{"id":8372,"date":"2013-03-04T22:57:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T22:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=8372"},"modified":"2013-03-04T22:57:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T22:57:28","slug":"old-tom-hobbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/old-tom-hobbes\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Tom Hobbes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Hobbes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Hobbes.jpg\" alt=\"Hobbes\" width=\"220\" height=\"232\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-8379\" \/><\/a>A man of the secular right, I feel.<\/p>\n<p>Writing in the <em>TLS<\/em> David Runciman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-tls.co.uk\/tls\/public\/article1222086.ece\">explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But between the political parts [of <em>Leviathan<\/em>] \u2013 the first two sections and the final one \u2013 come parts three and four, which are concerned with religion. This bit of the book, which makes up nearly half the total, is entirely uncompromising. Hobbes uses it to demolish all those claims to religious authority that he despised, whether coming from Presbyterians or Catholics, bishops or Bible-bashers. He deploys a combination of selective biblical citation and his own materialist philosophy to lay into every absurd religious idea he can find: demons, fairies, the holy spirit, the life everlasting, the immortal soul. Life, for Hobbes, means motion, and when motion ceases, there is only death.<\/p>\n<p>This all-out assault on religious superstition and stupidity is what makes <em>Leviathan <\/em>a very different book from <em>De Cive<\/em>, which contains no equivalent. Hobbes\u2019s urgency in 1649\u201350 derived in large part from his fear that a new political order might provide a fresh opportunity for the peddlers of religious charlatanry to get their hooks into the state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dish.andrewsullivan.com\/2013\/03\/03\/challenging-the-highest-authority\/\">H\/T: Andrew Sullivan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A man of the secular right, I feel. Writing in the TLS David Runciman explains: But between the political parts [of Leviathan] \u2013 the first two sections and the final one \u2013 come parts three and four, which are concerned &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/old-tom-hobbes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[997],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8381,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions\/8381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}