The Erotic Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Joanne Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Human Sexuality ◽  
The Erotic

AbstractIn this article I engage with recent scholarly commentary concerning the realm of human sexuality in the work of Thomas Hobbes. This has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been a neglected area of enquiry given the paucity of Hobbes's analysis of this aspect of the human passions. I argue that this new field of enquiry is to be welcomed as it allows us to explore and understand Hobbes as a fully erotic philosopher. Moreover, his erotic philosophy is best understood through the prism of his thorough-going materialism.

Hobbes's Concept of Representation—I

1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Pitkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Standard Edition

It is not customary to regard Thomas Hobbes as a theorist particularly concerned with representation. Hardly any of the traditional commentaries on his thought even acknowledge that he mentions the term; and the index to Molesworth's standard edition of Hobbes's English works contains no reference to it. But the fact is that representation plays a central role in the Leviathan; and Hobbes's analysis of the concept is among the most serious, systematic and challenging in the history of political philosophy. It is an analysis both temptingly plausible and, as I hope to show, peculiarly wrong. And the ways in which it is wrong are intimately related to what is most characteristic and peculiar in the Hobbesian political argument.

Colloquium 4 Hermeneutical Platonism in Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Mark Shiffman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Wisdom Traditions ◽  
The Erotic ◽  
At Home

Abstract I here examine the underlying order of Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris, following compositional cues the author uses to highlight its themes, in order to draw out distinctive features of Plutarch’s philosophical agenda. After placing the text in the context of Plutarch’s general themes and his other main Platonic-hermeneutical works, I follow the indications of key framing devices to bring to the surface his structuring concerns first with the erotic character of the cosmos, in which human eros is at home, and second with the intentions of ancient lawgivers to civilize human communities, both of which he sees represented in the Isis myth. The text thus exemplifies both Plutarch’s recovery of the unity in Plato of metaphysics and political philosophy and his manner of achieving that recovery through a coordinated threefold hermeneutics of wisdom traditions and human and cosmic phenomena.

Teaching in Vain

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
German State ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter traces Carl Schmitt’s attempt, in his 1932 book The Concept of the Political, to quell the near civil war circumstances of the late Weimar Republic and to reinvigorate the sovereignty of the German state through a reappropriation of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy. The chapter then examines Schmitt’s reconsideration of the Hobbesian state, and his own recent reformulation of it, in light of the rise of the “Third Reich,” with particular reference to Schmitt’s 1938 book The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes.

MALCOLM’SLEVIATHAN: HOBBES’S “THING”

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-120
Author(s):  
JEFFREY COLLINS
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
General Editor ◽  
Fourth Decade ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
The University

The publication of the Clarendon edition of theWorks of Thomas Hobbesrecently entered its fourth decade. The monumental project has unfolded against shifting methodologies in the practice of intellectual history, and the edition's own history exemplifies these shifts. Its first general editor was Howard Warrender, who died in 1985 after a distinguished career as a professor of political theory at the University of Sheffield. Warrender was best known for thePolitical Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation. This influential book offered a deontological interpretation of Hobbes's theory of obligation, according to which the Hobbesian natural laws were to be understood as divine commands. Warrender's book appeared in 1957 and was resolutely textualist in its approach, exploring Hobbes's arguments in isolation and with considerable interpretive charity. His subject was the “theoretical basis” of Hobbes's writing, the importance of which might not be “historically conspicuous.”

scholarly journals DEBATE EM TORNO DA EXISTÊNCIA DE UM FUNDAMENTO MORAL NA FILOSOFIA POLÍTICA DE THOMAS HOBBES

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (8) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Bruno Dos Santos Paranhos
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Moral Basis

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar alguns dos argumentos utilizados no debate em torno da existência ou não de um fundamento moral na filosofia política de Thomas Hobbes. Para isso, serão analisados duas obras: "The political philosophy of Hobbes: its basis and its genesis", de Leo Strauss, especialmente o capítulo II, "The moral basis"; e "A física da política: Hobbes contra Aristóteles", de Yara Frateschi. Strauss escreve a favor da existência desse fundamento moral; Frateschi apresenta uma resposta negativa, criticando a posição de Strauss e recolocando a filosofia política hobbesiana sobre uma base essencialmente mecanicista e, portanto, moralmente inocente.

scholarly journals The Body Politic “is a fictitious body”

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Douglass
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Imagery ◽  
Central Purpose

Thomas Hobbes once wrote that the body politic “is a fictitious body”, thereby contrasting it with a natural body. In this essay I argue that a central purpose of Hobbes’s political philosophy was to cast the fiction of the body politic upon the imaginations of his readers. I elucidate the role of the imagination in Hobbes’s account of human nature, before examining two ways in which his political philosophy sought to transform the imaginations of his audience. The first involved effacing the false ideas that led to sedition by enlightening men from the kingdom of spiritual darkness. I thus advance an interpretation of Hobbes’s eschatology focused upon his attempt to dislodge certain theological conceptions from the minds of men. The second involved replacing this religious imagery with the fiction of the body politic and the image of the mortal God, which, I argue, Hobbes developed in order to transform the way that men conceive of their relationship with the commonwealth. I conclude by adumbrating the implications of my reading for Hobbes’s social contract theory and showing why the covenant that generates the commonwealth is best understood as imaginary.

A Brief Semantic History of Securitas

Security ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
History Of ◽  
Semantic History ◽  
Cultural Connotations ◽  
Historical Usage

What does the term “security” express? What are or have been its semantic functions: its shifting cultural connotations and its divergent discursive values? This chapter examines the figures and metaphors that have been deployed to think about security across the ages. It outlines the main stations along the word's complex itinerary through historical usage. It begins with a cursory overview that marks the major turning points of this history, beginning with ancient Rome and concluding with seventeenth-century Europe. Among the topics covered is the positive sense of security that established its position as a central topic in political philosophy in the work of Thomas Hobbes. Throughout, the affirmation of security as a good is fundamentally connected with the power of sovereignty to alleviate the cares and concerns of its subjects. The state emerges as an institution that protects its citizens from all varieties of existential threats, from external aggression as well as from internal discord.

Latour, Bruno (1947–)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Harman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
William James ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modes Of Existence

Bruno Latour is a French philosopher whose work and influence have been mainly in the social sciences, and he is one of the world’s most cited authors in this field. Along with Michel Callon and John Law he is considered one of the founders of actor-network theory (ANT), a method of avoiding abstract terms such as ‘society’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘the economy’ by focusing on the role of individual actors in building up any collective. ANT is thus a ‘flat ontology’ that places humans, nonhumans, concepts and fictional characters on the same footing. All entities are equally real, though not equally strong: neutrons simply have more or better allies attesting to their existence than Popeye, square circles or white ravens. Entities are termed ‘actors’ or ‘actants’, since they can be known and understood only by the effects they have on other things: there is no substance or thingly surplus hidden behind their concrete actions. From the late 1990s Latour partly renounced ANT due to its inability to distinguish between the truth conditions of differing modes of reality, a problem he tried to address in his new ‘modes of existence’ project. Among the chief influences on his work are the semiotics of A.J. Greimas, the metaphysics of A.N. Whitehead, the pragmatism of William James, and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

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