Thomas Hobbes, like Francis Bacon before him, disliked Aristotle and scholasticism. They were both quite familiar with the objects of their dislike, having encountered Aristotle and scholasticism first hand at Oxford University. Bacon later described his tutors as "men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their Dictator." Bacon clearly saw the extent of new possibilities in thought. He held that Europeans of his time needed to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the limits of ancient learning) into an ocean of new learning. Hobbes, for similar reasons described the universities as places for the production of insignificant speech. Locke also echoed this rejection of scholasticism and contempt for the universities. The purpose of this paper is to talk about this rejection and the ways in which the continuing revolt against university education by Hobbes and Locke has contributed to a new view of the self.
Hobbes rejects the teleology of Aristotelian science. His view of man is shaped by Galileo's new insights about motion. His translation of the revolutionary doctrines of physics into claims about man and politics is a most remarkable piece of creative thinking. Life is not aimed at the attainment of the mature state of the species as Aristotle claimed. Man, like other physical objects, keeps moving until something (death, in the case of man) stops him. Yet the reaction to Aristotle and scholasticism was not a matter of simply rejecting the philosophy of Aristotle wholesale. The relation which philosophers had to Aristotelian ideas is much more complex. Philosophers quite typically would reject one piece of Aristotelianism but keep another. Part of the reason for this is that it is not easy...
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...ump of matter to another, when the matter changes, so necessarily do the accidents which depend on it. Thus the ship of Theseus case Hobbes claims fits this model of individuation and not the first two.
(10) Thus, Hobbes also can give an account of the trinity in terms of these definitions, and it is worth noting that most of the occurences of the term 'person' in the Leviathan are in the context of a discussion of the trinity. But, presumably Hobbes still regards God as a material body, and the three persons of the trinity as different representations in speech and action of that body.
(11) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972. (II. xxvii. 6. 2-9) Pg. 332
(12) Ibid.
(13) Ibid. (18-20) Pg. 332
(14) Ibid. (II. xxvii. 7. 23-24) Pg. 332
(15) Locke, op. cit. (II. xxvii. 9 21-28) Pg. 335
“We’re just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that.” Kurt Cobain’s thoughts on why his band, Nirvana was such a massive success in an unexpected way. A heroin shooting, guitar strumming musician who sang the barely audible lyrics which spoke so loudly for the angst ridden youth of America had such an important influence on our culture that over twenty years later, the details around his suicide are still heatedly debated. The impact that Cobain had on the world was intense at the time and can still be found today; the music he wrote for Nirvana had influence on the music industry, his unintended voice to angst-ridden society and even the fashion industry cashed in on his style.
Locke clarified the problem by pointing out his notions that mostly derived from the natural state of human beings. Each man was originally born and predestined to have his own body, hands, head and so forth which can help him to create his own labor. When he knew how to use his personal mind and labor to appropriate bountiful subjects around him, taking them "out of the hands of...
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The main critics of Thomas Hobbes’ work are most often those with a more optimistic view of human nature. However, if one is to really look at a man’s actions in depth, a self-serving motivation can always be found. The main problem with Hobbes’ claims is that he does not account for the more Darwinian perspective that helping one’s own species survive is at the same time a selfish and unwar-like act. Thus his conclusion that without a governing body, we are essentially at war with one another is not completely true as years of evolution can help disprove.
This article investigates the relationship between biography and authenticity of grunge musician Kurt Cobain. Focusing on Cobain's lyrics involving the human body, the article argues that his idea of the 'sick body' was a metaphor in his various works.
Hobbes argued that everything in the world, including our thoughts and the states of our minds, can in principle be explained in terms of one thing and one thing only: matter in motion. Thoughts, for example, can be explained, he argued, as matter in motion in the brain. A perception of the world arises in a person’s brain when motion in the external world causes motion in the brain, which is then experienced as an external object, and so on. If everything can be explained as matter in motion, including the mental, then there is no good reason to suppose mind and matter are two fundamentally different kinds of things. Rather, it is more reasonable to suppose that if everything can be explained in material terms then everything is material. So argued
Hobbes was a strong believer in the thought that human nature was evil. He believed that “only the unlimited power of a sovereign could contain human passions that disrupt the social order and threatened civilized life.” Hobbes believed that human nature was a force that would lead to a constant state of war if it was not controlled. In his work the Leviathan, he laid out a secular political statement in which he stated the significance of absolutism.
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Grasso, June, Jay P. Corrin, and Michael Kort. Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to World Power . N.p.: M.E. Sharpe, 2004. (Pg. 78-90)