Leviathan Part I, Ch. 3 Summary

사실 워낙 짧은 파트라 엄청 길게 요약할 건 없는데, 그래도 구술로 풀어야 하는 건 여전히 어렵다 ㅠ_ㅠ

This chapter is about consequence of thoughts or train of thoughts. This term is also called as mental discourse, because Hobbes wants to differentiate it from normal discourse.

His point is that our thoughts are based on what we experienced, therefore it is impossible to think of or imagine infinite objects.

He classifies human mental discourse into two big subjects, the one is unguided and the other one is regulated. Unguided one has no specific order and it is compared to un-tuned instrumental sounds or randomly played sounds. Of course, this type of train of thoughts sometimes has connection with each other but it is hard to catch it.

Regulated mental discourses, which Hobbes more concentrate on, is classified into two subjects again. The first one, that happens in both man and beast, described like, thoughts of cause or means to achieve something desired. The other one, which exists only in human, is about imagination of an incident and its every possible affect or succeeding results. This can be categorized into four themes: remembrance, prudence, signs, and conjecture of the past. Each kind of thought is based on our expericences, so people who are more experienced with longer lifetime are likely to be more accurate with these types of thinking.

Also, what makes human different from other animals starts from education, enabled by invention of words and speech.

In sum, Hobbes as an empericist, he emphasizes on human senses and criticizes the idea of undetectable senses.