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Agostino Lupoli
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Imaginary Space
On Hobbes’s distinction of accidents
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Agostino Lupoli
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On Hobbes’s distinction of accidents
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                      On Hobbes’s distinction of
                            accidents
                                                  Agostino Lupoli
                                                    (Università di Pavia)




An interpolation introduced by K. Schuhmann in his critical edition of De corpore (chap. VI, § 13) diametrically overturns the
meaning of Hobbes’s doctrine of distinction of accidents in comparison with all previous editions. The article focuses on the complexity of
this crucial juncture in De corpore argument on which depends the interpretation of Hobbes’s whole conception of science. It discusses the
reasons pro and contra Schuhmann’s interpolation and concludes against it, because it is not compatible with the rationale underlying the
complex architecture of De corpore, which involves a symmetry between the ‘logical’ distinction of accidents and the ‘metaphysical’
distinction of phantasms.

Keywords: Hobbes, De corpore, Accident, Phantasm, Imaginary Space



What I intend to do is to develop some reflections on Hobbes’s doctrine of
distinction of accidents, a key doctrine to understand Hobbes’s doctrine of science.
Let me start from a text of chapter six, paragraph thirteen, which contains a
fundamental distinction whose sense is diametrically overturned by the 1997 critical
edition in comparison with the previous editions. I shall quote the text first
according to Schuhmann’s critical edition of 1999 and then according to editio
princeps of 1655:
Principia autem illa solae Definitiones sunt,                         Principia autem illa, solæ Definitiones sut, quarum
quarum duo sunt genera. Alia enim sunt eorum                          duo sunt genera, alia enim sunt eorum
vocabulorum, quae res significant, quarum causa                       vocabolorum, quae res significant quarum causa
aliqua intelligi <non> potest; alia eorum, quae                       aliqua intelligi potest; alia eorum quæ res
res significant, quarum causa intelligi potest.                       significant quarum causa intelligi non potest.
Prioris generis sunt corpus sive materia, quantitas                   Prioris generis sunt corpus sive materia, quantitas
sive extensio, motus simpliciter, denique quae omni                   sive extensio, motus simpliciter, denique quæ omni
materiae insunt. Secundi generis sunt corpus tale,                    materiæ insunt. Secundi generis sunt corpus tale,
motus talis et tantus, magnitudo tanta, talis figura,                 motus talis & tantus, magnitudo tanta, talis figura,
aliaque omnia, quibus unum corpus ab alio                             aliaque omnia quibus unum corpus ab alio distingui
distingui potest1.                                                    potest2.

  The text of the critical edition differs from all previous editions (except for 1997
German translation by Schuhmann himself): it differs not only from the 1655 editio
1. Thomas Hobbes, De corpore. Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima, Édition critique, notes, appendices et index par
Karl Schuhmann, Introduction par Karl Schuhmann avec la collaboration de Martine Pécharman, Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 1999 (hereafter referred to as Dc 1999), VI.13, p. 67 (bold mine).
2. Elementorum philosophiae sectio prima De corpore. Authore Thoma Hobbes Malmesburiensi, Londini: Andreae Crook, 1655
(hereafter referred to as Dc 1655), VI.13, p. 50 (bold mine).
2                                                          Agostino Lupoli


princeps but also from the 1656 English translation, anonymous but published and
revised by Hobbes himself. It differs from the next seventeenth and eighteenth
century editions and from both the Molesworth editions and the 1972 Italian
translation. It differs from all those previous editions because of the
interpolation/displacement of the negation non which, obviously, reverses the
meaning of the sentence3.
    Thus, at this fundamental juncture in Hobbes’s argument we have two contra-
sting versions of the doctrine of the distinctions of accidents.
    The fact that Schuhmann needs to make such interpolations clearly shows, if
only, how puzzling is this crucial point, essential to understanding the doctrine of
distinctions of accidents.
    The first question is, of course, why does Schuhmann make the interpolations?
i.e.: why does he add the first negation and expunge the second one? The second
question is: are his motivations justified, admissible or convincing?
    To answer the first question is rather easy and it demands only to explain the
contradiction Schuhmann admittedly intends to eliminate reversing the
relationships between the sets of accidents that have / have not some conceivable cause
and the sets of accidents which are common to all Matter / we can distinguish bodies by.
    According to all pre-Schuhmann editions, to the former kind of accidents (i.e.
what «have some conceivable Cause») belong «whatsoever is common to all
Matter», i.e. the accidents common to all bodies; to the latter (i.e. the accidents
«which we can conceive no Cause at all») belong the accidents «we can distinguish
one Body from another by». According to Schuhmann the relationships must be
inverted.
    The context is known. The thirteenth paragraph distinctions come after Hobbes
has affirmed, in the previous paragraph, that «the whole Method… of
Demonstration is Syntheticall, consisting of that order of Speech, which begins from
Primary or most Universall Propositions, which are manifest of themselves»4.
These primary propositions, or «principles» are definitions, and definitions are in
terms of causes, that is in terms of generations produced by simpler accidents (that
is, again, ultimately in terms of motion of simpler accidents). Hobbes’s definition
process implies of course ultimate or first accidents (otherwise there would be an
infinite regress) coinciding with their own causes; and this is the avowed case of
motion. Therefore it is quite natural to think that Hobbes’s distinction of

3. The sentence, in the version of all mentioned editions, is as follows (I quote only the version of 1656 ed. for the
sake of brevity): «Now, such Principles are nothing but Definitions; whereof there are two sorts; one, of Names, that
signifie such things as have some conceivable Cause, and another of such Names as signifie things of which we can
conceive no Cause at all. Names of the former kind are, Body or Matter, Quantity or Extension, Motion, and
whatsoever is common to all Matter. Of the second kind are, such a Body, such and so great Motion, so great
Magnitude, such Figure, and whatsoever we can distinguish one Body from another by» (Elements of philosophy the first
section, concerning body written in Latin by Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; and now translated into English; to which are added Six
lessons to the professors of mathematicks of the Institution of Sr. Henry Savile, in the University of Oxford, London: Printed by R.
& W. Leybourn for Andrew Crooke, 1656 (hereafter Dc 1656), VI.13, p. 59 (bold mine). Cf., also, The English Works
of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, now first collected and edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart., London: J. Bohn,
1839-1945, I, p. 81.
4. Dc 1656, VI.13, p. 59.
                                            Hobbes’s distinction of accidents                            3


definitions provides, in the chain of definitions, the existence of first, simple and
universal accidents, not caused or generated (and in this sense whose causes are not
known). And what follows in the paragraph seems to confirm this interpretation:

   And Names of the former kind [which, according to the critical edition, are those whose cause
we cannot conceive] are well enough defined, when by Speech as short as may be, we raise in the
Mind of the Hearer perfect and cleer Ideas or Conceptions of the Things named, as when we
Define Motion to be the leaving of one place, and the acquiring of another continually; for though no Thing
Moved, nor any Cause of Motion be in that Definition, yet at the hearing of that Speech, there
will come into the Mind of the Hearer an Idea of Motion cleer enough5.

   In conclusion, since Hobbes admits that there are accidents (first: motion)
whose definitions cannot be in terms of causes, but are only «Speechs» capable to
«raise in the Mind of the Hearer perfect and cleer Ideas or Conceptions», it seems
far more logical to identify them (contrary to all pre-critical editions) with the
second kind of accidents, above defined as those «of which we can conceive no
Cause at all» (as Schuhmann does), rather than with the first sort above defined as
those whose causes we conceive (as all previous editions do).
   From this point of view, Schuhmann’s choice appears to be quite justified and
defendable. It appears also quite in line with Hobbes’s doctrine that these universal
accidents are the natural equipment of the constitutive «manners by which» the
mind conceives any body6.
   I myself, before methodically reflecting about Hobbes’s doctrine of science, had
come to the same conclusion; but later I changed my mind, for many important
reasons, both, so to say, historical and conceptual. The historical one is, of course,
that all the editions of De corpore published during Hobbes’s life (even though
neglecting the later editions) agree on the same (so to say) erroneous version, and, in
particular, the 1656 English translation which, though anonymous, was certainly
revised by Hobbes himself.
   The conceptual ones are more complex and demand a longer argument.
   The interpretive problem is clearly this: whether the accidents «common to all
Matter» («quae omni materiae insunt») are those which «have some conceivable
Cause» («quarum causa aliqua intelligi potest»), or else are those «of which we can
conceive no Cause at all» («quarum causa aliqua intelligi non potest»), as Schuhman
reads.
   Admittedly the matter is not one of minor importance. Firstly, we need to begin
by asking whether there is some ambiguity in the expressions («things» or)
«accidents» which «have / have not some conceivable Cause». In fact, this
expression can have another sense than what, given the context, seemed the more
logic and spontaneous to Schuhmann.




5. Ibid.
6. Accident is «the Manner by which any Body is conceived» (Dc 1656, VIII.2, p. 75).

                                                                                                         3
4                                                   Agostino Lupoli


   Actually we cannot overlook that this couple of concepts – accidents whose causes
are conceivable and accidents whose causes are not conceivable – appears in the first step of
Hobbes’s argument, that is in the definition of philosophy itself:

Philosophia est effectuum sive phaenomenωn ex             PHILOSOPHY is such knowledge of Effects or
conceptis eorum causis seu generationibus, et             Appearances, as we acquire by true Ratiocination
rursus generationum quae esse possunt, ex                 from the knowledge we have first of their Causes
cognitis effectibus per rectam ratiocinationem            or Generation: And again, of such Causes or
acquisita cognitio7.                                      Generations as may be from knowing first their
                                                          Effects8.

    Now, this definition provides (as the chap. XXV.1 shows) for two cases of
acquiring philosophy (i.e. science): the first is when we can conceive the causes of
accidents, the second is when we do not conceive them. In the first one we can
procede deductively from definitions in terms of conceived causes (conceptis causis:
that is «known generations») and this is undoubtedly the domain of common
accidents (that is geometry: or, better philosophia prima and de rationibus motuum and
magnitudinum). In the second case we also have to proceed deductively, but starting
from hypothetical definitions, that is definitions in terms of hypothetical
generations built or imagined according to (as Hobbes says in chap. XXV) «such
general Propositions as have been already demonstrated»9. And this is undoubtedly
the domain of accidents that make us «distinguish one Body from another», which
is as much to say: the accidents «determined» that belong to «singular things»10, that
is, as we have seen, «such and so great Motion, so great Magnitude, such Figure»,
but also such color, such sound, such savor etc. (that is the domain that Hobbes
also calls that of the «Variety of those things we perceive by Sense»11. And this is
certainly the domain of physics.
    What can deceives us is that to this domain belong not only those accidents that
are the «sensible qualities», «qualitates sensibiles»12, but also the quantitative ones if
they are determined («such and so great Motion, so great Magnitude, such Figure»), that it to
say, when they have the gnoseological function of distinguishing in our perceptive
activity one Body from another (they are to be understood as those that make up
the actual perceptive content of the «singular thing»).
    It is true that the accidents determined (by which a body is distinguished from
another, or belonging to «singular things») can be explained only by hypothetical
causes, or generations in terms of the common accidents (that, for the sake of
simplicity, we can call quantitative) which being «universals» in the end cannot be
defined but in terms of causes which «are manifest of themselves»13, but this is not


7. Dc 1999, I.2, p. 12.
8. Dc 1656, I.2, p. 2.
9. Dc 1656, XXV.1, p. 290.
10. Dc 1656, VI.4, p. 50.
11. Dc 1656, VI.5, p. 51.
12. Dc 1656, VI.6, p. 53; Dc 1999, VI.6, p. 61 and XXV.3, p. 270.
13. Dc 1656, VI.5, p. 51.
                                            Hobbes’s distinction of accidents                                     5


to say that they (the common ones and universal) could be identified with accidents
whose causes are inconceivable (as Schuhmann does).
   Schuhmann’s construal, although it arises from a real ambiguity, may induce us
to miss that the distinction, between accidents whose cause is conceivable and accidents
whose cause is not so, concerns the fundamental cognitive status of accidents, which is
the rationale of the whole Hobbes’s doctrine of science. A distinction so
fundamental for the role it plays in the structure of De corpore as to be quite
appropriately comparable to the distinction between analytical and synthetic
judgments in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
   Like Kant’s distinction, Hobbes’s one actually conditions the deploying of all the
argument of De corpore since it defines two distinct domains of science (in the
proper sense of science, that is as «cognitio του~ διóτι»14. The former can be
correctly said a priori, because all accidents belong to it whose kinetic generations
(to be used in definitions) the mind has the power to imagine (or conceive). In
other words, this is the domain of the accidents whose kinetic constructions
(imagined by the mind) coincide with their concepts (like a circle or a geometrical
figure). The latter domain is made up of those accidents whose causes cannot be
but hypothetical, because their imaginable generations (whatever they may be) no
way coincide with their real concept or image (i.e. with the real perceptive content,
like a color, or sound and so on)15. And the construction of all these hypotheses
demands a preliminary hypothesis on the kinetic nature of the φαι´νεσθαι or
«Apparition it self»16. This domain is of course that of physics.
   Thus Hobbes’s distinction of accidents (which, as I have already observed, is
implied in the first definition of philosophy) is intrinsically connected with the
epistemological distinctions between geometry and physics. But there is more; it is
even the same connected with the basic distinction, we come upon at the beginning
of Philosophia prima after the annihilation hypothesis, between two preliminary
«considerations» the mind can have of the things appearing to it, that is of its
phantasmata (of course, before constructing science).
   Consideration (to consider) is a fundamental word in Hobbes’s vocabulary: «considera-
re, Graece λογίζεσθαι, sicut ipsum computare sive ratiocinari συλλογίζεσθαι nomi-
nant»17. To consider is the same as reasoning (or beginning to reasoning): be bring
into account or in rationes venire.
   The act of considering has intrinsically to do with the nominalistic (or if I may
say so, hyper-nominalistic) way Hobbes intends the dependence (both conceptual and
ontological) of accidents on the substance, that is on the body. The dependence is
of course universally admitted by the early modern philosophers, but differently
conceived. Now, in Hobbes’s perspective (rather complex and often

14. Dc 1999, VI.2, p. 58.
15. Dc 1999, XII.3. In other words, while, by example, the conception of a circle coincides with the generation by
the movement of rotation of a body, the conception of a color will never result from the description, or imagination
of a movement (in order that this happens, we have to enter intentionally a hypothetical merely mechanistic world,
where the perception itself is reduced to a kinetic event).
16. Dc 1656, XXV.1, p. 290.
17. Dc 1999, I.3, p. 13.

                                                                                                                  5
6                                                    Agostino Lupoli


misunderstood), we have no ideas of accidents (ideas in the proper sense) – as it
happens in the Cartesian, or Lockean, or Spinoza’s approach. Hobbes thinks that
the real or tota idea is always the actual perception /sensation / imagination
/conception of one body. On the one hand, the body is not actually perceived /
sensed / imagined /conceived but qua figured, white, hard, great, located etc.;
namely it is conceived in many manners (this is the English word used in 1656
translation for modi) or with (to use the usual expression) many accidents. On the
other hand, of these manners of conceiving the body, there are no real ideas but as
ideas of the bodies which are endowed with them.
   In other words, there is no real idea of white, of three, or of extended, but as ideas
of a white body, of a threesome of bodies, or of corpus simpliciter. The cognitive operation
that results in accidents is not an analytic act of logical nature, nor an analytic act of
psychological nature (according to the Locke-Berkeley’s line of thought), but it is
precisely to consider. And to consider is already reasoning or calculating, because, put
very briefly, it consists in not taking into account (then in subtracting) all or certain
accidents (that is manners of conceiving the body) except that we are concerned in.
   On the one hand, it is a basic cognitive operation, because common to all men;
on the other hand, Hobbes sees in it the mind leaving an unproblematic terrain and
entering in a problematic dimension characterized by the emerging of questions
concerning the «cause of names» – or (which is the same) the «cause of concepts» –
by the introduction of abstract names18, and by the explicit construction of
propositions (without which the abstract names cannot exist)19.
   We know that phantasms (or ideas) cannot be immediately identified with
«accidents», if only because they are numbered as a distinct «kind» («genus») among
the «four kinds» of «all things to which we give names, namely, Bodies, Accidents,
Phantasms, and Names themselves»20.
   Phantasms – namely, apparitions, phaenomena, ideas – are defined as «eae quae
sentientibus nobis innasci perpetuo experimur»21, namely things «which are
perpetually generated within us whilest we make use of our Senses» or of our
imagination22. Another aspect of theirs is that: «our Phantasmes or Ideas are not
alwayes the same; but that new ones appear to us, and old vanish»23.
   Put briefly, sharing (in a sense) the modern skeptics’s approach24 to the
epistemological (and gnoseological) problem, Hobbes ascribes the status of

18. Dc 1999, III.3.
19. Dc 1999, III.4.
20. Dc 1656, V.2, p. 43.
21. Dc 1655, XXV.1, p. 224.
22. Dc 1656, XXV.1, pp. 290-291. Cfr. R. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae I.9:«Cogitationis nomine, intelligo illa
omnia, quae nobis consciis in nobis fiunt, quatenus eorum in nobis conscientia est» (Œuvres de Descartes, publiées par
Charles Adam & Paul Tannery, nouvelle présentation, en co-édition avec le Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1982-1991 (hereafter AT), VIII-1, p. 7). Cfr. anche J. Locke: «The
Mind […], reflecting also on what passes within it self […]» (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Edited with an
Introduction by Peter H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, II, XXI.1, p. 233).
23. Dc 1656, XXV.1, p. 291.
24. According to F. Sanchez the function of sense is essential but instrumental: «Unum cognoscens homo est. Una
cognitio in omnibus his. Eadem enim mens est quae externa, et quae interna cognoscit. Sensus nil cognoscit: nil
iudicat: solùm excipit quae cognitura menti offerat. Quemadmodum aër non colores, non lucem videt: quamvis hos
                                            Hobbes’s distinction of accidents                                     7


indubitability to the cognitive level of mere contents of conscience (that is, for him,
of sensation and imagination). Though we do not «know why they are and from
what Causes they proceed»25, phantasms (qua what «appears» to conscience) are
such as it is impossible to question their existence: «That there be such phantasms we
know well enough by nature» («cognoscimus naturaliter, quod sunt»), and therefore
they are «the first Beginnings of Knowledge», «Principia scientiae omnium prima»26.
Therefore it is from taking them into a general consideration that Philosophia prima
(The first grounds of philosophy) begins. The starting point of our knoweledge is to have
phantasms, that is to have ideas.
    From this point of view Hobbes shares also skeptics’s identification of percipere
with intelligere (understanding); that is as much to say that there is no perceiving (i.e.
having ideas or phantasms) without understanding what we perceive. Thus
perceiving is an enigmatic phenomen characterized by the fact that 1) there is no
knowledge of the object but through its phantasma («omnis nostra cognitio rerum
existentium est imaginatio ea, quae a rerum actione efficitur in sensoria nostra»27), 2)
there is no perception of phantasma (or idea) but as a perception of the object which
it is the image of: phantasm and its object, or idea and thing, or cognitio and res, are
terms absolutely complementary (except for, as we will see, for the imaginary
space).
    Therefore to clear definitively the field of any ambiguous and obscure
involvement of the object as something transcending its phantasm, like the concept
of substance according the classical and scholastic ontologies, Hobbes introduces,
at the beginning of the philosophia prima, the hypothesis of annihilatio mundi (as it is
known, the hypothesis belongs to the scholastic tradition, but in Hobbes its use is
totally different).
    By the introduction of the hypothesis Hobbes believes he can demonstrate that
there is no difference between what the «Man still remaining» after the annihilatio
mundi does in order to acquire knowledge and what we do «though all things be still
remaining in the world». Regardless of the existence and nature of the transcendent
world of substances, reasoning (i.e. computing) has only to do with our phantasms.
    The term phantasm seems to be a compromise between the skeptical term of
spectrum and that of phaenomenon, and serves to stress the subjective nature of
appearances, the fact that they are not to be confused (like prefilosofical attitude
does) with things themselves.
    Then what are phantasms? How can we problematize them, given only the
certainty of their mere mental existence as appearances? We know they are, Hobbes
says, and there is no perception without understanding the thing perceived. Thus
the knowledge begins with understanding what we perceive. And this
understanding can be only of two kinds, because there are only two manners of

excipiat visui offerendos» (Franciscus Sanchez Philosophus et Medicus Doctor, Quod nihil scitur, Lugduni: Ant. Gry-
phium, 1581, pp. 55-56).
25. Dc 1656, VI.1, p. 49.
26. Ibid. (Dc 1999, VI.1, p. 58).
27. Thomas Hobbes, Critique du ‘De mundo’ de Thomas White, Introduction, texte critique et notes par Jean Jacquot et
Harold Whitmore Jones, Paris: Vrin-CNRS, 1973 (hereafter De motu), III.2, p. 117.

                                                                                                                  7
8                                                   Agostino Lupoli


considering our phantasms, or, the things conceived. One is to consider them
(«that is, bring into account») as «species of external things»; the other is to consider
them as «internal accidents of our Mind»28.
   The former consideration shows us that the understanding of the phantasm as
species of external things (even if «not as really existing, but appearing only to exist,
or to have a Being without us») demands a reference to something independent
from the mind, that is bodies. That is to say that, a reference to bodies is necessary
to consider phantasms as species or images. Therefore the consideration of
phantasms as mere species or images or ideas belonging to the mind (or to
sentient) does not allow (pace Descartes) to sever all reference to the body (even
though Hobbes never defines how to conceive this reference).
   The alternative is precisely when we want to sever every reference of phantasms
to external things, and consider them as only concerning the mind. This is possible
only considering them as «internal accidents of our Mind»29. But also in this case we
cannot but involve the body, because we cannot imagine nothing existing but as a
body. Therefore to consider phantasms as «internal accidents of our Mind», is
precisely to consider them as accidents of a peculiar body which is our brain. But,
since we have no experience (i.e. idea) at all, nor can we ever have, of our
phantasms (i.e. we cannot have no ideas of ideas: omnino impossibile est cogitare se
cogitare, as Hobbes says in response to Descartes30), such a consideration
presupposes the assumption of the mechanical hypothesis according to which the
mind is a material brain (anima corporea) whose accidents are movements. In other
words, it is impossible to understand anything we think without a reference to body
(of course not in the sense scholastic, Cartesian or Spinozan ontologies intend the
reference to the their substances).
   Incidentally it is noteworthy that Hobbes’s distinction represents an important
revision of scholastic-Cartesian distinction between objective and formal reality of
ideas (a distinction that had in Descartes’s Medititationes de prima philosophia a very
important function). While species, i.e. images (of external things) correspond to
what Descartes called the objective or representative reality of ideas, Hobbes’s distinction
presents a very different conceptualization of the formal reality of ideas, that is of the
idea as act of thinking.
   In the Cartesian perspective the absolute certainty of the cogito, that is to say of
the self being a thinking thing or a thinking substance, converts the indubitability of
possessing ideas in the certain knowledge that those acts of thinking are performed
by the mind31, that is, that their formal reality is that of «modes» of a thinking
substance:

28. Dc 1656, VII.1, p. 68.
29. Ibid.
30. Thomas Hobbes, Objectiones tertiae in Meditationes de prima philosophia, Ob. II, AT VII, p. 173.
31. «Nam si dicam, ego video, vel ego ambulo, ergo sum; & hoc intelligam de visione, aut ambulatione, quae corpore
peragitur, conclusio non est absolute certa; quia, ut saepe sit in somnis, possum putare me videre, vel ambulare,
quamvis oculos non aperiam, & loco non movear, atque etiam forte, quamvis nullum habeam corpus; Sed si
intelligam de ipso sensu, sive conscientia videndi aut ambulandi, quia tunc refertur ad mentem, quae sola sentit, sive
cogitat se videre aut ambulare, est plane certa» (R. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae I.9, AT VIII-1, p. 7).
                                             Hobbes’s distinction of accidents                                       9



putandum est … talem esse naturam ipsius ideae ut nullam aliam ex se realitatem formalem exigat
praeter illam quam mutuatur a cogitatione mea, cujus est modus32.

    In other words, given the ontological significance of the cogito the formal reality
of an idea has nothing problematic: it is «that which it borrows from our
consciousness, of which it is but a mode», or in the French translation «seulement
un mode» de l’esprit33.
    Hobbes makes two objections: the former is that it seems to him that
Descartes’s definition of ideas in terms of «modes of consciousness» is not in terms
of a subject but in terms of a «faculty», «acts», or «property», while we cannot really
conceive any act or mode (he says in the Third Objections to Meditations), «sine sub-
jecto suo»34. The latter is that, even though Descartes’s definition were correctly in
terms of a «subject», this subject cannot be but a body, since we can conceive
nothing existing but «sub ratione corporea»35, that is as a body.
    But, since we have no real experience of our phantasms as accidents of a body
(that is, as we have seen, we have no idea of ideas: «impossibile est cogitare se cogitare»),
when we consider our phantasms as «internal accidents of our Mind» we are
assuming a hypothesis on the corporeal nature of our minds. Therefore the formal
reality of our thoughts, phantasms, ideas (or whatever other name we want to give
them) can be only in terms of hypothetical movements of our brain, mechanically
generated (through the organs of sense) by other hypothetical movements of
external bodies. When this hypothesis is scientifically formulated, it is the only
possible and hypothetical premise of physics, which precisely begins from the
kinetic-mechanical hypothesis of the φαι´νεσθαι.
    According to some scholars Hobbes’s reduction of phantasms to «internal
accidents of our mind» would give evidence for Hobbes’s phenomenalism, since it
is interpreted as an integral subjectification of bodies accidents; it is not exactly so,
because the hypothetical reduction of the mind to a body, that is to the brain, is not
an essential theoretical constituent of any form of phenomenalism. Rather, it it is
the consideration of accidents as «species of external things» (even though «not as
really existing, but appearing onely to exist, or to have a Being without us») that
generate a science concerning things totally depending on the mind.
    We have seen that considering means «be brought into account», «in rationes
venire»36. To consider «species» means to consider things merely as imaginated, that
is merely qua imagined or «cognita», that is finally by or juxta the common
accidents; i.e. the accidents whose causes or generations are known, that is are in
power of the mind.


32. R. Descartes, Meditatio III, AT VII, p. 41.
33. «Mais on doit sçavoir que toute idée estant un ouvrage de l’esprit , sa nature est telle qu’elle ne demande de soy
aucune autre realité formelle, que celle qu’elle reçoit & emprunte de la pensée ou de l’esprit, dont elle seulement un
mode, c’est à dire une maniere ou façon de penser» (R. Descartes, Meditation troisième, AT IX-1, p. 32).
34. Thomas Hobbes, Objectiones tertiae, cit., Ob. II, AT VII, p. 173.
35. Ivi, p. 175.
36. Dc 1656, VII.1, p. 68; Dc 1999, p. 76.

                                                                                                                    9
10                                                    Agostino Lupoli


   The sciences concerning common accidents are the philosophia prima and
geometry (namely, the third part of De corpore, the science of Proportions of motions and
magnitudes); and, since the hypothetical science (i.e. the science deriving from the
consideration of accidents «as internal accidents of the mind») is framed in terms of
the «general propositions»37 of the first two sciences, the consideration of accidents
as «internal accidents of the mind» must be preceded by the other as species of
external thing; «and this is the manner – Hobbes concludes, at the beginning of phi-
losophia prima – we are now to consider them»38. (In a sense Hobbes’s distinction
corresponds exactly to our familiar distinction between mind and brain, between
perceptive contents and neuronal events of the brain).
   Some scholars wondered whether Hobbes is a phenomenalist. The answer
depends, of course, on the definition of phenomenalism (if a consistent definition
is possible without being entangled in the construction of an entire philosophy). In
any case, if by phenomenalism we mean to critically supersede the ingenuous and
dogmatic realism, assuredly he is a phenomenalist. But a phenomenalist who could
be also defined a realist because, to put it very briefly, he claims that the body (i.e.
something non depending on our imagination) has an unavoidable and essential
function in making comprehensible what we think or imagine. Thus to admit or
not the existence of bodies – res existentes – does not depend on us, but it is a
necessary implication and condition of thinking / understanding what we think /
understand. From this point of view Hobbes’s materialism has nothing to do with
an ontolological or metaphysical materialism and even less with a dogmatic one. A
confirmation of this is given by the concept of imaginary space.
   In spite of the above illustrated function of the body as something existing, we
cannot conceive anything existing (i.e. independent on imagination) but «sub spatio
imaginario substerni et supponi videtur» (that is: «placed in and subjected to
Imaginary Space»39). And that is as much to say that we cannot think anything
existing which is not subjected to something that does not exist, because depends
entirely on the imagination. A paradox Hobbes was completely aware of.
   From this point of view it would seem that that of «spatium imaginarium» is the
only idea whose conception and comprehension not only does not depend on the
experience, that is on the phantasm of «singular thing» (that is it is not an accident
of a singular thing, or a «Manner of our conception of Body», as the «real space»,
spatium reale, is), but precedes the experience, is the condition of the phantasm of
the singular body. Hobbes had already openly admitted it in The Motu: «existentiam
spatii [imaginarii] dependere non ab existentia corporis sed ab existentia imaginati-
vae facultatis»40. In terms of the four nameable things (Hobbes’s categories, so to
say), spatium imaginarium is a phantasm, but a singular, very peculiar phantasm
because it is the phantasm of no singular thing of experience, but the «phantasma
corporis simpliciter», that is, as he adds: «dicemus spatium esse imaginem corporis,

37. Dc 1656, XXV.1, p. 290.
38. Dc 1656, VII.1, p. 68.
39. Dc 1999, VIII.1, p. 83; Dc 1656, VIII.1, p. 75.
40. De motu, III.1, pp. 117.
                                                 Hobbes’s distinction of accidents                                               11


quatenus corporis»41. Which is as much to say that the imaginary space is the real
space (and real space is an accident of the body and intrinsically connected to the
existens) qua cognitum, as it is known.
   It seems to me that a tension here emerges between a hyper-nominalism and a
form of criticism or transcendentalism; a tension which is resolved in such a way to
save nominalism. In other words what Hobbes seeks to save is the process of
consideration, that is of «computing or reasoning», starting from phantasms of
singular things. To consider the body regardless (that is subtracting) every
determination connected to the body as existent (that is regardless every its
accident) does not produce the annihilation of the phantasm or sensation, but leave
another phantasm (not of course any accident) of the body considered only as
imagined or imaginable and this is the imaginary space. This is further confirmed
by the fact that Hobbes defines a determined imaginarium spatium as what the mere
image is made up of («constat»42). Of course what is made up of by the imaginativa
facultas.
   I cannot understand this doctrine but as a somersault in a new philosophical
terrain which has nothing to do with an Aristotelian or scholastic conceptual
dimension and that, rather, can be defined as a form of transcendentalism.
   All this recalls to mind the authoritative opinion on Hobbes expressed by Pierre
Bayle: who, on the one hand, attributed to Hobbes «sans doute une hardiesse, ou
une intrépidité d’esprit» (a boldness, or intrepidity of mind); and, on the other,
considered Hobbes not much concerned in a real dialogue with philosophical
tradition: «Il avoit beaucoup plus médité que lu; & il ne s’étoit jamais soucié d’une
grande Bibliothèque»43; and he adds: «pour un homme qui a tant vécu, sa lecture
étoit peu de chose»44. («He had much more meditated than read, and he never cared
about a great library… for a man who had a so long life, reading was a little thing»).
   Bayle acknowledges Hobbes’s originality and novelty, but does not recognize to
him a full right of citizenship in the Republic of Letters (Respublica literaria).
   The literati Bayle is thinking of are actually students of humanities; but even more
strong was the ostracism of the mathematicians and scientists. What it is certain is
that, whether it was deserved or not, the discredit of Hobbes’s geometry was very
great among professional mathematicians. It is true that his interest in geometry
arised from its method much more than from its content («delectatus» non «ob
theoremata», but «ob artem ratiocinandi»45); but it is precisely also from a
methodological point of view that Hobbes’s geometry is problematic, though
geometry should offer the methodological paradigm of science.

41. Ibid.
42. «Jam huiusmodi imagines constant colore et figura; figura autem spatium finitum est. Cum igitur imago ipsa non
est ibi ubi obiectum, neque etiam figura, ex qua constat, ibi est ubi obiectum; spatium ergo apparens solis, sive
cuiuscumque alterius obiecti, non inhaeret in ipso obiecto, sed est mere imaginarium» (De Motu, III.1, p. 116). The
image of the body is the body qua imaginated, or «cognitum», i.e. imaginary.
43. Art. Hobbes, in P. Bayle, Œuvres diverses, Volumes supplementaires, vol. I, 1: Choix d’articles tirés du Dictionnaire Historique
et Critique, éd. par É. Labrousse, Hildesheim, New York, 1982, ripr. della V ed. 1740, p. 527.
44. Ivi, rem. O, p. 527b.
45. Cfr. Vita in Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera Philosophica Quae Latine Scripsit Omnia, in unum corpus nunc
primum collecta studio ed labore Guglielmi Molesworth, Londini: Richards, 1839-1845, I, p. xiv.

                                                                                                                                 11
12                                          Agostino Lupoli


   We have already considered the double operation involved in the process of
science, and in a paradigmatic form in geometry: the former is the conception (or
construction) of kinetic generations (concepta generatio); the latter is the deduction
from propositions formulated in terms signifying these generations. Hobbes
reasserts this in chapt. XX:
   And seeing also, that the end of the Analysticks, is either the construction of such a Probleme
as it is possible, or the detection of the impossibility thereof; whensoever the Probleme may be
solved, the Analyst must not stay, till he come to those things which contain the efficient cause of
that whereof he is to make construction. But he must of necessity stay when he comes to prime
Propositions; and these are Definitions. These Definitions therefore must contain the efficient
cause of his Construction; I say of his Construction, not of the Conclusion which he
demonstrates, for the cause of the Conclusion is contained in the premised proposition; that is to
say, the truth of the proposition he proves, is drawn from the propositions which prove the
same. But the cause of his construction is in the thing themselves, and consists in motion, or in
the concourse of motion46.

   But, it seems that in reality, in spite of all his good intentions, Hobbes does not
succeed in combining these two different processes of reasoning (that is the
construction or kinetic generation and the deduction) in the orderly and clear way
he claims, and he is very far from giving such a form to geometry as should belong
to it by nature. Confronted with the science that he assumed as a paradigm, his
method seems to find an application extremely laborious and perhaps impossible.
   Why? On the one hand, in retrospect, we could answer that his conception of
the a priori nature of geometric accidents – outcomes of our constructions – would
demand more complex mediations before being operatively applied to solve
problems; on the other hand it is evident the backwardness of his concepts of
measure (that is determination of equality and inequality) and of equation. As for
the former concept (concerning lengths or areas to be compared) he resorts to
heterogeneous calculations (of motions, through «indivisibles» or «powers»). And
he, in the end, affirms: «But if the question be much complicated, there cannot by
any of these wayes be constituted a cartaine Rule, … but the successe will depend
upon dexterity, upon formerly acquired science, and many times upon fortune»47.
Sure he reaffirms that «the true teaching of Geometry is by Syntesis, according to
Euclides method»48; but it seems to be a confirmation merely in principle.
   As for the backwardness of the latter concept (equation), this has to do with the
refusal (or underestimate) of algebra. This derives from the strict nominalism of
Hobbes, that is from the fact that symbols (and algebra is, according to him,
«symbolic») are not – and cannot be – real «names». That is to say: since they lack
in that correspondence to real ideas (i.e. ideas actually present in the mind, or in the
imagination) in which the «evidence» consists (and «evidence» is the first requisite
of knowledge). The «evidence», he says in The Elements, is «the concomitance of a

46. Dc 1656, XX.6, p. 230.
47. Dc 1656, XX.6, p. 232.
48. Ibid.
                                          Hobbes’s distinction of accidents                                   13


man’s conception with the word’s that signify such conception»49. In the following
works the concept of evidence seems to be absorbed in that of «truth» (of an idea),
very probably in order to avoid that a distinction between «evidence» and «truth»
could induce readers to believe that a knowledge could be true (in the sense of
syntactically true) without being evident50. In fact Hobbes affirms that only the
names can be used which «signify» ideas really present in the mind; therefore he
never was the theorist of the science as a merely linguistical or syntactical
construction. By contrast, he claims a perfect one-to-one correspondence between
«names» and «ideas» (it is obvious that by «name» he does not mean a singular term,
or voice, but any combination of words corresponding to a certain idea).
   The real existence of the idea is what grants comprehension (understanding),
without which there cannot be that process which is called reasoning and
demonstration.
   Therefore, faithful to these assumptions, he cannot but deny the nature of true
science to algebra, whose «symbols» he continues to understand as those made use
of by the scholastic logic.
   Even on this point the divergence from Descartes cannot be greater.




49. Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, edited with a preface and critical notes by Ferdinand
Tönnies, Ph.D., Cambridge: At the University Press, 1928 (1889 1), I, VI.3, p. 19.
50. See, Leviathan, IV (ed. by R. Tuck, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 24 ff.).

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