API tools faq
paste
Advertisement
jonstond2

Hobbes's Political Thought

jonstond2
Mar 12th, 2016
524
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 84.06 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Thomas Hobbes (b. 1588–d. 1679) is one of the most influential political theorists in the Western canon. Arguably, many of our contemporary political structures are based on his thinking and reasoning. Hobbes lived in a time when traditional sources of political authority were being deeply challenged. In works such as The Elements of Law, De Cive, and Leviathan, Hobbes retells the story of the foundation of political order so as to create a new rationale and model for state and society. Key among his insights are his description of the chaotic state of nature, his view of natural law, and the nature of political sovereignty. In particular, he is noted for his understanding of the relationship between the sovereign and the people that it represents. By anchoring that relationship in social contract theory, Hobbes produces a tale of consent and authorization. Calling the people the true “authors” of the covenant that they make with the sovereign, Hobbes indicates, at least indirectly, a role for the larger community in their own political structures (although the degree of that involvement is an ongoing controversy among Hobbes scholars to this day). In the latter parts of Leviathan, and also in De Cive, among other texts, Hobbes also considers an alternative genesis to contemporary political authority, stemming from God’s authority over ancient Israel.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6.  
  7. Hobbes’s work is of such breadth and complexity that many works treat him at an unfairly broad and general level. These books tend to be dominated by some basic questions about Hobbes: the question of his relationship to humanism and classical Antiquity, the degree to which he can be read as a “proto-liberal” (or not), and the question of his politics and how they relate to his notions of morality and philosophy. Overviews that deal specifically with Hobbes’s politics include Baumgold 1988 and Malcolm 2003. Those that focus on his metaphysics and philosophy include Finn 2007 and Reik 1977. Books that focus on Hobbes’s ethics and morality include Gert 2010. More general overviews with a lot of biographical details include Martinich 1999, Rogow 1986, Sorell 2008, and Tuck 1989.
  8.  
  9. Baumgold, Deborah. Hobbes’s Political Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
  10. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11. For Baumgold, Hobbes’s concerns are chiefly about elite ambition, civil unrest, and the dangers of factional strife. In this way she changes the conversation about Hobbes from one primarily concerned with morality and philosophy to one concerned with politics.
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Finn, Stephen. Thomas Hobbes: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2007.
  14. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. Explores Hobbes’s philosophical methodology, detailing Hobbes’s theories of metaphysics, epistemology, and political and theological principles. Finn encourages the reader to consider their own moral positions in terms of Hobbes’s consideration of these questions.
  16. Find this resource:
  17. Gert, Bernard. Hobbes: Prince of Peace. New York: Polity, 2010.
  18. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. Gert seeks to show that Hobbes is not a psychological egoist and that he offers a much richer and more nuanced approach to political and moral questions than such a view would allow. For Gert, Hobbes demonstrates a moral system based on the possibility of human virtue. In this way, Gert makes an argument similar to thinkers such as the author of Deigh 1996 (cited under Ethics, Egoism, and Moral Science).
  20. Find this resource:
  21. Malcolm, Noel. Aspects of Hobbes. London: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  22. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  23. Malcolm covers a gamut of issues related to Hobbes including his relationship to the Virginia Company, his understanding of science, the nature of international relations in Hobbes’ system, the meaning and history of the frontispiece of Leviathan, and his relation to several contemporaries.
  24. Find this resource:
  25. Martinich, A. P. Hobbes: A Biography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  26. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27. Martinich situates Hobbes in the political, cultural, social, religious, and philosophical contexts of his time, considering questions of the rise of modern science and the events of the English Civil War, among other issues, as major influences on Hobbes’s work.
  28. Find this resource:
  29. Reik, Miriam. The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1977.
  30. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  31. Reik deals with questions of Hobbes’s philosophy of science as well as his relationship to classical and Renaissance humanism. She also deals with the many controversies that swirled around Hobbes in his own lifetime and the way that Hobbes dealt with (and generally outlived) his critics.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. Rogow, Arnold. Thomas Hobbes: Radical in the Service of Reaction. London: Norton, 1986.
  34. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Rogow attempts to write an intellectual biography of Hobbes, while acknowledging the many gaps that exist in our knowledge of his life.
  36. Find this resource:
  37. Sorell, Tom. Hobbes. London: Routledge, 2008.
  38. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  39. Sorell emphasizes Hobbes’s metaphysics and philosophy of science as well as his psychology. He denies that Hobbes is a psychological egoist even as he grapples with the fact that he considers Hobbes not to be a fully moral thinker.
  40. Find this resource:
  41. Tuck, Richard. Hobbes. London: Oxford University Press, 1989.
  42. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  43. Provides an overview of Hobbes’s life and writings. Among Tuck’s claims about Hobbes is that he probably was an atheist even though he was not as pessimistic about human nature as many often assume. Tuck also defends Hobbes from the claim that he was a totalitarian.
  44. Find this resource:
  45. Edited Volumes
  46.  
  47. There are several important edited volumes on Hobbes that have come out in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Perhaps in particular, two editions of the Cambridge Companion series—one on Hobbes in general (Sorell 1996) and one on Leviathan (Springborg 2007)—offer critical insights into Hobbes’s life and work. Hirschmann, et al. 2012 offers a feminist perspective on Hobbes, whereas Dietz 1990 and Sorell and Foisneau 2004 offer more general contentions with Hobbes’s political theory (the latter focusing on Leviathan).
  48.  
  49. Dietz, Mary, ed. Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
  50. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  51. This edited volume has essays from scholars ranging from Sheldon Wolin to David Johnston and Deborah Baumgold.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. Hirschmann, Nancy J., and Joanne H. Wright, eds. Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
  54. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  55. This edition features many prominent writers such as S. A. Lloyd, Carole Pateman, and Susanne Sreedhar in considering the promise (or failure) of Hobbes’s work with regard to feminist theory.
  56. Find this resource:
  57. Sorell, Tom, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  58. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521410193Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  59. This volume contains many essays by well-known Hobbes scholars including Richard Tuck and Alan Ryan. The essays cover the fundamentals of Hobbesian thought, ranging from the question of his relationship to the sciences to his moral and political philosophy.
  60. Find this resource:
  61. Sorell, Tom, and Luc Foisneau. Leviathan after 350 Years. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  62. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199264612.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  63. Contains essays by some of the most prominent Hobbes scholars: Richard Tuck, Quentin Skinner, Edwin Curley, A. P Martinich, Noel Malcolm, and several others.
  64. Find this resource:
  65. Springborg, Patricia, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. By Thomas Hobbes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  66. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  67. This volume, including essays by Gabriella Slomp, Quentin Skinner, and Edwin Curley, covers each of the four parts of Leviathan.
  68. Find this resource:
  69. Works of Hobbes
  70.  
  71. Hobbes’s writings span many decades and cover many issues. In terms of his political writings, they can be divided into two fields. The major works are those for which Hobbes is best known and which most clearly address issues of politics. Other works of his touch on political questions and also engage with his many critics who attacked him for his expressed beliefs.
  72.  
  73. Major Political Works
  74.  
  75. The most important works of Hobbes are Elements of Law (Hobbes 2008), De Corpore (Hobbes 1981), De Cive (Hobbes 1991a), Leviathan (Hobbes 1991b), and Behemoth (Hobbes 2009). While there are many elements in common in these texts (especially among the first four), there are also important differences. Some scholars argue that De Cive is a text that more accurately reveals Hobbes’s political theory because its writing does not reflect the state of emergency in England that Leviathan was written in response to.
  76.  
  77. Hobbes, Thomas. De Corpore. Translated by A. P. Martinich. Edited by Isabel C. Hungerland and George R. Vick. New York: Abaris, 1981.
  78. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  79. The full text in English is also available in the Molesworth edition of Hobbes’s collected works (The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury). Written in 1655, De Corpore treats questions of foundational philosophy, logic, abstract bodies, geometry, and natural phenomena. The full Latin text is also available in print with an introduction by Karl Schuhmann (Paris: Vrin 1999).
  80. Find this resource:
  81. Hobbes, Thomas. Man and Citizen: De Homine and De Cive. Edited by Bernard Gert. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991a.
  82. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  83. De Homine is a tract on human nature that engages some of the same ideas discussed in Leviathan. De Cive is one of Hobbes’s most important books apart from Leviathan. There, he develops his ideas about the state of nature, the laws of nature, the origins of law, and the rights and duties of citizens and their rulers.
  84. Find this resource:
  85. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991b.
  86. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  87. See also Noel Malcolm’s Clarendon Press edition from 2012. See also Edwin Curley’s edition, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994). Hobbes’s magnum opus starts with the most basic of human senses and builds up to an argument for the causes of war and the best fence against it. In the first parts of the book, Hobbes makes his arguments for humanities natural condition and the need for sovereignty. In the second half of the book, he focuses on a parallel story of the origin of government, based on God’s rule over ancient Israel.
  88. Find this resource:
  89. Hobbes, Thomas. Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  90. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  91. Originally published in 1640, this treatise is composed of two parts, Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. It represents Hobbes’s first major treatise in response to the crisis of government in England between king and parliament.
  92. Find this resource:
  93. Hobbes, Thomas. Behemoth or The Long Parliament. Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.
  94. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  95. This is Hobbes’s retelling of the English Civil War in the form of a dialogue between “A” and “B” (with “A” playing the role of Hobbes’s foil in the text and “B” serving as his student). Here, Hobbes revisits many of his ideas about the causes of war via a specific (by then historic) example.
  96. Find this resource:
  97. Other Works Related to Politics
  98.  
  99. Hobbes wrote prodigiously during his long life. Some of his earlier texts, most famously his translation of Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War (Hobbes 1989), reflect Hobbes’s training in classical scholarship and humanism. Some of his later works delve into philosophy and science and their relationship to politics. These include Hobbes 2000 and Hobbes 1976. Other texts involve struggles with some of Hobbes’s contemporary critics including Hobbes 1999 and Hobbes 2010, both of which were written as part of Hobbes’s long struggle with John Bramhall. Another work, Hobbes 2011, involves Hobbes’s struggle with John Wallis. Hobbes 1997 engages with questions of law. In terms of Hobbes’s collected works, the Moleskin edition has been dominant but with the addition of the new Clarendon series, there is a fresh interpretation of many of Hobbes’s key texts. Malcolm 1998 is a key collection of Hobbes’s letters.
  100.  
  101. Hobbes, Thomas. Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined. London: Bradford University Press, 1976.
  102. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  103. Hobbes argues against Thomas White’s attempt to contain Galileo within traditional understandings of epistemology and cosmology. Hobbes argues instead that Galileo’s break with traditional scholarship is radical, issuing a clear separation between science and faith.
  104. Find this resource:
  105. Hobbes, Thomas. The Peloponnesian War: The Complete Hobbes Translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
  106. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. A translation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War published in 1629, this book is often read as Hobbes offering a denouncement of democracy and a preference for monarchy.
  108. Find this resource:
  109. Hobbes, Thomas. A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
  110. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  111. Published posthumously in 1681, this late writing of Hobbes considers the relationship between law and reason. In this work, he seems to depart from his earlier absolute defense of indivisible sovereignty.
  112. Find this resource:
  113. Hobbes, Thomas. Of Liberty and Necessity in Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  114. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139164207Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  115. This was originally published without Hobbes’s permission in 1654 and was part of a long battle with John Bramhall over questions of divine versus material forms of determination. It was later followed by Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance (written in 1656, some of which is excerpted in this same volume, as are some of Bramhall’s responses) that continued in the same vein.
  116. Find this resource:
  117. Hobbes, Thomas. Objections to Descartes in René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  118. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  119. The third objector to Descartes’s Meditations, Hobbes challenges the French philosopher in terms of the degree to which his skepticism is enough. For example, he argues that Descartes collapses the experience of thinking with thinking itself (so that “thinking you are thinking” becomes the same as thinking).
  120. Find this resource:
  121. Hobbes, Thomas. An Answer to a Book Published by Mr. Bramhall. London. Printed for W. Crooke at the Green Dragon without Temple, Barr, 1682. Oxford: Early English Books, 2010.
  122. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. In this text, Hobbes attacks Bramhall’s The Catching of the Leviathan and defends his own position on questions of natural liberty and humanity’s relationship to divinity.
  124. Find this resource:
  125. Hobbes, Thomas. Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners & Religion of Thomas Hobbes, Written by Himself, by Way of Letter to a Learned Person. Oxford: Early English Books, 2011.
  126. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  127. In this 1662 work, Hobbes defends himself from some of the attacks made on him in John Wallis’s Hobbius-Heauton-timorumenos. Among other issues, he disputes the claim that he had betrayed the king by returning from France to England during the post-regicide regime of Oliver Cromwell.
  128. Find this resource:
  129. Collected Works
  130.  
  131. In terms of his collected works, Hobbes 1997 is the oldest and best-known collection. Hobbes 2012 is part of an ongoing series with some important textual innovations.
  132.  
  133. Hobbes, Thomas. The Collected English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Edited by William Molesworth. London: Routledge, 1997.
  134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  135. Arguably the most comprehensive collection of Hobbes’s writing in one edition. Molesworth also has a complete set of Hobbes’s works that were written in Latin.
  136. Find this resource:
  137. Hobbes, Thomas. Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon, 2012.
  138. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. The editorial board for this set of volumes consists of Noel Malcolm, Simon Shaffer, Quentin Skinner, and Sir Keith Thomas. This collection is still in progress.
  140. Find this resource:
  141. Letters
  142.  
  143. Malcolm 1998 is probably the best and most comprehensive resource for Hobbes’s letters.
  144.  
  145. Malcolm, Noel, ed. The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes. By Thomas Hobbes. London: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  146. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  147. This collection of letters is the first complete collection of Hobbes’s correspondence.
  148. Find this resource:
  149. Hobbes and his Contemporaries
  150.  
  151. In his long life, Hobbes had many critics. He was long at the center of various controversies ranging from scientific questions about the nature of the vacuum and geometry to questions about one’s duty to a defeated sovereign, to questions of theology and human nature. Hobbes fought back vigorously against his many detractors. Bowle 1951, Mintz 1993, and Rogers 2007 give general overviews of Hobbes’s engagements with his intellectual adversaries. Parkin 2007 characterizes the way that Hobbes’s work was received and responded to in his own time. Bramhall 1995 represents one of the many attacks on Hobbes by his contemporaries. Jackson 2007 gives a lot of insight into the struggle between Hobbes and Bramhall. Curley 1992 reflects on the relationship between Hobbes and Spinoza.
  152.  
  153. Bowle, John. Hobbes and his Critics: A Study in Seventeenth Century Constitutionalism. London: Cape, 1951.
  154. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  155. Bowle examines many instances of criticisms made of Hobbes by his contemporaries, including some that accuse Hobbes of being an anarchist and an atheist.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Bramhall, John. “The Catching of the Leviathan, or the Great Whale.” In Leviathan: Contemporary Responses to the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by G. A. J. Rogers, 115–179. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes, 1995.
  158. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  159. Bramhall was one of Hobbes’s great adversaries in his own lifetime. He accused Hobbes of “blasphemous opinions” and for preaching atheism and further suggested that Hobbes had himself in mind for the figure of the Leviathan, among many other charges.
  160. Find this resource:
  161. Curley, Edwin. “I Durst Not Write So Boldly.” Hobbes and Spinoza, Scienza e Politica Atti del Convegno Internazionale Urbino 14–17 October 1988. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1992.
  162. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  163. Curley argues here that Hobbes sees in Spinoza’s own radical views, especially in terms of the way that theology intersects with politics, an illumination of his own theory, which is therefore much more radical than Hobbes himself would have normally admitted.
  164. Find this resource:
  165. Jackson, N. D. Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  166. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511495830Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. Jackson gives a great deal of context for the debate between Hobbes and Bramhall, including aspects of both their public and private disagreements as well as the connection between their arguments and the events of the English Civil War and the Interregnum.
  168. Find this resource:
  169. Mintz, Samuel. The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. New York: Bantam, 1993.
  170. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  171. Mintz focuses on the way that Hobbes’s contemporaries reacted to his views on morality and materialism as well as giving an overview of the intellectual ferment of the 17th century of which Hobbes was a major part.
  172. Find this resource:
  173. Parkin, Jon. Taming the Leviathan: The Reception of the Political and Religious Ideas of Thomas Hobbes in England, 1640–1700. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  174. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511720499Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  175. Parkin argues that Hobbes’s work was too important to be either ignored or simply denounced by his contemporaries. Instead, they sought to “tame” his work by denouncing the author but often taking his positions on as their own (however subtly or not so subtly altered).
  176. Find this resource:
  177. Rogers, G. A. J. “Hobbes and his Contemporaries.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. By G. A. J. Rogers, 413–440. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  178. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670.019Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. Rogers describes the extent to which Hobbes was a highly controversial figure in his own lifetime, accused as he was of heresy, atheism, and disloyalty to the Crown. He also discusses the way that many of Hobbes’s works were pitched toward various interlocutors.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Political Ideas
  182.  
  183. Hobbes was a voracious political thinker, and his ideas set some of the most basic tenets of the Western canon. The major questions he raises concern his understanding of natural law, the relationship between liberty and necessity, social contract theory, the political theory of representation, sovereignty, war and international relations, the relationship between science and politics, and questions of gender and race.
  184.  
  185. Natural Law
  186.  
  187. Hobbes’s understanding of natural law is one of his most critical contributions to philosophy and political thought. The key question that scholars focus on in this regard is the nature of human agency: are we basically motivated by fear and greed, or are there more moral and ethical aspects that stem from natural law theory? Bobbio 1989 is one of the best-known works that describes Hobbes’s natural law theory. Warrender 1957 argues that natural law is infused with divine (and moral) truth. His argument has received many counterarguments over the years including Nagel 1959 and Barry 1968. Hoekstra 2007 takes somewhat of a middle position, arguing that Hobbes used the trappings of divine law to sell his view of law in the state of nature. Hoekstra 1997 deals with the nature of covenants and whether they can be broken. Deigh 1996 (cited under Ethics, Egoism, and Moral Science) argues against reading Hobbes as an egoist as does Lloyd 2014. Zagorin 2009 and Birmingham 2011 offer arguments that expand the way we normally think about the state of nature and human motivations.
  188.  
  189. Barry, Brian. “Warrender and His Critics.” Philosophy 43 (1968): 117–137.
  190. DOI: 10.1017/S0031819100009001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  191. Brian argues that Warrender errs in making obligation for Hobbes stem from humankind’s relation to God. He claims that Hobbes’s understanding of the laws of nature gives sufficient means by which to derive a practicable form of obligation.
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Birmingham, Peg. “Arendt and Hobbes: Glory, Sacrificial Violence, and the Political Imagination.” Research in Phenomenology 41.1 (2011): 1–22.
  194. DOI: 10.1163/156916411X558864Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  195. In this essay, Birmingham argues that for Hobbes, the subject is not motivated by fear but rather for the desire for glory and immortality (see Cooper 2010, cited under Social Contract Theory and its arguments on this question). She connects this view to a reading of Hannah Arendt wherein such desires can be harnessed to cause the subject to bear the responsibility for a world that continues beyond them.
  196. Find this resource:
  197. Bobbio, Norberto. Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
  198. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  199. Bobbio describes Hobbes’s relationship both to natural law and legal positivism (and reading Hobbes as being closer to the latter). He also denies that Hobbes fits neatly into either the liberal or totalitarian camp and claims that he is devoted above all to the state.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Hoekstra, Kinch. “Hobbes and the Foole.” Political Theory 25.5 (1997): 620–654.
  202. DOI: 10.1177/0090591797025005002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. Hoekstra argues that Hobbes’s answer to the fool who says that one should break covenants whenever one likes is not simply (as others argue) that one must never break covenants. Instead, Hoekstra claims that for Hobbes there are certain highly limited circumstances under which it is justified to break covenants.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Hoekstra, Kinch. “Hobbes on the Natural Condition of Mankind.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Edited by Patricia Springborg, 109–127. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  206. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  207. Hoekstra argues that Hobbes, perhaps recognizing the shock that his views of human nature would have on his contemporaries, steeped his discussion in ideas of divinely given human goodness, aligning his claims with biblical and classical tropes in order for his ideas to have the widest and best possible reception.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Lloyd, S. A. Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  210. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  211. Lloyd challenges the idea that the laws of nature are egoistic and self-preserving. Instead she reads them as moral precepts focusing on the concept of reciprocity and that can be applied to a good and collective life.
  212. Find this resource:
  213. Nagel, Thomas. “Hobbes’s Concept of Obligations.” Philosophical Review 68 (1959): 68–83.
  214. DOI: 10.2307/2182547Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. Nagel opposes Warrender’s view of Hobbes’s theological basis for obligation with a rational egoist view instead. He says that no moral obligation could exist for Hobbes that conflicted with self-interest.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Warrender, Howard. The Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation. London: Oxford University Press, 1957.
  218. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  219. Warrender argues that Hobbes’s concept of God underpins his theory of obligation and that no purely egoistic understanding of Hobbes would suffice to allow the transition from the state of nature into civil society.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Zagorin, Perez. Hobbes and the Law of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. Zagorin argues that the idea of natural law eclipses even sovereignty in Hobbes’s theory. Far from conceiving human beings as purely self-interested creatures who must obey the state due to fear, Zagorin sees in Hobbes a model for action that is both moral and transcendent over political expediency.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Liberty and Necessity
  226.  
  227. The controversy about Hobbes’s understanding of liberty began in his own lifetime with his battles with John Bramhall. Ever since, Hobbes has been both attacked and defended for his ideas about liberty. His notion that liberty and necessity are complementary causes many to consider that he does not have any real theory of liberty at all. Yet, at the same time, some authors insist that Hobbes devotion to liberty is genuine and that we cannot really properly think of liberty, at least in a secular context, without taking his contributions into account. Skinner 2008 is perhaps one of the most important books in this regard, arguing that Hobbes effectively ends a classical—and superior—form of liberty. Kramer 2001 challenges this view. Lloyd 1992, Pettit 2005, and Frost 2008 complicate and seek to improve or expand Hobbes’s notion of liberty. Brett 1997 gives some of the historical origins of Hobbes’s ideas on rights and liberty. Warrender 1957 (cited under Natural Law) and Tralau 2011 offer more redemptory versions of Hobbes’s understanding of liberty.
  228.  
  229. Brett, Annabel. Liberty, Right and Nature: Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  230. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  231. In the final chapter of this book, Brett locates Hobbes’s concept of rights in its historical context, looking at theological, philosophical, and legal sources. She focuses on the influences of Spanish neo-Thomists (and especially Vázquez) on Protestant jurisprudence and on Hobbes in particular.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Frost, Samantha. Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.
  234. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. Frost explores Hobbes’s materialism and the way it applies to human actions. She sees that far from rendering us into robotic automatons, for Hobbes our material nature (which is determinate in his view) gives us such an infinitely varied set of responses that we are effectively free creatures.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Kramer, Matthew H. “Freedom, Unfreedom and Skinner’s Hobbes.” Journal of Political Philosophy 9.2 (2001): 204–216.
  238. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9760.00125Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  239. This essay at least partially defends the modern concept of negative liberty that Skinner attributes to Hobbes against Skinner’s own claims that the civic-republican (or neo-Roman) model of liberty is superior.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Lloyd, S. A. Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  242. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511611971Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  243. Lloyd discusses various notions of Hobbes concerning liberty. She discusses how he favors practical over metaphysical liberty and how in his view republican concepts of liberty pose a threat to the social order. This book also seeks to refute the idea that for Hobbes the fear of death is the overriding determinant of all human actions. Instead, Lloyd looks to transcendent interests in Hobbes’s theory that override this fear and make us capable of better responses.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Pettit, Philip. “Liberty and Leviathan.” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 4.1 (February 2005): 131–151.
  246. DOI: 10.1177/1470594X05049439Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. Pettit argues that for Hobbes only actually exercised power reduced a people’s freedom, not its mere potential. He also points out that for Hobbes, sovereign power is all the same; whether in its republican or dictatorial form, the effect on freedom is the same regardless of the source.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Skinner, Quentin. Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  250. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. Skinner argues that Hobbes replaces the Roman model whereby a citizen got their freedom from society with a new sense of freedom entailing being unencumbered by constraints. See also Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press [Canto Classics], 2012).
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Tralau, Johan. “Hobbes contra Liberty of Conscience.” Political Theory 39.1 (2011): 85–111.
  254. DOI: 10.1177/0090591710386698Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. Tralau argues that it is not the case that Hobbes grants citizens the right to think what they like even as they obey the sovereign. Tralau claims that Hobbes creates a public conscience that tends to trump any private one. For this reason, the supposed right to private conscious is effectively nullified.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Social Contract Theory
  258.  
  259. Social Contract theory is one of Hobbes’s chief contributions to political thought. The idea that there is an implied contract wherein we give up our natural liberty in exchange for a more limited but more effective form of liberty in society is a key centerpiece of his thought. The social contract is Hobbes’s way to recreate a basis for consent in a society where existing ideas about divine right and other more traditional forms of authority were losing their power to compel obedience and order. Hampton 1986 is one of the best-known works in this regard, reading Hobbes through the rational actor model. Slomp 2000 criticizes her findings. Bernasconi 1997 and Kahn 2004 offer more contingent and complicated readings of Hobbesian social contract theory. Matheron 2008, Button 2010, and Cooper 2010 argue for the social and educative benefits of social contract theory. Kramer 1997 focuses on the paradoxical and even impossible aspects of the social contract.
  260.  
  261. Bernasconi, Robert. “Opening the Future: The Paradox of Promising in the Hobbesian Social Contract.” Philosophy Today 41 (Spring 1997): 77–86.
  262. DOI: 10.5840/philtoday199741120Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. Bernasconi considers the paradox that the social contract binds people as a community, which cannot exist before the moment of forming the social contract by mutual promising. He argues that it makes more sense to consider the social contract in Hobbes as a means for producing individual identity.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Button, Mark E. Contract, Culture, and Citizenship: Transformative Liberalism from Hobbes to Rawls. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
  266. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  267. Button argues that the social contract, in addition to its function of keeping a community politically unified, has a social and educational value as well; the social contract educates citizens and helps them to develop modes of being together that enrich and not just maintain the polity.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Cooper, Julie. “Vainglory, Modesty and Political Agency in the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes.” Review of Politics 72.2 (Spring 2010): 241–269.
  270. DOI: 10.1017/S0034670510000045Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. Cooper argues that in denouncing vainglory, Hobbes is not limited to a rejection of behaviors that are not conducive to political community. He also promotes those qualities that are necessary to make a community truly adhere and function at its best.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Hampton, Jean. Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
  274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. Hampton applies rational actor theory to a reading of Hobbes in order to argue for a geometry-based methodology in his work. She argues that Hobbes offers not so much social contracts as conventions that each individual can turn to in terms of their own relationship to sovereignty and authority.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Kahn, Victoria. Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England: 1640–1674. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. Kahn looks at the ways that the construction of social contract theory in Hobbes is both political and literary in nature. Accordingly, the notion of the social contract is not as determining as often believed but is instead open to multiple interpretations and outcomes.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Kramer, Matthew. Hobbes and the Paradoxes of Political Origins. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.
  282. DOI: 10.1057/9780230373778Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. Kramer looks at the how the origin story of the social contract contains paradoxes that render the story itself impossible.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Matheron, Alexandre. “The Theoretical Function of Democracy in Spinoza and Hobbes.” In The New Spinoza. Edited by Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, 207–218. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. Matheron argues that for Hobbes, every form of sovereignty (whether monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form) presupposes a democratic origin in so far as the state of nature mandates a collective state of being together as the point of origin.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Slomp, Gabriella. Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.
  290. DOI: 10.1057/9780333984437Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. For Slomp, glory seeking is one of the prime motivators for human beings in Hobbes. Arguing against Jean Hampton, in this book, Slomp argues that the rational actor could not find a way out of the state of nature and states that the sovereign is developed as a solution to the limits of the rational actor model under such conditions.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Representation
  294.  
  295. Hobbes’s theory of representation has been called both a “trick” (by Hanna Pitkin) and alternatively been considered the basis of liberal theories of the state. On the one hand, he calls citizens the “authors” of sovereignty, suggesting a great deal of influence and power on their part; but then his actual descriptions of representation appear to give people almost no say in their own governance. This paradox is worked out and argued over throughout the literature. Pitkin 1967 is one of the key texts on Hobbes and representation. Both Pitkin and Panagia 2003 assert that Hobbes’s theory offers more than initially meets the eye. Skinner 2005 offers a historical context for Hobbes’s theories. Vieira 2009 looks at Hobbes’s theory of representation as a phenomenon that moves beyond a strictly political calculus.
  296.  
  297. Panagia, Davide. “Delicate Discriminations: Thomas Hobbes’s Science of Politics.” Polity 36.1 (2003): 91–114.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. Panagia challenges the view of Hobbes as a strict nominalist by looking at the ways that representation functions as an aesthetic practice in his work. For Panagia, the sovereign is not merely a unifier of popular thinking but rather serves as the site upon which opinions are produced and move back and forth between sovereign and subject.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Pitkin, Hanna. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
  302. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. Pitkin argues that Hobbes offers a seemingly empty definition of popular sovereignty insofar as all the power converges in the sovereign. Yet, she points out that the examples he picks to illustrate the notion of representation (an actor, a legal guardian, a lawyer) suggest a complication of that one-sidedness insofar as those examples are far more nuanced and suggestive of a more interactive model.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Skinner, Quentin. “Hobbes on Representation.” European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2005): 155–184.
  306. DOI: 10.1111/j.0966-8373.2005.00226.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. Skinner argues that Hobbes did not innovate the idea of political representation but rather was responding to ideas already extant in his time. He argues that Leviathan in particular is written to oppose the kinds of ideas promoted by the Levellers and many parliamentarian writers, among others, that would have promoted a far more egalitarian view of representation.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Vieira, Monica Brito. The Elements of Representation in Hobbes: Aesthetics, Theatre, Law, and Theology in the Construction of Hobbes’ theory of the State. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009.
  310. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004181748.i-286Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. Vieira looks at Hobbes’s theory of representation and argues that, rather than conceive it narrowly as a purely political phenomenon, it needs to be considered in a larger context, linking it to the imagination and the power of human artifice.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Sovereignty
  314.  
  315. Hobbes’s notion of the sovereign is the centerpiece of his work. The frontispiece of Leviathan, which depicts a giant figure itself composed of myriad subjects, suggests the duality of his view; the sovereign is at once over the people and of the people. The nature of the sovereign and its connection to the people it rules remain a source of discussion and controversy. To some extent, Hobbes’s political reputation and the question of whether he is embraced by liberals, conservatives, or even those on the left, depends on how Hobbes is read in this regard. A related question about sovereignty is the source of the sovereign’s power, whether it is performative (i.e., having its source of authority via its own self-enactment), simply an extension of the social contract, or whether it has some other source. Pye 1984, Coleman 1998, and Martel 2007 deal with the relationship between sovereign authority and political idolatry. Parry 1969 and Bertman 1978 deal with sovereignty and the question of performativity. Fitzpatrick 2001 and Sreedhar 2010 show that there are more rights for the citizen than initially appear in Hobbes’s understanding of sovereignty. Schmitt 1996 argues forcefully for an absolute model of sovereignty while Sorell 2004 shows how this power does not mean that the sovereign will never defer to popular will.
  316.  
  317. Bertman, Martin. “Hobbes and Performatives.” Critica 10.30 (December 1978): 41–52.
  318. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. Bertman argues against the idea that Hobbes’s notion of the performative is akin to J. L. Austin’s work in How to Do Things with Words. In the case of the sovereign, what is performed is not custom but rather the sovereign’s own authority. In this way such performances are not conventional in the normal (and Austinian) sense of the word.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Coleman, Frank. “Hobbes’s Iconoclasm.” Political Research Quarterly 51.4 (1998): 987–1010.
  322. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  323. Coleman argues that in his depictions of sovereignty, Hobbes comes dangerously close to practicing the very sorts of political idolatry that he condemns as a religious practice. However, in the end, Coleman argues that Hobbes avoids this contradiction (at least to some extent).
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Fitzpatrick, Peter. Modernism and the Grounds of Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  326. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. Fitzpatrick argues that in addition to the sovereign’s authoritarian power, there is also a “demotic” law that precludes and even diminishes sovereign authority. Hobbes’s sovereign is, for Fitzpatrick, at times forced to respond to the subjects via a process of “empathic engagement.”
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Martel, James. Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
  330. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. Martel argues that Hobbes can be read as being far more resistant to sovereign authority than we ordinarily assume. He sees Hobbes’s challenge to the reader to “Read thy self” as setting up an alternative form of interpretation to the sovereign’s power to read or interpret for all of us. He also sees elements of resistance in Hobbes’s theology especially in terms of Hobbes’s discussion of political idolatry.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Parry, Geraint. “Performative Utterances and Obligation in Hobbes.” Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1969): 246–252.
  334. DOI: 10.2307/2218158Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Parry argues that for Hobbes, the power of sovereignty comes, not from the fear of sovereignty per se, but rather through the performative acts used to make the covenant. He sees Hobbes as anticipating Austin’s notion of promises as performative utterances in this regard.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Pye, Christopher. “The Sovereign, the Theater, and the Kingdome of Darknesse: Hobbes and the Spectacle of Power.” Representations 8 (Fall 1984): 85–106.
  338. DOI: 10.1525/rep.1984.8.1.99p00834Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. Pye discusses the ways that Hobbes appropriates the tools of fetishism (normally something he is highly critical of) in order to promote allegiance to the sovereign.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Schmitt, Carl. The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political System. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. Schmitt argues that as itself, the social contract cannot produce sovereignty. For Schmitt, sovereignty is not the sum total of individual wills. He tells us that the individuals in question “evoke” rather than create sovereignty and that sovereign authority is, in fact, unto itself.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Sorell, Tom. “The Burdensome Freedom of Sovereigns.” In Leviathan After 350 Years. Edited by Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau, 183–196. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004.
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. Sorell examines the question of how the sovereign deals with his or her natural passions insofar as this figure, unlike every other person in the commonwealth, is perfectly free. Sorell argues that although not formally bound to self-control, it remains in the sovereign’s personal interest to act in ways that benefit the larger community.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Sreedhar, Susanne. Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  350. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511762376Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. This book takes Hobbes’s assertions that citizens do have some rights of resistance seriously. Sreedhar argues that although Hobbes wrote Leviathan with an eye toward stabilizing the state, he allows a quieter expression of the right to rebel that can be found in his text, even if it is not highlighted.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. War and International Relations
  354.  
  355. Hobbes is famous for articulating the condition that many realists consider to be the de facto situation between nations; where an overarching sovereignty is absent, the (Hobbesian) theory is that there is no recourse for the weak and the strong can do whatever they please. Some have contested this view, arguing that, in fact, Hobbes’s theory of war is more nuanced (as is his theory of the state of nature which underlies this understanding of war in the international context). Thivet 2008 and Dyzenhaus 2014 argue against reading Hobbes as a realist. Abizadeh 2011 focuses on the psychological aspects of warfare for Hobbes, and Pasqualucci 1990 examines the ways that the threat of war is endemic to human societies for Hobbes.
  356.  
  357. Abizadeh, Arash. “Hobbes on the Causes of War: A Disagreement Theory.” American Political Science Review 105.2 (May 2011): 298–315.
  358. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055411000098Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. Abizadeh argues that war for Hobbes is primarily psychological and ideological. For this reason, applying Hobbes’s analysis to international relations, Abizadeh claims that soft power is just as important as military force in terms of preventing or preempting conflict.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Dyzenhaus, David. “Hobbes on the International Rule of Law.” Ethics and International Affairs, Spring 28.1 (2014): 53–64.
  362. DOI: 10.1017/S0892679414000057Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. Dyzenhaus argues that realists miss some of the complexity of Hobbes’s thought about international relations. Hobbes does not assume that states cannot act with restraint. Instead he offers insights about how to construct practices so that international law can avoid the mayhem that is possible when states behave purely according to self-interest.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Pasqualucci, Paolo. “Hobbes and the Myth of ‘Final War.’” Journal of the History of Ideas 51.4 (1990): 647–657.
  366. DOI: 10.2307/2709650Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. Pasqualucci deals with Hobbes’s notion of a final war, which is an ultimate breakdown of society to the point where there is no real chance for peace and the struggle over resources becomes desperate. Pasqualucci tells us that for Hobbes, the danger of overpopulation is the principle reason that war can never be entirely eliminated from human life.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Thivet, Delphine. “Thomas Hobbes: A Philosopher of War or Peace?” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16.4 (2008): 701–721.
  370. DOI: 10.1080/09608780802407407Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. Thivet separates Hobbes from the realist perspective that he is often associated with when it comes to war. She argues that Hobbes proffers a more normative approach to war and does not condone the kind of violent free-for-all that is often ascribed to him.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Science and Politics
  374.  
  375. Hobbes spent a great deal of time writing and thinking about various branches of science: optics, physics, and mathematics (geometry in particular). Inevitably, his considerations of science had important philosophical and political connotations. His major battles during his lifetime over questions of science, especially with John Wallis and Robert Boyle, had deep political connotations and so the stakes for Hobbes were always high in these debates. Jesseph 1999 focuses on Hobbes’s battles with Wallis while Shapin and Schaffer 1985 discusses his battles with Boyle. Goldsmith 1966, Foisneau 1990, and Miller 2011 engage in what Hobbes saw as the social and political benefits of thinking along scientific and mathematical lines. Leijenhorst 2007 and Spragens 2014 look at the relationship between Hobbesian and Aristotelian versions of science.
  376.  
  377. Foisneau, Luc. “Les savants dans la Cité (the wisemen in the City).” In Thomas Hobbes. Edited by J. Bernhard, and Y. C. Zarka, 181–192. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1990.
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. Foisneau discusses Hobbes’s “science of politics.” He argues that Hobbes felt that an appreciation for the sciences on the part of the sovereign would be beneficial for the state and the citizenry as a whole.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Goldsmith, M. M. Hobbes’s Science of Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. Goldsmith attempts to take Hobbes’s claim to use science as a model for his political theory seriously. Starting with Hobbes’s most basic suppositions, Goldsmith shows how Hobbes attempts to build this foundation into a systematic and science-based logic of politics.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Jesseph, D. M. Squaring the Circle: The War Between Hobbes and Wallis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. Discusses the extensive dispute between Hobbes and John Wallis over the nature of Euclidean geometry. Wallis opposed both Hobbes’s mathematics as well as his materialist claims about the power and reach of geometry in political and social terms.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Leijenhorst, Cees. “Sense and Nonsense about Sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on Sense Perception and Imagination.” In The Cambridge companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Edited by P. Springborg, 82–108. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  390. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. Leijenhorst argues that Leviathan begins with the question of sense perception in order to combat what he saw as a deep-seated Aristotleanism (especially in its contemporary form) whose basic cosmology undermined the kind of statehood that Hobbes himself was seeking to promote.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Miller, Ted H. Mortal Gods; Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. Miller argues that, rather than reading Hobbes as moving from one distinct phase of thinking to another, we can think of his work in a unified fashion when we look at his belief in the persuasive power of mathematical logic. For Miller, Hobbes’s mathematical science is creative and humanistic and is the bedrock of his political thought.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Shapin, Steven, and Schaffer, Simon. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
  398. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. The authors consider the debate between Hobbes and Robert Boyle over the question of the existence of vacuums. In his resistance to the idea of a vacuum, they argue that Hobbes is demonstrating not only a scientific but a political point: that there is no space in the world that is not filled by sovereign authority.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Spragens, Thomas. The Politics of Motion: The World of Thomas Hobbes. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014.
  402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. Spragens discusses the relationship between Hobbes and Aristotelian science. Although he formally rejects it, for Spragens, Hobbes borrowed a great deal from Aristotelian cosmology even as he adapted it for his own political and moral purposes.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Gender
  406.  
  407. Hobbes is usually seen as hostile to feminism and generally either uninterested in or actively opposed to questions of gender equity; however, some have found in Hobbes a resource on which to draw a critique of patriarchy and an affirmative feminist politics. Slomp 2006, Sreedhar 2012, and Ng 2012 argue that Hobbes actually offers women some advantages in his understanding of the state of nature and the political nature of gender. Okin 1980, Di Stefano 1983, Pateman 1988, and Schochet 2012 argue that, on the contrary, Hobbes’s state of nature is already gendered and he extends this inequality into his understanding of society. Hirschman 2012 qualifies Schochet’s view with an understanding of women’s perspective on these matters.
  408.  
  409. Di Stefano, Christine. “Masculinity as Ideology in Political Theory: Hobbesian Man Considered.” Women’s Studies International Forum 6.6 (1983).
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. Di Stefano criticizes Hobbes for denying the role of maternity in the state of nature. She argues that Hobbes is committed to masculinity and embeds it into his most basic “epistemology, ontology and intellectual style” (p. 634).
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Hirschman, Nancy. “Gordon Schochet on Hobbes, Gratitude and Woman.” In Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Joanne H. Wright, 125–148. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. Responding to an essay by Gordon Schochet in the same volume, Hirschman argues that while Schochet is correct in his claim that Hobbes carries patriarchal authoritarianism over from the state of nature into society, he neglects to narrate this story by including the question and perspective of women—a situation she addresses in her own essay.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Ng, Su Fang. “Hobbes and the Bestial Body of Sovereignty.” In Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Joanne H. Wright, 83–104. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. Ng argues that in many of his stories about the state of nature and historical examples, Hobbes seeks to de-gender bodies, offering new opportunities for thinking about gender without subsuming it to the usual hierarchies and orthodoxies.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Okin, Susan Moller. Women in Western Political Thought. London: Virago, 1980.
  422. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. Okin argues that while Hobbes seems to offer some equality to women, he is generally not willing to engage in questions of gender equality and instead lets unequal conventions of gender remain undisturbed.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Pateman, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.
  426. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. For Pateman, the social contract presupposes a sexual contract. For Pateman, Hobbes allows the sexual contract to determine the status of women even as he generally avoids the question of gender in the social contract altogether (an omission which is itself telling).
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Schochet, Gordon. “Thomas Hobbes on the Family and the State of Nature.” In Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Joanne H. Wright, 105–124. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. Schochet argues that the patriarchal authoritarianism that Hobbes sees in the state of nature becomes transmitted to the state as well.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Slomp, Gabriella. “Hobbes and the Equality of Women.” Political Studies 42.3 (2006): 441–452.
  434. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1994.tb01687.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. Slomp argues that the formal equality of human beings in the state of nature, while not precluding the possibility of patriarchy and gender hierarchy in society, serves as a resource from which to question its necessity or inevitability.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Sreedhar, Susanne. “Toward a Hobbesian Theory of Sexuality.” In Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Nancy J. Hirschmann and Joanne H. Wright, 260–279. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. Sreedhar argues that one can find support in Hobbes’s work for a liberal view of sexuality. Hobbes’s forbearance to discuss any kind of “natural sexuality” is, for Sreedhar, indicative of a refusal to control and delimit human sexual expression.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Race
  442.  
  443. In terms of racial politics, Hobbes’s musing about “savages” in non-sovereign societies has been examined in order to consider the implications for a Hobbesian theory of race. In general, Hobbes’s treatment of race has been found both wanting and problematic. Moloney 2011 and Lott 2002 focus on how Hobbes’s reading of non-Western states as “savage” justifies European imperialism and expansion. Mills 1997 and Hall 2005 focus on the way racism is built into Hobbes’s system (with Mills being more critical than Hall).
  444.  
  445. Hall, Barbara. “Race in Hobbes.” In Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy. Edited by Andrew Valls, 43–56. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. Hall examines Hobbes’s views on “savages,” conquest, and slavery. She concludes that although he is not as blatantly racist as later figures such as Locke, Hobbes’s ideas are problematic enough that he can be justifiably considered to be racist.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Lott, Tommy. “Patriachy and Slavery in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy.” In Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays. Edited by Julie K. Ward and Tommy L. Lott, 63–80. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
  450. DOI: 10.1002/9780470753514Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. Lott offers that Hobbes’s understanding of race allows for the conquest and preemption of nonwhite peoples without requiring an explicitly racist understanding of these communities.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. Mills discusses how the social contract (as envisioned by Hobbes among others) is in fact a deliberate exclusion of people of color and a division of the world between people who matter (i.e., white people) and people who do not (i.e., non-white people).
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Moloney, Pat. “Hobbes, Savagery, and International Anarchy.” American Political Science Review 105.1 (2011): 189–204.
  458. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055410000511Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. Discusses how Hobbes constructed the notion of sovereignty by contrast with a supposed absence of sovereignty in the New World. In doing so, he denied the subjects of the new world any sense of citizenship or politics.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. Evaluating Hobbesian Philosophy
  462.  
  463. Hobbesian philosophy has many resonances with his political theory. In thinking about the contribution that his philosophy makes in this regard, some key issues involve the question of ethics, egoism and moral science, his relationship to liberalism, the political upshot of his theology, and the relationship between language and rhetoric and politics.
  464.  
  465. Ethics, Egoism, and Moral Science
  466.  
  467. Many authors have written about the degree to which Hobbes can be considered an ethical thinker or whether, on the contrary, he is a psychological egoist who sees self-interest as the only motivation for human behavior. On the one hand, Hobbes consistently argues for a moral and civil science. At the same time, his basis of human actions in self-interest and fear of death (among other passions) suggests for many thinkers that he has a less than idealized notion of ethics. Even so, there are scholars who argue against reading Hobbes as being anything but a fully ethical thinker; these writers tend to stress his religious ideas or the way his view of natural law coincides with religious and moral principles. Taylor 1938 and Oakeshott 1975 argue that claims for Hobbes’s egoism is overstated (or, comes from an overreliance on Leviathan, which is seen as being more egoist than many of his other texts). McNeilly 1968, on the other hand, says that it is in fact Leviathan that is the non-egoist text in Hobbes’s opus. Gauthier 1969, Kavka 1986, and Darwall 2000 look at a mixture of egoist and non-egoist sources of motivation, offering that Hobbes is at least somewhat of an ethical thinker. Deigh 1996 and Gert 2010 (cited under General Overviews) reject the egoist hypothesis more firmly. Murphy 2000 critiques Deigh’s position and Lloyd 1992 (cited under Liberty and Necessity) rejects the idea that fear of death (and hence egoism) is the only motivation for human beings in Hobbes’s view.
  468.  
  469. Darwall, Stephen. “Normativity and Projection in Hobbes’s Leviathan.” Philosophical Review 109.3 (July 2000): 169–250.
  470. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. Darwall tries to reconcile Hobbes’s materialism and empiricism with his many normative claims as well as his attempt to make ethics a science. He argues that our desires are projections, not acknowledgments of inherent or teleological goodness. Insofar as desire cannot be shaken, neither can the normative ethics that come along with those desires (distinguishing Hobbes, in Darwall’s view from subjectivist theories of ethics).
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Deigh, John. “Reason and Ethics in Hobbes’s Leviathan.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34.1 (January 1996): 33–60.
  474. DOI: 10.1353/hph.1996.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. Deigh argues that Hobbes is not an egoist. For Deigh, egoism is incompatible with Hobbes’s understanding of reason. Instead, he offers what he calls a “definitivist” interpretation of Hobbes wherein laws of nature are generated by reason and made available to us by linguistic usage.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Gauthier, David. The Logic of Leviathan: The Moral and Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. Gauthier offers that deliberative rationality is the basis for Hobbesian notions of obligation. Although we are free to make any choice that we wish, the “logic of Leviathan” directs each person toward making a decision that refrains from maximizing their own self interest at the expense of others.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Kavka, Gregory S. Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory Princeton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
  482. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  483. Kavka explores the nature of Hobbes’s voluntarism. Kavka describes how rather than having a “golden rule” of ethics, Hobbes offers us a “copper rule” instead: “Do unto others as they do unto you.” For Kavka, Hobbes offers us a mixture of voluntaristic and objective reasons to be moral.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. McNeilly, F. S. The Anatomy of Leviathan. New York: St. Martin’s, 1968.
  486. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. McNeilly argues for a radical break in Hobbes thought when it comes to his moral philosophy. He argues that Hobbes begins from a position of egoistic psychology in his earlier writings (such as De Cive) but abandons this by the time he sets down to write Leviathan.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Murphy, Mark C. “Desire and Ethics in Hobbes’s Leviathan: A Response to Professor Deigh.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.2 (2000): 259–268.
  490. DOI: 10.1353/hph.2005.0078Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. Murphy critiques Deigh’s notion of definitivism as the basis for Hobbes’s theory of ethics. He argues that the orthodox view of Hobbesian ethics is actually superior to definitivism.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Oakeshott, Michael. Hobbes on Civil Association. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. Oakeshott stresses morality over reason in readings of Hobbes’s political theory. Above all, he promotes the idea of civil association as a non-instrumental and non-coercive mode of political community.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Taylor, A. E. “The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes.” Philosophy 3 (1938): 406–424.
  498. DOI: 10.1017/S0031819100014194Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  499. Taylor argues that an overemphasis on Leviathan leads scholars to put too much emphasis on the egoism that was characteristic of Hobbes’s response to the political emergencies of the English Civil War. He claims that a truer account of his work could be found in earlier works such as De Cive and the Elements of Law.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Relationship to Liberalism
  502.  
  503. Hobbes is often called a “proto-liberal.” This qualification suggests both the ways that Hobbes is connected to the liberal order that often looks back to him as a founder and the ways that he is at odds with many central liberal tenets. Various scholars seek either to show that Hobbes is quite liberal after all or that, on the contrary, he is a reactionary and contrary to genuine liberal values. Eisenach 1981, Ryan 1983, Tuck 1990, and Owen 2005 see Hobbes as contributing to an ethical form of liberalism. Flathman 1993 is more skeptical; he sees contradictions between the authoritarian and liberal aspects of Hobbes’s work. Schochet 1990 argues that Hobbes is not liberal at all. Strauss 1936 and Skinner 2008 (cited under Liberty and Necessity) argue that Hobbes is a liberal but in a modern and (therefore) problematic way. MacPherson 1962 argues that Hobbes is liberal in a wholly negative sense.
  504.  
  505. Eisenach, Eldon. Two Worlds of Liberalism: Religion and Politics in Hobbes, Locke and Mill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
  506. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. Eisenach argues that we have put too much store in the kinds of coldly calculating rationalist aspects of liberalism that we usually attribute to Hobbes and Locke. Instead, he sees a far more nuanced and ethical system that comes from these thinkers’ connection to their understanding of religion.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Flathman, Richard. Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individualism and Chastened Politics. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1993.
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511. Flathman describes the inherent and unresolvable tension between the autocratic features of the Hobbesian state on the one hand and the self-making, decentralized, and democratic features he offers on the other. For Flathman, this tension is endemic to the theory and practice of liberalism.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. MacPherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
  514. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  515. MacPherson argues that Hobbes’s theory sets up a notion of “possessive individualism,” a characteristic of all of modern liberal society wherein individuals feel that they owe nothing to one another and are interested only in self-enhancement, consumption, and competition with others.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Owen, J. Judd. “The Tolerant Leviathan: Hobbes and the Paradox of Liberalism.” Polity 37.1 (2005): 138–139.
  518. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. Owen argues that there is no inherent contradiction between the liberal value of toleration and what appears to be Hobbes’s absolutism with regard to sovereignty. This is because toleration is included within liberalism’s own forms of absolutism.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Ryan, Alan. “Hobbes, Toleration, and the Inner Life.” In The Nature of Political Theory. Edited by David Miller and Larry Siedentop, 197–218. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
  522. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. Ryan argues that Hobbes is more favorable toward tolerance than is usually thought and that his claims for uniformity are based on pragmatic concerns for the state of England of his time.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Schochet, Gordon J. “Intending (Political) Obligation: Hobbes and the Voluntary Basis of Society.” In Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory. Edited by Mary Dietz, 55–73. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
  526. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. Schochet challenges the idea that Hobbes can be considered a liberal. He does so by looking at the way that Hobbes thinks about political obligation and also the notion of consent, which he deems to be highly problematic.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Strauss, Leo. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. Oxford: Clarendon, 1936.
  530. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. Strauss argues that in making fear of death rather than the classical value of courage a basis for human behavior, Hobbes inaugurates a new modern conception of personhood with a correspondingly different (and worse) sense of obligation to the polity.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Tuck, Richard. “Hobbes and Locke on Toleration.” In Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory. Edited by Mary Dietz, 153–171. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
  534. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. Tuck argues that Hobbes actually defends toleration in Leviathan (in part because at the time he was writing the book he feared state intolerance against himself). Tuck contrasts this view with Hobbes’s intent in writing his earlier text, De Cive, which he claims advocated religious repression.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Theology
  538.  
  539. Hobbes’s theology gets relatively less attention than his political writing but in fact his major books, especially Leviathan and De Cive, give equal weight to both questions. For some, Hobbes’s theology is his saving grace; it prevents him from having a purely egoistic political theory. For others, it is an unfortunate complication or is even entirely separate from and unrelated to his political writing. Springborg 1996, Collins 2007, and Sommerville 2007 give some of the context for Hobbes’s involvement with religion in his own time. Polin 1981 thinks about Hobbes’s religion from the perspective of our own relatively irreligious time (at least at the time of his writing). Botwinick 1997 and Curley 2005 argue that although his theology is unconventional, it is sincere and has important influences on Hobbes’s politics. Springborg 1975 argues that Hobbes’s religious ideas are spare but not irrelevant. Tuck 1992 argues that Hobbes employs religious language mostly for political purposes. Martinich 1992 argues that Hobbes’s religious beliefs are both heartfelt and necessary for his philosophy and politics. Pocock 1973 argues that Hobbes’s religious writings are completely separate from his political ones.
  540.  
  541. Botwinick, Aryeh. Skepticism, Belief and the Modern: Maimonides to Nietzsche. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
  542. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  543. Botwinick describes Hobbes’s argument that the source of political authority in ancient Israel comes from the moment that the Hebrews chose to believe in Moses’s claims at Mount Sinai about God. From this theological origin, Botwinick argues that an entire genealogy of political authority is produced, leading down to current ideas about liberalism and political authority.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Collins, Jeffrey R. “Silencing Thomas Hobbes: The Presbyterians and Leviathan.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Edited by Patricia Springborg, 478–499. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  546. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. Collins gives a detailed history of the publication, response, and attempts at censorship of Leviathan in Hobbes’s lifetime, particularly focusing on the attempts by Presbyterian clergy to ban and condemn Hobbes’s magnum opus.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Curley, Edwin. “The Covenant with God in Hobbes’ Leviathan.” In Leviathan after 350 years. Edited by Tom Sorrell and Luc Foisneau, 199–216. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. Curley argues, against Hobbes’s contemporaries such as Cavendish, that Hobbes took the idea of the covenant seriously as a theological concept, albeit not in the usual and more orthodox sense that was dominant during his lifetime.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Martinich, A. P. The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  554. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511624810Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  555. Martinich argues that religion is critical to understanding Hobbes. He claims that for Hobbes religion is consistent with the political principles that he sets forth in his works. Indeed, Martinich argues that Hobbes worries that religion will be eroded by reason and sought to immunize it against such an outcome.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Pocock, P. G. A. Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought in History. New York: Atheneum, 1973.
  558. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559. Pocock argues that the second half of Leviathan is, in effect, a wholesale departure from the first parts of the book and does not reflect on the political questions that he treats in the beginning of the work.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Polin, Raymond. Hobbes, Dieu et les hommes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981.
  562. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  563. Polin argues that the relative decline of faith in modern times has led to a plurality of misinterpretations of Hobbes’s Christianity, ranging from atheism to orthodox devotion.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Sommerville, Johann. “Leviathan and Its Anglican Context.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan. Edited by Patricia Springborg, 358–374. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  566. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521836670Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  567. Sommerville describes how in Leviathan, Hobbes is far more open about his disagreements with Anglican doctrine than he is in earlier texts such as De Cive and the Elements (although in those texts too, he argues, Hobbes is expressing a different position, albeit in a way that is less apparent).
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Springborg, Patricia. “Leviathan and the Problem of Ecclesiastical Authority.” Political Theory 3 (1975): 289–303.
  570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. Argues that Hobbes reduced all questions of faith ultimately to questions of political obedience but that this does not imply that religion is meaningless or an empty concept for him.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Springborg, Patricia. “Hobbes on Religion.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Edited by Tom Sorell, 346–380. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  574. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521410193Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. Springborg describes Hobbes’s controversy with Bishop Bramhall over the question of God’s three persons and the controversy over the fact that in Leviathan Hobbes had included Moses as a “person” of God (something he later retracted).
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Tuck, Richard. “The Christian Atheism of Thomas Hobbes.” In Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Edited by M. Hunter and D. Wooton, 111–130. London: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  578. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198227366.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579. Tuck describes how in De Cive, Hobbes participates in a tradition that united deism with a discourse of civil religion. Tuck argues that this served Hobbes as a fence against the ecclesiastical and political chaos of his time.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Rhetoric and Language
  582.  
  583. Although Hobbes frequently denounces rhetoric, he also uses it quite liberally in his work. There is an ongoing controversy over whether Hobbes remains a humanist (along with a corresponding appreciation for the power of rhetoric to shape the polity) or denounces humanism and sticks to a more scientific basis for order and rule (or some combination of the two). Skinner 1996 gives a comprehensive overview of Hobbes’s use of and relationship to rhetoric (especially classical). Kahn 1985, Johnston 1986, Mintz 1988, and Strong 1993 argue that Hobbes’s anti-rhetorical tone disguises the way he himself uses rhetoric to persuade his readers to his politics. Krook 1956, Schulman 1989, and Pettit 2008 argue that Hobbes’s nominalism means that human beings are subject to the rules and organizations of language. Feldman 2006 makes a similar argument focusing on the production of the conscience. Prokhovnik 1991 argues that rhetoric allows Hobbes to express political ideas that he otherwise would not be able to articulate. Rayner 1991 and Silver 1996 argue that, politically speaking, there are positive and negative forms of rhetoric for Hobbes. Silver 1993 argues that for Hobbes, in the face of God’s inscrutability, we need rhetoric to organize and make sense of the world.
  584.  
  585. Feldman, Karen. Binding Words: Conscience and Rhetoric in Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.
  586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587. Feldman examines Hobbes in terms of how words and promises are able to bind and control us. She examines this particularly through the idea of conscience, how it is described, and how it thereby becomes effectively “real” and binding for the subject who bears it.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Johnston, David. The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
  590. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  591. Johnston argues that Hobbes uses rhetoric to inculcate the reader’s receptivity to his scientific ideas that then can be presented as objective facts. In doing so, Hobbes must effectively denounce rhetoric in order to disguise the way he uses it to persuade (and manipulate) his readers.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Kahn, Victoria. Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
  594. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595. Kahn looks at the way that Hobbes seeks to replace the humanist model of prudence with a more mathematical or scientific source of knowledge. At the same time, she shows how this model itself his highly rhetorical, based less on objectivity itself than on the pose of objectivity.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Krook, Dorothea. “Thomas Hobbes’s Doctrine of Meaning and Truth.” Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 31.116 (1956): 3–22.
  598. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  599. Krook argues that for Hobbes, all notions of truth and morality are linguistic propositions and thus follow the logic of language and discourse. Thus, for example, she argues that for Hobbes, the idea of sedition means to go against the linguistic order installed in us by the sovereign.
  600. Find this resource:
  601. Mintz, Samuel. “Leviathan as Metaphor.” Hobbes Studies 1 (1988): 3–9.
  602. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  603. Mintz argues that Hobbes’s use of the image of the Leviathan evinces a poetic sensibility (in several complex ways) and also serves to embody a sovereign that would otherwise be more difficult, if not impossible, to render legible to its subjects.
  604. Find this resource:
  605. Pettit, Philip. Made with Words. Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
  606. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  607. Pettit explores the ways that for Hobbes language is an invented technology. This leads Pettit to think of Hobbes as a materialist wherein the logic of language helps to determine and shape human agency and action.
  608. Find this resource:
  609. Prokhovnik, Raia. Rhetoric and Philosophy in Hobbes’ Leviathan. New York: Garland, 1991.
  610. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611. Prokhovnik shows how Hobbes is able to express complex and difficult concepts (like the fact that the sovereign is both singular and, at the same time, an expression of the community it represents) through rhetorical devices that do not merely reflect but actually organize and produce meaning.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Rayner, Jeremy. “Hobbes and the Rhetoricians.” Hobbes Studies 4 (1991): 76–95.
  614. DOI: 10.1163/187502591X00066Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  615. Rayner contests the notion that Hobbes is implacably hostile to rhetoric even as he uses it himself. Rayner argues that Hobbes attacks classical conceptions of rhetoric because he felt that it was inherently misleading. But rather than reject rhetoric out of hand, he preferred and advocated a style that advanced clarity and perspicuity.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Schulman, George. “Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes.” Political Theory 17.3 (August 1989): 392–416.
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619. Schulman considers the way metaphor has structured the bases of political authority and identity in modernity in Hobbes’s system. He claims that Hobbes’s focus on conventionality (as it is expressed through language and politics) is the building block of all social relations and actions.
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Silver, Victoria. “A Matter of Interpretation.” Critical Inquiry 20 (Autumn 1993): 160–171.
  622. DOI: 10.1086/448704Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  623. Silver argues that in the face of God’s complete incomprehensibility, for Hobbes we turn to rhetoric to respond (and ultimately submit) to God’s awesome power (as evidenced, for example, by his treatment of the story of Job).
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Silver, Victoria. “Hobbes on Rhetoric.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes. Edited by Tom Sorrell, 329–345. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  626. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627. Silver argues that we should stop thinking of Hobbes in terms of humanism versus science and focus instead on the kinds of speech he favored (speech that bolsters communal understanding) and the kind he disfavors (speech that merely reflects back on the individual’s own opinions).
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Skinner, Quentin. Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  630. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511598579Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631. This book details Hobbes’s relationship with classical rhetorical styles and techniques. Skinner argues that Hobbes’s idea of rhetoric as ornatus—a classical term that he employed—does not mean “ornaments” which simply adorn his arguments. Instead, he claims that ornatus serves as a kind of weapon to sharpen and hone Hobbes’ arguments.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Strong, Tracy. “How to Write Scripture: Words, Authority and Politics in Thomas Hobbes.” Critical Inquiry 20 (Autumn 1993): 128–159.
  634. DOI: 10.1086/448703Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  635. Strong writes that although Hobbes used metaphors, he sought to have as literal a reading as possible in keeping with a larger Protestant sensibility toward literalism. By extension, he argues that the sovereign produced in this text is not subject to interpretation but is simply meant to be “there,” as is the meaning of the text itself.
  636. Find this resource:
  637. back to top
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement
Public Pastes
Advertisement
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!