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Journal articles on the topic 'Hobbes'
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1
PARKIN, JON. "HOBBISM IN THE LATER 1660s: DANIEL SCARGILL AND SAMUEL PARKER." Historical Journal 42, no. 1 (March 1999): 85–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x98008127.
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Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker have both been regarded as isolated and eccentric disciples of Thomas Hobbes. However, a detailed examination of their views reveals a more complicated relationship with the notorious philosopher. Far from being simple ‘Hobbists’, Scargill and Parker developed ideas close to those of ‘latitudinarian’ clergymen. In the polarizing political circumstances of the later 1660s, the hostile identification of their views with the doctrines of the Leviathan led to public discussion of latitudinarianism and its relationship to Hobbism. In response, writers with latitudinarian sympathies used criticism of Hobbes as a means of reconsidering and redefining their own position. Such criticism accepted some of Hobbes's political conclusions, while at the same time rejecting his controversial methodology. Discussion of Hobbism and criticism of Hobbes were thus important means by which Hobbes's political insights were absorbed by Restoration political thinkers.
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Navickas, Andrius. "PRIGIMTINIS ĮSTATYMAS IR PRIGIMTINĖS TEISĖS: NUO TOMO AKVINIEČIO IKI THOMASO HOBBESO." Problemos 67 (January 1, 2005): 75–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.15388/problemos.2005..4090.
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Straipsnyje analizuojama prigimtinio įstatymo koncepcijos politinėje filosofijoje sklaida. Susitelkiama ties dviejų mąstytojų – Tomo Akviniečio ir Thomaso Hobbeso – teorijomis, svarstomi jų filosofinių pozicijų panašumai ir skirtumai. Teigiama, kad perėjimas nuo Akviniečio prie Hobbeso politinės filosofijos yra glaudžiai susijęs su esmine transformacija, kurią galima vadinti perėjimu nuo klasikinės prigimtinio įstatymo koncepcijos prie prigimtinių teisių teorijos. Taip pat akcentuojama, jog tiek Akviniečio, tiek Hobbeso filosofinės įžvalgos yra svarbus diskusijų objektas ir šiandien. Tokio pobūdžio diskusijos galėtų reikšmingai praturtinti šiuolaikinę politinę filosofiją.Prasminiai žodžiai: prigimtinis įstatymas, prigimtinės teisės, Akvinietis, Hobbesas.
NATURAL LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS: FROM AQUINAS TO HOBBESAndrius Navickas
Summary The article deals with the concept of “rights” in the political philosophy. The author compares political philosophy of Aquinas and Hobbes, shows their similarities and differencies. The main aim of such analysis – to reveal the transformation in political philosophy, which can be named as the switch to natural rights theories. The author stresses that the tradition of natural law has various versions. The works of Aquinas and Hobbes represent two of them, which still are relevant for contemporary philosophical discussions.Keywords: natural law, natural rights, Aquinas, Hobbes.
3
COOPER, JULIE E. "THOMAS HOBBES ON THE POLITICAL THEORIST'S VOCATION." Historical Journal 50, no. 3 (August 28, 2007): 519–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x07006243.
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ABSTRACTThomas Hobbes's Leviathan offers the fiercest modern indictment against pride. Yet seventeenth-century polemicists and contemporary historians of political theory agree that arrogance is one of Hobbes's stylistic signatures. Does Hobbes, the author, fail to practise the modesty which he preaches to political subjects? Against critical consensus, I argue that Hobbes devises protocols of literary self-presentation consistent with his arguments for modesty. I make this argument by way of a close reading of Hobbes's Latin verse autobiography. Although the autobiography is usually cited as evidence of Hobbes's vanity, I read it as Hobbes's perverse profession of modesty. In the autobiography, Hobbes shuns the role of hero, casting himself as a ‘poor worm’ whose endeavours are motivated by fear. Acute consciousness of mortality, rather than lust for renown, moves Hobbes to philosophize. With this account of the affective springs of his own philosophy, Hobbes redefines the political theorist's vocation. Breaking with traditions that define political theory as a vehicle for heroic self-display, Hobbes defines political theory as a vocation for ordinary mortals.
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Baldin, Gregorio. "A “Galilean Philosopher”? Thomas Hobbes between Aristotelianism and Galilean Science." Philosophies 7, no. 5 (October 14, 2022): 116. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7050116.
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The conventional portrait of Thomas Hobbes that emerged in twentieth century histories of philosophy is that of the quintessential mechanical philosopher, who openly broke with philosophical tradition (together with René Descartes). Hobbes’s scholars depicted a more correct and detailed panorama, by analyzing Hobbes’s debt towards Aristotelian and Renaissance traditions, as well as the problematic nature of the epistemological status that Hobbes attributes to natural philosophy. However, Hobbes’s connection to modern Galilean science remains problematic. How and in what way did Hobbes take inspiration from Galileo? In this article, I analyze Hobbes’s natural philosophy by addressing three topics: (1) his connection with some aspects of seventeenth-century Aristotelianism; (2) differences and analogies between Hobbes’s and Galileo’s epistemological approaches; and (3) the Galilean foundation of Hobbes’s philosophy. Through this analysis I want to show in which sense Hobbes can be properly defined a “Galilean philosopher”.
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Slomp, Gabriella. "Kant against Hobbes: Reasoning and Rhetoric." Journal of Moral Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2007): 207–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1740468107079259.
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AbstractThis paper aims to offer an analysis of `Against Hobbes', the title of the second section of Kant's essay On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory but is of no Use in Practice. The paper suggests that we should take the title `Against Hobbes' seriously and that Kant meant to target Hobbes as the standard-bearer of the old regime and in particular Hobbes's claim that the Head of state cannot act unjustly against his citizens. It is argued that Kant's interpretation of Hobbes conforms to what can be regarded as the majority view in Hobbesian scholarship and that Kant poses a serious challenge to Hobbes, in so far as he removes the very foundations from Hobbes's argument on justice, namely, a specific notion of natural law. Finally the paper highlights Kant's lack of interest in engaging with possible Hobbesian counter-arguments.
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Duncan, Stewart. "Hobbes, Signification, and Insignificant Names." Hobbes Studies 24, no. 2 (2011): 158–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502511x597685.
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AbstractThe notion of signification is an important part of Hobbes's philosophy of language. It also has broader relevance, as Hobbes argues that key terms used by his opponents are insignificant. However Hobbes's talk about names' signification is puzzling, as he appears to have advocated conflicting views. This paper argues that Hobbes endorsed two different views of names' signification in two different contexts. When stating his theoretical views about signification, Hobbes claimed that names signify ideas. Elsewhere he talked as if words signified the things they named. Seeing this does not just resolve a puzzle about Hobbes's statements about signification. It also helps us to understand how Hobbes's arguments about insignificant speech work. With one important exception, they depend on the view that names signify things, not on Hobbes's stated theory that words signify ideas. The paper concludes by discussing whether arguments about insignificant speech can provide independent support for Hobbes's views about other issues, such as materialism.
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Odzuck, Eva. "War by Other Means? Incentives for Power Seekers in Thomas Hobbes's Political Philosophy." Review of Politics 81, no. 1 (December 17, 2018): 21–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034670518000931.
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AbstractThe problem of the power seeker is of crucial importance for Hobbes's political philosophy. While education might aid in changing the behavior of some people, Hobbes is clear that there are limits to the effectiveness of education and that incurable, unsocial power seekers will persist. In my analysis, I ask whether and, if so, how Hobbes can also get these incurable power seekers on board. The result of my findings that Hobbes provides a huge variety of treatments for power seekers, including incentives to betray and exploit their fellow citizens by employing a public gesture of civility, has implications for Hobbes research: it shows the complexity and costs of Hobbes's “solution” to the problem of war and corrects a widespread developmental hypothesis about the concept of honor in Hobbes's works. Thereby, it can also enrich a recent diagnosis about the decline of honor in modern societies.
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Spasenko, Natalia. "The foundations of the historical-philosophical reconstruction of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes." Sententiae 12, no. 1 (June 27, 2005): 54–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.31649/sent12.01.054.
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The article is devoted to the role of language, conceptual schemes, ontology and epistemic losses in the works of Thomas Hobbes. The author highlights two types of interpretive schemes: (1) emphasis on systematic unity and integrity in Hobbes's work, (2) consideration of Hobbes' works as a set of individual parts. Two ways of justifying the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes are also investigated: based on prudence and definitive (scientific). The author justifies that philosophia prima is Hobbes's theory of experience and that it is human experience that makes science possible.
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Machamer, Peter. "Thomas Hobbes." Hobbes Studies 27, no. 1 (June 6, 2014): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02701003.
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In this essay, I present an overview of Hobbes as a consistent philosopher, perhaps the most consistent in the Early Modern period. First, I sketch how his endeavors have a cogency that is unrivalled, in many ways even to this day. Section 2 outlines Hobbes’s conception of philosophy and his causal materialism. Section 3 deals briefly with Hobbes’s discussion of sensation and then presents his views on the nature and function of language and how reason depends upon language. Section 4 treats human nature, and section 5 discusses the artificial body of the Commonwealth. All of this will move rather quickly, so that hopefully the sketch of the overall structure of Hobbes’s thought will be clear. At the end, I will try to correct a few misconceptions, and briefly to say why it was that Hobbes’ natural philosophy has been so unduly neglected.
10
Tran, Tuoi Thi. "Thomas Hobbes' Views on the Notion of Power in "Leviathan" and their Manifestations in Human Settlements in Vietnam." International Society for the Study of Vernacular Settlements 10, no. 8 (August 10, 2023): 429–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.61275/isvsej-2023-10-08-29.
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The concepts of state and power in Leviathan were formed under the influence of the English revolution and civil war. Thomas Hobbs, the philosopher of materialism articulated the ideas as they apply to socio-political aspects of human existence. In fact, they manifest in human settlements, both in everyday life and in every situation in which power and politics play a role. Needless to say, the production and habitation of human settlements involve the application and articulation of power through material expressions. This paper uses a comprehensive method and specific history of dialectical materialism to clarify social contract theory to better understand Hobbes’ views on the subject of power. At the same time, It uses analysis, and comparison methods to see Hobbes’ views of the subject of power and responsibility of the ultimate manifestation of power in persons: the autocrat. From there, the paper explores Hobbes's suggestions about the nature of power and the responsibility of the government as inherited and applied to politics of human settlements as manifesting in Vietnam today. In conclusion, the paper points out the values and limitations of Hobbes' view on the subject of power and its manifestations in human settlements particularly in architecture and buildings: through domestic space.
11
COLLINS, JEFFREY R. "CHRISTIAN ECCLESIOLOGY AND THE COMPOSITION OF LEVIATHAN: A NEWLY DISCOVERED LETTER TO THOMAS HOBBES." Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (March 2000): 217–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x99008845.
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This communication presents a newly discovered letter to Thomas Hobbes. It offers conclusive evidence that the letter was written by Hobbes's friend, the scientist and Anglican clergyman Robert Payne, and strong evidence that the letter was in fact received by Hobbes in late 1649. The discovered letter was part of a running controversy over questions of church government in which Hobbes and Payne engaged during the composition of Leviathan. In it Payne tries unsuccessfully to soften Hobbes's strident Erastianism, and to defend the beleaguered Church of England from his criticisms. The letter thus sheds light on the political and religious context in which Leviathan was composed. Moreover, the letter offers an indirect but intriguing glimpse at underlying assumptions of Hobbes's religious thought.
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Odzuck, Eva Helene. "‘I Professed to Write Not All to All’." Hobbes Studies 30, no. 2 (October 6, 2017): 123–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-03002001.
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While there are old questions in research on Hobbes regarding which audience he addressed in each of his different works – e.g. there are speculations that De Cive is addressed to scientists and Leviathan to the English people – another question has rarely been discussed and only recently reconsidered: Might Hobbes have addressed different audiences also within one and the same text, and if so, might he have intended to communicate different messages to different readers? As ‘Straussian’ as this question might sound, it does not require us to impose external principles of hermeneutics on Hobbes’s texts. As this paper will argue, there is strong plausibility for the claim that Hobbes himself believes in the possibility and the necessity of ‘diversified communication’ or, to state it differently, to communicate different things to different people within one and the same text. By analysing Hobbes’s passion-grounded hermeneutics that is expressed both in Hobbes’s political writings and in his writings on science and on poetry, I show that it is very likely that Hobbes wrote ‘not all to all’ but instead designed different arguments for different people. Employing the heterogeneity principle in interpreting Hobbes’s texts might thus shed new light on some persistent puzzles of Hobbes’s political philosophy.
13
Corsa, Andrew J. "Thomas Hobbes: Magnanimity, Felicity, and Justice." Hobbes Studies 26, no. 2 (2013): 130–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02602003.
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Thomas Hobbes’s concept of magnanimity, a descendant of Aristotle’s “greatness of soul,” plays a key role in Hobbes’s theory with respect to felicity and the virtue of justice. In his Critique du ‘De Mundo’, Hobbes implies that only genuinely magnanimous people can achieve the greatest felicity in their lives. A life of felicity is a life of pleasure, where the only pleasure that counts is the well grounded glory experienced by those who are magnanimous. Hobbes suggests that felicity involves the successful pursuit of desires, a pursuit at which the magnanimous are particularly adept. Additionally, Hobbes implies that those who possess the virtue of justice must also possess magnanimity; it is the just person’s “Nobleness or Gallantnesse of courage, (rarely found).” Leo Strauss and Dorothea Krook suggest that this cannot be Hobbes’s “final word” on justice, because, they say, Hobbes considers magnanimity a type of pride, which he derogates and cannot consistently associate with virtue. I argue that magnanimity, associated with well-grounded glory, is not a type of pride; only vain glory is.
14
Skinner, Daniel. "Political Theory beyond the Rhetoric–Reason Divide: Hobbes, Semantic Indeterminacy, and Political Order." Review of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 561–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034670511003640.
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AbstractThis article engages the longstanding debate over Hobbes's use of rhetoric, with the aim of rethinking both the political logic ofLeviathanand the way contemporary theorists approach rhetoric in relation to reason. Rhetoric was a particularly acute problem for Thomas Hobbes, whose pursuit of a stable political order may appear to require the absence of rhetoric and the presence of a purely rational order. This appearance is misleading, and it is suggested therefore that political theorists rethink how they understand rhetoric to grasp more fully Hobbes's understanding of political order. The common view that Hobbes resolves the problem of semantic indeterminacy must be questioned. Hobbes in effect understands that stable meaning structures are impossible to attain, even under Leviathan. This reworking suggests the need for refining our understanding of Hobbes, who envisions political order not by privileging reason over rhetoric, but by moving beyond engagements with language altogether.
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Adams, Marcus P. "Natural Philosophy, Deduction, and Geometry in the Hobbes-Boyle Debate." Hobbes Studies 30, no. 1 (March 13, 2017): 83–107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-03001005.
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This paper examines Hobbes’s criticisms of Robert Boyle’s air-pump experiments in light of Hobbes’s account in De Corpore and De Homine of the relationship of natural philosophy to geometry. I argue that Hobbes’s criticisms rely upon his understanding of what counts as “true physics.” Instead of seeing Hobbes as defending natural philosophy as “a causal enterprise … [that] as such, secured total and irrevocable assent,” 1 I argue that, in his disagreement with Boyle, Hobbes relied upon his understanding of natural philosophy as a mixed mathematical science. In a mixed mathematical science one can mix facts from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles borrowed from geometry (the ‘why’). Hobbes’s harsh criticisms of Boyle’s philosophy, especially in the Dialogus Physicus, sive De natura aeris (1661; hereafter Dialogus Physicus), should thus be understood as Hobbes advancing his view of the proper relationship of natural philosophy to geometry in terms of mixing principles from geometry with facts from experience. Understood in this light, Hobbes need not be taken to reject or diminish the importance of experiment/experience; nor should Hobbes’s criticisms in Dialogus Physicus be understood as rejecting experimenting as ignoble and not befitting a philosopher. Instead, Hobbes’s viewpoint is that experiment/experience must be understood within its proper place – it establishes the ‘that’ for a mixed mathematical science explanation.
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Vereb, Zachary. "The Unity of Hobbes’s Philosophy: Science, Politics, and God?" Philosophies 7, no. 4 (August 22, 2022): 89. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7040089.
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This paper re-examines the dispute concerning Hobbes’s religious beliefs in light of his natural philosophy. First, I argue that atheistic readings of Hobbes can be more plausibly defended provided interpreters make use of a methodological unity thesis. Second, I suggest that theistic readers of Hobbes have good reason to favor the autonomy thesis. I conclude by highlighting how a re-examination of the theism dispute motivates reconsideration of the role of Hobbes’s natural philosophy and scientific methodology vis à vis politics. Maintaining the unity thesis as a methodological device can shed important light on the politics and methods of Leviathan. More importantly, this analysis motivates consideration of De Corpore in any serious study of Hobbes.
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Milanese, Arnaud, and Philippe Crignon. "Recent trends in French scholarship on Hobbes." Hobbes Studies 23, no. 2 (2010): 139–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502510x531651.
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AbstractThis paper presents the state of research on Hobbes in France these last 7-8 years. First of all, it explains how the generation of forerunners in the 1970s and 1980s has been replaced by the birth of a vigorous French school of Hobbes scholars in the 1990s and then by a new generation of academics during the recent years. The first part of this paper deals with the institutions and the institutional life concerned with Hobbes in France (Centre Hobbes, Groupe Hobbes, conferences, etc.). The second part is devoted to eight recent monographs on the English philosopher. The third one is focused on various collections of papers as well as special issues. The fourth part reckons five recent translations into French of some of Hobbes's works (Elements of Law, Latin Leviathan, Vitae, De cive). The whole gives a complete account of the intense activity of scholars on Hobbes in France today, including works that are about to be published.
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Cooper, Julie E. "Vainglory, Modesty, and Political Agency in the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes." Review of Politics 72, no. 2 (2010): 241–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034670510000045.
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AbstractHistories of political theory have framed the story of the emergence of sovereign states and sovereign selves as a story about secularization—specifically, a story that equates secularization with self-deification. Thomas Hobbes's investment in modesty and humility demonstrates the need for, and the possibility of, an alternative secularization narrative. Scholars have long insisted that “vainglory” is a key term for the interpretation of Leviathan. But Hobbes's task is not complete once he has discredited vainglory. Hobbes must also envision, and cultivate, contrary virtues—and modesty is one virtue that Hobbes would cultivate. An analysis of Hobbes's attempt to redefine and rehabilitate the virtues of modesty shows that Hobbes warns against the temptation to self-deification. In Leviathan, the political task is not to enthrone humans in sovereign invulnerability, but rather to achieve the right balance between bodily security and consciousness of finitude.
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Shapiro, Michael J. "“The Light of Reason”: Reading the Leviathan with “The Werckmeister Harmonies”." Political Theory 45, no. 3 (February 5, 2016): 385–415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0090591716631019.
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In this essay I stage an encounter between Hobbes’s Leviathan and two versions of the “The Werckmeister Harmonies” (a chapter in Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s novel The Melancholy of Resistance [1998] and a film version of the story by the director Bela Tarr [2000]). The story contains a number of Hobbes icons, for example, an enormous stuffed whale and a “Prince,” both of which arrive with a circus that comes to a Hungarian town and precipitates fear and chaos. I argue that the story thinks (differently within the two genres) both with and against Hobbes, enabled by Hobbes’s aesthetic style (which I elaborate) while at the same time challenging the historical prescience of his political philosophy. Sorting the diverse ontologies of the story’s main characters helps us better appreciate Hobbes as a writer and distance ourselves from Hobbes’s solution to political disorder.
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Adams, Marcus P. "Natural Philosophy, Abstraction, and Mathematics among Materialists: Thomas Hobbes and Margaret Cavendish on Light." Philosophies 7, no. 2 (April 10, 2022): 44. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7020044.
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The nature of light is a focus of Thomas Hobbes’s natural philosophical project. Hobbes’s explanation of the light (lux) of lucid bodies differs across his works, from dilation and contraction in Elements of Law to simple circular motions in De corpore. However, Hobbes consistently explains perceived light (lumen) by positing that bodily resistance (endeavor) generates the phantasm of light. In Letters I.XIX–XX of Philosophical Letters, fellow materialist Margaret Cavendish attacks the Hobbesian understanding of both lux and lumen by claiming that Hobbes has illicitly made abstractions from matter. In this paper, I argue that Cavendish’s criticisms rely on an incorrect understanding of the nature of Hobbesian geometry and the role it plays in Hobbes’s natural philosophy. Rather than understanding geometry as wholly abstract, Hobbes attempts to ground geometry in different ways of considering bodies and their motions. Furthermore, Hobbes’s own criticisms of abstraction suggest that he would share many of the worries she raises but deny that he falls prey to them.
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Goldsmith, M. M. "Hobbes on Liberty1." Hobbes Studies 2, no. 1 (1989): 23–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502589x00041.
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AbstractIt has become common to view Hobbes as a 'liberal', indeed as one of the founders of liberalism. Despite this characterization, there are few works which examine his views on liberty closely. The first part of this paper attempts to explicate what Hobbes says about liberty, mainly in Leviathan, especially in relation to recent philosophical analysis of the subject. In the second part, I examine the relation between Hobbes's views about liberty and other aspects of his political views.
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Gary, Browning. "The Politics of Recognition." Hobbes Studies 28, no. 1 (April 24, 2015): 3–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02801002.
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Hobbes and Hegel are standardly taken to be contrasting political theorists, who maintain contrasting views on philosophy, individualism, and society. However, Oakeshott’s reading of Hobbes is a reminder that Hobbes can be read in ways that reduce antagonisms between Hobbes and Hegel. Hobbes’s state of nature is an artificial device that is internally related to the significance of political artifice in rendering the social world a reasonable context for interaction just as the struggle for recognition in Hegel shows the need for a political context in which individuals can interact with one another in ways that are productive and equilibrated. Both Hobbes and Hegel invoke notions of mortality, conflict and sociality in their imaginative depictions of life and death struggles. They also share a notion of the sovereignty of nation-states and were doubtful over the viability of international treaties and organisations.
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Auger, Peter. "The Books of Tho. Hobbes." Hobbes Studies 30, no. 2 (October 6, 2017): 236–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-03002006.
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There are four books that have been advertised in sales catalogues as possessing the inscription ‘Tho. Hobbes’ and having once been owned by Thomas Hobbes. But how confident can we be that they belonged to the famous philosopher? This research note gathers evidence for assessing whether or not this quartet of books were once in the possession of Hobbes of Malmesbury, with particular attention given to a previously undiscussed edition of Josuah Sylvester’s Devine Weekes and Workes (1611) sold to the University of Illinois in 1951 as Hobbes’s copy. The evidence is insufficient to connect any of the four books to Hobbes securely, and in at least one case an Oxford undergraduate of the same name emerges as a stronger candidate. This conclusion confirms that the catalogues at Chatsworth are our principal source for knowing which books Hobbes might have read.
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Curran, Eleanor. "Hobbes on Equality: Context, Rhetoric, Argument." Hobbes Studies 25, no. 2 (2012): 166–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02502003.
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It is often argued that Hobbes’s arguments for natural and political equality are used instrumentally. This paper does not argue against the instrumental arguments but seeks to broaden the discussion; to analyse aspects of Hobbes’s arguments and comments on equality that are often ignored. In the context of the anti-egalitarian arguments of leading contemporary royalist commentators, Hobbes’s arguments and remarks are strikingly egalitarian. The paper argues, first, that there is an ideological disagreement between Hobbes and leading royalists on equality. Second, that Hobbes believes in natural equality as well as using the arguments for equality instrumentally.
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MAY, LARRY. "A Hobbesian Approach to Cruelty and the Rules of War." Leiden Journal of International Law 26, no. 2 (May 3, 2013): 293–313. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0922156513000058.
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AbstractContrary to the way Hobbes has been interpreted for centuries, I will argue that Hobbes laid the groundwork for contemporary international law and for a distinctly moral approach to the rules of war. The paper has the following structure. First, I will explain the role that the laws of nature play in Hobbes's understanding of the state of war. Second, I will explain Hobbes's views of self-preservation and inflicting cruelty. Third, I reconstruct Hobbes's important insight that rationality governs all human affairs, even those concerning war. Fourth, I explicate the idea of cruelty moving from what Hobbes says to a plausible Hobbesian position. Fifth, I address recent philosophical writing on how best to understand the rules of war. Sixth, I then turn to legal discussions of cruelty's place in debates about the laws of war, showing how my Hobbesian approach can ground these laws.
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Davenport, Anne. "Reading Hobbes before Leviathan." Hobbes Studies 27, no. 2 (September 8, 2014): 105–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02702004.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide new information about Philip Scot’s 1650 Treatise of the schism of England, in which Hobbes is discussed in surprising detail. Who was the author and why did he wish so urgently to engage Hobbes? By learning the identity of “Philip Scot” and examining the Treatise in light of it, we gain new insight into reactions to Hobbes’s political views prior to Leviathan.
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Rosler, Andrés. "Odi et Amo? Hobbes on the State of Nature." Hobbes Studies 24, no. 1 (2011): 91–111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502511x563826.
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AbstractVery few—if any—will doubt Hobbes's aversion to the state of nature and sympathy for civil society. On the other hand, it is not quite news that it would be inaccurate to claim that Hobbes rejected the state of nature entirely. Indeed, he embraced or at the very least tolerated the state of nature at the international level in order to escape from the individual state of nature. Hobbes's recommended exchange of an individual state of nature for an international one does seem to have a smack of contradiction, arguably first noted by Rousseau. There is yet another charge of contradiction lurking around Hobbes's account of the state of nature. Hobbes's political thought would still reflect an ambivalent attitude towards a third instantiation of the state of nature, i.e. civil war. This is one of the main reasons why the political allegiance of Thomas Hobbes has been an issue ever since the publication of De Cive at the very least. This paper deals with Hobbes's differential treatment of the original and the international states of nature and discusses the source of Hobbes's somewhat ambivalent attitude towards civil war. It is here argued that Hobbes can fairly hold his ground vis-à-vis Rousseau's criticism, in spite of the normative resemblance between the international state of nature and the initial state of nature, and that Hobbes ambivalent attitude of attraction and repulsion towards civil war is actually due not so much to opportunism on his part as to the normative autonomy he has granted to the state of nature.
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Bejan, Teresa M. "Difference without Disagreement: Rethinking Hobbes on “Independency” and Toleration." Review of Politics 78, no. 1 (2016): 1–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0034670515000856.
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AbstractIn arguments for a more tolerant Hobbes, Leviathan's endorsement of “Independency” is often Exhibit A; however, the conditionals Hobbes attached have received little attention. These—and the dangers of “contention” and sectarian “affection” they identify—are essential for understanding Hobbes's views on toleration. Together, they express a vision of “difference without disagreement” in which the accommodation of diversity in religious worship and association depends on the suppression of disagreement through sovereign- and self-discipline over speech. This expressly antievangelical ideal of toleration as a civil silence about difference presents a challenge to the more tolerant Hobbes thesis, particularly in its recent “Erastian Independency” guise. It also raises deeper questions about what might be at stake in applying the labels of “intolerant” or “tolerant” to Hobbes today.
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Henry, John. "Hobbes, Galileo, and the Physics of Simple Circular Motions." Hobbes Studies 29, no. 1 (April 25, 2016): 9–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02901002.
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Hobbes tried to develop a strict version of the mechanical philosophy, in which all physical phenomena were explained only in terms of bodies in motion, and the only forces allowed were forces of collision or impact. This ambition puts Hobbes into a select group of original thinkers, alongside Galileo, Isaac Beeckman, and Descartes. No other early modern thinkers developed a strict version of the mechanical philosophy (not even Newton who allowed forces of attraction and repulsion operating at a distance). Natural philosophies relying solely on bodies in motion require a concept of inertial motion. Beeckman and Descartes assumed rectilinear motions were rectilinear, but Galileo adopted a theory which has been referred to as circular inertia. Hobbes’s natural philosophy depended to a large extent on what he called “simple circular motions.” In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s simple circular motions derived from Galileo’s belief in circular inertia. The paper opens with a section outlining Galileo’s concept, the following section shows how Hobbes’s physics depended upon circular motions, which are held to continue indefinitely. A third section shows the difficulty Hobbes had in maintaining a strictly mechanistic philosophy, and the conclusion offers some speculations as to why Galileo’s circular inertia was never entertained as a serious rival to rectilinear inertia, except by Hobbes.
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O'Gorman, Ned. "Hobbes, Desire, and the Democratization of Rhetoric." Journal for the History of Rhetoric 16, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 1–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/jhistrhetoric.16.1.0001.
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ABSTRACT This article considers the modern melding of rhetoric and democracy by looking at the approach to rhetoric in the early-modern figure Thomas Hobbes. While other scholars have considered Hobbes's approach to rhetoric in terms of humanistic, Ramistic, and Aristotelian influences, I look at it in light of the psychagogic tradition of rhetoric still active in the Renaissance. Reading Hobbes in light of the psychagogic tradition makes his approach to rhetoric less equivocal or contradictory than is often supposed, even as it helps us see in Hobbes's work a concerted effort to democratize rhetoric. I conclude that the real tension Hobbes presents us with is not found in his approach to rhetoric, which is relatively consistent, but rather in what his work suggests about the tensions of a democratized rhetoric.
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Springborg, Patricia. "Hobbes's Fool the Stultus, Grotius, and the Epicurean Tradition." Hobbes Studies 23, no. 1 (2010): 29–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502510x496345.
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AbstractAmong the paradoxical aspects of Hobbes's scepticism attention has recently turned to Hobbes's fool of Leviathan, chapter xv, where Hobbes makes a claim about justice that paraphrases Psalm 52:1: "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." It is a charge of which Hobbes himself could be suspected, but in fact we see that it is on this startling claim that his legal positivism rests. Moreover it is embedded in a theory of natural law that Hobbes inherited from the late scholastics and that he shares in common with Grotius as a practical solution to the problem of scepticism. Indeed, the fool is not even honoured with the designation "sceptic." He is simply dumb, stultus, one of the mindless mob, or those led astray by priests. Hobbes's treatment of the fool as stultus is Epicurean, as we see in the Historia Ecclesiastica, where he gives the topos special attention, and Epicureanism helps us solve the puzzle of the fool.
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Burgess, Glenn. "On Hobbesian Resistance Theory." Political Studies 42, no. 1 (March 1994): 62–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1994.tb01674.x.
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As many have observed, Hobbes's political theory contained elements of an inchoate resistance theory. The present article identifies those elements, and considers their significance for the general interpretation of Hobbes's thought. It is suggested that Hobbes's resistance theory provides evidence of his belief that the artificial commonwealth was built upon foundations of natural morality. If the sovereign ruler of any commonwealth infringed natural morality then she might well face the natural punishment of rebellion, even though in the artificial realm of civil law this rebellion could never be justified. In the light of these remarks, the interpretation of Hobbes given by Howard Warrender is re-examined. Although Warrender's conclusion that Hobbes grounded natural morality in the command of God cannot be sustained, it is shown that much else in Warrender's work remains valid. In particular, his contention that Hobbes was a genuine natural law thinker seems more defensible when Hobbesian resistance theory is properly understood.
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Clucas, Stephen. "An Early European Critic of Hobbes’s De Corpore." Hobbes Studies 30, no. 1 (March 13, 2017): 4–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-03001002.
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The Animadversiones in Elementorum Philosophiae by a little known Flemish scholar G. Moranus, published in Brussels in 1655 was an early European response to Hobbes’s De Corpore. Although it is has been referred to by various Hobbes scholars, such as Noel Malcolm, Doug Jesseph, and Alexander Bird it has been little studied. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on the mathematical criticisms of André Tacquet which Moranus included in the form of a letter in his volume. Moranus’s philosophical objections to Hobbes’s natural philosophy offer a fascinating picture of the critical reception of Hobbes’s work by a religious writer trained in the late Scholastic tradition. Moranus’s opening criticism clearly shows that he is unhappy with Hobbes’s exclusion of the divine and the immaterial from natural philosophy. He asks what authority Hobbes has for breaking with the common understanding of philosophy, as defined by Cicero ‘the knowledge of things human and divine’. He also offers natural philosophical and theological criticisms of Hobbes for overlooking the generation of things involved in the Creation. He also attacks the natural philosophical underpinning of Hobbes’s civil philosophy. In this paper I look at a number of philosophical topics which Moranus criticised in Hobbes’s work, including his mechanical psychology, his theory of imaginary space, his use of the concept of accidents, his blurring of the distinction between the human being and the animal, and his theories of motion. Moranus’s criticisms, which are a mixture of philosophical and theological objections, gives us some clear indications of what made Hobbes’ natural philosophy controversial amongst his contemporaries, and sheds new light on the early continental reception of Hobbes’s work.
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Sokolowski, Asaf. "Hobbes Against the Fool." Politička misao 59, no. 2 (September 5, 2022): 95–111. http://dx.doi.org/10.20901/pm.59.2.04.
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In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes voices concern over the squandering of the prospects of human prosperity. This paper argues that the remedy he proposes is the political replication of scripture’s idea of creation; the acknowledgment of an originator, a first cause of indisputable order. Hobbes’s nemesis, the Fool, is an agent of scripture’s antithetical tohu and bohu (the disarray that preceded creation), who misguidedly believes he can work disarray to his advantage. For Hobbes this is folly, because the volatility of disarray is beyond human mastery. Nevertheless, steadfastness and prosperity remain at hand, by replicating the order of a ‘higher power’ that is fortunately echoed in all creation. This paper is made in the image of Hobbes’s ‘replication methodology’, that in turn is modelled after scripture’s original depiction of the act of creation “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). The paper identifies the biblical Nabal as the ‘original Fool’, and reflects on how the original resonates in Hobbes’s iteration.
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Duncan, Stewart. "Comments on Larry May, Limiting Leviathan." Hobbes Studies 27, no. 2 (September 8, 2014): 185–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02702006.
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This paper discusses two aspects of Larry May’s book Limiting Leviathan. First it discusses a passage in Leviathan, to which May draws attention, in which Hobbes connects obligation to “that, which in the disputations of scholars is called absurdity”. Secondly it looks at the book’s discussion of Hobbes and pacifist attitudes, with reference to Hobbes’s contemporary critic John Eachard.
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Riley, Patrick. "Kant against Hobbes in Theory and Practice." Journal of Moral Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2007): 194–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1740468107079255.
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AbstractIn the middle section of Theory and Practice, Kant speaks briefly `against Hobbes'; but for a fuller version of Kant's anti-Hobbesianism one must turn to the three Critiques, the Groundwork, and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. It is in those works that one learns that, for Kant, Hobbes's notion of `will' as fully determined `last appetite' destroys the freedom needed to take `ought' or moral necessity as the motives for self-determined action; that Hobbes' s version of the social contract is thus incoherent; that Hobbes is not even able to show how moral ideas (i.e. `ought') are conceivable through the `pressure' of `outward objects'. For Kant, in short, Hobbes has no adequate notions of will, freedom, moral necessity, ideation, or even obligatory contract, and therefore fails in his own stated aims.
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Jesseph, Douglas. "Geometry, religion and politics: context and consequences of the Hobbes–Wallis dispute." Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 72, no. 4 (October 10, 2018): 469–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2018.0026.
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The dispute that raged between Thomas Hobbes and John Wallis from 1655 until Hobbes's death in 1679 was one of the most intense of the ‘battles of the books’ in seventeenth-century intellectual life. The dispute was principally centered on geometric questions (most notably Hobbes’s many failed attempts to square the circle), but it also involved questions of religion and politics. This paper investigates the origins of the dispute and argues that Wallis’s primary motivation was not so much to refute Hobbes’s geometry as to demolish his reputation as an authority in political, philosophical, and religious matters. It also highlights the very different conceptions of geometrical methodology employed by the two disputants. In the end, I argue that, although Wallis was successful in showing the inadequacies of Hobbes’s geometric endeavours, he failed in his quest to discredit the Hobbesian philosophy in toto .
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Abizadeh, Arash. "Hobbes’s agnostic theology before Leviathan." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47, no. 5 (2017): 714–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2017.1301776.
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AbstractPrior to 1651, Hobbes was agnostic about the existence of God. Hobbes argued that God’s existence could neither be demonstrated nor proved, so that those who reason about God’s existence will systematically vacillate, sometimes thinking God exists, sometimes not, which for Hobbes is to say they will doubt God’s existence. Because this vacillation or doubt is inherent to the subject, reasoners like himself will judge that settling on one belief rather than another is epistemically unjustified. Hobbes’s agnosticism becomes apparent once we attend to his distinctions between the propositional attitudes one might adopt towards theological claims, including supposing, thinking, having faith and knowing.
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Chwaszcza, Christine. "The Seat of Sovereignty: Hobbes on the Artificial Person of the Commonwealth or State." Hobbes Studies 25, no. 2 (2012): 123–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02502001.
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Is sovereignty in Hobbes the power of a person or of an office? This article defends the thesis that it is the latter. The interpretation is based on an analysis of Hobbes’s version of the social contract in Leviathan. Pace Quentin Skinner, it will be argued that the person whom Hobbes calls “sovereign” is not a person but the office of government.
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Tabb, Kathryn. "The Fate of Nebuchadnezzar." Hobbes Studies 27, no. 1 (June 6, 2014): 13–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02701005.
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This paper makes a case for the centrality of the passion of curiosity to Hobbes’s account of human nature. Hobbes describes curiosity as one of only a few capacities differentiating human beings from animals, and I argue that it is in fact the fundamental cause of humanity’s uniqueness, generating other important difference-makers such as language, science and politics. I qualify Philip Pettit’s (2008) claim that Hobbes believes language to be the essence of human difference, contending that Pettit grants language too central a place in Hobbes’s psychology. Language is, for Hobbes, a technology adopted on account of curiosity. Further, curiosity is necessary not only for linguistic but also for scientific activity. Only after what he calls original knowledge has been gathered are names employed to generate the conditional propositions that constitute science. Finally, curiosity can resolve another puzzle of Hobbesian psychology that Pettit leaves unanswered: our tendency towards strife. Hobbes believes that insofar as human beings have an implacable hunger for knowledge of the future, we are unable to rest content with present gains and must always aspire to secure the best possible outcome for ourselves.
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Médina, José. "Hobbes’s Geometrical Optics." Hobbes Studies 29, no. 1 (April 25, 2016): 39–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02901003.
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Since Euclid, optics has been considered a geometrical science, which Aristotle defines as a “mixed” mathematical science. Hobbes follows this tradition and clearly places optics among physical sciences. However, modern scholars point to a confusion between geometry and physics and do not seem to agree about the way Hobbes mixes both sciences. In this paper, I return to this alleged confusion and intend to emphasize the peculiarity of Hobbes’s geometrical optics. This paper suggests that Hobbes’s conception of geometrical optics, as a mixed mathematical science, greatly differs from Descartes’s one, mainly because they do not share the same “mechanical conception of nature.” I will argue that Hobbes and Descartes also have in common the quest for a different kind of geometry for their optics, different from that of the Ancients. I will show that this departure is not recent since Hobbes’s approach is already evident in 1636, when he judges the demonstrations of his contemporary friends, Claude Mydorge and Walter Warner. Finally the paper broadly suggests what is noteworthy in Hobbes’s optics, that is, the importance of the idea of force in his mechanics, although he was not able to conceptualize it in other terms than “quickness.”
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Ribarević, Luka. "Politička ekonomija u Levijatanu." Politička misao 57, no. 2 (October 1, 2020): 127–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.20901/pm.57.2.06.
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U magistralnoj studiji razvoja klasične političke ekonomije Robna proizvodnja i udruženi rad u Marxovoj kritici političke ekonomije Daga Strpića veoma važno mjesto zauzima Thomas Hobbes. Prema Strpiću Hobbes uspostavlja novi metodološki i kategorijalni okvir za razumijevanje političke zajednice u moderni. Za razliku od velike većine interpretacija Hobbesove philosophiae civilis Strpić Hobbesa ne čita samo kao utemeljitelja moderne političke teorije, nego i klasične političke ekonomije. U tekstu se političko-ekonomski aspekt Hobbesove znanosti o politici razmatra posredstvom kritičke analize dijaloga koji Strpić vodi s utjecajnim tumačenjem C. B. Macphersona. Strpić usvaja bitne elemente Macphersonove interpretacije fokusirane na e konomske pretpostavke Hobbesova političkog mišljenja, ali istovremeno odstupa od njegova razumijevanja Levijatana. Na toj se pozadini nastoji utvrditi spoznajne domete i ograničenja političko-ekonomskog čitanja Hobbesa koje dijele Strpić i Macpherson.
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May, Larry. "Hobbes Against the Jurists: Sovereignty and Artificial Reason." Hobbes Studies 25, no. 2 (2012): 223–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18750257-02502007.
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This paper discusses sovereignty and examines in detail Hobbes’s debates with the two leading legal theorists of his day, Coke and Hale, both Lord Chief Justices of the King’s Bench. I argue that Hobbes came to change his mind somewhat about the desirability of divided sovereignty by the time, near the end of his life, that he wrote the Dialogue. But I also argue that Hobbes should have developed more than a very thin conception of the rule of law. Hobbes should have been more open to the ideas that the jurists of his day were developing, especially the idea that the judiciary should have independent status.
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Oliveira, Mariana Kuhn de. "The Governing of Opinions." Disputatio 14, no. 67 (December 1, 2022): 395–410. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/disp-2022-0019.
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Abstract Thomas Hobbes’s most important recommendations for a sovereign reader concerned the governing of opinion. Due to the spread of false doctrines and their powerful champions, Hobbes was afraid that subjects would have opinions contrary to the maintenance of peace. His solution comprehended a combination of civic education and censorship. This text explains how Hobbes justifies his recommendations from the perspective of individual deliberation. It argues that Hobbes conceived censoring circulating doctrines as a way of keeping subjects’ minds like clean paper, ready for the sovereign to imprint civil doctrine in them through teaching, thereby increasing the chances of influencing subjects’ (free) deliberation, and thus of producing obedience.
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DAY, ANDREW KENNETH. "HOBBES'S CHANGING ECCLESIOLOGY." Historical Journal 62, no. 4 (November 13, 2018): 899–919. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x18000304.
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AbstractReaders of Hobbes have sought to account for differences between the arguments of his most influential texts. In De cive Hobbes (tepidly) endorsed apostolic structures of spiritual authority, while in Leviathan he at last unleashed his vehement anticlericalism. I argue that these disparities do not reflect an identifiable change in Hobbes's ideas or principles over time. Rather, the political context in which Hobbes composed his treatises drastically altered over the course of his writing career, and the Hobbesian theoretical significance of those contextual developments best accounts for some ecclesiological inconsistencies across his oeuvre. There was, throughout the brief and tumultuous period after the regicide during which Hobbes composed Leviathan, no sovereign power in England to whom he should defer, and consequently he acquired certain liberties that subjects in a civitas forgo. Those included the renewal of his right to wage a ‘war of pens’ against High Anglican episcopal power.
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Abbott, Don Paul. "“Eloquence is Power”." Rhetorica 32, no. 4 (2014): 386–411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/rh.2014.32.4.386.
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Thomas Hobbes is a severe critic of rhetoric but he is also a careful student and skillful practitioner of the art of persuasion. Many critics have therefore argued that Hobbes's views of rhetoric are both conflicted and inconsistent. In contrast, I argue that Hobbes's conception of rhetoric displays remarkable consistency. While he rejects the abuses of rhetoric abundant in political oratory he nevertheless embraces the power of eloquence. In Leviathan Hobbes reconciles his appreciation of eloquence with his distrust of oratory by refashioning rhetoric into a private, rather than public art, which fulfills many of the traditional duties of rhetoric.
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Wielomski, Adam. "Thomas Hobbes i teologia polityczna władzy suwerennej." Studia nad Autorytaryzmem i Totalitaryzmem 42, no. 4 (September 21, 2021): 281–305. http://dx.doi.org/10.19195/2300-7249.42.4.13.
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Tekst ten stanowi moją osobistą polemikę z tradycyjną interpretacją teorii politycznej Thomasa Hobbesa, zwykle uznawaną za ateistyczną i stanowiącą jedno ze źródeł filozofii oświecenia. W mojej ocenie Hobbes jest nieortodoksyjnym kalwinem, woluntarystą i fideistą religijnym, podczas gdy jego idea stanu natury i umowy społecznej stanowią wyłącznie teoretyczny model państwa. Jako fideista i woluntarysta kalwiński, Hobbes jest zwolennikiem gomaryzmu, czyli nieortodoksyjnie kalwińskiego uznania wolnej woli ludzkiej. Jego wizja suwerenności stanowi, że ludzka władza polityczna jest pochodna wobec wizji wszechmogącego Boga. Oto klasyczny przykład teologii politycznej sformułowanej przez Carla Schmitta w XX stuleciu. Główną teologiczno-polityczną analogią w dziele Hobbesa jest ta, że władza ludzka stanowi tylko refleks władzy Stwórcy. Dla tego kalwina władza Boska jest nieodparta, nieograniczona przez prawa natury. Teologiczno-politycznym refleksem nieodpartej władzy Boga jest równie nieodparta władza suwerena, która nie może być ograniczona przez konstytucję, prawa fundamentalne czy ustawy. Dla Hobbesa, wszelka władza ludzka jest jedynie refleksem Boskiej nieodpartej władzy. W wizji tego angielskiego filozofa mamy więc moc suwerena ustanowienia narodowego wyznania i podjęcia decyzji o kościele, dogmatach, rytach i liturgii, jego monopol na decyzje polityczne i administracyjne, negację konstytucjonalizmu, zakaz oporu i penalizację zbrodni ateizmu, stanowiącego negację nieodpartej władzy Boga, a w konsekwencji, tejże samej władzy króla, skoro suweren jest Imago Dei.
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Brett, Annabel. "'The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth': Thomas Hobbes and Late Renaissance Commentary on Aristotle's Politics." Hobbes Studies 23, no. 1 (2010): 72–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502510x496372.
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AbstractHobbes's relation to the later Aristotelian tradition, in both its scholastic and its humanists variants, has been increasingly explored by scholars. However, on two fundamental points (the naturalness of the city and the use of the matter/form distinction in the political works), there is more to be said in this connection. A close examination of a range of late Renaissance commentaries on Aristotle's Politics shows that they elucidate a picture of pre-civic human nature that had (contrary to Hobbes's implication) much in common with that of Hobbes. Moreover, they deployed the matter-form distinction in their analysis of the city or civitas in ways that are in important respects similar to Hobbes's procedure in De cive and Leviathan. The paper concludes that Hobbes drew on this tradition in multiple ways while at the same time undermining some of its principal conclusions; Hobbes was in no sense an 'Aristotelian' even if his philosophy has substantial debts to Aristotelianism.
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Andrew, Edward G. "Hobbes on Conscience Within the Law and Without." Canadian Journal of Political Science 32, no. 2 (June 1999): 203–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008423900010465.
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AbstractThis article seeks to clarify the meaning of conscience and to exhibit its role in the philosophy of Hobbes. The author compares Hobbes's philosophy to Locke's doctrine. Instead of the usual contrast of Hobbes, the enemy to the claims of conscience, and Locke, the defender of the rights of conscience, he shows that Hobbes found a place for conscience within the law—the rights of defendants to a jury of their choice, and the rights of jurors to a verdict according to their conscience—whereas Locke found a place for conscience outside the law, in the judgment of revolutionaries when a revolution is justifiable or successful. In elaborating Hobbes's views of trial by jury, the author suggests that the best forensic metaphor for conscience is a juror (rather than the more usual ones of a witness, a judge or a legislator). Conscience is subjective certainty, dangerous outside an institutional setting, but indispensable for decisions not based on demonstrable knowledge, such as a juror's verdict beyond reasonable doubt.
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May, Larry. "Hobbes on Fidelity to Law." Hobbes Studies 5, no. 1 (1992): 77–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187502592x00065.
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AbstractI will attempt to explicate Hobbes's conception of legal obligation by trying to understand what factors would lead people, on his view, to agree to obey a legal authority as well as to accept a legal system as deserving of respect. I am mainly concerned to understand Hobbes's curious claims that those who have been legitimately condemned to death and those who have been legitimately commanded to serve in combat situations may nonetheless justifiably disobey the law. Such claims seem to undermine fidelity to law, at least as that concept was understood by Plato in The Crito. As a result it might appear that Hobbes provides too simplistic a view of legal obligation. On the contrary, I will argue that Hobbes supports quite a plausible and subtle view of legal obligation which has several advantages over various other views of legal obligation.