Hobbes, Montaigne et les animaux moraux

Regarding the traditional definition of man as a mortal and rational animal, Hobbes upholds mortality, adds curiosity to rationality, and above all stops reasoning in terms of genera and species, of matter and form, as in the Aristotelian conception. By confronting Hobbes’s thought with that of Montaigne, this article both underlines the borrowed and the original elements in Hobbes’s thought as far as the relation between human and animal psychology, the problem of equality between men, and the question of humanism in the age of science.