The rise of modern philosophy a new history of western philosophy volume 3 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) (1) 57

DESCARTES TO BERKELEY Long Parliament He remained there more than ten years, and was, for a period, tutor to the exiled heir to the throne, the future King Charles II In 1642 he presented a number of the ideas of the Elements of Law in a Latin treatise, De Cive, which established his reputation in France Hobbes’ comments on Descartes show little comprehension of the Meditations, and the two thinkers have traditionally been regarded as standing at opposite poles of philosophy In fact they resembled each other in several ways Both, for instance, were Wred by a passion for mathematics Hobbes’ most lively biographer, the gossipy John Aubrey, described his Wrst encounter with geometry: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally Being in a gentleman’s library, Euclid’s Elements lay open, and ’twas the 47th Element at Book I He read the proposition ‘By G —’ said he, ‘this is impossible!’ So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read Et sic deinceps [and so on], that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth This made him in love with geometry (Aubrey 1975: 158) He did not, however, grasp the importance of Descartes’ analytic geometry, which he thought ‘lacked bite’ He thought even more poorly of his philosophy, in particular his physics or natural philosophy ‘Mr Hobbes was wont to say,’ Aubrey tells us, ‘that had Des Cartes kept himself wholly to Geometrie that he had been the best Geometer in the world, but that his head did not lye for Philosophy.’ There is an irony here When, later in life, Hobbes betook himself to the serious study of geometry, he wasted years debating with the mathematical professors of Oxford in a futile attempt to square the circle Descartes and Hobbes had much in common They shared a contempt for Aristotle and the Aristotelian establishment in the universities Both were solitary thinkers who spent signiWcant parts of their lives in exile— each, for a time, beholden to banished Stuart courts Both of them had very modest libraries, and were contemptuous of book-learning Those who rely on reading, Hobbes said, ‘spend time in Xuttering over their books; as birds that entering by the chimney, and Wnding themselves enclosed in a chamber, Xutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in’ (L, 24) Hobbes, like Descartes, was a master of vernacular prose, and wrote for popular reading as well as for the learned world 42