Scholarly accounts of Hobbes’s theory of passions focus on fear of death and glory. Honour is often conflated with glory. I argue that honour is not a passion but a power. Honouring is a natural attribute that recognises another's higher value (power). Honour is always a relative term that varies with the standing of the parties and the context. If one is honoured too highly, this is flattery. If too lowly, then one is dishonoured.
Given the ubiquity of flattery and miserliness, how do we know true honour? While not explicit, Hobbes suggests that self-knowledge measures honours proffered and being dispassionate assists since passions reduce power. The constraints on honour are clearer. Most significant is Hobbes’s principle of equality. In the seventeenth century, honour was closely aligned to social status: one should act honourably within one’s social rank. Hobbes sweeps rank aside, insisting we are equal as members of a species. If inequality does exist, we should treat others as equals in the interest of peace. Honour, then, demands modesty in the name of equality and acceptance of impermanence in context and status. Though modest, honour can be valued more highly than life itself, as in war and duels. Used wisely, it is a powerful tool for the sovereign.
Thursday July 9, 2026 11:00am - 11:55am AEST Steele-206
This paper explores whether, for Hobbes, having power is intrinsically comparative. Is having power always already 'more power' than someone else, so that some people having power means that others lack it? In more contemporary terms, is power 'zero-sum'? Or can many individuals simultaneously have power? I will argue that Hobbes does initially conceive of power as zero-sum, but that he later repudiates this conceptualisation. I'll reconstruct the weaknesses of his early view, and how these are remedied in his later work. I'll then trace the ramifications of this conceptual shift for Hobbes's moral psychology of justice and equity.
Thursday July 9, 2026 12:00pm - 12:55pm AEST Steele-206
Spinoza emphasizes the value of intuition, the third kind of knowledge, which he associates with the greatest human joy (E5p32=Ethics, Part 5, Proposition 32). He writes little, however, about how we might come to attain intuitive knowledge. The clearest suggestion is that such knowledge somehow arises from a different, less valuable sort of knowledge, reason (E5p28), but it is difficult to see how it might do so. After all, for Spinoza, it appears that (1) reason consists in common notions (E2p40s2), which are ideas of what is common to things (E2p38C); (2) intuition is knowledge of the essence of things (E2p40s2); and (3) what is common to things does not constitute the essence of anything (E2p37). In this essay, I try to make a little headway against this problem. I argue, first, against (1), that the Ethics may suggest that there are other ideas that are also ideas of reason but that are not common notions; second, that there is good reason to think that such ideas include ideas of laws of nature; and third, mitigating the problem that (3) presents, that laws of nature do, for Spinoza, constitute the essence of things.
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm AEST GCI-275 HYBRID
This paper challenges the widespread interpretation under which Spinoza understands the modes of God as propria. This interpretation is based on three principal doctrines:(i) Spinoza’s familiarity with the Scholastic tradition which defines propria as God’s necessary but non-essential properties; (ii) Spinoza’s claim that each mode necessarily follows from the essence of God; and (iii) Spinoza’s two-category ontology (substance and modes). I argue that the distinction between God’s modes and propria is compatible with (i)-(iii) because, whereas modes are intrinsic denominations of the only substance (properties that are predicated of a thing in virtue of something inherent to that thing), propria are its extrinsic denominations. First, I argue that for Late Scholastics, such as Suárez, the propria of God (such as eternity and infinity) are distinguished from God by reason and hence extrinsic denominations. Second, I show that Spinoza’s understanding of propria is consistent with Suárez’s characterisation. I contrast this with Spinoza’s view of modes as inherent properties and distinguished from God by a modal distinction. Third, I contend that by rendering propria as extrinsic denominations, my interpretation not only accommodates (i)-(iii) but also avoids the challenge of explaining how finite, durational things can follow from an eternal and infinite substance.
Thursday July 9, 2026 3:00pm - 4:00pm AEST GCI-275 HYBRID
