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. (shrink)

Hobbes’s theory of authorisation poses numerous puzzles to scholars. The weightiest of these conundrums is a supposed contradiction between chapter 17 of Leviathan, that calls for unconditional submission to the sovereign, and chapter 21, that defends the liberties of the subject. This article offers a fresh perspective on the theory’s consistency, function and addressees. While existing research doubts the theory’s consistency, focuses on its immunisation function and on the subjects as the theory’s main addresses, the paper argues that Hobbes’s theory (...) of authorisation is consistent with the doctrine of the liberty of subjects, and that it serves the dual purpose of immunising the sovereign against criticism and disciplining the sovereign via a counsel of memento mori: A hitherto underexplored element of authorisation theory is a reminder of the mortality of sovereignty directed at the sovereign to convince him to make restricted use of his absolute right to rule. Hobbes’s theory of authorisation can thus be read as part of a complex argumentative strategy for peace, rooted in a ‘liberal absolutism’ which is not as paradoxical as it sounds, and which is reflected in the frontispiece by the friendly smile of the sovereign. (shrink)

Hobbes is often portrayed as a thinker who anticipated modern constructivist ideas of fiction and representation according to which reality is simply a social construction. This article questions t...

The paper examines Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the state and representation in light of the historical development of the idea of the people as a corporation and its use in late-medieval and early-modern theories of resistance. Consequently, it is argued that Hobbes’s use of a corporate metaphor for the state embodied a rejection of the ius gentium reading of the people as a corporate body that legitimised the right of resistance to the sovereign power. By incorporating the state, not the (...) people, and championing a single covenant of a dissociated multitude that leads to its generation, Hobbes undermined the basis on which advocates of popular sovereignty justified opposition to the sovereign; a prerogative derived in their eyes from a covenant between the people and the ruler. (shrink)

Nuestro interés en el presente trabajo es, efectivamente, enfocarnos en la temática de las corporaciones, pero centrándonos en dos autores en particular: Thomas Hobbes y Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Como se verá, mientras que Hobbes referirá a las corporaciones como empresas, Hegel las aludirá como asociaciones (encargadas de anexar la sociedad civil con el Estado). Es a estos fines que estructuraremos el presente trabajo en tres tiempos. En primer lugar, explicaremos cómo las corporaciones surgen de acuerdo a las teorías de (...) ambos autores. Luego elucidaremos la forma en que las mismas funcionan y se encuentran conformadas. Finalmente, en tercera instancia dilucidaremos la relación que las corporaciones mantienen con el Estado tanto en Hobbes como en Hegel. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The concepts of liberty and representation reveal tensions in Hobbes's political anthropology that only a study of the development of his philosophical materialism can fully elucidate. The first section of this article analyses the contradictory definitions of liberty offered in De cive, and explains them against the background of Hobbes's elaboration of a deterministic concept of conatus during the 1640s. Variations in the concepts of conatus and void between De motu and De corpore will shed light on ideas of (...) individuality, unity and agency that carry direct political relevance. The second section explains why the concept of representation that Hobbes elaborated at the end of the decade in Leviathan cannot be interpreted within an exclusively political and juridical framework. Rather, I will claim that it should be explained in the light of Hobbes's materialist theory of the power exerted by the sovereign persona on human imagination. (shrink)