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Hobbes, Gassendi and the tradition

of political *

GIANNI PAGANINI

1. `Christian' Epicureanism ? Hobbes' "worst of all natural ills" Hobbes, like the Epicurean of law and of politics, assigned to the State the primary role of freeing man from the dread of violent death caused by other men'. As far as Hobbes is concerned, this assumption does not even need to be argued, so strong and so pervasive is the theme of self-preservation in all aspects of his thinking. The link with the Epicurean tradition, however, does require some clarification, since neither the question of fact of Hobbes' relation with the texts of Kepos, nor the question of principle about the centrality of interhuman aggressiveness within the Epicurean philosophy, are so self-evident. I deal with the first order of problems later on; but I will immediately spend some time on the second order of problems, since the cardinal texts of Epicurean are directed towards freedom from the fear of death through "therapy" in the form of philosophy'. Indeed, three of the four precepts that make up the tetrapharmakon' are dedicated to combatting the fear of death, of dissolution and of physical , whereas, as is well known, in Hobbes' view the impulse to constitute a political society arises from the elementary stimulus provided by the primary passion, the dread of death. It is true that Hobbes' also ultimately freed the citizen from fear; but it achieved this on the plane of a concrete and collective (a true "public reason") incarnated in the State, and certainly not at the level of the "private" reason of the sage, as in the case of the Epicurean philosophy, which addresses first and foremost the indi-

*Paper presented at the international conference: Epikureismusvom Humanismus bis zur Auflkldrung,Herzog August Bibliothek,Wolfenbüttel, 24-25 November 2000, hrsg. v. Gianni Paganini und Edoardo Tortarolo (Proceedings forthcoming: "WolfenbiittelerForschungen", Harrassowitz,Wiesbaden. ' Cfr. Victor Goldschmidt,La doctrine d'Epicure et le droit, Vrin, Paris 1977,pages 123, 245- 246. 2On the therapeutic of Epicurean philosophy, see Jean Salem, Tel un dieu parmi les hommes.L'éthique d'Epicure, Vrin, Paris 1989, pages 10-29. ' Ratae Sententiae(= R. S.), II-IV:the first precept of tetrapharmakon,as is well known, con- cerns liberation from the superstitiousterror of the gods.

3 vidual separate from the public sphere. Furthermore, Hobbes' strategy implies the full recognition of the validity of that fear and not (as in the doctrine of Kepos) the pure and simple dissolution of fear through rational and highly the- oretical syllogisms (like those in R.S. II) whose abstraction has been universal- ly criticized, from Plutarch and to Bayle. These critics observed that, if the absolute division between life and death theorized by ' succeeds in offering a logical response to the fear of death, it fails to dissipate the dread of the physical suffering linked to the process of dying5. And, on the contrary, the true Epicurean sage would have branded the Hobbesian individual's extreme preoccupation with self-preservation as a pathological form of that «numquam desinendi libido», the "strongest and oldest of all desires", but not for this also the most rational, indeed the worst breeding ground of irrational fears that bar the road to happiness'. In stressing this split, a distinguished scholar like Arrigo Pacchil blurred the picture of an "Epicurean" Hobbes: in , as we will see later, the compari- son regains all its relevance if, instead of looking at the moral doctrine, we look at the juridical and political aspects of the Epicurean tradition. But before exam- ining this point, it will be useful to add some further considerations on the idea on which Pacchi concentrated: that common horizon of earthly mortality, which affected both the subjects of Leviathan and the inhabitants of the Garden.

4 R.S. II: «For us death is nothing...» ; to be compared with , III, 380: «Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum». 5 Cfr. Charles Segal, Lucretius on Death and Anxiety.Poetry and Philosophy in "De rerum natura ", Princeton UniversityPress, Princeton 1990, chapt. II, pages 28-32; J. Salem, Tel un dieu... cit., pages 205-207. 6 Cfr. for example Plutarch, Suav. w Epic., 1104 C, which speaks of 6 g60og wv dvm, imvlwv EQMTMVnQEOj3'Útamç 6V Xal ?eyLatOs. The theme of premature death recurs in Lucretius, in connectionwith diseases or animal attack: «quare mors immatura vagatur?» (De rerum natura V, 221). ' Cfr. Arrigo Pacchi, «Hobbes e 1'epicureismo»,Rivista di storia della filosofia, 33 (1978), pages 54-71, see above all pages 68-71. For the presence of Epicurean philosophyin modem English culture, see: G. D. Hadzsits,Lucretius and His Influence,New York 1963,pages 284- 316 ; W.B. Fleischmann, Lucretius and English Literature (1680-1740), Paris 1964; B. Fabian, «Lukrez in England im siebzehnten und achtzehnten Jahrhundert», in: R. Toellner (ed.), Aufklärung und Humanismus,Heidelberg 1980, pages 107-129; S. Fleitmann, Walter Charleton (1620-1707) 'Virtuoso': Leben und Werk, Frankfurt 1986; Jean-Paul Pittion, «Lucrece et 1'epicurisme en Angleterre. Epoque Tudor et jacobeenne», in: Pr.6sence de Lucrèce, ed. Rémy Poignault,Centre de RecherchesA. Piganiol, Tours 1999, pages 299-3111 (with bibl.). On relations in general between Hobbes and the ideal, as well as the pratice, of humanist culture, we now have the excellent synthesisby Quentin Skinner, «Thomas Hobbes and the Renaissance studia humanitatis», in: Derek Hirst and Richard Strier (eds.), Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-CenturyEngland, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, pages 69-88.

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