Hobbes's Study and the Hardwick Library

Notes and Discussions HOBBES'S STUDY AND THE HARDW/CK LIBRARY The widely held, scholarly maxim that all great theorists are the beneficiaries of the thought of their predecessors presents more difficulty to the scholar concerned with Thomas Hobbes's political and moral ideas than to most other scholars. The greatest frustration facing the Hobbes scholar must surely be the risky business of identifying previous thinkers who were influential in the development of Hobbes's political theory. Such an inquiry inevitably will involve a degree of informed conjecture . This essay aims at providing a basis for investigation that limits conjecture. There is direct evidence of only a few of the books Hobbes read, but it is possible to introduce method into an inquiry into the intellectual sources of his political theory by examining his account of his study and the contents of the library available to him during most of his study, the library of the Cavendishes at Hardwick Hall. A case for the influence of a given thinker can be made if textual analysis of Hobbes suggests that thinker's ideas, and if that thinker's works are, in addition, consonant with Hobbes's reports of his study or were in the Hardwick Library when Hobbes studied there. Some selections are provided below from the seventeenth-century catalogues of the library that are preserved today at Chatsworth. It is impossible to trace with precision all the intellectual influences on Hobbes. The chief problem is the paucity of references to the works of other writers in his letters, manuscripts, and printed works. In fact, Hobbes sometimes gives the impression that he read very little, that his philosophy and its doctrines, the only true ones, were developed from first principles and observation by his own creative genius alone. "He was wont to say," Aubrey reports, "that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men. ''1 Even the most cursory examination of Hobbes's works suggests a profound originality. Hobbes expressly rejected the prevailing philosophical doctrines of his time and sought to build a new philosophy upon new foundations. He condemned appeal to authority. Accepting uncritically the vocabulary and conclusions of others is not science, he reasoned, but trust. If one does not conceive the meanings of words, one cannot verify experience and matters of fact. Wrong definitions will lead to utter nonsense, which is worse than ignorance. Moreover, the habit of taking opinions on trust may be dangerous, for some men--Hobbes had the scholastics particularly in mind--would manipulate the opinions of others for their own fraudulent ends.2 ' John Aubrey, "'Brief Lives, "' chiefly of Contemporaries, ed. AndrewClark, 2 vols.(Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1898), 1:349. [ have modernizedspellingsin all quotations. z Evidentlyreferring to his own relationship with a scholastic opponent, BishopBrarnhall, Hobbes laments that "by reading others, men commonly obstruct the way to their own exact and natural judgment, and use their wit bothto deceivethemselveswithfallacies,and to requitethose, whoendeavor at theirownentreatyto instructthem, withrevilings."ThusHobbesaccountedfor the violentopposition his doctrines were wont to exciteamong men of letters (Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Sir WilliamMolesworth, 11vols. [London:John Bohn, 1839-45],5:441; hereaftercited as EW). [445] 446 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Hobbes must not be understood to mean that all reading is bad. Examination of the opinions of others may be profitable if it is done critically: "If in your own meditation you light upon a difficulty, I think it is no loss of time, to enquire what other men say of it, but to rely only upon reason. ''3 Hobbes's own study included reading as well as meditation. According to Clarendon, Hobbes was a man of "some reading, and somewhat more thinking. ''4 He undoubtedly read many of the most commonly read and the most important works of his time, such works as any educated man would have read, though he apparently owned few books himself. After his standard Aristotelian education at Oxford, Hobbes entered a long humanist period, which culminated in his translation of Thucydides, published in 1629. During this period he studied on the sufferance of his friend...