2 - Ideas in conflict
political and religious thought during the English Revolution
from Part 1 - Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
Summary
Liberty, absolutism and the ancient constitution
When the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) published The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance in 1656, he was attempting to close the debate on human freedom in which he had been engaged with Bishop John Bramhall (1594-1663) since 1645 when they were both exiles in France. As a materialist and determinist (that is, as one who believed that the universe consists of nothing but matter in motion, and that all movements are caused by the impact of other moving bodies, and so on in a sequence that leads back ultimately to a first cause or unmoved mover, namely God) Hobbes could not subscribe to orthodox notions of free will; for him, human mental processes were physically caused, just like everything else. Indeed, the ‘occasion’ of his debate on free will with Bramhall is itself wittily posited as the outcome of a causal sequence which began when the ‘doctors of the Roman Church’ first
brought in a doctrine that not only man but also his will is free, and determined to this or that action not by the will of God, nor necessary causes, but by the power of the will itself. And though by the reformed Churches instructed by Luther, Calvin and others, this opinion was cast out; yet not many years since it began again to be reduced by Arminius and his followers, and became the readiest way to ecclesiastical promotion; and by discontenting those that held the contrary, was in some part the cause of the following troubles; which troubles were the occasion of my meeting with the Bishop of Derry at Paris, where we discoursed together of the argument now in hand
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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