GREAT THINKERS Thomas Hobbes

Commentary

[in chronological order]

The Platonian Leviathan

- Leon Harold Craig, The Platonian Leviathan, (University of Toronto Press, 2013)

From the publisher: Thomas Hobbes’s influential political treatise, Leviathan, was first published in 1651. Many scholars have since credited him with a mechanistic outlook towards human nature that established the basis of modern Western political… More

Hobbes and the Law

- David Dyzenhaus and Thomas Poole, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

This volume provides the first collection of specially commissioned essays devoted to Hobbes and the law.

Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan

- Noel Malcolm (Clarendon Press, 2012)

This is a three-volume critical edition based on a study of the manuscript and printing history of the Leviathan.  The first volume contains Malcolm’s introduction, which gives an account of the Leviathan’s context, sources, and textual history.  The… More

Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity: A Quarrel of the Civil Wars and Interregnum

- Nicholas D. Jackson (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

This 2007 book was the first full account of one of the most famous quarrels of the seventeenth century, that between the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and the Anglican archbishop of Armagh, John Bramhall (1594-1663). This analytical narrative… More

Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life

- Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (Princeton University Press, 2011)

Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic experimentation… More

Hobbes

- Bernard Gert (Polity, 2010)

A book-length study of Hobbes’ political and moral teaching that resists the psychological egoism often attributed to Hobbes by emphasizing the distinction between justice and morality in his political theory.

“‘Of Religion’ in Hobbes’ Leviathan” by Devin Stauffer

- Devin Stauffer, The Journal of Politics, v. 72, no. 3 (July, 2010): 868-879

Abstract: Although Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential works in the early modern critique of traditional Christian political theology, a debate persists over Hobbes’s view of religion. This… More

The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

- Samuel I. Mintz (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Mintz, in examining these seventeenth-century reactions to Hobbes, sets him against his intellectual background and so gives an added dimension to his thought, captures the ideological excitement of the seventeenth-century critics, and reawakens the crucial… More

“The Non-Normative Nature of Hobbesian Natural Law”

- Gary Herbert, Hobbesian Studies, 22, no. 1 (2009): 3-28

Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to defend an older, non-normative approach to Hobbes’s philosophy. I argue, against recent theories that maintain Hobbes’s philosophy contains a normative theory of human behavior “which prescribes proper or… More

“Hobbes’ Fearful Wisdom”

- Michael Gillespie, in The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago University Press, 2009), pp. 207-254

In this, the seventh chapter of his book-length study of the origins of modernity, Gillespie considers the place of Hobbes in the making (and crisis) of modernity and the Enlightenment.

Major Works

Behemoth, or the Long Parliament [written 1668, published 1682]

- University of Chicago Press, 1990 (Ferdinand Toennies, ed.)

Behemoth is Hobbes’s account of the English Civil Wars of the 1640s.  It is an important book in helping us consider how the experience of the wars influenced Hobbes’s thinking, and how he would later interpret the wars through the perspective of the… More

A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England [written 1666, published 1681]

- University of Chicago Press, 1997 (Joseph Cropsey, ed.)

Hobbes presents here, in dialogue form, a reflection on the relation between reason and law.  The opinion that emerges from this dialogue manages to maintain Hobbes’s famous insistence on the indivisibility of sovereignty while allowing for a separation of… More

Of Liberty and Necessity and Selections from Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance [1654-1656]

- Cambridge University Press, 1999 (Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, Vere Chappell, ed.)

This volume presents an exchange between Hobbes and the Anglican cleric John Bramhall.  Hobbes and Bramhall debate questions such as whether human beings can act freely, what freedom means, whether freedom and material determination can coexist, and how… More

The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic [1640]

- Oxford University Press, 2008 (Human Nature and de Corpore Politico, J.C.A. Gaskin, ed.)

This is Hobbes’s first published philosophical work (1640), which was written in part in response to the conflicts between Charles I and Parliament. The book represents Hobbes’s initial attempt to address political matters with the deductive methods of… More

The Elements of Philosophy: De Cive

- Hackett, 1991 (Bernard Gert, ed. -- contains De Cive and selections of De Homine)

The Elements of Philosophy is composed of three parts, not published in their intended order. De Cive, published in 1642, was Hobbes’s first definitive articulation of his political philosophy. It includes Hobbes’s account of the state of nature and the… More

The Elements of Philosophy: De Homine

- Hackett, 1991 (Bernard Gert, ed. -- contains De Cive and selections of De Homine)

The Elements of Philosophy is composed of three parts, not published in their intended order. De Homine, which was published in 1658, opens with ten chapters on optics. The last five chapters, treating Hobbes’s accounts of the passions and an analysis of… More

The Elements of Philosophy: De Corpore

  The Elements of Philosophy is composed of three parts, not published in their intended order. De Corpore, which was published in 1655, contains four parts. Part I concerns logic, Part II concerns scientific concepts, Part III concerns geometry and… More

Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil [1651]

- Hackett, 1994 (Edwin Curley, ed.)

The Leviathan is Hobbes’s masterwork, published in 1651. It contains four parts: “Of Man,” “Of Commonwealth,” “Of a Christian Commonwealth,” and “Of the Kingdom of Darkness.” “Of Man” connects… More

Multimedia

Three Introductory Lectures on Leviathan

- Steven Smith, Yale University Open Courses. PLSC 114: Introduction to Political Philosophy. Yale University.

Lecture I: This is an introduction to the political views of Thomas Hobbes, which are often deemed paradoxical. On the one hand, Hobbes is a stern defender of political absolutism. The Hobbesian doctrine of sovereignty dictates complete monopoly of power… More

Discussion of Hobbes with Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, and Annabel Brett

- Audio. In Our Time Podcast, BBC.

A lecture to first-year students on Hobbes

- Video. Peter Millican, University of Oxford, 2009.

A series of lectures delivered by Peter Millican to first-year philosophy students at the University of Oxford. The lectures comprise the 8-week General Philosophy course and were delivered in late 2009.

Discussion of the frontispiece of the Leviathan

An interview with Steven Pinker and Noel Malcolm on Hobbes

- Audio. BBC Radio 4, Great Lives, 23 Dec 2011.

The writer and psychologist Steven Pinker joins Matthew Parris to discuss the life of the great English philosopher  Thomas Hobbes. Noel Malcolm from All Souls College, Oxford provides the expert analysis. Power and violence are themes of the discussion of… More

Other Works

Thomas Hobbes’ Translations of Homer: The Iliad and the Odyssey [1673-1676]

- Oxford University Press, 2008 (Eric Nelson, ed.)

Hobbes translated the Iliad and the Odyssey in the 1670s; it was his last major undertaking.  This volume, edited by Eric Nelson, is extensively annotated, marking places in which Hobbes alters the poems to align more closely with his own views.  Nelson… More

Translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War [1629]

- Chicago University Press, 1989 (David Grene, ed.)

Hobbes published a translation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War in 1628, long before publishing his own work on political philosophy.  The translation has long been considered a masterful rendering of the ancient Greek and a work of art in… More

The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, Volume 2 (1660-1679)

- Oxford University Press, 1998 (Noel Malcolm, ed.)

This volume includes correspondence with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christiaan Huygens, Cosimo de’Medici, King Charles II, John Aubrey, Anthony Wood, William Crooke, François du Verdus, and Samuel Sorbière.  In this edition by Noel Malcolm, the letters… More

The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, Volume 1 (1622-1659)

- Oxford University Press, 1994 (Noel Malcom, ed.)

This volume includes correspondence with members of the Cavendish family, René Descartes, Marin Mersenne, Sir Kenelm Digby, Henry Stubbe, and Samuel Sorbière.  In this edition by Noel Malcolm, the letters are presented in their original languages and… More

Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’ War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes

- Oxford University Press, 2010 (Noel Malcolm, ed.)

In this volume, Noel Malcolm presents his recent discovery of a manuscript translation, in Hobbes’s handwriting, of a propaganda pamphlet written to support the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years’ War.  Malcolm introduces and contextualizes this work with… More

Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes

- University of Chicago Press, 1997 (Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene W. Saxonhouse, eds.)

Hobbes may have been the author of the three essays printed here (“A Discourse Upon the Beginning of Tacitus,” “A Discourse of Rome,” and “A Discourse of Laws”), which, together with twelve other pieces, were published… More

The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury

- Published by J. Bohn, and by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839-1845 (11 volumes, Sir William Molesworth, ed.)

This is the most comprehensive edition of Hobbes’s English works.  It was published over the course of six years in 11 volumes.  A comparable edition of Hobbes’s works in Latin, also edited by Sir William Molesworth, is listed below. An updated edition… More