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Hobbes’s Materialist Agenda

The Politics of Early Modern Science

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

1 429 kr

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In this major contribution to our understanding of Hobbes's political thought, Andrea Bardin contends that it should be analysed in relation to the 'materialist agenda' Hobbes was pursuing when confronting Descartes's project. Bardin pinpoints the changes in Hobbes's political thought to the intellectual context in which he elaborated his materialist ontology and epistemology. He investigates the classical sources that initially shaped Hobbes's political thinking, including Thucydides and Aristotle, as well as the broad materialist agenda that Hobbes drew from Bacon and elaborated in opposition to Descartes. He studies Hobbes's exchanges with his contemporary interlocutors in the Mersenne circle, including Descartes and Gassendi, with whom he discussed first philosophy and natural philosophy. In this way, Bardin vindicates materialist critiques of the idealist foundations of early modern mechanical philosophy.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-01-31
Mått156 x 234 x 19 mm
Vikt466 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieCycles
Antal sidor224
FörlagEdinburgh University Press
ISBN9781399540872

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Andrea Bardin is Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies at the University of Padua. He works on the relationship between science and political thought, and political anthropology from early modernity to the present. He has written extensively on Gilbert Simondon and Thomas Hobbes, and is the author of Epistemology and Political Philosophy in Gilbert Simondon: Individuation, Technics, Social Systems (Springer, 2015) and Hobbes’s Materialist Agenda: The Politics of Early Modern Science (Edinburgh University Press, 2026).

AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Hobbes’s Materialist AgendaPART IChapter 1 – Ontology and Epistemology in Hobbes’s mechanics1.1 The Quaestio de certitudine mathematicarum and the Pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica1.2 Bacon’s materialist project and Galileo’s mathematical revolution1.3 The Mersenne circle and Gassendi1.4 Descartes’s dualist foundation of mechanics1.5 Hobbes’s Materialist Geometry and the System of the SciencesChapter 2 – Political Epistemology: the strange case of Hobbes’s scientia civilis2.1 The table of sciences in Leviathan IX: what’s the problem with civil philosophy?2.2 Civil science as political techne2.3 The twofold method of civil science2.4 On the neutrality and purpose of civil scienceChapter 3 – Political Ontology: the body politic as an artificial automaton3.1 The passive matter of mechanics3.2 The political anthropology of mechanics3.3 The automation of wisdom3.4 The political automaton imaginedPART IIChapter 4 – From The Elements of Law to De cive: the powerless power of civil science4.1 The Elements of Law: an ‘optical’ ontology4.2 De cive: a ‘geometrical’ epistemology4.3 On the laws of (human) nature4.4 The powerless superiority of recta ratio4.5 Empowering right reason: Hobbes’s modest PlatonismChapter 5 – The political stakes of determinism: ‘liberty’, ‘conatus’, ‘void’, ‘causa integra’5.1 On liberty5.2 On conatus5.3 On void5.4 On causa integra5.5 The political stakes of determinismChapter 6 – Leviathan Becoming Behemoth: Back to Ideology6.1 Neutralising human power (potentia/potestas)6.2 The civil person and the materiality of representation6.3 Imagination: a material principium for the body politic6.4 From Leviathan to Behemoth: for a theory of ideology6.5 The political myth of mechanical philosophyBibliography