Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
New Article: Thomas Hobbes’ Critique of Ancient Friendship
/in General, New Publications /by Publication OfficerSlomp, Gabriella (2018): As Thick as Thieves: Exploring Thomas Hobbes’ Critique of Ancient Friendship and its Contemporary Relevance, in: Political Studies. First Published March 19, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718761243
Abstract: Recent decades have witnessed a revival of interest in ancient friendship both as a normative and as an explanatory concept. The literature concurs in holding Hobbes responsible for the marginalisation of friendship in political science and suggests that Hobbes devalued friendship because of his understanding of man. This article argues that although Hobbes’ appraisal of friendship hinges on his assumption that man is self-interested, his critique of normative friendship does not rest on that notion. Hobbes’ challenge to us is this: without foundation in the ‘truth’ (i.e. the ‘Good Life’) that underpinned ancient friendship, modern friendship, whether self-interested or selfless, cannot be assumed to be a civic virtue, nor an index of the health of a political association, nor a facilitator of domestic or global peace. Hobbes’ critique is especially relevant for writers who maintain that a resurgence of friendship can nurture concord and foster reconciliation within contemporary liberal democracies.
New book: Cooperative commentary on Hobbes’s De Cive (in German)
/in General, New Publications /by Publication OfficerHöffe, Otfried (Ed.): Thomas Hobbes. De Cive. (Klassiker Auslegen). Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, 2018.
A new cooperative commentary on Thomas Hobbes’s De Cive, edited by Otfried Höffe, has just been published. Most chapters are in German, with some exceptions (English). The book is a chapter by chapter commentary on De Cive and includes papers by Jeremy Adler, Ronald Asch, Dirk Brantl, Franz Hespe, Moritz Hildt, Otfried Höffe, Heiner Klemme, Elif Özmen, Dietrich Schotte, Peter Schröder, Patricia Springborg, Tom Sorell and Lothar Waas.
New book: Thomas Hobbes’s Conception of Peace
/in Member Publications, New Publications /by Publication OfficerMaximilian Jaede, Thomas Hobbes’s Conception of Peace: Civil Society and International Order (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
About this book: This book explores Hobbes’s ideas about the internal pacification of states, the prospect of a peaceful international order, and the connections between civil and international peace. It questions the notion of a negative Hobbesian peace, which is based on the mere suppression of violence, and emphasises his positive vision of everlasting peace in a well-governed commonwealth. The book also highlights Hobbes’s ideas about international coexistence and cooperation, which he considers integral to good government. In examining Hobbes’s conception of peace, it provides a fresh perspective on his international political thought. The findings also have wider implications for the ways in which we think about Hobbes’s relationship to the realist and liberal traditions of international thought, and will appeal to students and scholars of political theory and international relations.
New publication: Europe and the Heritage of Modernity
/in Member Publications, New Publications /by Publication OfficerThis new volume, edited by Domagoj Vujeva and Luka Ribarević, contains four chapters on Hobbes, and one discussing the relationship between Hobbes and Rousseau.
Dirk Brantl, ‘Political Stability for Passionate Machines: Hobbes on Manners and Political Education’.
Philippe Crignon, ‘Representation and the State Paradigm in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy’.
Luc Foisneau, ‘Simplifying Hobbes: Hume’s Conception of Justice in a Hobbesian Perspective’.
Luka Ribarević, ‘Political Hebraism in Leviathan: Hobbes on I Samuel 8’.
Dragutin Lalovićm, ‘Republican Synthesis of the Political and of the State in Rousseau’s Political Theory’.
The publication is part of a project entitled ‘Political in the Time of Actual Crisis: the Heritage of Modernity and Contemporary Challenges to the Project of European Unity’, funded by the European Social Fund. Since the publication was financed by EU funds, it can be downloaded free of charge in pdf format by clicking on the following link: https://www.fpzg.unizg.hr/_
New book: Appropriating Hobbes
/in General, New Publications /by Publication OfficerBoucher, David (2018): Appropriating Hobbes. Legacies in Political, Legal, and International Thought. Oxford: OUP.
Description by the publisher:
This book explores how Hobbes’s political philosophy has occupied a pertinent place in different contexts, and how his interpreters see their own images reflected in him, or how they define themselves in contrast to him. Appropriating Hobbes argues that there is no Hobbes independent of the interpretations that arise from his appropriation in these various contexts and which serve to present him to the world. There is no one perfect context that enables us to get at what Hobbes ‘really meant’, despite the numerous claims to the contrary. He is almost indistinguishable from the context in which he is read.
Table of contents:
Introduction: Hobbes in Contexts
1: Hobbes Among the Philosophical Idealists: A Will that is Actual, but Not General
2: Understanding Hobbes: Philosophy versus Ideology
3: Constraining Leviathan: Power versus authority in Hobbes, Schmitt, and Oakeshott.
4: Hobbes Among the Classic Jurists: Natural Law versus the Law of Nations
5: Hobbes Among Legal Positivists: Sovereign or Society?
6: Hobbes Among International Relations thinkers: International Political Theory
Robert P Benedict Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
/in Events /by adminThe Robert P Benedict Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy at Boston University will be delivered by Kinch Hoekstra. These lectures will take three different approaches to Hobbes as a philosopher of Politics. The first will focus on Hobbes’s engagement with the tradition of ‘politic history’ and his attempt to influence politics via history, especially in his edition of Thucydides. The second lecture will argue that for Hobbes philosophy was not simply a way to understand politics, but was itself political. And the final lecture will ask how Hobbes’s philosophical positions were challenged by the unfolding of history in his own time, with a focus on Behemoth, his history of the English civil war.
Kinch Hoekstra is the Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science and Law and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy and Classics at Balliol College. Most of his work has been on the history of classical, renaissance, and early modern philosophy.
See this page for more information.