Sobre o conatus de Thomas Hobbes e as artes retóricas.

This study argues that, for Hobbes, rhetoric was an important linguistic and conceptual apparatus available in his time, especially for the description of physical phenomena in the nascent experimental science of the English 17th century. Considering that the epistemic parameters for describing this science were yet to be developed, Hobbes sought solutions in the doctrines of the arts of good speech, starting with his anthropology. The notion of conatus in Hobbes indicates the weight of the classical rhetorical tradition in his philosophy, with emphasis on Aristotle, the Stoics and Quintilian. We will see how rhetoric, articulated with physics and ethics, constituted a relevant paradigm of expression and research for Thomas Hobbes on conatus and went beyond the ornamentation of the text in his study of bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]