Strauss on Hobbes’ Critique of Religion

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Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Strauss on Hobbes’ Critique of Religion

Original language description

In Leo Strauss’s book Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1930), Hobbes’s criticism of religion occupies an important position. According to Strauss, Hobbes was convinced that religion and science are by their nature opposed. He viewed them as two opposing attitudes of the mind. Strauss therefore investigates Hobbes’s conception of a man, that is, his anthropology. According to Hobbes, a man is a being which desires power as the sum total of means at his or her disposal. Science then consists of a methodical search for causes and is one of the manifestations of a man’s power. Religion, on the other hand, investigates causes non-methodically and leads to the assumption of illusory causes. Hobbes also points out that at the core of religion are both fear of invisible powers and the contemplation and investigation of the universe in search of understanding God. God’s infinite mind is not, however, accessible to the finite human mind. From this, Strauss concludes that Hobbes is not an atheist but rather an agnostic. According to Hobbes, ethical and moral precepts (such as ‘Though shalt love your neighbour’) are binding to all subjects of a state in virtue of the subjects’ reason, not because they were ‘revealed’ by God. In other words, they are binding because God created people as reasonable beings. Strauss correctly points out that Hobbes is primarily interested not in religion as such (and, specifically, in Bible science) but in the political implications of religiosity. Hobbesian scholars tend to be classified in two groups: the secularists, who interpret his philosophy in a secular fashion, and religionists, in whose view the idea of God plays in Hobbes’s philosophy an important role (A. P. Martinich). Strauss’s interpretation of Hobbes’s critique of religion transcends this simplified disjunction.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2022

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů