scientific practice in De homine and elsewhere. Closely tied to (...) the conventionalist interpretation is the deductivist interpretation, on which it is claimed that Hobbes believed sciences such as optics are deduced from geometry. I argue that Hobbesian science places simplest conceptions as the foundation for geometry and the sciences in which we use geometry, which provides strong evidence against both the conventionalist and deductivist interpretations. (shrink)

This is a book about Hobbes's philosophy as a whole, viewed through the lens of his philosophy of science. Political philosophy is claimed to have a certain autonomy within Hobbes's scheme of philosophy and science as a whole, and in particular, a kind of autonomy in relation to natural sciences. Hobbes's moral and political philosophies guide action --of both individual subjects and sovereigns. They have a role in a special kind of rhetorical product called counsel. In natural science Hobbes probably (...) exaggerates the explanatory powers of mechanics --the theory of matter in motion-- including by an attempted assimilation of geometry to the sciences of motion. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Volumes I and II provided a completely new translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. Volume III contains 207 of Descartes' letters, over half of which have previously not been translated into English. It incorporates, in its entirety, Anthony Kenny's celebrated translation of selected philosophical letters, first published in 1970. In conjunction with Volumes I and II it is designed to meet the widespread demand for a comprehensive, authoritative and accurate edition (...) of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

Descartes is possibly the most famous of all writers on the mind, but his theory of mind has been almost universally misunderstood, because his philosophy has not been seen in the context of his scientific work. Desmond Clarke offers a radical and convincing rereading, undoing the received perception of Descartes as the chief defender of mind/body dualism. For Clarke, the key is to interpret his philosophical efforts as an attempt to reconcile his scientific pursuits with the theologically orthodox views of (...) his time. (shrink)

This paper surveys the many misunderstandings of Descartes Meditations in Hobbes' objections --the third set--issued in 1641. Some of the understanding can be traced to different understandings of philosophy or science, as well as differences over the importance epistemological scepticism.

Descartes' procedure in "Meditation II" must be brought into line with his claim that "we must never ask about the existence of anything until we first understand its essence." And Descartes' "Meditation III" claim that he is aware of his mind's power to cause ideas must be grounded in a prior discovery of this power. Both demands are met by reading "Meditation II" as a progressive clarification of the nature of mind, with the investigation of the wax providing the discovery (...) of the mind's generative power. This process of discovery also provides the meanings of "thinking" and "existing" -- as "causing ideas" and "exercising causal power", respectively. Thus the discovery of the mind's nature also grounds the cogito. I provide a close reading of the wax investigation which supports this view. (shrink)