Mister Hobbes’s Oakeshott

Abstract

“It may be said, then, that Hobbes is not an absolutist precisely because he is an authoritarian. His skepticism about the power of reasoning, which applied no less to the ‘artificial reason’ of the Sovereign than to the reason of the natural man, together with the rest of his individualism, separate him from the rationalist dictators of his or any age.”1 In this interestingly paradoxical passage, Oakeshott connects his emphasis upon Hobbes’s skepticism with his interpretation of Hobbes’s political thought. For Oakeshott, Hobbes was not an absolutist, because his skepticism served to undermine the certainty on which absolute claims— whether philosophical or political—could rest. In labeling Hobbes an “authoritarian,” Oakeshott meant no pejorative; instead, he reveals authority as a central concept of his interpretation of Hobbes’s political philosophy and, I will argue, of his own.KeywordsCivil SocietyPolitical PhilosophyCommon GoodMoral LifePolitical ThoughtThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.