Ideology and Class in Hobbes' Political Theory

Abstract

f S A CONSEQUENCE of the extraordinary attention paid to the logic and scientific methodology of Thomas Hobbes' writings by recent scholars, we have all but set aside the importance of the fact that Hobbes was, in the first instance, apoliticaltheorist.1 In this essay, I will focus upon the political importance of Hobbes' thought to his contemporaries. My concern will be with the rather specific political motives and objectives which underly his writings, the polemical context within which Hobbes' thinking developed. This polemical context was no passing historical phase in Hobbes' thought, but, on the contrary, supplied the structural framework for all of his political theory. Beginning with the recognition that avoidance of civil war is the central objective of Hobbes' political theory, I will try to show that this proposition presupposes a prior understanding of the causes of civil war. More specifically, it is Hobbes' interpretation and explanation of the English Revolution which provides the basic parameters within which his political recommendations are offered. Moreover, in considering Hobbes' analysis of the causes of the English Revolution, I shall argue that the role he attributed to class divisions and ideological conflict explains why his own political theory is premised upon the exclusion of ideology and class as factors of political life. Hobbes' understanding of class and ideology as revolutionary forces, therefore, lies at the heart of his political theory, and his opposition to those forces, as manifest both in his contemporaries' behavior and in their