Knowledge is Memory, or, Finding Hobbes’s Plato

4.


Introduction1
Thomas Hobbes calls Plato the 'best philosopher of the Greeks' (ew iii, 668) in Leviathan (1651).2A few years later Plato appears as 'the best of the ancient philosophers' (ew vii, 346) in Hobbes's Six Lessons (1656).Aristotle, on the other hand, is treated scornfully by Hobbes in the very texts where Plato is praised.3It must be said then that Plato appears to have some special significance for Hobbes's estimation of ancient texts.But scholars hitherto have had little to say about Hobbes's precise reading of and engagement with Plato.In the introduction to her 2008 critical edition of Hobbes's Historia ecclesiastica (posthumously published in 1688), Patricia Springborg observes that the impact of Platonism on Hobbes's writings has been 'systematically underestimated.'4We have very little understanding of which Platonic dialogues Hobbes may have read, let alone what he may have thought of them.With the notable exception of Karl Schuhmann,5 who was the first to identify some of the examples are listed below, no historian has attempted to characterise the range and depth of Hobbes's reading of Plato's dialogues.Renaissance philosophers who engaged in depth with Marsilio Ficino (who is perhaps the figure most responsible for the revival of Plato in the Renaissance) such as Tommaso Campanella have featured prominently in studies of Hobbes's philosophy by Karl Schuhmann and Gianni Paganini.But those philosophers have principally been considered in those articles in the context of their Hermeticism rather than their relationship with Platonism.6The same is true of Taming the Leviathan (2007), where Jon Parkin has illuminated the polemical relationship between Hobbes and leading members of the so-called Cambridge Platonists, such as Henry More and Ralph Cudworth.7But he has had little to say about Hobbes's engagement with Plato himself.Recently, in the world of political science, Teresa Bejan has suggested a Platonic reading of the theory of education espoused in Leviathan.8However, the very introduction in which Springborg identifies this lacuna remains the only tentative step towards a general historical survey of Hobbes's relationship with the writings of Plato.9 What follows is a catalogue of what I believe to be the first seven references to specific passages of Plato's dialogues in Hobbes's works.In every case I try to show what the passage referred to is, and how Hobbes may have encountered it and used it for his own purposes.The catalogue begins with his translation of Thucydides in 1629 and ends with his De cive in 1642.It must be noted that the final reference to Plato treated here is by no means the last occasion on which Hobbes alludes to a specific passage of the Plato's writings.I end my catalogue of references at this point because there is, I contend, a suggestive conceptual difference between the reference to Plato in 1642 and the ones that precede it, and that difference requires explanation.The references to Plato before De cive are eclectic and are more philological than philosophical.It is their variety that makes them so useful as evidence of the range and depth of Hobbes's reading of Plato.But it is also that very quality that means that it is impossible to describe a single Platonic argument stretching from 1629 to the penultimate reference listed here, in Third Set of Objections in 1641.However, the proposition attributed to Plato in De cive, viz.that knowledge is memory, is, I shall argue, a foundational and Platonic element of Hobbes's philosophical system.A consistent and novel reinterpretation of Hobbes's corpus as a whole can be derived from the connection of Hobbes with Platonic anamnesis.It is thus, of all the Platonic topics treated here, the most significant for understanding Hobbes's philosophy at large and represents, arguably, the culmination of those decades of reading Plato into a single philosophical point.
I have only included in this list only places where Hobbes either names Plato's writings or otherwise refers to a specific phrase, concept, or individual strongly associated with them.What is left is a body of accurate references to a wide range of exclusively authentic Platonic dialogues.This is in itself unusual, as English Platonism (at least insofar as it can be represented by the Plato that was printed in England)10 at that time relied in large part on Pseudo-Platonic works.The simplest explanation for Hobbes's accuracy is that he had direct access to a reliable edition of Plato, in Greek or Latin (and most likely both).

Plato in Hobbes's England
Certainly, Hobbes was a skilled humanist translator with Greek and Latin learning, and had the ability to navigate not just Plato's texts, in the original or in translation, but also the countless Renaissance commentaries and commonplace books, which featured sentences from Plato on almost every topic with which he is concerned.However, Hobbes could not reliably derive an authentic and accurate body of Platonic sentences from commonplaces and commentaries alone for the simple reason that he would not have been able to discern the accurate sentences from the frequent misattributions without at least some first-hand knowledge of Plato.
For most of Hobbes's life very few Platonic dialogues were printed in England.In 1587, the year before his birth, an edition of the Menexenus was printed for Thomas Thomas.This was the first time an authentic Platonic dialogue had ever been printed in England, (and the first time a Greek text of any kind was ever printed at Cambridge.)Thomas Thomas's Menexenus presents Plato's Greek without any translation.There are a few brief marginal notes and a slim Latin argumentum, in which the text is called an 'exhortation to love and protection of fatherland.'11Nothing but the contents of the funerary oration within the dialogue are considered in the argumentum.Indeed, that the Menexenus is a dialogue is not mentioned at all in the critical apparatus.The work is treated instead as an exemplar of Greek oratory.Amazingly, the second time an authentic Platonic dialogue would be printed in England was almost a century later, in the final decade of Hobbes's life, with the printing of a selection of dialogues in the Greek and Latin edition of the Platonis de rebus divinis dialogi selecti (1673).In France, by contrast, over a hundred different editions of authentic works by Plato were printed from 1485 to 1603.12In her article on 'Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist, and William Twisse, Aristotelian' ,13 Sarah Hutton suggests that '[i]t was not until the mid-seventeenth century […] that any native English Platonic philosophy appeared.'14Moreover, this philosophy, as Hutton notes, is generally associated with Cambridge.In Oxford, Corpus Christi College appears to have been an oasis of the continental Platonic revival between the late sixteenth and mid seventeenth centuries.Joseph Mede, Benjamin Whichcote, and, as we shall see, John Rainolds,15 are all figures with considerable knowledge of Platonism connected with that college.Other figures connected with Oxford whom Hobbes knew personally, such as Robert Burton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, were also well read in Plato in much the same way that Hobbes was.Unfortunately, we know very little about what kind of education Hobbes received during his time at Magdalen Hall at the start of the seventeenth century, but it is very likely that conversations there were the seeds of the interest in Plato that occupies his later writing.That Hobbes's engagement with Plato does not look like that of the "Cambridge Platonists" is one of the reasons, I believe, that we have overlooked it.In the 1620s when Hobbes first wrote about Plato there was not an established English Platonism for him to argue for or against.A figure of Hobbes's startling originality and eccentric temperament would have been capable of employing Plato and Ficino in ways that appear strange to us.In 1642, as we shall see, Hobbes uses Plato's theory of recollection to defend his own nominalism.Plainly, this does not mean that Hobbes thinks of Plato as being a nominalist but rather shows his capacity to isolate a singular Platonic concept and integrate into his own, nominalist philosophical system.
However, from an English perspective the gap in printed Platonic dialogues between 1587 and 1673 may not have been obvious.In 1592 Edmund Spenser published his English translation (from Herman Rayan's Latin edition of 1568) of Xenocrates's dialogue, the Axiochus, under the doubly misleading title16 of Axiochus.A most excellent dialogue, written in Greeke by Plato the philosophe.This effort was mirrored by Mary Sidney, who in 1607 published her Six excellent treatises of life and death, an English version of Philippe de Mornay's popular French translation of Xenocrates's dialogue in his Discours de la vie et de la mort (1585).The 1607 edition introduces the work somewhat carelessly as '[a] Dialogue, written by plato, or by some other heathen Philosopher' .17The Axiochus had been identified as Pseudo-Platonic by Marsilio Ficino himself 1484.18The writers of these texts, however, either lacked access to continental philological developments or (as is more likely) were concerned with Plato in literary rather than philological terms.
At the same time, Plato routinely featured as a source of commonplaces on a variety of subjects in English florilegia.In many cases these quotations were Pseudo-Platonic and came from some other classical or even biblical source.A significant florilegium for the Elizabethan understanding of Plato was Aelianus Claudius's Varia historia, translated into English in 1576 by Abraham Fleming under the title A register of hystories.Plato is named 89 times in the work.Many of these references are misleading.For instance, under the heading 'Of hope' we hear that 'P[l]ato had this sentence in his mouth […] [h]ope is the dreme of men whiles they are wakeing.'19The origin of this quotation is Diogenes Laërtius, who attributes the quote to Aristotle.Another example is offered by John Larke's Boke of Wisdom (1561).The quotations ascribed to Plato there include his apparent endorsement of the seven corporal works of mercy (as listed in Matthew 25:31-46): Plato sayth, that the person can not have a more profytable thyng [thing], then the Vertue of Mercie, that is to saye, to vysyte [visit] the sycke, to feede them that be hungry, to gyve them drynke, that be thrystye [thirsty], vysyte [visit] the prysoners, clothe the naked, lodge them that doe lacke lodgynge [lodging].And to burye the deade persons.20 The available commonplaces were thus unreliable, and could not be used to derive a set of accurate Platonic quotations unless one already had some first hand knowledge of Plato.An illustrative example of a work that appears to have been written with an only second hand understanding of Plato is the 1620 edition of the anonymous Horae subsecivae, Observations and Discourses.This is a work of disputed authorship, but which is now generally accepted to have written in at least part by William Cavendish (1590-1628).21However, the work was likely written using materials from the Hardwick Hall library, i.e. the same library that Hobbes used (and indeed curated) when in the service of the Devonshires.In the Horae, Plato is quoted on two occasions.In the essay 'Of Ambition' we find out that 'Scientia quae est remota a iustitia, calliditas potius quam sapientia est appellanda, saith Plato.Knowledge separated from that which is upright, is rather called craft, then wisdome.'22The quotation comes in fact from Cicero's De officiis (1.19.63),where the sentence is indeed attributed by Cicero to Plato.This kind of second hand quotation is characteristic of writers using commonplace books for their Platonic sentences.Hobbes, by contrast, generally refers to Platonic dialogues rather than commonplaces or commentaries.
The second occasion in which Plato appears in the Horae is in A Discourse of Lawes, where the De legibus (ix.874e-5a) is quoted at length, and for the most part translated verbatim from Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation into English:23 Plato affirms the necessity of Laws to be so great and absolute that men otherwise could not be distinguished from unreasonable creatures: for no man naturally is of so great capacity, as completely to know all the necessities, and accidents which be required for a common good.24 The extract from the De legibus begins and ends at the very same point that it does in Joseph Lange's Polyanthea nova (1607),25 and the very same quote from De officiis can be found there as well.26This is unsurprising, as Timothy Raylor has done extensive work to show that Lange's Polyanthea is one of the principle sources for commonplaces in the Horae.27By contrast, as we shall see, Hobbes always paraphrases Plato and never lifts quotations in this manner.

The First Reference: Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre (1629)
It is in the biography 'Of the Life and History of Thucydides' that prefaces Hobbes's translation of Thucydides's history that we find the first reference to a Platonic dialogue in his published work.Hobbes writes that Plato in Menone, maketh mention of Milesias and Stephanus, sons of a Thucydides of a very noble family; but it is clear they were of Thucydides the rival of Pericles, both by the name Milesias, and because this Thucydides also was of the family of Miltiades, as Plutarch testifieth in the life of Cimon.

ew viii, xx
In this case we can pinpoint the reference to a single section (94c) of the dialogue because Thucydides of Melesias is only named once in the Meno.It is worth noting that the section of the Meno to which Hobbes refers comes not long after the famous discussion of Plato's theory of recollection in than the wildest of wild beasts, and that for the following reason.There is no man whose natural endowments will ensure that he shall both discern what is good for mankind as a community and invariably be both able and willing to put the good into practice when he has perceived it.'25  which Socrates proposes that 'learning is reminiscence' (81d), so it may well be that Hobbes first encountered Platonic anamnesis in the 1620s.Naturally, it is difficult to determine whether or not this information is gleaned from direct reading of Plato or from another source.Certainly, in his biography of Thucydides Hobbes is concerned with demonstrating his Greek learning.We are given the impression that he has considerable control over his classical sources, cross-referencing as he does Plato with Plutarch.
The general impression we are given is that of a serious philological enterprise undertaken by a skilled Latinist and Hellenist.Indeed, Hobbes distinguishes his translation from earlier English, French, and Italian ones by virtue of his working directly from Thucydides's Greek.He recounts that Thucydides 'was exceedingly esteemed of the Italians and French in their own tongues: notwithstanding that he be not very much beholden for it to his interpreters.'(ew viii, ix.).Textual authenticity, then, is one of Hobbes's primary concerns as a translator.It is difficult to imagine him muddying the authorship of the Axiochus in the manner of Spenser and Sidney.According to Hobbes, Thucydides's interpreters have hitherto all suffered from the same problem, viz.'that whereas the author [Thucydides] himself so carrieth with him his own light throughout, that the reader may continually see his way before him, and by that which goeth before expect what is to follow; I found it not so in them […] [t]he cause whereof, and their excuse, may be this: they followed the Latin of Laurentius Valla, which was not with out some errors; and he a Greek copy not so correct as now is extant.'(ew viii, ix).Hobbes is particularly critical of Thomas Nicholls, who in 1550 translated Thucydides from Claude de Seyssel's 1527 French edition of the work: [o]ut of French he was done into English (for I need not dissemble to have seen him in English) in the time of King Edward the Sixth: but so, as by multiplication of error he became at length traduced, rather than translated into our language.

ew viii, ix
It is in response to the apparent traducement of Thucydides that Hobbes 'resolved to take him immediately from the Greek, according to the edition of AEmilius Porta.' (ew viii, ix).
The biography also gives us valuable information as to where Hobbes may be finding his classical materials.Almost every one of the classical sources cited in the biography are listed in the "Old Catalogue" of Hardwick Hall, Chatsworth ms hs E/1/A.This is a catalogue of the Devonshire's library spanning from 1608 to the 1630s, written in Hobbes's own hand.28Among the sources listed is a 'Platonis opera.Gr.Lat.fol.'29The pressmark (in this case organised by three letters a number indicating bookcase, shelf, and the location on the shelf) shows that the opera was bound into a single volume.30 Scholars have been content hitherto to point out that it is difficult to determine to which edition of Plato this refers.31This is certainly true.But whilst it is impossible to say with certainty which edition of Plato Hobbes had access to, it is possible to exclude many editions and isolate a range of likely ones that have important characteristics in common.It is worth noting, in the first instance, that no Renaissance edition of Plato works contains the words Platonis opera in its title unless it is a complete edition of Plato's work.James Whildon's catalogue of the of books at Hardwick Hall (Chatsworth hs add/1), composed in the period 1657-8, likewise records a 'Platonis opera.Graeco Lat fol' .Given that Whildon does not copy Hobbes's entry verbatim32 but nonetheless retains the Platonis opera, it is reasonable to conclude that Platonis opera is the title of the work rather than shorthand.33This means that we can exclude any partial selection of Plato's dialogues and say that in all likelihood Hobbes had access to a version of the complete works in Greek and Latin.
Translations of individual Platonic dialogues in the Renaissance tend to use the name of the dialogue itself in the title, alongside a description of it, as in the following editions: the 1495 edition of Rudolphus Agricola's Axiochus [Axiochus Platonis de contemnenda morte], the 1544 edition of Marsilio Ficino's translation of the Timaeus [Platonis philosophorum omnium seculorum longe principis Timaeus], the 1552 edition of Petreius Tiara's translation of the Sophist [Platonis Sophistes], and the 1614 editions of Ficino's translations of the Phaedo There were only two other Latin translations of Plato's complete works printed in the Renaissance, and it may surprise readers to learn that only one edition of each of them was ever printed.These are Janus Cornarius's Platonis opera (1561), and Jean de Serres's Platonis opera (1578).Hobbes's catalogue cannot be referring to the former, as it does not contain Plato's Greek.Serranus's edition, meanwhile, is superficially more plausible.It contain Henri Estienne's edition of Plato's Greek, which remains the authoritative version of the Greek of all of Plato's dialogues today.The first volume also contains a dedication to Elizabeth I and thus comments on English political life, which may have made it more appealing to Hobbes.However, crucially, the Serranus edition is in three volumes.34Neither Hobbes nor Whildon record more than one volume for the Platonis opera in their catalogues.That they do not do so makes it more likely than not Hobbes is using one of the many Greek and Latin editions of Plato's works containing Ficino's Latin translation and commentary.If Hobbes is relying on Ficino, then this would explain the accuracy and range of his references, as well as his avoidance of Pseudo-Platonic works like the Axiochus.

The Second and Third References: Chatsworth ms hs D/1 (c. 1633) and A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique (1637)
Now, I am not suggesting that Hobbes avoids using secondary sources for information on Plato's works.Rather, he appears to be able to combine his own reading of Plato with these sources to provide accurate philological analyses of Plato's relationship with other texts.The Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique is a digest of Aristotle's Ars rhetorica, published anonymously in 1637.Although its authorship has been contested, it seems to have been written by Hobbes The manuscript and the Briefe thus collectively provide a unique window into Hobbes's life as a humanist educator in the 1630s.Whilst Hobbes and Devonshire follow the structure and order of the chapters of the three books of the Ars rhetorica very closely, they freely condense material and also make significant interpolations to explicate the text.One such interpolation is found in chapter 24 of the second book, 'Of the places of true, demonstrative enthymemes'39 There, among a list of the topics of these enthymemes listed in a section written in Devonshire's hand, is listed '[a]nother from definition, as that of Socrates: a demon is either God or a work of God, he does not deny God exists, therefore, who affirms that demons exist.'40 In the Briefe the passage is translated into English verbatim.(ew vi, 479).The original Greek, however, does not attribute this example to Socrates.Instead, the relevant passage of the Ars rhetorica (1398a8) merely introduces 'Another [topic] from definition, such as [Ἄλλος ἐξ ὁρισμοῦ οἷον] […]' before stating the example.This suggests that Hobbes may well have taught Devonshire that this example is derived from Plato's Apologia Socratis (27c-d), in which Socrates defends himself against the charge of atheism by arguing that atheism is inconsistent with his well attested belief in demons.In the Apologia, Socrates argues that '[i]f therefore I should be of the opinion that demons exist, as you say, [and] if the gods are indeed demons, that would evidently be, I affirm, you are trifling with obscure words, when you say I do not believe the gods exist, and judge against the gods 'existence, seeing that you confess that I believe demons exist.'41The source for this connection between Socrates's trial and the topic from definition is probably not any direct encounter with Plato but simply borrowed from Theodore Goulston's 1619 Latin and Greek edition of the Rhetorica, whose Latin appears to be the material "digested" in the paraphrase.Whilst Goulston is authentic to the Greek in omitting any mention Socrates from the main body of his translation, in the margins he footnotes '[f]rom definition, e.g.[…] from Plato on the Apology of Socrates, the definition of a demon is used for the declaration of his innocence.'42This shows how Renaissance philology lent itself to the acquisition of accurate information concerning Plato's writings from commentaries on other classical Greek texts.Hobbes was thus not averse to borrowing from other authors, but that he does so pointedly and accurately points to the fact that Hobbes is able to verify that Goulston is correct.
An illuminating comparison with Hobbes as a private tutor of Aristotle's Rhetoric is found in John Rainolds's public lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.It is worth pausing to note that the capacity for argumentum in utramque partem was understood in the Renaissane to be one of the shared properties of rhetoric and dialectic in the Aristotelian tradition.Aristotelian dialectic depends upon [ἔνδοξα], i.e. those ideas 'which commend themselves to all.'43This kind of dialectic thus produces arguments whose material is human opinion, and are constrained by a particular view of human psychology (i.e.Aristotle's theory of the affections).In this sense it acquires a quasi-rhetorical aspect, insofar as the dialectician is compelled to think about which opinions are likely to commend themselves to other people.Indeed, this is Aristotle's observation in the first line of his Ars rhetorica, where he states that [r]hetoric is the counterpart [ἀντίστροφος] of dialectic.For both pertain to such things whose understanding is, in a sense, common to all, and not restricted to one single body of knowledge.44 The exact status of the relationship between the arts was the subject of considerable debate amongst Aristotle's sixteenth and seventeenth century commentators.John Rainolds's lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric, heard at Corpus Christi College, Oxford45 from 1571 to 1578, exemplify the humanist approach to that question whilst citing the leading authorities on the subject.They are also the only complete lecture notes to survive from the Tudor university classroom.Rainolds starts by commenting that '[t]here are as many interpretations of this little word [ἀντίστροφος] as there are interpreters.'46He notes that Cicero takes the term to mean that rhetoric 'answering [dialectic] from the other side [ex altera parte respondens]' .This opinion is confirmed, as Rainolds notes, by Ermolao Barbaro's Rhetoricorum Aristotelis libri tres (1545), where Barbaro affirms that '[t]he art of rhetoric responds, as it were, from the other side to dialectic.'47Carlo Sigonio alludes to this view in his De arte rhetorica libri tres (1577), where he confirms that '[r]hetoric responds to dialectic.'48Rainolds follows Johann Sturm's 1570 commentary, Aristoteles rhetoricorum libri iii, in paraphrasing this view as the position that 'rhetoric looks back from the other side, as in a chorus.' 49 Rainolds, however, also suggests a contrary view, one that he ascribes to Aristotle's Greek and Arabic commentators, but which had gained popularity in sixteenth-century Europe after its endorsement by Italian philologists such as Piero Vettori.As Rainolds explains, Averroës comments that Aristotle's use of αντίστροφος is intended to convey that rhetoric is allied with [affinis] dialectic, whilst George of Trebizond goes further in suggesting that Aristotle means that rhetoric has the same valence [aequipollet] as dialectic.50On this view, rhetoric and dialectic are not properly described as being engaged in any kind of opposition.Rainolds notes that this subtle distinction has been complicated by the fact that αντίστροφος [counterpart] and ἴσοστροφος [partner] are sometimes used as synonyms and sometimes as antonyms in the original Attic, just as they are in English.
The evidence that Rainolds offers in support of the compatibility of the two arts is humanistic and philological.He notes that the prefix αντί -can indicate opposition, as it does in some of the Greek geographical terms we have retained, such as ἀντίποδες [antipodes] and ἀνταρκτικός [Antarctic].51But it can also indicate that something is being used as a substitute due to an approximate equivalence, be it of expertise and authority, as in the ἀντιστράτηγος [lieutenant-general], or in market value, as in the case of ἀντίλυτρον [ransom, lit. the 'price instead of'].This equivalence, Rainolds explains, leads to the impression of a strong similarity: 'when one thing can be understood rightly for a second, and can be put in place of the second, we think it has the same force and possesses a similar nature.'52Rather than interpreting the prefix as indicating opposition, cognate with the re of respicit or Cicero's altera pars, Rainolds thus endorses the essential similarity of rhetoric and dialectic in Aristotle's schema.He goes so far as to say that '[t]his general idea of the word seems to have eluded Cicero; certainly he imputes to Aristotle something other than Aristotle indicates in this passage, and even the most stubborn defenders of Cicero would condemn this false imputation.'53In a sense, this is a story of two antistrophes, one between dialectic and rhetoric, and the other between Aristotle and Cicero.
However, and this is crucial for our purposes, rhetoric and dialectic were not allied because they shared a subject matter, but rather because they both lacked one.Aristotle, as we have seen, speaks of dialectic and rhetoric as 'not restricted [ἀφωρισμενης]  Rainolds then goes on to show how Aristotle's remarks concerning the pair's similarities can be integrated with passages where Cicero discusses rhetoric, once in connection with poetry, but always omitting dialectic.Glossing the verb ἀφορίζω, Rainolds explains that it means 'to mark off with boundaries,' 'to separate from others,' […] Cicero has much the same idea in Latin, when he claims that the poet, like the orator, 'does not circumscribe [circumscribat] or define [definiat] his liberty by any limits,' and again when he says that the art of speaking well 'has no determinate [definitam] province, within whose limits it is enclosed [septa] and held.'55At the same time, Rainolds speaks of the Aristotle's treatise as 'patterned after the rhetorical precepts which were sketched in Plato's Phaedrus,'56 and thus alludes to an older tradition of dialectic that was intimately connected to the precept γνῶθι σεαυτόν, which appears in the Phaedrus, and is, as we shall see, an integral part of Hobbes's conception of Platonic anamnesis.57One of the origins of dialectic's capacity to speak to any subject is that it deals as much with the auditor or reader's self knowledge as it does with the subject in question.

The Fourth Reference: Elements (1640)
The next of Hobbes's direct references to Plato's dialogues is found in the first part of the Elements, which contains a lengthy discussion of Plato's Symposium.58This is probably the best known of Hobbes's references to Plato.In a section concerning the affection of charity, Hobbes writes that [t]he opinion of Plato concerning honourable love, delivered according to his custom in the person of Socrates, in the dialogue intituled Convivium [i.e. the Symposium], is this, that a man full and pregnant with wisdom and other virtues, naturally seeketh out some beautiful person, of age and capacity to conceive, in whom he may, without sensual 55  respects, engender and produce the like.the idea of the then noted love of Socrates wise and continent, to Alcibiades young and beautiful: in which, love is not the sought honour, but the issue of his knowledge.

ew iv, 49
This passage represents the synthesis of Diotima's (206c-d) and Alcibiades's (216d-e) reflections on love in the Symposium.Note the contrast with the Horae's quotation from Plato's De legibus; Hobbes does not lift large quotations from a Latin translation of Plato verbatim, but instead fluently paraphrases Plato whilst following the structure of the argument as it appears in the Symposium.Indeed, as we shall see, this a close paraphrase of Plato's text.Hobbes follows the structure of the dialogue in presenting the material taken from Diotima before that of Alcibiades.Just as we hear of 'a man full and pregnant' , Plato writes that (206c) 'every man is both pregnant and heavy with child [praegnans et gravidum] in the body and the soul is pregnant.'59When Hobbes writes that the lover 'naturally seeketh out some beautiful person […] in whom he may, without sensual respects, engender and produce the like' , Diotima likewise informs Socrates that (206e) 'love concerns not the beautiful […] as you think.'Instead, she argues that love concerns 'the generation and birthing of the beautiful' .60In reporting that Socrates is 'continent' and that love is 'not the sought honour,' Hobbes refers to Alicibiades description of Socrates's nature (216d-e); 'if the inside should really be opened, you would be amazed, drinking companions, by the chastity and integrity inside.Nor does he value the beauty of the body of anyone whatsoever, nor riches, nor honours.'61This reference is significant as the first instance where Hobbes uses Plato to construct his own philosophy, rather than merely using Plato's text to make a philological point about another classical text.In all of the subsequent references discussed Hobbes shall similarly use Plato's arguments to develop his own.Significantly, the kind of Platonic love that Plato describes is maieutic; the older lover seeks out someone of 'age and capacity to conceive' love, 'the issue' of the older lover's knowledge.An essential component of Hobbes's own theory of recollection is that the obligation of the philosopher is to identify 59  those definitions that the reader shall be able to conceive of and reproduce in themselves.

The Fifth and Sixth References: Tractatus Opticus ii (c. 1640) and the Third Set of Objections (1641)
In the Tractatus Opticus ii, which only circulated in manuscript form in Hobbes's lifetime, Plato's Theaetetus is cited in support of Hobbes's theory of sensation: For we must not think that something is flying out of the object coming into the brain and telling us itself what the colour and shape of the body from whence it flew out might be.Nor do Plato and Aristotle judge vision to be anything other than motion, as is obvious from Aristotle's book on dreams and waking, chapter 3.And the book of Plato's in which it is written is the Theaetetus.62 The section Hobbes alludes to is likely Theaetetus 154a63 where Socrates argues 'that black or white or any colour you choose is a thing that has arisen out of the meeting of our eyes with the appropriate motion.'64In the Theaetetus this remark is associated with Protagoras, and so the attribution of this view to Plato himself is somewhat tendentious.Ralph Cudworth, by contrast, is careful to write in his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) that 'Protagoras in Plato's Theaetetus concludes, Knowledge to be Sense' .65But this is not quite right either, as Protagoras does not appear as an interlocutor in the dialogue.
I have paired this reference with one found in the Third Set of Objections (1641) below, because it appears to allude to one of the passages of the Theaetetus (157e-158a)66 that immediately follows the discussion motion referred to above.In the Hobbes criticises Descartes's first meditation concerning the criteria of doubt as follows: It is clear from the things which are said in this Meditation, that there is no criterion by which dreams are distinguished from waking and real sensation, and on this account the phantasms we have whether awake or asleep, are not accidents inherent in external objects, nor do they provide an argument that such external objects really exist.In other words, if we follow our sense without any other ratiocination, we deservedly doubt whether or not they really exist.Therefore we acknowledge the truth of this Meditation.But since the same uncertainty of the senses was argued for by Plato, and others of the ancient philosophers, and as the difficulties in distinguishing waking from sleeping are observed by everyone, I would not have wished for an author so distinguished in new speculations to publish these antiques.ol iv, 25167 That both of these references derive from roughly the same period and concerning roughly the same sections of the same Platonic dialogue may suggest that Hobbes was reading the Theaetetus in this period, or otherwise encountered them in optical treatises that he was using to construct his own optics.That Hobbes thought Plato's optics were compatible with his own is an important step in understanding how Hobbes came to rely on Plato's definition of knowledge as memory.Memory is, as Plato claims up the Philebus 66 Cf.Theatetus 157e-158a in Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 (Cambridge MA, 1921) trans.
Harold N. Fowler: 'Let us, then, not neglect a point in which it is defective.The defect is found in connection with dreams and diseases, including insanity, and everything else that is said to cause illusions of sight and hearing and the other senses.For of course you know that in all these the doctrine we were just presenting seems admittedly to be refuted, because in them we certainly have false perceptions, and it is by no means true that everything is to each man which appears to him; on the contrary, nothing is which appears.' (34a), is the conservation of sense, imagination for Hobbes is decaying sense.sense the self-knowledge we have can be located, ultimately, in our interpretation of that decaying motion.Hobbes is as comfortable pairing Plato's theory of recollection with nominalism as he is pairing Plato's optics with his own materialist theory of perception.In an England where Platonic philosophy was still eclectic, it was not taken for granted that Plato was the otherworldy philosopher we conceive of him as today.In Samuel Parker's Free and impartial censure of the Platonick philosophie (1666), for instance, we hear variously that '[t]he Platonists […] made their measures of Good and Evil, from the observations of Sense and Experience'68 and that this is connected with a form of self-knowledge; 'Plato concludes […] the same use that these delineations have in Mathematical Theories, Idea's have in Physical Speculations, as therefore we best understand what a Circle is by looking upon its Delineated Figure, so the surest knowledge, we can have of the Natures of things, is gotten by contemplating their Ideal Pictures or Images engraven on our understandings.'69

The Seventh Reference: De cive (1642)
In his treatise De cive (1642), we come to the pivotal moment where Hobbes cites Plato as an authority on the relationship between knowledge and memory: to know truth is the same as to remember that it was made by ourselves, by our very usurpation of names itself.Nor was it said idly by Plato long ago that knowledge is memory [scientiam esse memoriam].
ol ii, 41970 In the dedicatory epistle that commences the Latin edition, Hobbes writes that 'true wisdom is nothing other than knowledge of the truth in all matters […] as it is derived from the memory of things inspired by certain and definite appellations'(ol ii, 419).71 We possess, insofar as we remember of our act of naming ab arbitrio, a form maker's knowledge about all language.For knowledge, or demonstration by reading oneself, what connects politics with geometry.As Hobbes himself puts it his Six Lessons, [o]f arts, some are demonstrable, others indemonstrable; and demonstrable are those the construction of which is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation.The reason whereof is this, that the science of every subject is derived from a precognition of the causes, generation, and construction of the same; and consequently where the causes are known, there is place for demonstration, but not where the causes are to be found.Geometry therefore is demonstrable, for the lines and figures.from which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves; and civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves.But because of natural bodies we know not the construction, but seek it from the effects, there lies no demonstration of what the causes be we seek for, but only of what they may be.
For Hobbes, geometrical demonstration thus involves self-knowledge.The geometer must be aware of the propositions, common notions, and definitions they have committed to in order to demonstrate any geometrical equation.By implication, Hobbes also believes that this is possible in a subject as controversial as politics if only the same kind of self-knowledge is acquired and applied.
This quotation scientiam esse memoriam may well be a paraphrase of the Meno, where Plato says that 'seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection'72 (81d).This definition appears in the dialogue not long before the discussion concerning a certain Thucydides, son of Melesias, which Hobbes had dealt with in 1629.73However, similar ideas can be found in any number of Platonic dialogues which deal with anamnesis, including the Theaetetus, the Phaedrus, and the Philebus.Nor was Hobbes the first Renaissance philosopher to describe Plato's theory of recollection in these terms.In the Liber de intellectu (1510), for instance, the mathematician Charles de Bovelles paraphrases Plato's definition of memory in remarkably similar terms, saying that 'Plato said that knowledge is of memory [scientiam esse memorie resumptionem]' .74 Moreover, may well have been encouraged to combine Platonic anamnesis with his own metaphysics through reading Galileo.We know that from Hobbes's correspondence with William Cavendish, the first Duke of Newcastle, that he had read Galileo's Dialogo sopra i due sistemi massimi (1632) sometime between 1634 and 1636.The dialogue is notable for its discussion of scientific knowledge in terms of Platonic anamnesis.Salviati discusses with his interlocutor (named Simplicio) an apparent objection to the view that the earth revolves on its axis, viz.that the impetus that the earth's revolutions would confer to earthbound objects would seem bound to propel them away from the earth.Crucially, Salviati insists that he is only highlighting facts already known to both of them: [t]he resolution [of this objection] depends on certain facts, that are no less known and believed by you than me; but because they do not occur to you, you do not see the resolution.Therefore, without my teaching you, because you already know them, I will, by simply reminding you of them, make it so that you yourself resolve the question.75Simplicio responds by identifying Galileo's method of argument via reminiscence with Plato: I have frequently turned my mind to your way of reasoning, which has gotten me to thinking that you are inclined to the option of Plato, that our knowing is a kind of remembering [che nostrum scire sit quoddam reminisci].76Indeed, the marginal notation for this section confirms, this time in Italian, that '[o]ur knowing is a kind of remembering [Il nostro sapere è un certo 'nothing but decaying sense' (ew iii, in Leviathan certainly seems to have connection with what Hobbes wants to about Plato's position on knowledge and memory in De cive.

Hobbesian Anamnesis
That Hobbes, possibly inspired by Galileo, makes an explicit commitment to Platonic anamnesis does not mean that this was the first occasion he employed a kind of rhetoric or dialectic (insofar as the two are in antistrophe) of reminiscence.It may well be that Hobbes in 1642 recognised in Plato an approach that he had arrived at himself long ago.It may also be the case that Hobbes first encountered the idea when reading the Meno in the 1620s.I do not propose to settle these questions here.Instead, I hope to show why Hobbes might have felt that Plato lent authority to his own argumentative approach.
The paradox at the heart of Hobbes's rhetorical theory is Hobbes's insistence that rhetoric should not just persuade.Hobbes's ideal orator does not follow the Roman rhetorical prescription to teach, move, delight.Evidently, Hobbes is nonetheles concerned with persuading people (and some of his better jokes may even be said to delight), and so it is not my intention to suggest that he removes those elements from his argumentation entirely.Instead, I hope to show how Hobbes's argumentative strategy emphasises the role of the reader in demonstrating the author's arguments by testing them against their own passions.Hobbes aspires to remind his readers of what he thinks they already know.
There are strong parallels between this and Platonic dialectic.It is my contention that Hobbes had sufficient knowledge of those parallels to cite Plato in De cive as an authority for his own unusual method of argumentation.Anamnesis is suitable for this purpose because it is too places the demonstrative burden on the reader or interlocutor.As Ficino puts it in his commentary on the Phaedrus in his Commentaria in Platonem (1496); [t]hrough [dialectic] the soul at some point can arrive at the universal formula naturally implanted in the soul; and through this formula, at the Idea, the Idea that is not only called a species but actually exists.The beast's soul cannot do this, as it has none of the formulas of the Ideas implanted in it.But to arrive in this way through the formulas at the Ideas (which is the office of the rational soul) is nothing other than to recall those intelligibles that the rational soul seen in heaven when it followed there its god.87For Ficino, dialectic is thus an argumentative strategy intended to remind his readers of beliefs that they already possess.Once those beliefs are recalled they can be shown to apply to the matter in question.However, the Ficinian archetype of the old dialectician inspiring his student was not, as we might expect, Socrates, but the figure of Parmenides as the educator of Socrates in the Parmenides.For in this dialogue, on Ficino's reading, Parmenides argues against what he knows to be true, i.e.Socrates's arguments for the existence of the Ideas.On Ficino's reading, Parmenides's hidden purpose is dialectical, [j]ust as Socrates, who is the son of a midwife, always plays the role of a midwife towards children and youth (and he claims to be so above anything else), so Parmenides, who is already an elderly man, encourages and assists like a pious midwife the still young Socrates to give birth to admirable and almost divine opinions […] Parmenides does not spurn or destroy the thoughts that are about to be born, even the ones that are less beautiful, but rather embraces them and cherishes them in an admirable way: he strengthens those which are fragile, he straightens out those which are crooked, gives form to the formless ones and perfects the imperfect ones.88 It is in the same spirit that Hobbes rejects criminations in the Briefe whilst explaining (following Aristotle) that 'it is an absurd thing for a man to make crooked the ruler he means to use.' (ew vi, 423).In his commentary Ficino is invoking Proclus's interpretation of the dialectic in the Parmenides.In Proclus's own commentary on the dialogue, he explains Parmenides's mysterious opposition Socrates's arguments by way of 'three processes of dialectic': 'that of purification through cross-questioning' , 'the opposite of this, that which induces recollection of true reality, by means of which he [Socrates] used to lead on those naturally suited to contemplation' , and 'a compromise between the two, partly refuting, partly stimulating the interlocutor towards the truth.'89Proclus elsewhere in the same commentary explains that one of the chief activities of dialectic is self-enquiry, [o]ne, which is suitable for young men, is useful for awakening the is, as it were, asleep them and provoking it to inquire into itself.That is actually an exercise in training the eye of the soul for seeing its objects and for taking possession of its essential ideas by confronting them with their contradictories.90Proclus instances 'arguing on both sides'91 (what Quintilian would call argumentum in utramque partem) as an example of this kind of dialectic, [t]his is the method by which Socrates trains his young men, as for instance Theaetetus, by examining both sides of the question -e.g.whether what a man thinks is true for him or not, whether or not knowledge is perception -and then in turn examining the difficulties in true beliefs […] in this way constantly exposing [the interlocutor] to the difficulties inherent in his opinions.92 Parmenides is thus seen in the dialogue as using dialectic in utramque partem to bring out the truth of Socrates's ideas.But, crucially, this process is identified with the straightening out of the interlocutor's true beliefs.Indeed, Ficino commands that no one, therefore, suspect that Parmenides reproves opinions of this kind [i.e.Socrates's], since he is, like his Pythagorean colleagues, a friend of the Ideas, the defender of being itself, separate from sensible things and of the One itself, superior to being.Every Platonist should rather remember that Socrates is being carefully trained by Parmenides in the art of dialectic, to become more heedful of divine mysteries, to approach them with more caution and reach them more securely.93For Hobbes, in a similar fashion, Platonic dialectic is compatible with rhetoric because it can treat any subject whatever.We can see Hobbes using a similar strategy in the following texts in spite of their dealing with different kinds of principles: 1.
A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique (1637) In rhetoric the principles must be common opinions, such as the judge is already possessed with.(ew vi, 426).

Elements (1640)
To reduce this doctrine rules and infallibility of reason, there is no but, first, put such principles down for a foundation, as passion, not mistrusting, may not seek to displace; and afterwards to build thereon the truth of cases in the law of nature (which hitherto have been built in the air) by degrees, till the whole have been unexpungeable.(ew iv, iii).3. De Cive (1642) [I have] followed such a Method, in the first place I established as a Principle something known by experience to everyone, and denied by no one, namely, that the spirits of men are naturally such that, unless they are held in check together by fear of some power, they will all distrust and dread each other.(ol ii, 146).94 4. Leviathan (1651) He that is to govern a whole nation, must read in himself, not this or that particular man; but mankind: which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any language or science; yet when I shall have laid down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, if he also find not the same in himself.(ew iii, xii). 5. De corpore (1655) This is common to every method, that it is set out from what is known to what is unknown […] Civil and Moral Philosophy adhere to each other in such a way, however, that they might be separated; for the causes of motion of minds are known not only by ratiocination, but also from the experience of every one of us observing his own motion himself.(ol I, 59-65).95 When Hobbes (as in the first example) is using anamnesis in a solely rhetorical context, he is merely concerned with the importance of reminding the auditor of beliefs that the orator and the auditor share.There does not need to be anything universal about this kind of reminiscence because a different auditor may not share the same opinion.If you and I share a belief about, e.g., religious toleration, for rhetorical purposes it suffices that I remind you of our shared belief to support a particular argument about toleration.No one outside of the context of the rhetorical dispute need necessarily share Hobbes scholars will be quick to point out that this passage echoes the language he uses to describe stasis [civil war] in Corcyra, in his translation of the third book of Thucydides.In the passages describing the civil war we hear that as a result the rhetorical representations on the island, made respectively on behalf of the parties of 'the political equality of the multitude' and (as Hobbes has it) 'the moderate aristocracy' , [t]he received value of names imposed for signification of things was changed into arbitrary.For inconsiderate boldness was counted true-hearted manliness; provident deliberation, a handsome fear; 96 This means 'know yourself' .Accounts of the origin of the maxim, γνῶθι σεαυτόν in the original Greek, vary.According to Pausanias in his Description of Greece (24:10), the aphorism was dedicated to Apollo by seven sages at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi during a period of conflict following one of the Gallic resettlements in the Balkans of the 3rd century bc.Unsurprisingly, given the aphorism's subsequent association with Socrates, deviations from that origin story generally have their root in Plato's Socratic dialogues (and their scholia, via the Suidae Lexicon), especially Protagoras and the Philebus.modesty, the cloak of cowardice; to be everything, to be lazy in everything.
ew viii, It was rhetoric's capacity to unsettle moral language and question shared moral values that made civil war possible in Corcyra.That rhetoric might have this capacity was, in Hobbes's day, well understood.In the terms of Renaissance rhetoric, extensively excavated by Quentin Skinner, the rhetorical redescription of vices as virtues is called paradiastole.97 As with so many important devices of Roman elocutio, its formal definition can be found in Henry Peacham's Garden of Eloquence (1577).There, the neo-Ciceronian rhetorician explains that 'Paradiastole […] is when […] we doe excuse our own vices, or other mens whom we doe defend, by calling them vertues.'98Yet Hobbes's concern in Humane Nature is a more fundamental inconstancy than that produced by mere rhetoric, viz. the equivocations produced by natural differences in human opinion and the weakness of human reason.'It is impossible' , he contends to rectify so many errors of any one man, as must needs proceed from those causes, without beginning anew from the very first grounds of all our knowledge and sense; and instead of books, reading over orderly ones own conceptions, in which meaning, I take Nosce Teipsum for a precept worthy the reputation it hath gotten.ew iv, 26 Rhetoric thus merely exacerbated a natural tendency towards conceptual confusion.But the idea that dialectical self-reflection might have a unifying effect, and thus work to remedy conceptual confusion, also has some basis in Roman elocutio.Amongst the other figures of speech that Peacham lists is paroemia, or the rhetorical deployment of proverbs.Proverbs, Peachman tells us, are '[t]he Summaries of maners, or, The Images of humane life' .99He teaches us that a proverb consists of a sentence or forme of speech much used, and commonly knowen, and also excellent for the similitude and signification: to which two things are necessarily required, the one, that it be renowned, and much spoken a sentence in everie mans The other, that it be witty, and well proportioned, whereby it may be discerned by some speciall marke and note from common speech, and be commended by antiquitie and learning.100 This has a double significance for nosce teipsum.In a simple sense Hobbes is deploying paroemia because he is using a well known proverb to enhance his argument.But, more fundamentally, Hobbes is insisting on a proverb whose power depends on the 'commonly knowen' , because it is appeals to knowledge that ought to be expressible 'in everie mans mouth' .This because it is knowledge that is already held, in some sense, by his reader.
That Leviathan is concerned with the settling of definitions is something Hobbes freely admits in chapter four, 'Of Speech' .In a section called 'Necessity of Definitions' , Hobbes asserts that [s]eeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime twigs; the more he struggles the more belimed.He goes on to insist that 'in the right definition of Names, lies the first use of speech; which is the acquisition of science' .(ew iii 24.)The problem of inconstancy is revisited, with Hobbes complaining that 'though the nature of that we conceive, be the same; yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of body, and prejudices of opinion, gives every thing a tincture of our different passions.'(ew iii, 28.) Alluding again to the problem posed by paradiastole, Hobbes expands on the argument of Humane Nature: here is intended to be complementary, not the work of Skinner and Raylor in excavating classical roots of Hobbes's conception of argumentation.Similarly, I think that Tuck is right to say that Hobbes is concerned with scepticism, but that is a scepticism that he encountered in the first place not from Descartes, but from the shared capacity of rhetoric and dialectic for the argumentum in utramque partem.103 In summary, Hobbes's orator engages in a dialectical form of rhetoric that would be recognisable to Renaissance students of Plato's Phaedrus.This dialectic emphasises the role of the orator in drawing out the ideas inherent in the auditor.The formal end of this rhetoric is to induce reminiscence in its audience.Crucially, Hobbes offers his readers the means to verify his arguments with their own self-knowledge.The reader is directly invited to compare their own principles with those being proposed.This reasoning involves a kind remembering.The reader is guided to a conclusion on the basis of his own,104 rather than the author's, premises.The conclusions of any discourse can thus be said to exist in embryo in the minds of the philosopher's interlocutors.This is a consciously Socratic form of dialectic anamnesis and its function in politics is ultimately irenic, because it allows for the cultivate of a stable body of definitions from which all political argumentation might proceeds.Hobbes sincerely believes that if we can commence from definitions that we already know then, as in geometry, we can unify politics via a kind of universal maker's knowledge.Points of contention and inconstant definitions can be dissolved by recalling those ideas which we all have in common.The seeds of this complicated conception of argument and demonstration has its roots, as we have seen, in a deep and sustained reading of Plato that spanned several decades.
knowledge is memory, or, finding hobbes's plato Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

fusco
Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ therefore in reasoning, a man must take heed of words; which besides the signification of what we imagine of their nature, have a signification also of the nature, disposition, and interest of the speaker; such as are the names of virtues and vices; for one man calleth wisdom, what another calleth fear; and one cruelty, what another justice; one prodigality, what another magnanimity; and one gravity, what another stupidity, &c.And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination.No 100 Peacham, The Garden, sig.diiv.fusco Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

103
This is the capacity to argue on both sides of any given question.104 Hobbes tends to assume a male readership.knowledge is memory, or, finding hobbes's plato Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 10 The rare glimpses that we have into the Tudor Oxford university classroom, such as John Rainolds's lectures on Aristotle's rhetoric, suggest that in some quarters of Oxford at least there was a much livlier and deeper engagement with than the printed materials from the period suggest.11 Thomas Thomas in Menexenus (Cambridge, 1587): 'Continet Menexenus Exhortationem ad patriam amandam atque colendam.'knowledge is memory, or, finding hobbes's plato Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 16 The translation was from a Latin translation of a Pseudo-Platonic text.17MarySidney, Six excellent treatises of life and death (London, 1607), sig.A7.18Sears,Plato, 124.19 Claudius Aelianus, A register of hystories (London, 1576), 155, trans.Abraham Fleming.20 John Larke, The Boke of Wisdom (London, 1561), 85.
guide to the catalogue itself, containing as they do numerous errors and omitting the pressmarks.29Hobbes,Chatsworth ms hs e/1/a, 102.30 Hobbes, Chatsworth ms hs e/1/a, 102: 'J. 3. 11.' 31 This is Richard Talaska's claim in his edition of Hardwick Hall Library, 101, where he claims that '[s]ince works of classical or medieval or important authors prior the 1630s went through numerous editions by Hobbes's time, it is of no use to attempt to guess at an edition' .This claim is taken up as recently as 2018 by Teresa Bejan in her chapter on 'First Impressions: Hobbes on Religion, Education, and the Metaphor of Imprinting' in Hobbes on Politics and Religion, eds Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass (Oxford, 2018), fn. and Epinomis [In Platonis dialogum, qui Phaedo seu de animorum immortalitate inscribitur, and In Platonis Epinomidem, seu Philosophum, respectively].The first ever edition of Plato's works to bear the name Platonis opera is the 1517 edition of Ficino's translation of the complete works of Plato.Subsequently, the words 'Platonis' and 'opera' appear together in the title of editions of Ficino's translation of the complete works in 1518, 1532, 1533, 1548, 1550 (as Divini platonis operum), 1556, 1557, 1571, 1592, and 1602.
28 Richard Talaska, (ed.)The Hardwick Library and Hobbes's Early Intellectual Development (Charlottsville, 2013), 5. N.B.Talaska's transcriptions are, unfortunately, an unreliable 40, where Bejan cites Talaska in support of her own claim that 'it is difficult to determine precisely which edition of Plato's Opera Hobbes would have had to hand.' 32 Cf.Hobbes's aforementioned 'Platonis opera.Gr.Lat.fol' in Chatsworth ms hs e/1/a.33 Chatsworth ms hs add/1.knowledge is memory, or, finding hobbes's plato Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .35 Whilst the book nowhere features Hobbes's name, the Stationers' Register entry for the 1st February 1636 [/11th February 1637] records that the publisher, Andrew Crooke, has '[e]ntred for his Copie […] a Booke called A breife [sic] of the Art of Rhetorique […] by T. H.'36This suggests at the very least that Crooke presented Hobbes as the author.Moreover, the handbook is a more or less faithful English translation of an earlier Latin manuscript housed in Chatsworth House (Hobbes ms D1) that still remains unpublished.This manuscript, entitled only by way of an initial chapter heading that begins 'ex Aristots.Rhet.Lib:' ,37 is a 143 page paraphrase of Aristotle's Rhetoric that is written for the most part in the third Earl of Devonshire's hand, with autograph corrections and additional passages by Hobbes (then the third Earl's tutor).Large sections appear to have been left to have been filled in Hobbes.For example, in chapter 21 of the second book, 'Of example, similitude, and stories' ,38 the first paragraph is in the 3rd Earl's hand, the next four are in Hobbes's, and the final two are in the Earl's.It thus appears that the digest, if not a straightforward dictation exercise, was certainly written under Hobbes's close supervision.
knowledge is memory, or, finding hobbes's plato Erudition and the Republic of Letters 9 (2024) 76-109 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/04/2024 12:00:18AM via Open Access.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/