- The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Hobbes on Logic, or How to Deal with Aristotle’s Legacy
- Hobbes on Language: Propositions, Truth, and Absurdity
- Hobbes’s Mathematical Thought
- Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Context
- Hobbes on the Foundations of Natural Philosophy
- The Most Curious of Sciences: Hobbes’s Optics
- Hobbes on Liberty, Action, and Free Will
- Reason, Deliberation, and the Passions
- The State of Nature
- Hobbes on the Family
- Natural Law
- Political Obligation
- Authorization and Representation in Hobbes’s <i>Leviathan</i>
- Hobbes (and Austin, and Aquinas) on Law as Command of the Sovereign
- The Sovereign
- Hobbes and Absolutism
- Sovereign Jurisdiction, Territorial Rights, and Membership in Hobbes
- Hobbes and the Social Control of Unsociability
- Hobbes and Religion Without Theology
- Hobbes, Conscience, and Christianity
- Christianity and Civil Religion in Hobbes’s <i>Leviathan</i>
- Thomas Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History
- Hobbes’s Thucydides
- Making History: The Politics of Hobbes’s Behemoth
- Hobbes on the Nature and Scope of Poetry
- Hobbes and Paradox
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
Hobbes’s views on free will and action were radically revisionary of a well-established scholastic theory of the ethical significance of freedom and of freedom’s relation to law. At the heart of this scholastic theory was an account of freedom as a multiway power to determine alternatives and of human action as a distinctively practical mode of exercising reason. The chapter explains this theory as developed by Suarez and, following Suarez, by Bramhall, and examines Hobbes’s attack on the theory’s basis—the theory of freedom as a metaphysical power and of action as a distinctively practical mode of exercising reason.
Keywords: Hobbes, liberty, action, free will, law, reason, ethical significance, Suarez, Bramhall, metaphysical power
Thomas Pink is professor of philosophy at King's College, London. He is the author of The Psychology of Freedom (1997), and Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004) and articles on ethics and the history of philosophy. He is currently completing a two-volume study of the ethical significance of action, The Ethics of Action (OUP), dealing both with freedom and with moral normativity. He is preparing an edition of Hobbes's Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance for the Clarendon edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes, and an edition of Francisco Suarez's ethical and political works for Liberty Fund.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Hobbes on Logic, or How to Deal with Aristotle’s Legacy
- Hobbes on Language: Propositions, Truth, and Absurdity
- Hobbes’s Mathematical Thought
- Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Context
- Hobbes on the Foundations of Natural Philosophy
- The Most Curious of Sciences: Hobbes’s Optics
- Hobbes on Liberty, Action, and Free Will
- Reason, Deliberation, and the Passions
- The State of Nature
- Hobbes on the Family
- Natural Law
- Political Obligation
- Authorization and Representation in Hobbes’s <i>Leviathan</i>
- Hobbes (and Austin, and Aquinas) on Law as Command of the Sovereign
- The Sovereign
- Hobbes and Absolutism
- Sovereign Jurisdiction, Territorial Rights, and Membership in Hobbes
- Hobbes and the Social Control of Unsociability
- Hobbes and Religion Without Theology
- Hobbes, Conscience, and Christianity
- Christianity and Civil Religion in Hobbes’s <i>Leviathan</i>
- Thomas Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History
- Hobbes’s Thucydides
- Making History: The Politics of Hobbes’s Behemoth
- Hobbes on the Nature and Scope of Poetry
- Hobbes and Paradox
- Index