Hobbes Vs Descartes Research Paper

Despite being concerned with two different objectives, Hobbes with the commonwealth concerned and Descartes with certain knowledge, both thinkers fundamentally challenged key Aristotelian notions. Hobbes challenges Aristotle’s fundamental idea that humans’ natural tendency is for society by stating that the natural state is that of war. Descartes, on the other hand, reorganizes and inverts Aristotle’s outline of the soul by creating his dualist separation of the mind and body. In their writings, both philosophers recognize key similarities in the way humans fundamentally apprehend the world, divisions within this process of apprehension, and the skepticism that should be associated with this apprehension. All understanding for Hobbes begins with the senses and the causes of these different sensations fall into two categories: primary causes, which are real, and secondary causes, which are mere projections and representations of real things. Like Hobbes, Descartes divides the different modes of thinking and perceiving: reason, imagination, and sensation. Though Descartes is seemingly more explicit with his skepticism for certain faculties, as seen here, “Another attribute is sensation. But one cannot feel without body, and besides I have thought I perceived many things during sleep that I recognized in my waking …show more content…
Stemming from this reduction of reason to a mere tool is the complete non-existence of truth, forms, and principles in Hobbes’ philosophy, the use and end of reason, is not the finding of the summe and truth of one, or a few consequences remote from the first definitions, and settled significations of name; but to begin at these; and proceed from one consequence to another. For there can be no certainity of the last Conclusion (Hobbes