The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 05 (of 11)Hobbes, Thomas
Philosophy
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 05 (of 11)
Hobbes, Thomas
Philosophy, English -- 17th century
_J. D._ “He who will speak with some of our great undertakers about the
grounds of learning, had need either to speak by an interpreter, or to
learn a new language (I dare not call it jargon or canting) lately
devised, not to set forth the truth, but to conceal falsehood. He must
learn a new liberty, a new necessity, a new contingency, a new
sufficiency, a new spontaneity, a new kind of deliberation, a new kind
of election, a new eternity, a new compulsion, and in conclusion, a new
nothing. (_a_) This proposition, _the will is free_, may be understood
in two senses; either that the will is not compelled, or that the will
is not always necessitated; for if it be ordinarily, or at any time free
from necessitation, my assertion is true, that there is freedom from
necessity. The former sense, that the will is not compelled, is
acknowledged by all the world as a truth undeniable: _voluntas non
cogitur_. For if the will may be compelled, then it may both will and
not will the same thing at the same time, under the same notion; but
this implies a contradiction. Yet this author, like the good woman whom
her husband sought up the stream when she was drowned upon pretence that
when she was living she used to go contrary courses to all other people,
holds, that true compulsion and fear may make a man will that which he
doth not will, that is, in his sense may compel the will: “as when a man
willingly throws his goods into the sea to save himself, or submits to
his enemy for fear of being killed”. I answer, that T. H. mistakes
sundry ways in this discourse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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