The Significance of Hobbes's Relationship to the Intellectual Libertines in France in the 1640s
Eleanor Curran, University of Kent
Nearly sixty years ago Quentin Skinner published an article drawing attention to the close relationships Hobbes formed with a group of European philosophers and scientists in France, while he was living there from 1640 to 1651. Skinner pointed out that while much has been made of the notoriety Hobbes endured back in England after the publication of Leviathan, his reputation in France has been largely ignored. He was held in very high esteem by his associates in France and his good reputation as a philosopher of distinction and importance continued there, after Hobbes had returned to England.
Skinner’s article came largely out of painstaking research into the correspondence of Hobbes which had not been published at the time but thanks to Noel Malcolm’s publication of the collected correspondence in 1994, the letters between Hobbes and his European colleagues are now available to us all. One of the interesting aspects of Hobbes’s time in France is his close association with scientists and philosophers who have been referred to as the ‘libertins érudit’, many of whom were involved with what was to become the Montmar Academy, a group who met at the house of Herbert de Montmar. This group included Gassendi, Sorbiere, and Hobbes’s close friends, the physician Thomas De Martel, and the mathematician Francois Du Verdus.
The group were brought together by their interest in materialism and atomism and more generally their epicureanism, as well as their interest in current scientific work, including Hobbes’s science of politics. Their epicureanism was potentially dangerous territory in that materialism, at this time, often brought accusations of atheism. Important thinkers such as Gassendi and Mersenne were adroit at separating theology from science and maintaining respectable reputations. This is in stark contrast to Hobbes who, once he was back in England, was silenced and excluded from the respectable scientific community (the future Royal Society) by the many and frequent attacks on him for atheism and heresy.
In this paper, I will explore Hobbes’s relationship to this circle of thinkers in France and what it can tell us about his thinking and his beliefs. These people were both his closest intellectual companions and his personal friends. It is fair to assume that they were the most likeminded of his associates and their loyalty is confirmed by the fact that when Hobbes was living back in England, they continued to be his correspondents and intellectual contacts for many years to come, indeed in some cases, for almost the rest of his long life.