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New book: Sovereignty as a Vocation in Hobbes’s Leviathan – New foundations, statecraft, and virtue

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Hoye, Matthew (2023): Sovereignty as a Vocation in Hobbes’s Leviathan: New foundations, statecraft, and virtue, Amsterdam University Press.

Description:

This book is about virtue and statecraft in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. Its overarching argument is that the fundamental foundation of Hobbes’s political philosophy in Leviathan is wise, generous, loving, sincere, just, and valiant—in sum, magnanimous—statecraft, whereby sovereigns aim to realize natural justice, manifest as eminent and other-regarding virtue.

I propose that concerns over the virtues of the natural person bearing the office of the sovereign suffuse Hobbes’s political philosophy, defining both his theory of new foundations and his critiques of law and obligation. These aspects of Hobbes’s thought are new to Leviathan, as they respond to limitations in his early works in political theory, Elements and De Cive—limitations made apparent by the civil wars and the regicide of Charles I. Though new, I argue that they tap into ancient political and philosophical ideas, foremostly the variously celebrated, mystified, and maligned figure of the orator founder.

New article: Hobbes and Hats

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Bejan, Teresa M. (2023): Hobbes and Hats, in: American Political Science Review, 117(4): 1188-1201. 

There is no more analyzed image in the history of political thought than the frontispiece of Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), yet the tiny figures making up the giant have largely escaped scholarly attention. So, too, have their hats. This article recovers what men’s failure to “doff and don” their hats in the frontispiece might have conveyed to readers about their relationship to the Sovereign and each other. Sometimes big ideas—about the nature of representation, for example, or how to “acknowledge” equality—are conveyed by small gestures. When situated textually and contextually, Hobbes’s hats shed important light on the micropolitics of everyday interaction for those who, like Hobbes himself, hope to securely constitute a society of equals.

Latest Issue of Hobbes Studies

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Hobbes Studies, Volume 35, Issue 2 (Nov 2022)

Articles

Book Reviews

New article: The Name ‘Leviathan’ – or the Shadow that Fell on a Work

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Waas, Lothar R. (2022): The Name ‘Leviathan’ – or the Shadow that Fell on a Work: Hobbes and Bodin, the Bible and a Commentary or Two on Job, in: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, https://doi.org/10.25162/arsp-2022-0010

Description
Is the reference to the Book of Job sufficient to explain why Hobbes gave the name ‘Leviathan’ to the state he advocated? Had he not been aware of how maligned this name had been for centuries: that it not only referred to a monster, but soon became synonymous with the devil himself? – The “long shadow” that, according to Carl Schmitt, the name ‘Leviathan’ alone had cast on Hobbes’s work from the very beginning was first cleared somewhat in 2007 by Noel Malcolm’s reference to Jacques Boulduc’s Job- commentary of 1619/37. As far as the “extraneous influence” in question is concerned, however, reference could also be made to the Job-commentary of a certain Joseph Caryl of 1643, which in turn took away some of the scandalous connotation of the biblical Leviathan. The real key to Hobbes’s naming, however, may lie with Jean Bodin, with whom Hobbes shares everything that the name ‘Leviathan’ stands for in his political philosophy.

New article: Taylor and Hobbes on toleration

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Okada, Takuya (2022): Taylor and Hobbes on toleration, in: History of European Ideas, https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2022.2080375

Description
The English Revolution saw fierce controversy over religious toleration. While this controversy was usually associated with parliamentarians and Puritans, major contributions to the debate were also made by a few thinkers from the royalist side: Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Hobbes. Despite their prominence in the toleration debate, however, the intellectual context of the English Revolution in which their distinctive views of toleration were formed remains unclear apart from Hobbes’s association with the Independents. Here, I suggest the potential importance of Taylor and Hobbes for understanding each other. While studies of Hobbes and Taylor have developed in relative isolation from each other, I show that their views of toleration have various features in common, and that these features are rarely found in their celebrated predecessor William Chillingworth or in major Puritan tolerationists. In several key respects, moreover, Hobbes and Taylor were more similar than Hobbes and the Independents. This research also helps to clarify the contribution to the toleration controversy at that time by the two leading thinkers. Furthermore, the similarities between Taylor and Hobbes, as shown in this paper, may contribute to better understanding the reception of Hobbes in the Restoration toleration debate.

Chapter on “Hobbes and Pretenders to God’s Kingdom” in the new book: Apocalypse without God

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Jones, Ben (2022): Apocalypse without God: Apocalyptic Thought, Ideal Politics, and the Limits of Utopian Thought, published by Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009037037

Description
This chapter examines how Hobbes tempers apocalyptic thought to advance his political philosophy. What troubles Hobbes about such thought is its potential to spur continuous upheaval. Apocalyptic thought anticipates perfection – a divine kingdom that will wipe away corruption. The failure to realize utopian hopes breeds endless dissatisfaction, disruption, and instability in politics. But rather than abandon apocalyptic ideals, Hobbes co-opts them. Specifically, he reinterprets the doctrine of the kingdom of God to make it safe for politics. He arrives at an interpretation that denies, at present, all claims to represent God’s kingdom by prophets and sects challenging the sovereign’s authority. For now, the kingdom of God can only take one form – what Hobbes calls the natural kingdom of God. Importantly, the Leviathan-state is a manifestation of the natural kingdom of God. By identifying God’s kingdom with the Leviathan-state, Hobbes transforms a Christian doctrine used to justify rebellion into one bolstering the sovereign’s authority.

New article: A Bridge between Art and Philosophy: The Case of Thomas Hobbes

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Skinner, Quentin (2022): A Bridge between Art and Philosophy: The Case of Thomas Hobbes, in: European Review, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798722000059

Description
The leading question raised by the rhetoricians of classical antiquity was how to speak with maximum persuasive force. You must find the means, they answered, to enable your readers to see what you are arguing. This initially gave rise to a preoccupation with visual metaphors and other so-called figures of speech. Much later, with the development of the printed book, this also led to the practice of inserting actual figures into books to provide visual summaries of their arguments. Here, one pioneer was Thomas Hobbes, and this article offers an interpretation of the frontispieces he included in his two main works of political philosophy, De cive and Leviathan. The moral Hobbes aims to convey is that we have no alternative but to submit to the protecting power of the sovereign state if we wish to live in security and peace.

New article on Hobbes’s Eschatology and Scriptural Interpretation in Leviathan

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Okada, Takuya (2022): Hobbes’s Eschatology and Scriptural Interpretation in Leviathan, in: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046921000683

Description
Hobbes’s eschatology in Leviathan is one of the most striking aspects of this classic work and has received considerable scholarly attention. Nevertheless, its scriptural interpretation has rarely been examined. This article closely analyses Hobbes’s scriptural case for two aspects of eschatology: the doctrine of mortalism and the terrestrial kingdom of God. It shows that, to a large extent, Hobbes’s biblical exegesis for these two eschatological issues was preceded by that of his contemporaries, including Richard Overton and John Archer. It is likely, in particular, that the scriptural interpretation for Hobbes’s mortalism was directly indebted to Overton’s Mans mortalitie.

New collection of essays: A Companion to Hobbes

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Adams, Marcus P. (ed.) (2021): A Companion to Hobbes. (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy). John Wiley & Sons.

Chapters

New anthology: Early Modern Philosophy

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Shapiro, Lisa & Lascano, Marcy P. (2021): Early Modern Philosophy. An Anthology, Broadview Press.

Description
This new anthology of early modern philosophy enriches the possibilities for teaching this period by highlighting not only metaphysics and epistemology, but also new themes such as virtue, equality and difference, education, the passions, and love. It contains the works of forty-three philosophers, including traditionally taught figures such as Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as well as less familiar writers such as Lord Shaftesbury, Anton Amo, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and Denis Diderot. It also highlights the contributions of women philosophers, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Gabrielle Suchon, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, and Emilie Du Châtelet.