ABSTRACT
Hobbes's remarks suggest that civil philosophy is a part of science, and yet teachable and learnable in isolation from the rest of science. There is a good idea here, but it is obscured by Hobbes's ordering of the parts of science, and, as we shall see later, by his explanation of what the various topics of science have in common. The good idea is that while there can be something better than mere intuition or opinion about moral and political matters, while there can be such a thing as knowledge or science concerning the good and the just, it is not esoteric knowledge or science. It can be acquired by anyone with ordinary intellectual capacities, and it presupposes no special training. Plato had held that a genuine science of the good and of the just was possible, but that it was not accessible to everyone; Aristotle had held that practical wisdom could be acquired by most people but that there was no real (i.e. exact and systematic) science of the good and the just; Hobbes contrives to have it both ways. He holds that there can be a science of the good and the just, and that it can be made available to practically everyone, rulers and ruled alike.
