Moral Science; a Compendium of EthicsBain, Alexander
Philosophy
Moral Science; a Compendium of Ethics
Bain, Alexander
Ethics; Ethics -- History
Aquinas then passes to politics, or at least the discussion of the
political ideas of law, right, &c.
Coming now to _modern_ thinkers, we begin with
THOMAS HOBBES. [1588-1679.]
The circumstances of Hobbes's life, so powerful in determining the
nature of his opinions, had an equally marked effect on the order and
number of expositions that he gave to the psychological and political
parts of his system. His ethical doctrines, in as far as they can be
dissociated from, his politics, may be studied in no less than three
distinct forms; either in the first part of the Leviathian (1651); or
in the De Cive (1647), taken along-with the _De Homine_ (1658); or in
the Treatise of Human Nature (1650, but written ten years earlier),
coupled with the De Corpore Politico (also 1650). But the same result,
or with only unimportant variations, being obtained from all, we need
not here go beyond the first-mentioned.
In the first part of the Leviathan, then, bearing the title _Of Man_,
and designed to consider Man as at once the _matter_ and _artificer_ of
the Commonwealth or State, Hobbes is led, after discussing Sense,
Imagination, Train of Imaginations, Speech, Reason and Science, to take
up, in chapter sixth, the Passions, or, as he calls them, the Interior
beginnings of voluntary motions. Motions, he says, are either vital and
animal, or voluntary. Vital motions, _e.g._, circulation, nutrition,
&c., need no help of imagination; on the other hand, voluntary motions,
as going and speaking--since they depend on a precedent thought of
whither, which way, and what--have in the imagination their first
beginning. But imagination is only the relics of sense, and sense, as
Hobbes always declares, is motion in the human organs communicated by
objects without; consequently, visible voluntary motions begin in
invisible internal motions, whose nature is expressed by the word
_Endeavour_. When the endeavour is towards something causing it, there
is Appetite or Desire; endeavour 'fromward something' is Aversion.
These very words, and the corresponding terms in Greek, imply an
actual, not--as the schoolmen absurdly think--a metaphorical motion.
Passing from the main question, he describes Love and Hate as Desire
and Aversion when the object is present. Of appetites, some are born
with us, others proceed from experience, being of particular things.
Where we neither desire nor hate, we contemn [he means, disregard].
Appetites and aversions vary in the same person, and much more in
different persons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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