ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a basic form of a challenge to traditional views arising from new conceptions of God and the world in the seventeenth century together with few basic questions that arise out of this challenge. It also presents responses to these questions drawn from the most revisionary and systematic moral doctrines of the century, those of Thomas Hobbes and Benedictus Spinoza. The chapter utilizes these philosophers as points of reference for the understanding of major trends of seventeenth century moral philosophy. Hobbes revision of received morality requires more of him than making do without a providential God, however. It also restrains him within the bounds of the new science of body. Although Spinoza is like Hobbes in adopting metaphysical commitments that constrain his moral theory, Spinoza is in a way much more ambitious in the moral doctrine that he hopes to defend.
