tailieunhanh - The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 28

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 28. The book is alphabetized by the whole headings of entries, as distinct from the first word of a heading. Hence, for example, abandonment comes before a priori and a posteriori. It is wise to look elsewhere if something seems to be missing. At the end of the book there is also a useful appendix on Logical Symbols as well as the appendices A Chronological Table of Philosophy and Maps of Philosophy. | 250 English philosophy is Bacon s materialist philosophy of nature largely derived from Telesio. Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679 was equally independent and systematic and more uncompromisingly materialist than Bacon. For him everything is matter in motion including man his mental life consists of small movements in the head and human society the subject of Leviathan. There he maintained that reason in the service of the supreme value of bodily security dictates obedience to an unlimited sovereign. All men are equally liable to death at the hands of others so all have the same interest in the establishment of a supreme power that can protect them against it. The only circumstance in which obedience to the state can be rationally withheld is its failure to provide that protection. Hobbes saw the civil war as the outcome of the unfettered exercise of a supposed right to private judgement in matters ofbelief. He concluded that the church should be wholly subordinate to the state which alone should authorize its doctrines. Bacon was quietly and Hobbes noisily irreligious. Hobbes s excesses were countered by Lord Herbert of Cherbury 1583-1648 and directly attacked by the Cambridge Platonists of whom the most important was Ralph Cudworth 1617-88 . Herbert boiled religion down to five large principles God exists and should be worshipped etc. taken to be intuitively self-evident. Cudworth argued that mind is wholly distinct from matter and is prior to it in being constructively essential to our knowledge of it. The ideas of Herbert underlay the long eighteenthcentury episode of deism. Deism denied the personality of God and the claims of Christ or anybody else to be the incarnation of God. Deism was espoused by Voltaire but had no philosophically distinguished exponents in England although it was defended by many vigorous and intelligent controversialists. Bolingbroke who infuriated SamuelJohnson and Burke was at least a major public figure and a brilliant writer. A less extreme .