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Archibald Campbell, Critic of Hobbes Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-01 Robin Douglass
In the 1733 edition of An Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue, Archibald Campbell added two lengthy discussions of Thomas Hobbes’s views on human nature and sociability. Taken together, these constitute what is probably the most detailed engagement with Hobbes’s thought in the early decades of the eighteenth century, at least amongst British moral philosophers. This article reconstructs and analyses
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Transubstantiation, Absurdity, and the Religious Imagination: Hobbes and Rational Christianity Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-10 Amy Chandran
This article evaluates the political implications of Thomas Hobbes’s extensive treatment of religion by taking up the motif of the Eucharist (and accompanying doctrine of transubstantiation) in Leviathan. Hobbes holds out transubstantiation as an exemplar of absurdity and an historical outgrowth of Christianity’s inauspicious meeting with pagan practices. At the same time, Leviathan contains allusions
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The Multitude, the People, and Popular Sovereignty: Pufendorf and Locke in Reply to Hobbes Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 James Harris
In the early iterations of his political thought, The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes proposed a new account of the nature of the people. In Section 2 I describe Pufendorf’s critical response. Pufendorf’s theory of the people is a neglected aspect of the political argument of the De Jure. Just as neglected is Locke’s theory of the people in Two Treatises of Government, though there is better reason
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Hobbes, Locke, and the Christian Commonwealth Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Timothy Stanton, Tim Stuart-Buttle
Locke refrained from engaging explicitly with Hobbes in any of his writings. Locke’s policy of non-engagement should be interpreted, we argue, neither as evidence of his lack of interest in (or ignorance of) Hobbes’s arguments, nor as an attempt to conceal from the uninitiated Locke’s covert Hobbesian commitments. Locke’s silence reveals rather than conceals. What it reveals is an absolute determination
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Hobbes and Locke: Meaning, Method, Modernity: Introduction Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-11 Timothy Stanton, Tim Stuart-Buttle
An introduction to the special issue on Hobbes and Locke: Meaning, Method, Modernity.
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A Hobbesian Method for Establishing the Absurdity of Injustice Without Reliance on Hobbes’s Temporal Arguments Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 S.A. Lloyd
The paper investigates Hobbes’s arguments that injustice is a kind of absurdity involving a “contradiction properly so called,” concluding that although those arguments are undermined by their reliance on a mistaken temporality assumption, Hobbes’s philosophy provides other means for establishing his desired conclusion.
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Thomas Hobbes’ Invisible Things Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Allan Gabriel Cardoso dos Santos
Hobbes argues that among the reasons for the Catholic Church’s power is the difficulty for ignorant people to understand the causes of natural phenomena. They take the motion of invisible bodies for the intervention of incorporeal agents. For Hobbes, the Church tries to perpetuate this profitable misunderstanding by spreading Scholastic doctrines supporting this idea in the sermons of all the parishes
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Plague and the Leviathan Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Daniel J. Kapust
Building on a number of recent studies that have turned to Hobbes in light of covid-19, I explore the context of Hobbes’ own encounters with plague while at Oxford, along with efforts to mitigate plague by the regime of James I. I then explore what role his encounters with plague may have played as he wrote his philosophical masterpiece, Leviathan.
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Civilization and Its Others: American Imaginaries, State of Nature, and Civility in Hobbes Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Stephanie B. Martens
Critical approaches to the canon of Western political and legal thought from the point of view of race or gender have developed in recent years, as have studies highlighting the connections between supposedly universalist philosophies and their role in sustaining or legitimizing imperial and colonial conquests. On social contract theory in particular, seminal works include Charles Mills’ The Racial
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Hobbes on the Cause of Action: How to Rethink Practical Reasoning Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Martine Pécharman
In the free-will discussion between Hobbes and Bramhall, Hobbes’s principle that actions are necessary is not immediately action-theoretic. The fundamental theoretical context of Hobbes’s explanation of action lies in an understanding of causation more generally. However, Hobbes’s action theory is not simply modeled after the account of cause and effect in his First Philosophy. It introduces a temporal
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The Intersections of Knowledge: Hobbes, Mersenne, Descartes Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Roger Ariew
Gregorio Baldin’s book, La croisée des savoirs, concerns the intellectual relations among Hobbes, Mersenne, and Descartes. The study is limited to the time between 1634 and 1648, starting when Hobbes first met Mersenne in Paris and ending when Mersenne died. It covers three main topics. Part i is devoted to the relations maintained by Hobbes with the circle of Mersenne during 1634–1636, which Baldin
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Is the Hobbesian State of Nature Racialized? Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-10 Susanne Sreedhar
Thomas Hobbes, like other early modern social contract theorists, has been accused of promoting racist views in his philosophy – ideas used to justify European imperialism and the devastation of Indigenous peoples. I argue that his philosophy does not assume or promote a naturalized racial hierarchy. I demonstrate that the logic of Hobbes’s project requires rejecting a racially essentialist conception
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Hobbes Among the Savages: Politics, War, and Enmity in the So-called State of Nature Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Allan M. Hillani
In this article I argue that Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the “state of nature” should be understood as describing a thoroughly political situation. Hobbes’s exemplification of the state of nature by resorting to the “savages” of America should be taken in its ultimately paradoxical character, one that puts in question the stark opposition between a prepolitical natural state and the properly political
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Thomas Hobbes in Racist Context Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Adrian Blau
Is it anachronistic to talk about racism in Hobbes? After all, racism is usually seen as biological: the disliked group must have innate characteristics which are inherited biologically. This is mostly said to be a modern idea. Yet biological racism can be found in medieval and early modern times, as with the Spanish doctrine of limpieza de sangre (cleanliness/purity of blood). Racism, including biological
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Hobbes and Leibniz on the Nature and Grounds of Slavery Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-13 Iziah C Topete
During a period when transatlantic slavery was still being racialized, Hobbes and Leibniz represent stark alternatives on the nature and justification of slavery. This article investigates Leibniz’s encounter with the Hobbesian position on slavery (servitus), drawing out the racial implications. Throughout his political works, Hobbes defended voluntary servitude by transforming a legacy of Roman jurisprudence
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Hobbes on Public Ministers Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-15 Jonah Miller
Until recently, scholars paid relatively little attention to chapter 23 of Leviathan, in which Hobbes discussed “the public ministers of sovereign power.” In the past few years, however, political theorists have used chapter 23 extensively in discussions of Hobbes’ concept of the state. But what was the significance of the chapter in its own time? This article suggests it served two purposes. First
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Hobbes’s Lesser Evil Argument for Political Authority Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-09-17 Ben Jones, Manshu Tian
This article identifies an argument in Hobbes’s writings often overlooked but relevant to current philosophical debates. Political philosophers tend to categorize his thought as representing consent or rescue theories of political authority. Though these interpretations have textual support and are understandable, they leave out one of his most compelling arguments – what we call the lesser evil argument
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Hobbes and the Indirect Workings of Political Consent Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-21 Laetitia Ramelet
This paper brings to light an unexplored aspect of Hobbes’s argument that political authority rests upon subjects’ consent. Consent enacts a transfer of subjects’ right of nature to the sovereign, yet she already possesses a natural right to everything. What moral difference, then, does this make to her possession of power, and how? In my reading, the difference lies in the rise of new obligations
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The Elements of Law: Manuscripts and the Short Parliament Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-21 Johann Sommerville
There are eleven known manuscripts of Hobbes’s Elements of Law. As they divide on textual grounds into two groups, they are effectively two separate editions, employing two different texts. While two of the manuscripts apparently were Hobbes’s working copies, it also seems clear that he never definitively established the text of the Elements. There are reasons for thinking it unlikely that, as has
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Guest Editors’ Introduction Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-21 Daniel J. Kapust, Brandon Turner
Hobbes Studies presents a special issue dedicated to the career and work of Professor Johann Sommerville on the occasion of his retirement. This introduction provides a brief overview of Sommerville’s professional achievements and the major themes of his scholarly work over the past forty years. It closes with a very brief summary of the contributions made in his honor.
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A Commonwealth for Galileo: Imagining a Hobbesian Utopia Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Elad Carmel
A Hobbesian utopia might sound paradoxical. Hobbes never prescribed a utopia per se, and he is well-known for his practical and pragmatic approach to human nature and to politics. Yet, this article identifies several utopian elements in Hobbes, starting with the ways in which his contemporaries thought of his work as utopian. Following Galileo and others, Hobbes might have been part of a utopian moment
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The Elements of Law and Hobbes’s Purpose Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-16 Ioannis Evrigenis
The unauthorized 1650 publication of The Elements of Law broke Hobbes’s treatise into two parts that were inconsistent with his own division of the work. This obscured what is arguably the most important insight into Hobbes’s method: his account of how human beings use language to instigate and appease others. I review the evidence of how the publication history of the Elements resulted in a break
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Hobbes Reenvisions Hebraic and Christian History Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-10 Mary Nyquist
In this essay, I examine Hobbes’s interpretation of Scriptural passages that figure prominently in contemporaneous political debates. Hobbes’s interpretative practices affirm his major systematic aims but also contribute to his inventive reenvisioning of Hebraic and Christian political history. The privileged position Hobbes gives Hebraic forms of rule together with his treatment of I Samuel 8 are
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Hobbes’s Theory of Responsibility as Support for Sommerville’s Argument Against Hobbes’s Approval of Independency Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-10 S. A. Lloyd
Just as some types of philosophical analysis are more useful than others to historians or political scientists, so, I find, are some sorts of historical research more useful to philosophers than are other sorts. Sommerville makes history useful to non-historians by clarifying the large-scale historical background against which his investigative questions are posed, and then separating out crucial figures
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Catanzaro, Andrea. Politics through the Iliad and the Odyssey: Hobbes Writes Homer Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Luca Iori
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Hackenbracht, Ryan. National Reckonings: The Last Judgment and Literature in Milton’s England Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-02 Victor Lenthe
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‘The History of Political Thought Above All’: A Portrait of Johann P. Sommerville (1953-) Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-02 Cesare Cuttica
Well-known for his work on absolutism, divine right theory, and his contextual reading of Hobbes’ ideas, Sommerville also published successful critical editions of Sir Robert Filmer and King James vi and I’s political writing. Sommerville’s engagement in key historiographical debates on early- modern British history, involving “opposing camps” of revisionists and post-revisionists, is less explored
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Ideological Context and the Study of Political Theory Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2022-03-02 Xinzhi Zhao
This paper recounts my encounter with the ideological context of Hobbes’s system as a graduate student in political theory through the teaching and scholarship of Professor Johann Sommerville. This encounter made me recognize that political theorists should study not only systems of political philosophy but also their ideological contexts, whose primary components are not “languages” but ideas and
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How does Spinoza’s “Democracy” differ from that of Hobbes?: A Discussion of Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-09-22 Jonathan Israel
Field focuses on the role in political theory of the concept of potentia of the people—power understood as the informal, natural power of the people—as distinct from potestas understood as the formal arrangement of power under the constitution of a given state. In a close analysis of the arguments of Hobbes and Spinoza on popular power and sovereignty, the book critiques democratic interpretations
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Psychology and Obligation in Hobbes: The Case of “Ought Implies Can” Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-09-21 Paul Garofalo
Many interpreters use Hobbes’s endorsement of “ought implies can” to justify treating Hobbes’s motivational psychology as an external constraint on his normative theory. These interpreters assume that, for Hobbes, something is “possible” for a person to do only if they can be motivated to do it, and so Hobbes’s psychological theory constrains what obligations people have. I argue this assumption about
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Baldin, Gregorio. Hobbes and Galileo: Method, Matter and the Science of Motion Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-09-21 Douglas Jesseph
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Thomas Hobbes on Civility, Magnanimity, and Scientific Discourse Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-07-26 Andrew J. Corsa
Thomas Hobbes contends that a wise sovereign would censor books and limit verbal discourse for the majority of citizens. But this article contends that it is consistent with Hobbes’s philosophy to claim that a wise sovereign would allow a small number of citizens – those individuals who engage in scientific discourse and who are magnanimous and just – to disagree freely amongst themselves, engaging
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Douglass, Robin, and Johan Olsthoorn, eds., Hobbes’s On the Citizen: A Critical Guide Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-06-28 Michael Byron
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Thomas Hobbes, Diodorus Siculus, and Early Humanity Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-06-07 John Russell Holton
This article offers a study of Thomas Hobbes’s reading of Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historiographer of the 1st century bc whom Hobbes called “the greatest antiquary perhaps that ever was.” After offering a comparison of the works of Thucydides (often regarded as Hobbes’s greatest classical model) and Diodorus, the article traces the reception of Diodorus’ work in early modern England and examines Diodorus’
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Lechner, Silviya. Hobbesian Internationalism: Anarchy, Authority and the Fate of Political Philosophy Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-18 Theodore Christov
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Fleming, Sean. Leviathan on a Leash: A Theory of State Responsibility Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-18 Robin Douglass
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Introduction to Research Symposium on Political Economy Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-16 Katherine M. Robiadek
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Progress Report on the Clarendon Edition of “De corpore” and Related Manuscripts Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-15 Stephen Clucas,Timothy Raylor
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Hobbes on Property: Between Legal Certainty and Sovereign Discretion Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-15 Laurens van Apeldoorn
Hobbes treats individual property as regulated by stable law, yet dependent on the arbitrary will of the sovereign. In this paper I catalogue the different definitions of property present in his main political and legal works – The Elements of Law (1640), De Cive (1642, 2nd ed. 1647), Leviathan (1651) and A Dialogue between a philosopher and a student (1681) – with the aim of showing how he attempted
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Hobbes on Wealth, Poverty, and Economic Inequality Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-10 David Lay Williams
While Thomas Hobbes is not typically cited as a philosopher concerned with economic inequality, there is a great deal of evidence in his writings to suggest that he was aware of inequality and worried about its effects on the commonwealth. This essay first contextualizes Hobbes in the development of the 17th-century English political economy to understand the mercantilist milieu that might have shaped
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Stauffer, Devin. Hobbes’s Kingdom of Light: A Study of the Foundations of Modern Political Philosophy Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-08 Andrew Day
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Progress Report on Editing Hobbes’s Elements of Law for the Clarendon series Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-08 Johann P. Sommerville
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Progress Report on an English Translation of De Homine Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2021-03-03 Elaine Condouris Stroud
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Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy, edited by Courtland, Shane D. Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Vladimir Milisavljević
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Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times, written by McQueen, Alison Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Enzo Rossi
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The Sovereign and the Prophets: Spinoza on Grotian and Hobbesian Biblical Argumentation, written by Fukuoka, Atsuko Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Jeffrey Collins
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Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes, written by Raylor, Timothy Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 David Johnston
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In the Shadow of Leviathan: John Locke and the Politics of Conscience, written by Collins, Jeffrey Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 John Marshall
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Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times, written by McQueen, Alison Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Enzo Rossi
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Hobbes’s Strategy of Convergence Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Alison McQueen
In his political works, Thomas Hobbes proliferates arguments and overdetermines his conclusions. This article hypothesizes that at least some of this overdetermination was intentional. It was part of a “convergent strategy” meant to appeal to a broad, diverse, and unknown audience. The article draws on Leviathan to offer evidence for this hypothesis.
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The Sleeping Subject: On the Use and Abuse of Imagination in Hobbes’s Leviathan Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Avshalom M. Schwartz
This paper offers a novel interpretation of the political implications of Hobbes’s theory of imagination and his solution to the threat posed by the imagination to political stability. While recent work has correctly identified the problem the imagination poses for Hobbes, it has underestimated the severity of the problem and, accordingly, has underestimated the length to which the Hobbesian sovereign
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Margaret Cavendish: Essential Writings, edited by Cunning, David Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 Laura Georgescu
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Interpreting Hobbes’s Political Philosophy, edited by Lloyd, S.A. Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 Marcus P. Adams
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From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics, written by Skinner, Quentin Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 Monica Brito Vieira
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By Force or Wiles: Women in the Hobbesian Hunt for Allies and Authority Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 S.A. Lloyd
The article investigates whether Hobbes’s political theory gives us reason to expect the systematic subordination of women. It argues that who dominates whom is a matter of victory in the quest to pull allies into ordered alliances. The primary means of gaining allies—force and wiles—depend on both skill-fitness and affective fitness. The analyses suggest that it is sex-linked and gender-linked differences
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Hobbes on Sexual Morality Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 Susanne Sreedhar
Despite the vast amount of scholarship on Hobbes’s philosophy, his writings on sexuality have gone largely unexplored. This paper offers an interpretation of Hobbes’s writing on that topic. I argue that if we pay attention to his remarks on sexuality, we can retrieve a coherent account of sexual morality, one that takes a strong stance against doctrines of natural sexual morality, replacing them with
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How Far Can a “Radical” Philosopher Go? Thomas Hobbes’s Paradox of Gender Relations, and One Possible Solution Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2020-03-18 Gianni Paganini
This article challenges the idea that Hobbes presents a negative anthropology and shows, to the contrary, that there is a thick web of social relations in his state of nature and laws of nature. It considers the contradiction between human natural equality claimed by Hobbes, and female subjection that de facto characterizes most of his passages on gender relations. The key to this puzzle is found in
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Hobbes’s Practical Politics: Political, Sociological and Economistic Ways of Avoiding a State of Nature Hobbes Studies (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2019-11-11 Adrian Blau
This paper offers a systematic analysis of Hobbes’s practical political thought. Hobbes’s abstract philosophy is rightly celebrated, but he also gave much practical advice on how to avoid disorder. Yet he is typically interpreted too narrowly in this respect, especially by those who only read him economistically. Other scholars supplement this economistic focus with sociological or political interpretations