Abstract

Thomas Hobbes made original and philosophically important contributions to the theory of definition in the seventeenth century. Hobbes explicitly challenged the predominance of the traditional paradigm of definition per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. In place of this classifying or "generic" method of definition, Hobbes introduced and insisted upon the primacy of the method of "generating" or "genetic" definition. Instead of defining by classifying, by locating a definiendum relative to the next higher genus and specific difference, a generating definition defines by describing the genesis, emergence, formation, or construction of an object out of its elementary generating or causal conditions. To this day Hobbes's work on definition has received relatively little explicit and systematic attention in comparison with other aspects of his work. The aim of this study is to rectify that deficiency by exploring the philosophical meaning and implications of Hobbes's theory of generating definition. The study has both historical and systematic components. ;Hobbes's theory of generating definition is examined for its role in both reflecting and also effecting the transition from philosophical antiquity to philosophical modernity. Whereas the ancient mind was conceived as essentially theoretical and contemplative, the modern mind, by contrast, has been conceived as essentially productive, generative, and creative. According to the radical moderns, the human mind has genuine knowledge only of those things which it has itself produced. Indeed, for the moderns and for Hobbes in particular, the objects of our knowledge are conceived as having their very being and their properties precisely and only to the extent that they have been constructed or at least reconstructed by the mind. Hobbes's theory of generating definition is shown to give methodological expression to these fundamental epistemological and ontological commitments of modernity. ;Systematically, within the context of Hobbes's own philosophical work, the theory of generating definition is shown to express a methodological perspective that is fundamental to and formative of philosophical views across all the major areas of Hobbes's philosophical program. The latter half of the dissertation is devoted to a systematic study of Hobbes's philosophy from the interpretive perspective of his theory of generating definition