Hobbes sensualista: uma leitura diderotiana da Natureza humana.

Sensualism is usually attributed to Condillac. Hobbes's treatise on Human nature (1650) shows, though, a century before Condillac's Traité des sensations (1754), the most characteristic marks of this philosophical current: the development of mental faculties and operations only through sensations so that all thought is some modification of sensation. Hobbes' treatise was translated into French by d'Holbach in 1772, providing a sort of Hobbesian revelation in Diderot. Even though the encyclopedist's theory of sensibility does not present clear traces of Hobbes' treatise, the latter contributes to a better understanding of it. With this in mind, I propose to read four chapters (I-III; VII) of Human nature from a Diderotian point of view. I intend to show that, on the one hand, Hobbes is a sensualist, and, on the other hand, his sensualism has a vitalist perspective thanks to a dual system of sensibility, whose centers (brain and heart) interact continuously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]