THE REPLACEMENT OF ELOQUENCE BY SCIENCE

Hobbes not only supplies us in The Elements and De Cive with a critique of the classical theory of eloquence and its associated conception of civil science. He also lays out his own contrasting prescriptions for the construction of a genuine science of politics independent of the rhetorical arts. He first puts forward his positive programme in chapter 6 of The Elements, in which he outlines what he calls the four steps of science that need to be followed if we wish to attain the kind of knowledge that will make us wise. De Cive adds that the tracing of these vestigia or footsteps can in turn be described as a matter of following recta ratio or right reasoning. While Hobbes preserves this familiar terminology, however, he is far from viewing recta ratio in traditional terms as an unerring intuition or faculty. As he makes clear when explaining how controversies in religion differ from those in science, he thinks of it simply as a method, ‘a way of searching out the truth’. There is thus a sense in which it is highly fallible, for the approach it prescribes can always be followed with greater or lesser intelligence.‘The reasonings of men are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, with the result that what is concluded and held to be true is sometimes the truth and is sometimes erroneous.’ Nevertheless, even for Hobbes there remains a sense in which recta ratio can properly be described as unerring.