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.”

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 6

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Personal Space ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Special Relationships ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
Past Injustices

This consists of eight papers in political philosophy that were presented at the Sixth Annual Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, at the University Pavia, Italy, in June 2018. In Part I: Rights and Wrongs, Kimberley Brownlee analyses how wrongs can create new rights. Zofia Stemplowska argues that it is possible to mitigate some past injustices done to those who are no longer alive. Japa Pallikkathayil develops an account of how our bodily rights constrain the right to free speech. In Part II: Immigration and Borders, Valeria Ottonelli defends the right to stay where one lives, on the basis of the right to control one’s body and one’s personal space. Nils Holtug argues that the equality required by justice has global scope and that open borders can be expected reduce global inequality. Johann Frick argues that special relationships among members of a group (e.g. one’s compatriots) cannot justify strong forms of partiality, unless the boundaries of this group can also be justified. In Part III: Other Matters, Christian List and Laura Valentini argue that the normative facts of political theory belong to a higher—more coarse-grained—level than those of moral theory and that, consequently, some questions that moral theories answer are indeterminate at the political level. Aart van Gils and Patrick Tomlin explore the issue whether weaker claims can be aggregated in order to collectively defeat stronger claims, and they focus on the limited aggregation view, according to which this is sometimes, but not always so.

Hegel and The Libertarians

1998 ◽  
pp. 165-172
Author(s):  
Paulo Roberto Monteiro De Araujo
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hegelian Philosophy

This paper aims to show how the Hegelian philosophy can contribute to the conceptual discussions between the two strains of contemporary ethical-political philosophy. I argue that the Hegelian political theory is of central import to the discussion between communitarians and libertarians, both in the communitarian criticism of the libertarian — mainly in Michael Sandel's criticism of Rawls — and in the Rawlsian project of a society founded in justice as equality. For if the communitarians' theoretical basis is the living of a community in terms of historical-social values, and the individualists' deontological rationality is the basis for the libertarians, Hegel's pointing to a synthetic resolution of the two positions provides a moral foundation for their harmonious coexistence. This does not, however, mean that there is one simple ideological solution that can unite the universal and the particular, the community and the individual, through artificial dialectics, as the critics of Hegelian thought would affirm following the Frankfurt School.

Pierre Charron: Precursor to Hobbes

1963 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Grendler
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The State ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past

The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is rightly considered as marking the end of one era in political theory and the beginning of a new one. Formerly, men had sought and found a guide to political conduct in a basic principle upon which the order of well-being of the state depended. Hobbes broke with the past by postulating the state as simply a rationalization of the needs of men. He analyzed man's psychology and relied on his own observation and ratiocination to establish the best possible state commensurate with mankind's situation, but his supreme emphasis on force and authority left no room for the older constitutional, religious, and traditional safeguards of the citizen. This was the price that Hobbes willingly paid to achieve a secure state during the English Civil War.

Preamble

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Isaiah Berlin

This book explores the history and nature of liberalism and includes the views of political thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, Isaiah Berlin, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and G.W.F. Hegel. Part 1 of the book deals with conceptual and practical issues and covers topics ranging from liberalism and freedom to culture, and death penalty. Part 2 deals with liberty and security and includes Hobbes's political philosophy as well as Locke's thoughts on freedom. Part 3 examines liberty and progress and includes topics such as Mill's political thought, utilitarianism and bureaucracy, democracy, and Berlin's political theory. Part 4 focuses on liberalism in America, and Part 5 is concerned with work, ownership, freedom, and self-realization.

Of Wonder: Thomas Hobbes’s Political Appropriation of Thaumazein

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-384
Author(s):  
Kye Anderson Barker
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Sovereign State

This essay presents a reading of the use of wonder in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. In this essay, I argue that not only did Hobbes incorporate the ancient conception of wonder into his design for the emotional apparatus of the modern sovereign state, but that when he did so he also transformed it and other concepts. Previous scholars have paid close attention to Hobbes’s confrontation with ancient philosophy, but there has been no sustained study of Hobbes’s use of wonder, which was a concern of his over the entire course of his authorship. More broadly, this study opens up a place for the study of wonder in contemporary political theory as part of the broader reassessment of emotion.

Liberty, Property and Popular Politics

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
The University

Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career. Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The book includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.

From Crusades to Colonization: Violence in Secular and Religious Political Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Xavier Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
State Power ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Beliefs And Values

This paper examines the transition in political philosophy between the medieval and early-modern periods by focusing on the emergence of sovereignty doctrine. Scholars such as Charles Taylor and John Rawls have focused on the ability of modern-states to overcome conflicts between different religious confessionals. In contrast, this paper seeks to examine some of the peace-promoting features of Latin-Christendom and some of the conflict-promoting features of modern-secular states. The Christian universalism of the medieval period is contrasted with the colonial ventures promoted by the Peace of Westphalia. This paper’s goal is not to argue that secularism is in fact more violent than religion. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate the major role that religion played in early modern philosophy and the development of sovereignty doctrine. It argues against the view that the modern, secular state is capable of neutrality vis-à-vis religion, and also combats the view that the secular nature of modern international law means that it is neutral to the different beliefs and values of the world’s peoples. These observations emphasize the ways in which state power and legitimacy are at the heart of the secular turn in political philosophy. 

Between Specters of War and Visions of Peace

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Mara
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Democracies

This book examines how ideas of war and peace have functioned as organizing frames of reference within the history of political theory. It interprets ten widely read figures in that history within five thematically focused chapters that pair (in order) Schmitt and Derrida, Aquinas and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, and Thucydides and Plato. The book’s substantive argument is that attempts to establish either war or peace as dominant intellectual perspectives obscure too much of political life. The book argues for a style of political theory committed more to questioning than to closure. It challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that premodern or metaphysical texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies, and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. What is offered instead is a nontraditional defense of the tradition and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory. Though the book avoids any attempt to show the immediate relevance of these interpretations to current politics, its impetus stems very much from the current political circumstances. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century , a series of wars has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations; citizens of the Western democracies are being warned repeatedly about the threats posed within a dangerous world. In this turbulent context, democratic citizens must think more critically about the actions their governments undertake. The texts interpreted here are valuable resources for such critical thinking.

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