Drawing on evidence from across Hobbes’s works, and in particular from an understudied discussion of “Vespasian’s law” in the Six Lessons, Zachariah Black argues that Hobbes models the discrete use of humorous rhetoric in defense of peace.
This article argues that Hobbes creatively utilizes the monster genre’s mythic spatiality, linear trajectory, and subject positions—monster, victim, and hero—to compellingly present a fundamental problem plaguing humanity (wolfishness), as well as his political-theoretical solution (Leviathan).
In this article, J.M. Hoye argues that Hobbes’s theory of the state in Leviathan amounts to an assault on the practices of urban republican politics. Triangulating the theory of the state in Leviathan using European ideological, local historical and textual coordinates, Hoye opens new insights into Hobbes’s understanding of democracy, republicanism, popular sovereignty and the state.
In this article, Luke William Hunt argues that the metaphysical underpinnings of Hobbes’s project downplay the notion of a purely individualistic conception of the self, pointing to a positivist theory of criminology relying upon external forces.
Gianni Paganini explores the complex interplay between Gassendi and Hobbes, especially with regards to psychology, the foundations of ethics, legal theory, and political philosophy, stressing the important role that ancient Epicureanism and seventeenth-century Neo-Epicureanism played in the birth of a modern theory of individual rights.
In this article Johan Olsthoorn argues that that as an incorporation of natural persons, the commonwealth of Leviathan becomes one person through the authorized (i.e. non-fictitious) representation of each constituent member singly by one common representative (‘the sovereign’).
In this article, Jerónimo Rilla argues that Hobbes ascribes responsibility to the leaders of rebellious groups by allowing them to compare to and challenge the sovereign. The centrality of the theory of represented corporations is a result of Hobbes’s aim to erase, not rebellion as such, but only its tumultuous setup.
In this article Arash Abizadeh argues that for Hobbes, throughout his career, disagreement is the universal cause of war because prickly, glory-seeking humans view its expression as a sign of contempt.
This book, translated from Italian, discusses the influence of Galileo on Hobbes’ natural philosophy.
Hobbes Studies Special Issue “Feminist Perspectives on Hobbes” (33-1/2020), guest-edited by Eva Odzuck and Alexandra Chadwick, contains articles by S.A. Lloyd, Gianni Paganini and Susanne Sreedhar.
