Article: ‘Hobbes and political realism’

Robin Douglass: ‘Hobbes and political realism’, European Journal of Political Theory, published online: November 20, 2016 (doi: 10.1177/1474885116677481)

Abstract: Thomas Hobbes has recently been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism. This article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legitimacy over justice, the relation between ethics and politics, and the place of imagination in politics. The thread uniting these themes is the importance Hobbes placed on achieving a moral consensus around peaceful coexistence, a point which distances him from realists who view the two as competing goals of politics. The article maintains that only a qualified version of the autonomy of the political position can be attributed to Hobbes, while arguing more generally that attending to the relation between ethics and politics is central to assessing his liberal credentials from a realist perspective. Against the prevalent reading of Hobbes as a hypothetical contract theorist, the article proceeds to show that the place of consent in his theory is better understood as part of his wider goal of transforming the imagination of his audience: a goal which is animated by concerns that realists share.

New issue of Hobbes Studies

A new issue of Hobbes Studies is now available, containing the following articles:

Elliott Karstadt: The Place of Interests in Hobbes’s Civil Science

James J. Hamilton: Hobbes on Felicity: Aristotle, Bacon and Eudaimonia

Marcus Schultz-Bergin: The Authority Dilemma: Eternal Salvation and Authorization in Hobbes’s Leviathan

S. A. Lloyd: Authorization and Moral Responsibility in the Philosophy of Hobbes

There are also reviews of Michael Byron’s Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth (reviewed by Luciano Venezia), Robin Douglass’s Rousseau and Hobbes: Nature, Free Will, and the Passions (reviewed by  Ioannis D. Evrigenis), Tom Sorell’s Emergencies and Politics: A Sober Hobbesian Approach (reviewed by Maximilian Jaede), Nicolas Dubos’ Thomas Hobbes et l’Histoire: Système et Récits à l’Âge Classique (reviewed by  George Wright), and of a new edition of De homine (reviewed by Johann Sommerville).

Article: Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism

Patricia Springborg: ‘Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 24 (2016).

Abstract: Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?

Article: Democracy and the Body Politic from Aristotle to Hobbes

Sophie Smith: ‘Democracy and the Body Politic from Aristotle to Hobbes’, Political Theory, Published online: September 8, 2016 (doi: 10.1177/0090591716649984)

Abstract: The conventional view of Hobbes’s commonwealth is that it was inspired by contemporary theories of tyranny. This article explores the idea that a paradigm for Hobbes’s state could in fact be found in early modern readings of Aristotle on democracy, as found in Book Three of the Politics. It argues that by the late sixteenth century, these meditations on the democratic body politic had developed claims about unity, mythology, and personation that would become central to Hobbes’s own theory of the commonwealth. Tracing the history of commentary on the relevant passages in Aristotle reveals new perspectives not only on the political theories of both Aristotle and Hobbes but also introduces modern readers to the richness of early modern commentaries on classical political texts. The article ends with some thoughts on why attention to traditions of commentary might be valuable for political theorists today.

New book: Hobbes and the Artifice of Eternity

Christopher Scott McClureHobbes and the Artifice of Eternity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

About this book: Thomas Hobbes argues that the fear of violent death is the most reliable passion on which to found political society. His role in shaping the contemporary view of religion and honor in the West is pivotal, yet his ideas are famously riddled with contradictions. In this breakthrough study, McClure finds evidence that Hobbes’ apparent inconsistencies are intentional, part of a sophisticated rhetorical strategy meant to make man more afraid of death than he naturally is. Hobbes subtly undermined two of the most powerful manifestations of man’s desire for immortality: the religious belief in an afterlife and the secular desire for eternal fame through honor. McClure argues that Hobbes purposefully stirred up controversy, provoking his adversaries into attacking him and unwittingly spreading his message. This study will appeal to scholars of Hobbes, political theorists, historians of early modern political thought and anyone interested in the genesis of modern Western attitudes toward mortality.

Article: The Monstrosity of Matter in Motion: Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes’s Political Epistemology

Andrea Bardin: ‘The Monstrosity of Matter in Motion: Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes’s Political Epistemology’, Philosophy Today, 60,1 (2016).

Abstract: Along the path opened by Galileo’s mechanics, early modern mechanical philosophy provided the metaphysical framework in which ‘matter in motion’ underwent a process of reduction to mathematical description and to physical explanation. The struggle against the monstrous contingency of matter in motion generated epistemological monsters in the domains of both the natural and civil science. In natural philosophy Descartes’s institution of Reason as a disembodied subject dominated the whole process. In political theory it was Hobbes who opposed the artificial unity of the body politic to the monstrous multiplicity of the multitude. Through a parallel analysis of the basic structure of Descartes’s and Hobbes’s enterprises, this article explains in which sense Hobbes’s peculiar form of materialism is in fact to be considered a surreptitious reduction of materialism to its ideological counterpart, Cartesian dualism, and to its implicit political-pedagogical project.

Article: Hobbes’s Paradoxical Toleration: Inter regentes tolerantia, tolerans intolerantia inter plebem

Nicholas Higgins: ‘Hobbes’s Paradoxical Toleration: Inter regentes tolerantia, tolerans intolerantia inter plebes‘, Politics and Religion, 9,1 (2016).

Abstract: The source of Hobbes’s liberal view of toleration is a recognized paradox within his absolutist political sovereign. This article argues that Hobbes’s view of toleration is consistent with his overall political theory based upon his broader religious teaching, which leads to an epistemological skepticism on the veracity of religion, and as such among rulers toleration is not only allowed, but necessary. Further, this article argues that the inability of the sovereign to punish the private conscience of the citizen derives from natural right and the inherent limitation of law. Finally, this article examines Hobbes’s use of religious argumentation to support the inability of a believer to challenge or deviate from the religious commands of the sovereign.

Article: Forget Hobbes

Ondrej Ditrych: ‘Forget Hobbes’, International Politics, 53,3 (2016).

Abstract: This article has a threefold aim. First, it criticises the instrumentalisation of intellectual history in international relations (IR) that clouds issues of contemporary politics rather than illuminating them. Second, benefiting from the recent advances in Hobbes’ studies in the field of political theory and emphasising the importance of both textual plausibility and authorial intentions for preserving the ‘horizon’ of the possible interpretations, it suggests that ‘IR’ were of no particular concern to Hobbes, and the few scattered remarks on the ‘superpolitical’ state of the many governments interacting with each other are functionally subservient to the purpose of demonstrating the reality of the state of nature. Third, by pointing to the ‘security continuum’ of various states present in his political theory, the article challenges the reading of Hobbes as authoring the discipline’s foundational inside/outside difference. It concludes by making a case that the field would benefit from curing itself from the ‘Hobsession’ it seems to be suffering and from forgetting Hobbes to open space for rethinking international politics.

Article: A Pragmatics of Political Judgment: Hobbes and Spinoza

Oliver Feltham: ‘A Pragmatics of Political Judgment: Hobbes and Spinoza’, Philosophy Today, 60, 1 (2016).

Abstract: The question of political judgement is usually addressed within a normative or epistemological framework. In contrast in this paper the approach is that of a pragmatics of judgement. The leading questions are what does political judgement do and how does it operate? This enquiry, carried out through an examination of political judgement in Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, is shown to ineluctably lead to an ontology of action. These philosophers’ contrasting ontologies give rise to two different frameworks for political judgement whose avatars are still with us today: Hobbesian functionalism and Spinozist affirmationism. Finally these competing frameworks of judgement are put to the test of resolving—or at least treating—the very problem that gave rise to them in the first place in Hobbes and Spinoza’s philosophies, the problem of political conflict. The singularity of Spinoza’s affirmationist framework for judgement is identified as its capacity to pose the reflexive question of who the subject of judgement is for the object of judgement in the actual action of judgement. The hypothesis is that this question opens a way for both subject and object of judgement to increase their power to act and think.