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612-822-4611
Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes

Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes

Paperback

Philosophy

ISBN10: 0271048921
ISBN13: 9780271048925
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: Apr 15 2015
Pages: 344
Weight: 1.12
Height: 0.78 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

According to the commonly accepted view, Thomas Hobbes began his intellectual career as a humanist, but his discovery, in midlife, of the wonders of geometry initiated a critical transition from humanism to the scientific study of politics. In Mortal Gods, Ted Miller radically revises this view, arguing that Hobbes never ceased to be a humanist. While previous scholars have made the case for Hobbes as humanist by looking to his use of rhetoric, Miller rejects the humanism/mathematics dichotomy altogether and shows us the humanist face of Hobbes's affinity for mathematical learning and practice. He thus reconnects Hobbes with the humanists who admired and cultivated mathematical learning--and with the material fruits of Great Britain's mathematical practitioners. The result is a fundamental recasting of Hobbes's project, a recontextualization of his thought within early modern humanist pedagogy and the court culture of the Stuart regimes. Mortal Gods stands as a new challenge to contemporary political theory and its settled narratives concerning politics, rationality, and violence.

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Philosophy