Hobbes's Kingdom of Light

Hobbes's Kingdom of Light
Author: Devin Stauffer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2018-08-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 022655306X

Was Hobbes the first great architect of modern political philosophy? Highly critical of the classical tradition in philosophy, particularly Aristotle, Hobbes thought that he had established a new science of morality and politics. Devin Stauffer here delves into Hobbes’s critique of the classical tradition, making this oft-neglected aspect of the philosopher’s thought the basis of a new, comprehensive interpretation of his political philosophy. In Hobbes’s Kingdom of Light, Stauffer argues that Hobbes was engaged in a struggle on multiple fronts against forces, both philosophic and religious, that he thought had long distorted philosophy and destroyed the prospects of a lasting peace in politics. By exploring the twists and turns of Hobbes’s arguments, not only in his famous Leviathan but throughout his corpus, Stauffer uncovers the details of Hobbes’s critique of an older outlook, rooted in classical philosophy and Christian theology, and reveals the complexity of Hobbes’s war against the “Kingdom of Darkness.” He also describes the key features of the new outlook—the “Kingdom of Light”—that Hobbes sought to put in its place. Hobbes’s venture helped to prepare the way for the later emergence of modern liberalism and modern secularism. Hobbes’s Kingdom of Light is a wide-ranging and ambitious exploration of Hobbes’s thought.

Hobbes's Political Philosophy

Hobbes's Political Philosophy
Author: A.P. Martinich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2021-06-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197531733

Thomas Hobbes, the greatest English political philosopher, argued that human beings needed government in order to save their lives from being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." They form governments by making a contract with each other to support a sovereign, to whom they give their right of governing themselves. In other words, government is artificial and not natural to human beings. Hobbes's arguments are formidable, but often unacceptable. For example, few people believe Hobbes's claim that the authority of their government is unlimited. Government needs to be limited in some way, such as a system of check and balances, to prevent tyranny. Identifying exactly where Hobbes went wrong is difficult, but also illuminates the truth about government. Hobbes's Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations aims to clarify Hobbes's positions by examining what Hobbes considered a science of politics, a set of timeless truths grounded in definitions. A.P. Martinich explains this science of politics, examining Hobbes's views on the laws of nature, authorization and representation, sovereignty by acquisition, and others. He argues that in addition to the timeless science, Hobbes had two timebound projects. The first was to eliminate the apparent conflict between the new science of Copernicus and Galileo and traditional Christian doctrine by distinguishing science from religion and understanding Christianity as essentially belief in the literal meaning of the Bible. The second was to show that Christianity is not politically destabilizing by appealing to biblical teachings such as "Servants, obey your masters," and "All authority comes from God." In examining Hobbes's views on political philosophy, Martinich gives a comprehensive overview of Hobbes's historical context and puts his arguments in dialogue with other interpretations of Hobbes's philosophy, drawing on the work of scholars such as Jeffrey Collins, Edwin Curley, John Deigh, and Quentin Skinner. This new interpretation of Hobbes's work will be of interest to philosophers interested in the history of philosophy as well as those interested in political philosophy, theology, and moral philosophy.

Keeping the Republic

Keeping the Republic
Author: Dennis Hale
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2024-04-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0700636234

Keeping the Republic is an eloquent defense of the American constitutional order and a response to its critics, including those who are estranged from the very idea of a fixed constitution in which “the living are governed by the dead.” Dennis Hale and Marc Landy take seriously the criticisms of the United States Constitution. Before mounting their argument, they present an intellectual history of the key critics, including Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry David Thoreau, Woodrow Wilson, Robert Dahl, Sanford Levinson, and the authors of The 1619 Project. Why, they ask, if the constitutional order is so well designed, do so many American citizens have a negative view of the American political order? To address that question, they examine the most crucial episodes in American political development from the Founding to the present. Hale and Landy frame their defense of the Constitution by understanding America in terms of modernity, where small republics are no longer possible and there is a need to protect the citizens of a massive modern state while still preserving liberty. The Constitution makes large, popular government possible by placing effective limits on the exercise of power. The Constitution forces the people to be governed by the dead, both to pay the debt we owe to those who came before us and to preserve society for generations yet unborn. The central argument of Keeping the Republic is that the Constitution provides for a free government because it places effective limits on the exercise of power—an essential ingredient of any good government, even one that aims to be a popular government. That the people should rule is a given among republicans; that the people can do anything they want is a proposition that no one could accept with their eyes wide open. Thus, the limits that the Constitution places on American political life are not a problem, but a solution to a problem. Hale and Landy offer both a survey of American anti-constitutionalism and a powerful argument for maintaining the constitutional order of the nation’s Framers.

Subverting the Leviathan

Subverting the Leviathan
Author: James R. Martel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780231139847

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader. Martel demonstrates that Hobbes's radical method of reading not only undermines his own authority in the text, but, by extension, the authority of the sovereign as well. To make his point, Martel looks closely at Hobbes's understanding of religious and rhetorical representation. In Leviathan, idolatry is not just a matter of worshipping images but also a consequence of bad reading. Hobbes speaks of the "error of separated essences," in which a sign takes precedence over the idea or object it represents, and warns that when the sign is given such agency, it becomes a disembodied fantasy leading to a "kingdom of darkness." To combat such idolatry, Hobbes offers a method of reading in which one resists the rhetorical manipulation of figures and tropes and recognizes the codes and structures of language for what they are-the only way to convey a fundamental inability to ever know "the thing itself." Making the leap to politics, Martel suggests that following Hobbes's argument, the sovereign can also be seen as idolatrous--a separated essence--a figure who supplants the people it purportedly represents, and that learning to be better readers enables us to challenge, if not defeat, the authority of the sovereign.

Anticlerical legacies

Anticlerical legacies
Author: Elad Carmel
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2024-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526168812

Anticlerical legacies is the first comprehensive study of the reception of Thomas Hobbes’s ideas by the English deists and freethinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the most important English philosophers of all time, Hobbes’s theories have had an enduring impact on modern political and religious thought. This book offers a new perspective on the afterlife of Hobbes’s philosophy, focusing on the readers who were most sympathetic to his critical and radical ideas in the decades following his death. It investigates how Hobbes’s ideas shaped the English anticlerical campaign that peaked in the early eighteenth century and that was essential for the emergence of the early Enlightenment. The book shows that a large number of writers – Charles Blount, John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan, and many others – were more Hobbesian than has ever been appreciated. Not only did they engage consistently with Hobbes’s ideas, they even invoked his authority at a time when doing so was highly unpopular. Most fundamentally, they carried on Hobbes’s war against the kingdom of darkness and used various Hobbesian weapons for their own war against priestcraft. Analysing the ways in which the deists and freethinkers developed their nuanced theories and conducted their heated dialogues with the orthodoxy, they emerge from this study as sophisticated and valuable theorists in their own right. The case of Hobbes and his successors demonstrates that anticlericalism was a key component of a much larger programme whose primary aim was to secure civil harmony, peace, and stability.

Leviathan

Leviathan
Author: Thomas Hobbes
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2012-10-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 048612214X

Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world.

Leviathan

Leviathan
Author: Horst Bredekamp
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2020-08-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 3110681412

Von Natur aus ist der Mensch so frei wie wölfisch. Um sich selbst zu bändigen, muss er folglich einen künstlichen Riesen schaffen: den Staat, der als übergeordnete Instanz den permanenten Bürgerkrieg zu unterdrücken und Frieden zu schaffen vermag. Diese Essenz von Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" ist bis heute ebenso vehement verworfen wie bekräftigt worden. Zu den Mitteln, mit denen der Leviathan die Menschen vom Unfrieden abhält, gehören Bilder, und aus diesem Grund steht dem Leviathan ein Frontispiz voran. Das Buch erschließt mit Abraham Bosse den Künstler des Frontispizes, stellt sämtliche Varianten dieses Urbildes des modernen Staates zusammen und versucht, die Vorgeschichte seiner politischen Ikonographie zu klären.

Hobbes

Hobbes
Author: A.P. Martinich
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1135180792

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the first great English philosopher and one of the most important theorists of human nature and politics in the history of Western thought. This superlative introduction presents Hobbes' main doctrines and arguments, covering all of Hobbes' philosophy. A.P. Martinich begins with a helpful overview of Hobbes' life and work, setting his ideas against the political and scientific background of seventeenth-century England. He then introduces and assesses, in clear chapters, Hobbes' contributions to fundamental areas of philosophy: epistemology and metaphysics, in particular Hobbes' materialism and determinism and his relation to Descartes ethics and political philosophy, concentrating on Hobbes' most famous work, Leviathan, and the theory of the social contract it advances philosophy of science, logic and language, considering Hobbes' theory of nominalism and his writing on rhetoric and the uses of language; religion, examining Hobbes' analyses of revelation, prophets and miracles. The final chapter considers the legacy of Hobbes' thought and his influence on contemporary philosophy.

Behemoth Or The Long Parliament

Behemoth Or The Long Parliament
Author: Thomas Hobbes
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1990-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226345444

Behemoth, or The Long Parliament is essential to any reader interested in the historical context of the thought of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). In De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651), the great political philosopher had developed an analytical framework for discussing sedition, rebellion, and the breakdown of authority. Behemoth, completed around 1668 and not published until after Hobbe's death, represents the systematic application of this framework to the English Civil War. In his insightful and substantial Introduction, Stephen Holmes examines the major themes and implications of Behemoth in Hobbes's system of thought. Holmes notes that a fresh consideration of Behemoth dispels persistent misreadings of Hobbes, including the idea that man is motivated solely by a desire for self-preservation. Behemoth, which is cast as a series of dialogues between a teacher and his pupil, locates the principal cause of the Civil War less in economic interests than in the stubborn irrationality of key actors. It also shows more vividly than any of Hobbe's other works the importance of religion in his theories of human nature and behavior.

Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought

Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought
Author: Cary J. Nederman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2024-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1800373805

This insightful Handbook reviews the key frameworks guiding political scientists and historians of political thought. Comprehensive in scope, it covers historical methodology, traditions, epochs, and classic authors and texts, spanning from ancient Greece until the nineteenth century.