ABSTRACT
Scholars of diverse persuasions regard Thomas Hobbes as a foundational figure for modern social science. The full import of Hobbes' achievement cannot be grasped without setting it in a context of dialogical confrontation with Aristotle. Like Aristotle, Hobbes regarded human passions—the appetites—and human faculties—like reason—as natural phenomena. Unlike Aristotle, Hobbes thought they exhausted the universe of such phenomena. The process of revising Hobbes' conclusions in a framework of debate loyal to the postulates he set forth began with John Locke and a group of philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists. Like Hobbes, Mandeville believed that coercive authority was essential to civil order, observing, for example, that a hundred equal men "under no Subjection, or Fear of any Superior upon Earth, could never live together awake Two Hours without Quarreling". However, Mandeville followed Locke in placing his analytic emphasis on the problem of commercial prosperity rather than on the problem of civil order.
