Ioannis D. Evrigenis, Images of anarchy: the rhetoric and science in Hobbes’s state of nature

Abstract

Images of anarchy: the and science in Hobbes's state of nature,by Ioannis D. Evrigenis, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 309 pp., £60.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-5215-1372-2According to J. L. Austin, on comments, criticisms of criticisms, are subject to the law of diminishing fleas. For the study of philosophy this means, I suppose, that over time interpretations of masterpieces of philosophy decrease in originality and richness of insights. The Law of Diminishing Fleas is possibly rather alarming for Hobbesian specialists: What hope does contemporary interpreter have to contribute something novel and worthwhile to 350 years of Hobbesian scholarship? What can one add to Michael Oakeshott's reading of the state of nature as an ancient myth that can materialise at any time, or to David Gauthier's and Jean Hampton's understanding of the state of nature as game-theoretical model, or to Norberto Bobbio's claim that the state of nature and the political state represent the greatest dichotomy of modernity, or to Quentin Skinner's suggestion that the state of nature is rhetorical device? What can be discovered in Hobbes's texts that politics undergraduates do not already know about the state of nature, namely, that life there is solitary, nasty, poor, short, and, arguably, British?Perhaps as reaction to the Law of Diminishing Fleas, and in order to say something novel, Hobbesian scholarship over the last 25 years has shown tendency to concentrate on aspects of that are interesting but not central to his theory and that had therefore not attracted as much attention from Warrender, Oakeshott, Watkins, and Gauthier: for instance, Hobbes's concept of modesty, his idea of companionship, his understanding of counsel, his notion of just war, and so forth.One of the striking characteristics of Ioannis Evrigenis' new work is that far from being intimidated by the Law of Diminishing Fleas, it challenges it. Instead of offering the analysis of some under-studied if peripheral facet of Hobbes's theory, Evrigenis proposes to reexamine the Archimedean point of Hobbes's political philosophy, the core concept that since the seventeenth century every interpreter of has discussed in one way or another: the Hobbesian state of nature.In the Prologue, Evrigenis acknowledges that no part of Hobbes's legacy is as well known as his account of the natural condition of mankind (1) but points out that many important questions about it have neither been addressed nor satisfactorily answered. He reminds the reader that Hobbes's description of the state of nature is deeply puzzling and proposes to use the concept as vantage point from which to address the issue surrounding the interpretation of Hobbes's works (2).The book is organised in four parts, and every part is source of insightful observations and comments that can stimulate the imagination of the historian, the philosopher, the political theorist, the expert of English literature, the established academic as well as the young undergraduate. The analysis is inventive, authoritative, and inspiring.Evrigenis navigates the primary texts with ease and discusses the differences between them; pays attention to relevant contexts; considers Hobbes's work against the background of Greek and Roman political thought; and commands the secondary literature without overwhelming the reader with it. He puts forward coherent, challenging, and absorbing case.Evrigenis takes position on many issues that have generated debates in the secondary literature on in the last century. His focus, though, is the debate on the meaning, role, and significance of science and in Hobbes's works. Evrigenis questions very convincingly the interpretation of Hobbes's intellectual development as series of phases marked by turns, the most important of which would be from humanism to science (5); he argues that although there are major differences between, say, the Elements of Law and the Latin Leviathan, it is not true that Hobbes went through phase during which he thought it possible to persuade others without recourse to rhetoric (6); he challenges the widely spread idea that while in earlier writings was committed to science, in Review and Conclusion of Leviathan we witness a dramatic shift away from complete faith in the power of reason to convey truth and complete repudiation of as tool of manipulation (248). …