Patricia Springborg

This essay advances the following set of arguments: First, that we must take seriously Hobbes's claim in Behemoth that "the science of just & unjust" is a demonstrable science, accessible to those of even the meanest capacity. Second, that Leviathan is the work in which this science, intended as a serious project in civic education, is set out. Third, that Hobbes is prepared to accept, like Plato & Aristotle, "giving to each his own," as a preliminary definition of justice, from which however, he draws some very un-Aristotelian conclusions. Fourth, that though in Hobbes's theory "just & unjust" are equivalent of "lawful & unlawful," this is far from being a simple statement of legal positivism, but rather the conclusion of a practical syllogism. Fifth, that the impediments to this demonstrable science of justice being universally accepted, on Hobbes's account, are twofold, explained in terms of religion & the role of preachers & educators produced by the universities, on the one hand, & by the activity of "democratical gentlemen" & classical republicans dominating parliament, on the other. Sixth, that Hobbes's account of the transition from jus to lex, specified in terms of a transition from the state of nature to that of civil society, although Epicurean in origin, is much closer to a conventional civil law position. Adapted from the source document.

Quentin Skinner’s dedication to investigating Hobbes’s concept of liberty in a number of essays and books has born some unusual fruit. Not only do we see the enormous problems that Hobbes set himself by proceeding as he did, but Skinner’s careful analysis allows us to chart Hobbes’ ingenuity as he tried to steer a path between the Charybdis of determinism and the Scylla of voluntarism – not very successfully, as we shall see. The upshot is a theory of individual freedom and civil liberty to challenge the classical republican traditionThis Article does not have an abstract

Schwarz pursues a primordial theme by Freudian means, extrapolating from the psychogenesis of a person to the psychogenesis of a nation. He thus associates monarchy with culture in its infancy, displaying infantile narcisism and meglomania. But as perhaps the best worst case, Pharaonic Egypt, demonstrates, meglomania and narcissism expresssed in colossi, grandiose claims of the king that would shame even the gods, are more likely a sign of weakness than strength. And classical republicanism continues to maintain a monarchical element, now transferred to presidents.

The East/West divide seems to be as old as history itself, the roots of Orientalism and anti-Semitism lying far beyond the origins of modern Western imperialism. The very project of Western classical republicanism had its darker side: to purloin the legacy of the Greeks, distancing them from Eastern systems deemed 'despotic' and 'other'. Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince is a thoroughly revisionist book, challenging not only the comfortable view the West has of its own political evolution, but the negative stereotypes of non-Western systems. Not only did these images serve to legitimate early modern European nation states struggling for an identity, but they also served to justify slavery and other forms of domination over subject peoples. Drawing upon archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Springborg discusses the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian contribution of political forms and cultic institutions to classical Graeco-Roman civilization, an Eastern legacy to the West long obscured for political reasons. A different reading of the foundation myths of Athens and Rome, certain texts of Plato, Aristotle, and the writings of Herodotus, Isocrates, Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus, permits us to restore possible lines of filtration. Renaissance thought, long believed to have ushered in the Western classical republican tradition, demonstrates a curious ambivalence towards powerful Eastern system, objects of fascination as much as fear. We do not yet find sedimented the divide between Western Democracy and oriental despotism, in which post-Reformation thought as been set in stone. This major new study will be of interest to students of political history, political theory, comparative politics and political archaeology.

This Companion makes a new departure in Hobbes scholarship, addressing a philosopher whose impact was as great on Continental European theories of state and legal systems as it was at home. This volume is a systematic attempt to incorporate work from both the Anglophone and Continental traditions, bringing together newly commissioned work by scholars from ten different countries in a topic-by-topic sequence of essays that follows the structure of Leviathan, re-examining the relationship among Hobbes's physics, metaphysics, politics, psychology, and religion. Collectively they showcase important revisionist scholarship that re-examines both the context for Leviathan and its reception, demonstrating the degree to which Hobbes was indebted to the long tradition of European humanist thought. This Cambridge Companion shows that Hobbes's legacy was never lost and that he belongs to a tradition of reflection on political theory and governance that is still alive, both in Europe and in the diaspora.

(NB Published in translation as“Hobbes’ theorie der Zivilreligion”, in Dirk Bantl, Rolf Geiger, Stephan Herzberg, eds, Philosophie, Politik und Religion: Klassische Modelle von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. The Hague: de Gruyter, 2013, pp. 117-132. ABSTRACT: Hobbes's Epicureanism was a house of many mansions. Under the banners of antiquity he could flag modern positions on religion that if openly presented as such would have made him liable to charges of heresy or blasphemy, given the censorship of the modern state. But Hobbes's Epicureanism was also serious and there are important continuities, doctrinal and political, between ancient and modern Epicureanism.

Hobbes in Leviathan, chapter xv, 4, makes the startling claim: “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘there is no such thing as justice,’” paraphrasing Psalm 52:1: “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” These are charges of which Hobbes himself could stand accused. His parable of the fool is about the exchange of obedience for protection, the backslider, regime change, and the tyrant; but given that Hobbes was himself likely an oath-breaker, it is also self-reflexive and self-justificatory. For, Hobbes’s fool is not a windbag ( follis), or one of the dumb mob, led astray by priests ( stultus). He is, in the terminology of Psalm 52, an insipiens, a madman or raving lunatic, whose rebellion against God the King is his own destruction and that of his people. A long iconographic tradition portraying the fool as insipiens, Antichrist, heretical impostor and tyrant king, was at Hobbes’s disposal.

As a representative of the papacy Bellarmine was an extremely moderate one. In fact Sixtus V in 1590 had the first volume of his Disputations placed on the Index because it contained so cautious a theory of papal power, denying the Pope temporal hegemony. Bellarmine did not represent all that Hobbes required of him either. On the contrary, he proved the argument of those who championed the temporal powers of the Pope faulty. As a Jesuit he tended to maintain the relative autonomy of the state, denying the temporal powers ascribed by radical papalists and Augustinians. Their argument was generally framed as a syllogism: Christ, who possessed direct temporal power as both God and man, exercised it on earth; the Pope is the vicar of Christ; therefore the Pope possesses and may exercise direct temporal jurisdiction. Bellarmine simply denied that Christ had exercised the temporal power, which as God, it is true, he possessed. Moreover, he drew up and circulated a list of patristic passages collected under the title De Regno Christi quale sit, to prove to the Pope the orthodoxy of his position.

This paper brings new work to bear on the perennial question about Hobbes's atheism to show that as a debate about scepticism it is falsely framed. Hobbes, like fellow members of the Mersenne circle, Descartes and Gassendi, was no sceptic, but rather concerned to rescue physics and metaphysics from radical scepticism by exploring corporealism. In his early letter of November 1640, Hobbes had issued a provocative challenge to Descartes to abandon metaphysical dualism and subscribe to a ?corporeal God?; a provocation to which the Frenchman angrily responded, but was perhaps importantly influenced. Hobbes's minimal realism was consonant with atheism, to which Descartes felt he was being forced. Moreover, Hobbes was unrelenting in his battle against Cartesian dualism, for which he saw Robert Boyle's experimental science as a surrogate