Hobbes's Work Research Articles

Contesting the Future: Secular and Religious Time in Hobbes's Leviathan

Abstract This article examines the peculiar fusion of secular and religious temporal orders in Hobbes's Leviathan in light of the debate between Löwith and Blumenberg over the origins of modern time consciousness. The analysis places Hobbes more securely on the side of Blumenberg by uncovering the constructive agency at work in the anxiously future-preoccupied account of human nature which distinguishes Leviathan from Hobbes's earlier works and which gives his revision of Christian eschatology its psychological coherence and rhetorical force. This interpretation of Hobbes as an early architect of modern time consciousness fills in the missing temporal pieces in Blumenberg's own engagement with Hobbes and gives the theme of temporality—of creating and securing the experience of an open future above all—the attention that it deserves in the account of Hobbes's modernity.

On Equity and Inequity in Thomas Hobbes's Dialogue

ABSTRACTThe concept of equity is clearly important in Thomas Hobbes's philosophy. In his writings he repeatedly employs it in significant load bearing ways, particularly in the areas of civil law and governance. Equity is, however, not directly addressed in a sustained way in his core works and—perhaps even more frustratingly—it is often applied in ways which ask more questions about the concept than they answer. This presents an impediment to accurately understanding what equity really means to Hobbes. His late Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (1681) seems to offer a solution to this challenge. This work contains extensive discussion on equity, including on the application of equity in relationship to absolute rule. However, equity in the Dialogue is not always the same as what we see in Hobbes's core works. The question is, did Hobbes change his mind on equity? This article argues no. Hobbes did not change his mind on equity; rather, within the Dialogue he is engaging with a common understanding of the term as it existed in English law. Consequently, Hobbes's discussions here should not inform us about how equity fits into his philosophy.

‘Counterfinality’ in sociological theory: Reconceptualization of the concept

Counterfinality is defined as unintended consequences of the uncoordinated actions of rationally acting individuals. Even before the concept was introduced by Sartre and developed by Elster, counterfinality was considered by many scholars. Some defined counterfinality as a type of social paradoxes and dilemmas, others - as an outcome of social interaction. Description and analysis of such social contradictions and paradoxes can be found in the works of Hobbes, Mandeville, Smith, Marx and Hegel. In the 20th century, sociologists also considered the issue of unintended consequences. Many classic papers of Merton contributed to the sociological analysis of the unintended consequences of intentional actions. Subsequent works focused on their classifications, and the phenomenon of counterfinality was highlighted in almost every classification. The term counterfinality was introduced by Sartre as an appendage of history, an unforeseen consequence of many interactions. The sociological study of counterfinality was initiated by Elster. He analyzes counterfinality not within the functionalist paradigm, but in the methodological individualism perspective, and for him, counterfinality acts as a basis for social change. The authors analysis of the main ideas of Sartre, Elster and other authors on counterfinality reveals its distinctive features in general and in the sociological analysis of social action in particular. The author argues that today the counterfinality theory consists mainly of responses and criticism of the ideas of Sartre and Elster, and that further sociological research should focus on conditions, features and consequences of counterfinality, and on its empirical indicators.

Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes

Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes on Politics and Religion ed. by Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass

Reviewed by: Hobbes on Politics and Religion ed. by Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass Monicka Tutschka Laurens van Apeldoorn and Robin Douglass, editors. Hobbes on Politics and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 297. Cloth, $70.00. It is refreshing to read fifteen erudite articles written by seasoned experts and promising young scholars who engage the wide-ranging question of the intersection of religion and politics in Hobbes's works. The free standing arguments are not framed by Hobbes's alleged religious (in)sincerity, or by a priori conceptions of natural law, or some modernization thesis. This work is therefore a must-read for scholars yearning to explore Hobbes's religious politics in new ways. I hope it inspires more volumes, possibly organized around narrower religious topics (I will suggest two). Johan Olsthoorn argues that Hobbes's theory of representation takes him beyond Erastianism to the stronger claim of church-state identity with the sovereign speaking and acting in this new unity's name. Al Martinich likens Hobbes's human sovereign to his divine natural sovereign. God's sovereignty derives from the sure and irresistible power that He [End Page 172] may exercise arbitrarily. Since Hobbes's human sovereign resembles God, the former also is not accountable to humankind if (s)he unleashes irrational, evil, or destructive power. Teresa Bejan engages the Hobbes toleration debate. The sovereign influences fundamental inner beliefs by determining what young impressionable minds hear, and youth indoctrination is at odds with toleration. To the contrary, Franck Lessay maintains that Hobbes delineates an inner sphere that is home to religious belief and reflection, and offers a prudential foundation for political authority amenable to diverse faiths. His minimalist soteriology tolerates diverse Christian belief. Alexandra Chadwick explores Hobbes's responses to the politically destabilizing aftereffects of martyrdom. To minimize these effects, Hobbes defines martyrdom narrowly. He also undermines martyrs by claiming they mistake soteriological requirements and believe wrongly in reason's power to make correct salvific judgments. Alan Cromartie exposes the novelty of Hobbes's determinist-materialist psychology and his dubious Calvinist credentials. Hobbes's determinism deviates from the soteriological accounts of the bounded will developed by Luther and Arminians. His determinism also departs from predestination defined by Calvin and prominent English Divines. Alison McQueen maintains that Hobbes used the biblical figure of Moses to support absolutism in civil war England. This was a time when many Englishmen and women took Scripture's authority for granted. Whereas republican and parliamentarian activists interpreted Mosaic rule as a defense of their politics, Hobbes intervenes to realign Mosaic rule with absolutism and risks exposing the political nature of Scriptural interpretation. Paul Davis examines Hobbes's Scriptural quotations, documenting which Biblical translations he used, and if his quotations diverge from them. Usually, Hobbes transcribed quotations faithfully. Sometimes, he borrowed from theologians who influenced him. Occasionally, he takes liberties to reconcile biblical quotations with his theories. Patricia Springborg contextualizes and explores Hobbes's intentions in Historia Ecclesiastica. She locates the poem within Hobbes's works on heresy, dating its composition between the English and Latin Leviathans. The poem elevates humanist Christian historiographers above post-Eusebius church historians. She contends that Hobbes's preference for the former reflects his fear of persecution, as the histories of the latter are rabidly sectarian. For his part, Glen Newey is unconvinced that fear of persecution led Hobbes to amend the Latin Leviathan. The Appendix's account of the Trinity is nonconformist. Hobbes either made it fit his personation theory because he thought it was right, or because it could accommodate diverse faiths. Jon Parkin argues that Hobbes's vague vision of a Christianity supportive of civil authority made him adopt an ambiguous religious identity. His writing strategies block disagreeable conclusions and tease with paradoxes. Hobbes wins over diverse believers by reengineering convictions to conform to his theories. Elad Carmel complicates the Hobbes (authoritarian)/English deist (tolerationist) binary. Hobbes's anticlericalism, commitment to rational religion, and skepticism toward revelation influenced the English deists. He is a precursor to radical enlightenment. Jeffrey Collins asserts that Hobbes constructed two different conceptions of 'religious war.' The first is historically specific, addresses prominent causes of England's war...

The Return of the Sacral King

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.

Political Logic of “Multitudo” in the Works of Hobbes and Spinoza

Political Logic of “Multitudo” in the Works of Hobbes and Spinoza

War by Other Means? Incentives for Power Seekers in Thomas Hobbes's Political Philosophy

AbstractThe problem of the power seeker is of crucial importance for Hobbes's political philosophy. While education might aid in changing the behavior of some people, Hobbes is clear that there are limits to the effectiveness of education and that incurable, unsocial power seekers will persist. In my analysis, I ask whether and, if so, how Hobbes can also get these incurable power seekers on board. The result of my findings that Hobbes provides a huge variety of treatments for power seekers, including incentives to betray and exploit their fellow citizens by employing a public gesture of civility, has implications for Hobbes research: it shows the complexity and costs of Hobbes's “solution” to the problem of war and corrects a widespread developmental hypothesis about the concept of honor in Hobbes's works. Thereby, it can also enrich a recent diagnosis about the decline of honor in modern societies.

Thomas Hobbes, le guerre di religione e il mito dell'Ercole gallico

Thomas Hobbes, the Wars of Religion and the Myth of Gallic Hercules. In Leviathan Thomas Hobbes cites indirectly the Gallic Hercules. This reference to Lucian’s myth has been analysed in relation to both the emblematic context of the 16th century and the propagandistic literature published to support Henry IV of France. Otherwise, little attention has been devoted to those authors who were probably familiar to Hobbes. This study aims to focus attention on the works that emerged in the context of the historiography in France from the 16th to the 17th century, in particular, the texts of Jean de Serres and Jacques-Auguste de Thou. These works present a connotation of the figure of the Gallic Hercules that is very similar to that developed later in Leviathan. They thus help us to understand the presence of Lucian’s myth in the work of Hobbes.

HOBBES AS A SOCIOBIOLOGIST. RETHINKING THE STATE OF (HUMAN) NATURE

ABSTRACT In the following text we aim to present a proposal of interpretation of Hobbes's work from sociobiology viewpoint. Despite the fact it may strike some at first as an anachronism or straightforward wrong, reading the philosopher of Mamelsbury from a sociobiological perspective, can shed light on some particular aspects of his argument, particularly those referring to the construction of human nature and its influence on the modulation of the state of nature and on the justification of authority and political obligation. So, Hobbes proceeds as a sociobiologist since he offers us a tale about the emergence of morality from where it didn't exist before and moves from there to a specific understanding of political authority.

Thomas Hobbes and the Invented Tradition of Positivism: Reflections on Language, Power, and Essentialism

This is an essay about the legal theory of Thomas Hobbes and about the things that are revealed when one compares Hobbes's ideas with the main line of legal positivism. Hobbes occupies a paradoxical position in traditional jurisprudence-revered but frequently overlooked, hailed as a precursor but not as a founder, and used alternately as a bogeyman and an illustration of the difference between political and legal theory. If one actually looks at Hobbes's works, rather than footnoting them, cite unseen, one finds a rich stewpot of ideas; great dollops of wisdom about language, interpretation, power, legitimacy, epistemology, definition, scholasticism, human nature, and law. Of course, Hobbes has never been ignored. He still plays Mutt to Locke's Jeff in college courses in political theory. But at a time when legal theorists are rediscovering the fact that there is no bright line separating legal from political theory, that questions of legitimacy may resolve themselves into questions of epistemology, and that language and power are inextricably connected, Hobbes's work deserves rereading, if only to see how legal positivism defines its own margins.

Reflexiones sobre La filosofía política de Platón a la luz de las Leyes, de André Laks

<p class="p1">En este texto se señalan ciertas tesis de Platón que se reflejaron en la filosofía política moderna, concretamente en las obras de Hobbes, Mill, Bentham y Rousseau; y se formulan cuatro preguntas a André Laks sobre su libro La filosofía política de Platón a la luz de las Leyes:1 la primera se refiere a la relación entre las leyes y los preámbulos; la segunda cuestiona la posibilidad de que el hombre, representado como una marioneta movida por el hilo de la razón y el de los impulsos irracionales, pueda convertirse en una marioneta divina; la tercera apunta a la idea de la constitución mixta y del papel que desempeña la mediación en la que la sabiduría y la libertad se combinan para formar un buen gobierno; la cuarta pregunta se refiere a la generalidad de las leyes y a la particularidad del filósofo-rey, pues parece que Platón extraña la figura que describió en la República..</p>

Левиафан в поисках миропорядка: проблема международной безопасности в работах Т. Гоббса и И. Канта

Левиафан в поисках миропорядка: проблема международной безопасности в работах Т. Гоббса и И. Канта

Civil war and the state of nature in Hobbes

The paper deals with one of the important questions of Hobbes's philosophy, the relationship between his theoretical model of the state of nature and the historical phenomenon of civil war, which profoundly marked Hobbes's life as well as his thought. Civil war doesn't appear explicitly as an example of the state of nature in Hobbes's works prior to Leviathan (such as The Elements of Law or De cive). However, the way in which Hobbes describes the consequences of civil war, which tears apart the fabric of civil society - most often in the context of his criticism of the separation of powers doctrine - closely resembles a relapse into what he calls the state of nature or war of everybody against everybody. The final part of the article argues that civil war is the best paradigm of the state of nature in Leviathan by way of comparative analysis with two other examples thereof Hobbes gives in this book (the condition of the 'savage people' of America and the relations between sovereign states). This part of the text also provides an answer to the objection that civil war fails to correspond to the atomistic state of nature because it involves different sorts of coalitions between individuals. According to Hobbes, the temporary character of such alliances and the lack of moral obligations between persons that compose them, make them fundamentally as individualistic as the state of nature itself.

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

SummaryR. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.

The Right to Security

HUMAN RIGHTS' FOUNDATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS IN LAW AND POLITICS CANONICAL AND CONTESTED HUMAN RIGHTS 31. THE RELATIVITY AND ETHNOCENTRICITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law, by Annabel S. Brett

Changes of State. Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law, by Annabel S. Brett. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2011. xiv, 242 pp. $35.00 US (cloth). Annabel Brett's book is an accomplished study of the contested boundaries between and the in early modern natural law discourse. She traces the various discourses on the relation between the political and natural spheres from the influences of ancient and medieval political thought on early modern writers to the debates between and amongst scholastic Catholic political thinkers, Protestant Aristotelians, and others, highlighting the often radical departures from earlier traditions in the thought of Hugo Grotius and especially Thomas Hobbes. The book's achievements are at several levels: as an impressively detailed intellectual history of some of the wide-ranging controversies preoccupying natural law theorists in sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Europe; as a cogent analysis of what is at stake in Grotius's and above all Hobbes's significant developments of natural law theory: and as an innovative approach to the study of political thought. Brett's introduction nicely sets out the major themes of her work and reveals her methodological concerns. As is clear from her copious footnotes, Brett's study arises out of the so-called Cambridge School approach to the history of political thought as epitomized by the work of such scholars as Quentin Skinner, Noel Malcolm, and James Tully. Hence she is concerned with the formation of the political languages of natural law as they emerge in European thought, and her interpretation of Hobbes is indebted to Skinner's analysis of Hobbesian liberty in contradistinction to republican notions of freedom--implicitly, she shares Skinner's critique of Hobbes's position. But her focus is on intellectual context as much as on the context of historical practice: as she writes, her analysis is trained upon the characteristic argumentative motifs of this idiom or way of talking as a whole, rather than on particular authors as agents within their specific contexts (p. 9). Thus her work both broadens, for example, contextualist interpretations of Hobbes by situating his thought relative to continental European natural law (rather than focusing mainly on the historical circumstances in England surrounding Hobbes's work), and offers a unique historical perspective which indirectly engages with the work of such contemporary political thinkers as Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben on natural, territorial, juridical, and political spaces. The study is framed by the divisions between nature and the city, or Libertas and Imperium--in the frontispiece to Hobbes's De Cive (reproduced in Brett's introduction)--divisions which nevertheless are interpenetrated in various ways in Hobbes's thought. Brett shows how Hobbes's account relates to earlier treatments of the nature/city problematic by addressing a dominant theme in each chapter as dealt with by natural law theorists. In Travelling the Borderline, she relates Francisco de Vitoria's treatment of ius gentium as a law of humanity which sanctions the free movement of travellers into foreign countries to Domingo de Soto's assertion of the right of beggars to travel freely across borders: their chief activity as mendicants seeking to preserve themselves as human beings straddles the borderline between city and nature, in the physical but not political space of animals (p. …

Deception, politics and aesthetics: The importance of Hobbes’s concept of metaphor

In recent years, we have witnessed renewed interest in metaphors in political theory. In this context, Hobbes’s theory of metaphor is of great importance as it helps us understand aesthetic qualities in theory and politics. This article argues that in the work of Hobbes – often portrayed as hostile to the use of metaphor, especially so by himself – there is a remarkable discrepancy between his professed enmity to metaphor and his own use of the very word ‘metaphor’. In a philosopher who censures conceptual imprecision, we find a fundamentally inconsistent and ever-changing use of this key term. This inconsistency can be accounted for if we relate it to Hobbes’s own often neglected poetics and his theory of the need for conceptual innovation. This will help solve riddles that have haunted Hobbes studies. Moreover, we must discover Hobbes’s theory of metaphor as a source of potential insights into the way in which political and theoretical languages operate with regard to aesthetic pleasure through linguistic change. Hobbes’s theory can thus make us understand the importance of something being new, that is, how theoretical languages need novelty in order to be pleasant and persuasive.

Hobbes, Desire, and the Democratization of Rhetoric

This article considers the modern melding of rhetoric and democracy by looking at the approach to rhetoric in the early-modern figure Thomas Hobbes. While other scholars have considered Hobbes's approach to rhetoric in terms of humanistic, Ramistic, and Aristotelian influences, I look at it in light of the psychagogic tradition of rhetoric still active in the Renaissance. Reading Hobbes in light of the psychagogic tradition makes his approach to rhetoric less equivocal or contradictory than is often supposed, even as it helps us see in Hobbes's work a concerted effort to democratize rhetoric. I conclude that the real tension Hobbes presents us with is not found in his approach to rhetoric, which is relatively consistent, but rather in what his work suggests about the tensions of a democratized rhetoric.

Hobbes, Desire, and the Democratization of Rhetoric

ABSTRACTThis article considers the modern melding of rhetoric and democracy by looking at the approach to rhetoric in the early-modern figure Thomas Hobbes. While other scholars have considered Hobbes's approach to rhetoric in terms of humanistic, Ramistic, and Aristotelian influences, I look at it in light of the psychagogic tradition of rhetoric still active in the Renaissance. Reading Hobbes in light of the psychagogic tradition makes his approach to rhetoric less equivocal or contradictory than is often supposed, even as it helps us see in Hobbes's work a concerted effort to democratize rhetoric. I conclude that the real tension Hobbes presents us with is not found in his approach to rhetoric, which is relatively consistent, but rather in what his work suggests about the tensions of a democratized rhetoric.