The Governing of Opinions: Hobbes on How Civic Education and Censorship Impact Subjects’ Deliberation

Disputatio 14 (67):395-410 (2022)
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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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References found in this work

Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 2007 - In Aloysius Martinich, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes.Quentin Skinner - 1996 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 31 (1):74-79.
Thomas Hobbes and ‘gently instilled’ conscience.Amy Gais - 2021 - History of European Ideas 47 (8):1211-1227.

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