Hobbes’s Materialist Agenda

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).

This is a meticulously researched and carefully wrought study of the epistemological and ontological quandaries Hobbes navigated while engaging challenges posed by Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes. Bardin gives a fascinating analysis of the compromises Hobbes makes vis à vis his materialist metaphysics for the sake of securing political stability.

• 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