We are going to start with the material about language and science that we did not cover last time. Then we are going to talk about Hobbes’s views about our ideas of God and his materialist reading of Christianity.
The readings come from the Objections and Replies and three chapters of Levithan (1651).
Say what you will about Hobbes, but he has the best chapter titles. In particular, the titles often just list the topics. That helps! Look for the points in the chapter where it breaks between one topic in the title and the next.
In the Objections and Replies, Hobbes challenges Descartes’s characterization of the idea of God. Descartes, as might be expected, defends himself.
Chapters 34 and 38 come from Part 3 of Leviathan, titled “Of a Christian Commonwealth.” The important thing about this for our purposes is that everything in that part takes for granted the truth of the Bible. What Hobbes is trying to do is give a materialist interpretation of the Bible.
So, for example, we see him arguing in chapter 34 that biblical references to spirits, angels, and inspiration are either metaphorical expressions or references to real, corporeal things. In chapter 38, he takes on the biblical references to the afterlife and argues that they are also consistent with materialism. The afterlife will be here, on earth. Everyone who has ever lived will be brought back to life (chap. 38, par. 3; henceforth 38.3).1 Hell is a metaphorical expression; the wicked will be punished by dying a second, permanent death (38.14). Those who are saved will continue to live here on earth (38.18). This view of the afterlife is known as “mortalism,” for what it’s worth.
Chapter 46 is from the fourth part of Leviathan, titled “Of the Kingdom of Darkness.” Cheery. This part is dedicated to arguing that Christianity has been melded with bad philosophy, producing the said Kingdom of Darkness. Good philosophy, in turn, will yield various social benefits and restore the proper understanding of Christianity.
Hobbes criticizes what he calls the doctrine of “separated essences” (140R-141L). In the course of his criticism, he attacks those who think that the soul is entirely in the little finger and entirely in every other part of the body at the same time.
Who, you might ask, believed such a thing?
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), that’s who. And his reasoning is not bad.
Aquinas held that a person is identical with an immaterial soul. One piece of matter cannot be entirely in one place and entirely in a different place at the same time: it is either entirely in one place, entirely in the other place, or partly in the one place and partly in the other. An immaterial soul would not have the properties of matter and so, Aquinas argued, it could be wholly in every part of the body. Thus it could be wholly in the little finger and wholly in the big toe and wholly in the right earlobe, and wholly in the spleen, and so on.
Aquinas’s explanation of how this is possible involves distinguishing between three different ways of using the term “whole” (or “totality”). The one that is relevant to the soul concerns a thing’s essence.
Here is an illustration of what he means by that. Take a completely white eggshell. The eggshell has different parts, but each of them is the same color; no part is more white than any other part. For Aquinas, that means the essence of the color white is wholly in each part of the eggshell. By analogy, the essence of a person is wholly in each part of the body. Your lungs are no more, and no less, part of you than your feet are.
… if the soul were united to the body merely as its motor, we might say that it is not in each part of the body, but only in one part through which it would move the others. But since the soul is united to the body as its form, it must necessarily be in the whole body, and in each part thereof. For it is … the substantial form of the body. Now the substantial form perfects not only the whole, but each part of the whole. For since a whole consists of parts, a form of the whole which does not give existence to each of the parts of the body, is a form consisting in composition and order, such as the form of a house; and such a form is accidental. But the soul is a substantial form; and therefore it must be the form and the act, not only of the whole, but also of each part. Therefore, on the withdrawal of the soul, as we do not speak of an animal or a man unless equivocally, as we speak of a painted animal or a stone animal; so is it with the hand, the eye, the flesh and bones …
That it is entire in each part thereof, may be concluded from this, … a whole is that which is divided into parts, [and] there are three kinds of totality, corresponding to three kinds of division. There is a whole which is divided into parts of quantity, as a whole line, or a whole body. There is also a whole which is divided into logical and essential parts: as a thing defined is divided into the parts of a definition …. There is … a third kind of whole which is potential, divided into virtual parts. …
Therefore if it be asked whether the whole whiteness is in the whole surface and in each part thereof, it is necessary to distinguish. If we mean quantitative totality … then the whole whiteness is not in each part of the surface. The same is to be said of totality of power: since the whiteness which is in the whole surface moves the sight more than the whiteness which is in a small part …. But if we mean totality of species and essence, then the whole whiteness is in each part of a surface.
Since, however, the soul has not quantitative totality … the whole soul is in each part of the body, by totality of perfection and of essence, but not by totality of power. For it is not in each part of the body, with regard to each of its powers; but with regard to sight, it is in the eye; and with regard to hearing, it is in the ear; and so forth.2