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Hobbes' corporeal God

Scallan, John (2022) Hobbes' corporeal God. PhD thesis, Dublin City University.

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Abstract
This thesis focuses on Thomas Hobbes’ conception of a corporeal God and its role within his overall philosophical system. I show that Hobbes’ corporeal God was not a late development within his system but was something which was present from his early works. To this end, my aim is twofold. First, I offer a mainly literal and sincere interpretation of both Hobbes’ ontology and his corporeal God. I establish that Hobbes’ reliance upon God as motion – to account for all aspects of the natural world – is consistent with his explicit position that certain knowledge of the operations of the natural world is impossible. The central claim I make is that Hobbes sought to do more than merely find a way of preserving an abstract conception of God and, instead, wanted God to be an integral part of the universe. I argue that Hobbes achieved this by equating his corporeal God with motion: the constant effect of Hobbes’ corporeal God-as-motion on extension is responsible for the manifestation of the natural world. Secondly, I situate Hobbes’ corporeal God within its contemporaneous context. I argue that while Hobbes’ characterization of his ontological system is certainly unusual, its purpose was not. Hobbes was seeking to account for the activity of the natural world alongside a passive understanding of bodies. I illustrate the strong parallels as well as the important differences between Hobbes’ system and that of Henry More, Ralph Cudworth and Margaret Cavendish. To this end, I argue that Hobbes’ system can be understood as a form of partially extended substance-dualism. I argue that if we must classify Hobbes’ position with a philosophical label then we should understand his ontological theory as a modified form of Stoicism.
Metadata
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Date of Award:November 2022
Refereed:No
Supervisor(s):Leask, Ian
Subjects:Humanities > Philosophy
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Theology, Philosophy, & Music
ID Code:27723
Deposited On:11 Nov 2022 15:45 by Ian Leask . Last Modified 11 Nov 2022 15:45
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