Leviathan · Chapter
VIII: Of the Virtues Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects explained
Hobbes distinguishes between natural wit (fancy and judgment) and acquired wit (reason and science), arguing that differences in wit arise from passions, especially the desire for power.
What happens
Hobbes distinguishes between natural wit (fancy and judgment) and acquired wit (reason and science), arguing that differences in wit arise from passions, especially the desire for power. He explores how excessive passions lead to madness, and emphasizes the primacy of judgment over fancy in discourse and counsel.
Themes in this chapter
Human Nature and Passions
Hobbes argues that differences in wit stem from passions, particularly the desire for power, and that weak passions lead to dullness while excessive passions cause madness.
Key passages
“The passions that most of all cause the difference of wit, are principally, the more or less desire of power, of riches, of knowledge, and of honour. All which may be reduced to the first, that is, desire of power.”
The main passions that create differences in intelligence are the varying desires for power, wealth, knowledge, and honor, all of which ultimately stem from the desire for power.
Hobbes reduces all intellectual motivation to a fundamental drive for power.
“For the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired”
Thoughts act like scouts or spies for our desires, searching for ways to obtain what we want.
Hobbes uses a military metaphor to describe the relationship between thought and desire.
“Judgment therefore without fancy is wit, but fancy without judgment, not.”
Judgment alone constitutes intelligence, but imagination without judgment does not.
Hobbes prioritizes judgment over fancy as the essential component of wit.