•  3
    Hobbes and the Papal Monarchy
    In Marcus P. Adams (ed.), A Companion to Hobbes, Wiley. 2021.
    The papal monarchy is the subject of Thomas Hobbes's Historical Narration concerning Heresy, much of Behemoth, and his long Latin poem, the Historia Ecclesiastica. Hobbes's was not the only account in his day of the papal monarchy as a history of iniquity, or even as “the ghost of the Roman Empire.” The papal creation of a parallel system of offices in the late Roman and Holy Roman Empires is of immense institutional importance. Hobbes's analysis of the second papal strategy, the co‐optation of …Read more
  •  3
    Book reviews (review)
    with M. W. F. Stone, Luciano Floridi, John Henry, Patrick Riley, Paul Schuurman, Brandon Look, Sarah Hutton, D. O. Thomas, and Christopher Adair‐Toteff
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 155-183. 1999.
    The Cambridge Companion to Humanism. Jill Kraye. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. xvii + 320. £35.00 hbk, £12.95 pbk. ISBN 0–521–43038–0, 0–521–43624–9. Scepticism in the History of Philosophy ‐ A Pan‐American Dialogue. Edited by Richard H. Popkin. Dordrecht‐Boston‐London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996. pp. xxii + 285, hbk, £99.00, ISBN 0–7923–3769–7 Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe. David B. Ruderman. Yale Univ…Read more
  • The Politics of Hobbes's Historia Ecclesiastica
    In Laurens van Apeldoorn & Robin Douglass (eds.), Hobbes on Politics and Religion, Oxford University Press. 2018.
  •  43
    Calvin and Hobbes: A Reply to Curley, Martinich and Wright
    Philosophical Readings 4 (1): 3-17. 2012.
  •  7
    9. Hobbes’s Absolutist State
    In Otfried Höffe (ed.), Thomas Hobbes: De Cive, De Gruyter. pp. 131-144. 2018.
  •  746
    Leviathan and the problem of ecclesiastical authority
    Political Theory 3 (3): 289-303. 1975.
    This essay, published in Political Theory in 1975, was one of the first to address the subject of the last two long books of Hobbes's Leviathan on religion. It addresses the purpose of these books and the relation between Hobbes's philosophy, ecclesiology and theology and the problems they raise.
  •  1665
    Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine: Leviathan and 'he ghost of the Roman empire'
    History of Political Thought 16 (4): 503-531. 1995.
    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, d…Read more
  •  1
    A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. Parts I & II
    with Mary Astell
    Utopian Studies 9 (2): 225-226. 1998.
  •  44
    Mary Astell: Theorist of Freedom From Domination
    Cambridge University Press. 2005.
    Philosopher, theologian, educational theorist, feminist and political pamphleteer, Mary Astell was an important figure in the history of ideas of the early modern period. Among the first systematic critics of John Locke's entire corpus, she is best known for the famous question which prefaces her Reflections on Marriage: 'If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?' She is claimed by modern Republican theorists and feminists alike but, as a Royalist High Church Tory, the …Read more
  •  1000
    Hobbes's Biblical Beasts
    Political Theory 23 (2): 353-375. 1995.
    Reformation commentators were well aware of the allegorical referents for Leviathan and Behemoth in the book of Job, representing the powerful states of Ancient Egypt and Assyria, but played them down. Hobbes did not.
  •  11
    A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (edited book)
    Broadview Press. 2002.
    Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies is one of the most important and neglected works advocating the establishment of women's academies. Its reception was so controversial that Astell responded with a lengthy sequel, also in this volume. The cause of great notoriety, Astell's Proposal was imitated by Defoe in his "An Academy for Women," parodied in the Tatler, satirized on the stage, plagiarized by Bishop Berkeley, and later mocked by Gilbert and Sullivan in Princess Ida.
  •  574
    The Contractual State
    History of Political Thought 8 (3): 395. 1987.
    Recent archaeological discoveries show ancient, and particularly Near Eastern society to have been supremely contractual, while Mediterranean society was historically characterized by strong family structures, challenging the 19th century evolutionary Status-to-Contract canon.
  • Katrin Lederer, ed., "Human Needs: A Contribution to the Current Debate"
    Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 53 (n/a): 227. 1982.
  •  537
    Hobbes, Heresy, and the Historia Ecclesiastica
    Journal of the History of Ideas 55 (4): 553-571. 1994.
    Thomas Hobbes's 'Historia Ecclesiastica' presents his views on religion and aims to divert the attention of the public from charges against his being a heretic to placing heresy in pagan history, claiming that Greek philosophers were responsible for introducing heresy in the Christian Church. His book reveals his interest in religious history and the growth of hermeticism and Cabalism in England in his age.
  •  137
    Democracy: Method or Praxis?
    Thesis Eleven 9 (1): 108-125. 1984.
    The debate over democracy in recent years has resumed where Schumpeter left it, on the question whether democracy constitutes a phenomenon in its own right with the full range of conceptual, economic and institutional apparatuses, or whether democracy is rather a method or set of techniques which can be applied in widely different political contexts to regulate the struggle for power. Marx, who wrote a paean to democracy as a unique constitutional form, ’the essence’ of the political, in his Cri…Read more
  •  24
    Attention has turned from Hobbes the systematic thinker to his inconsistencies, as the essays in the Hobbes symposium published in the recent volume of Political Theory suggest. Deborah Baumgold, in "The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation," shifted the focus to "the history of the book," and Hobbes's method of serial composition and peripatetic insertion, as a major source of his inconsistency. Accepting Baumgold's method, the author argues that the manner of composition does not necessarily …Read more
  •  40
    Hobbes and Schmitt on the name and nature of Leviathan revisited
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 13 (2-3): 297-315. 2010.
    Hobbes's Leviathan transformed forever the meaning of the term, long debated by Biblical commentators. Alternatively, in the Book of Job chapter 41, a great chthonic beast, or Lucifer?like ?King of all the Children of Pride?, Leviathan for Hobbes was a figure for the modern state. Recent work by Quentin Skinner and Noel Malcolm treats Leviathan as in part a story about representation. But by juxtaposing the thesis of Carl Schmitt, juridical architect of the Third Reich, and author if his own sta…Read more
  •  245
    Marx, Democracy and the Ancient Polis
    Critical Philosophy 1 (1): 47-66. 1984.
    Marx in his early Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843) declared "Democracy is human existence, while in other political forms man has only legal existence". In the Grundrisse and his late Ethnological Notebooks he studied the emergence of "the political" from primordialism, or the rule of family, tribe and clan .
  •  1511
    14 Hobbes on religion
    In Tom Sorell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, Cambridge University Press. pp. 346. 1996.
    Why would someone concerned with heresy, who defined it as private opinion that flew in the face of doctrine sanctioned by the public person, harbor such a detailed interest in heterodoxy? Hobbes's religious beliefs ultimately remain a mystery, as perhaps they were meant to: the private views of someone concerned to conform outwardly to what his church required of him, and thereby avoid to heresy, while maintaining intellectual autonomy. The hazard of Hobbes's particular catechism is that he and…Read more
  •  1102
    Hobbes, civil law, liberty and the Elements of Law
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (1): 47-67. 2016.
    When he gave his first political work the title The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Hobbes signalled an agenda to revise and incorporate continental Roman and Natural Law traditions for use in Great Britain, and from first to last he remained faithful to this agenda, which it took his entire corpus to complete. The success of his project is registered in the impact Hobbes had upon the continental legal system in turn, specific aspects of his theory, as for instance the right to punish, ente…Read more
  •  589
    A Very British Hobbes, or A More European Hobbes?
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 22 (2): 368-386. 2014.
    Malcolm’s English-Latin Leviathan is a marvelous technical accomplishment. My issues are with his contextualization, seeing Leviathan primarily as an advice book for Hobbes’s teenage pupil, the future Charles II. Malcolm’s localization involves minimalizing Leviathan's remoter sources, so the European Republic of Letters, for which Hobbes so painstakingly translated his works into Latin, is almost entirely missing, along with current European traditions of Hobbes scholarship. Is this very Briti…Read more
  •  33
    The duck/rabbit Hobbes
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14 (4). 2006.
    Once in a blue moon a book comes along capable of effecting a Gestalt Switch and Jeffrey Collin’s The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes is just such a book. Here we have the duck/rabbit Hobbes, so long seen as an unmitigated Royalist, now exposed as an ardent Cromwellian.
  •  980
    Karl Marx on Democracy, Participation, Voting, and Equality
    Political Theory 12 (4): 537-556. 1984.
    Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843) makes the very case for Democracy as a privileged constitutional form that he makes in the 1844 Manuscripts for communism. Democracy is the "generic constitution" to which monarchy stands as a species. Democracy is "content and form", since the state is essentially the Demos and Democracy is goverment of the People. "Democracy is the resolved mystery of all constitutions".
  •  1546
    Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (5): 814-835. 2016.
    ABSTRACT: Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator go…Read more
  • David Runciman: Pluralism and the Personality of the State
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1): 162-164. 1999.
  •  260
    The Paradoxical Hobbes
    Political Theory 37 (5): 676-688. 2009.
    Attention has turned from Hobbes the systematic thinker to his inconsistencies, as the essays in the Hobbes symposium published in the recent volume of Political Theory suggest. Deborah Baumgold, in “The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation,” shifted the focus to “the history of the book,” and Hobbes’s method of serial composition and peripatetic insertion, as a major source of his inconsistency. Accepting Baumgold’s method, the author argues that the manner of composition does not necessarily …Read more
  •  376
    Aristotle and the Problem of Needs
    History of Political Thought 5 (3): 393-424. 1984.
    "Justice according to Need" is an old socialist slogan and Marxism embraced an ancient theory of true and false needs. But Aristotle also formulated "justice according to need", although in different terms, where "need" is often translated as "demand".
  •  10
    Review article: the view from the 'divell's mountain'
    History of Political Thought 17 (4): 615-622. 1996.
    Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in The Philosophy of Hobbes , xvi + 477 pp., ?35.00, ISBN 0 521 55436 5
  •  1354
    Hobbes o religiji
    Problemi 3. 1997.
    ABSTRACT: Why would someone concerned with heresy, who defined it as private opinion that flew in the face of doctrine sanctioned by the public person, harbor such a detailed interest in heterodoxy? Hobbes's religious beliefs ultimately remain a mystery, as perhaps they were meant to: the private views of someone concerned to conform outwardly to what his church required of him, and thereby avoid to heresy, while maintaining intellectual autonomy. The hazard of Hobbes's particular catechism is t…Read more