ABSTRACT

Although the awakening of thought in early modernity as well as the radical rejection of the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition are common to Descartes and Hobbes, the far-reaching distinctions between the two philosophies are likewise manifest even to the superficial observer. In Descartes the light of the human understanding, taken on its own, is not sufficient to dispose finally of hyperbolic doubt as it is present in the fiction of the deceiving God. Descartes’s consideration of the idea of God in consciousness takes another step that is decisive for the train of thoughts in the Third Meditation. In Hobbes men fulfill the commandment of freedom that advises them to live in concord, by mutual agreement. Yet these contracts remain uncertain “without the sword,” as Hobbes puts it; no enduring state of freedom can be erected on them. The mortal God, as Hobbes calls him, guarantees that man actually keep his contracts.