Hobbes: Teaching Philosophy to Speak English

Hobbes: Teaching Philosophy to Speak English WILLIAM SACKSTEDER HEGEL BOASTED that he wished to teach Philosophy to speak German,' to which claim a snide (English) commentator rejoined that he had succeeded. I should like here to discuss one phase of that instruction whereby Philosophy was taught to speak English. I shall consider Thomas Hobbes as teacher, appending some wary--but not snide--observations on the success of that teaching. Hobbes is a likely candidate, if any major figure might be said to have taught Philosophy to speak English; or at least that aptness will be my presumption here. He is at the watershed between scholarly employment of Latin and creative philosophy in English. Previous British thinkers had written only popular works in the vernacular, and his successors wrote all major works therein. ~ Indeed, he himself wrote two of his systematic works in both languages, in varying sequence. He supervised translating another, albeit rather inadequately.' But more important for present purposes, Hobbes was perhaps more selfconscious than any other philosopher of stature has ever been regarding variations in differing natural languages and the need for forming an exact philosophical vocabulary consisting of accurately defined terms. He is one of the greatest of linguistically oriented thinkers, even when our own century is tallied; and no one has insisted more persuasively on the priority and fruitfulness of verbal definitions conceived as principles. But also, more than any other thinker in any language, Hobbes combined these persuasions with both erudition and accomplishment in all of the languages having philosophic importance in his milieu. 4 He was an accomplished student of both Greek and Latin, which were the relevant intellectual languages of his time; he was conversant with French, which some of his friends and enemies were ' Hegel to J. H. Voss, Briefe von und an Hegel, ed. Johannes Hoffmcister, 4 vols. (Hamburg, 1952-1960), 1:99-100. 2 Bacon is the only other likely case. However, leaving aside my conviction that his stature is much below Hobbes's, the overlap of topics and purposes between Latin and English works is not very great, nor is he equally self-conscious about verbal processes. Locke, only slightly later, wrote some minor works in Latin but conceived his masterpieces in English. J The two are Leviathan, which was afterwards translated into Latin by Hobbes himself, and De Cive, whose later English version he himself prepared. De Corpore was translated into English, often carelessly , although apparently with Hobbes's approval and incomplete correction. ' So far as 1 know there is only one approximate parallel in the entire history of western philosophy, namely, C. S. Peirce, whose command of classical languages was great, along with his skills in those modern languages in which his predecessors had written for over two centuries. He too was sell'consciously forming a philosophical vocabulary and doing so within the context of linguistic philosophic intentions. 1 may overlook other interesting parallels among late classical and medieval thinkers, though I take it none of them could have written as students or scholars so deeply enmeshed in a dead but scholarly language. I am also unacquainted with the details of the process whereby Greek-speaking Philosophy was first instructed in Latin. [331 34 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY teaching Philosophy to speak during his stay in Paris. Philosophy as yet spoke no German, at least if we are to believe Hegel. Finally, Hobbes remains to this day one of the master stylists of the English language. I shall attend here to only one phase of Hobbes's instruction in English speech to that Philosophy which in his day spoke Latin almost exclusively, namely, the translator -like problem he faces in adjusting technical uses in the vernacular so that they carry (or reject) the implications embedded in the traditional language. Thus I omit such problematic aspects as the tension between stipulative decision and ordinary usages, or the interplay between idiosyncracy and more general custom, or disparities between philosophic speech and more popular discussions parasitic to it. Also, although my interests here are systematic, rather than historical or etymological, I shall avoid extensive excursions into the tight fabric of Hobbes's thought. Instead, I shall concentrate, for exemplary purposes, on...