The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation

Abstract

Two assumptions about the reception of Hobbes's political theory seem to be widely accepted. The first is that the theory bore virtually no relationship to any other political ideas of its time. It was ‘an isolated phenomenon in English thought, without ancestry or posterity’. The second is that it proved completely unacceptable. Hobbes's ‘boldness and originality’ provoked ‘intense opposition’, so that ‘no man of his time occupied such a lonely position in the world of thought’. I want to suggest that both these claims stand in need of some reconsideration. One of my aims in presenting this argument will be to arrive at a more accurate picture of Hobbes's intellectual milieu. In particular, I shall argue that the intentions of his critics, as well as the ideological uses of his theory, have to some degree been misunderstood. But my main purpose is to suggest that a knowledge of Hobbes's intellectual milieu is not merely of historical but of exegetical significance for students of his thought. In particular, I shall argue that to recover the context in which his political theory was written is to be in a position to cast doubt on one prevailing interpretation of his theory of political obligation. The belief that Hobbes was simply ‘the bete noire of his age’, and made his impact ‘almost entirely by rousing opposition’ appears to derive from placing too much emphasis on the fulminations of his many clerical adversaries.