Discover how Hobbes established the framework for modern political thought: liberalism originates in the Hobbesian theory of negative liberty; Hobbesian interest and contract are essential to ...contemporary discussions of the comportment of economic actors; and state sovereignty returns anew in the servility of the state.
Hobbes's political theory has traditionally been taken to be an endorsement of state power and a prescription for unconditional obedience to the sovereign's will. In this book, Susanne Sreedhar ...develops a novel interpretation of Hobbes's theory of political obligation and explores important cases where Hobbes claims that subjects have a right to disobey and resist state power, even when their lives are not directly threatened. Drawing attention to this broader set of rights, her comprehensive analysis of Hobbes's account of political disobedience reveals a unified and coherent theory of resistance that has previously gone unnoticed and undefended. Her book will appeal to all who are interested in the nature and limits of political authority, the right of self-defense, the right of revolution, and the modern origins of these issues.
Leviathan and the air-pump Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon
2011., 20110815, 2011, 2011-08-15, Letnik:
32
eBook
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 in natural philosophy, and Robert Boyle, mechanical philosopher and owner of the newly invented air-pump. The issues at stake in their disputes ranged from the physical integrity of the air-pump to the intellectual integrity of the knowledge it might yield. Both Boyle and Hobbes were looking for ways of establishing knowledge that did not decay into ad hominem attacks and political division. Boyle proposed the experiment as cure. He argued that facts should be manufactured by machines like the air-pump so that gentlemen could witness the experiments and produce knowledge that everyone agreed on. Hobbes, by contrast, looked for natural law and viewed experiments as the artificial, unreliable products of an exclusive guild.
In this book, S. A. Lloyd provides a radical interpretation of Hobbes' laws of nature, revealing them to be not egoistic precepts of personal prudence but rather moral instructions for obtaining the ...common good. This account of Hobbes' moral philosophy stands in contrast to both divine command and rational choice interpretations. Drawing from the core notion of reciprocity, Lloyd explains Hobbes' system of 'cases in the law of nature' and situates Hobbes' moral philosophy in the broader context of his political philosophy and views on religion. Offering ingenious new arguments, Lloyd defends a reciprocity interpretation of the laws of nature through which humanity's common good is secured.
How David Hume and Adam Smith forged a new way of thinking about the modern stateWhat is the modern state? Conspicuously undertheorized in recent political theory, this question persistently animated ...the best minds of the Enlightenment. Recovering David Hume and Adam Smith's long-underappreciated contributions to the history of political thought, The Opinion of Mankind considers how, following Thomas Hobbes's epochal intervention in the mid-seventeenth century, subsequent thinkers grappled with explaining how the state came into being, what it fundamentally might be, and how it could claim rightful authority over those subject to its power. Hobbes has cast a long shadow over Western political thought, particularly regarding the theory of the state. This book shows how Hume and Smith, the two leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment, forged an alternative way of thinking about the organization of modern politics. They did this in part by going back to the foundations: rejecting Hobbes's vision of human nature and his arguements about our capacity to form stable societies over time. In turn, this was harnessed to a deep reconceptualization of how to think philosophically about politics in a secular world. The result was an emphasis on the "opinion of mankind," the necessary psychological basis of all political organization. Demonstrating how Hume and Smith broke away from Hobbesian state theory, The Opinion of Mankind also suggests ways in which these thinkers might shape how we think about politics today, and in turn how we might construct better political theory.
Made with words Pettit, Philip
2008., 20090706, 2009, 2008, 2008-01-01, 20080101
eBook
Hobbes's extreme political views have commanded so much attention that they have eclipsed his work on language and mind, and on reasoning, personhood, and group formation. But this work is of immense ...interest in itself, as Philip Pettit shows in Made with Words, and it critically shapes Hobbes's political philosophy. Pettit argues that it was Hobbes, not later thinkers like Rousseau, who invented the invention of language thesis--the idea that language is a cultural innovation that transformed the human mind. The invention, in Hobbes's story, is a double-edged sword. It enables human beings to reason, commit themselves as persons, and incorporate in groups. But it also allows them to agonize about the future and about their standing relative to one another; it takes them out of the Eden of animal silence and into a life of inescapable conflict--the state of nature. Still, if language leads into this wasteland, according to Hobbes, it can also lead out. It can enable people to establish a commonwealth where the words of law and morality have a common, enforceable sense, and where people can invoke the sanctions of an absolute sovereign to give their words to one another in credible commitment and contract.
This is the first major work in English to explore at length the meaning, context, aims, and vital importance of Thomas Hobbes’s concepts of the law of nature and the right of nature. Hobbes remains ...one of the most challenging and controversial of early modern philosophers, and debates persist about the interpretation of many of his ideas, particularly his views about natural law and natural right. In this book, Perez Zagorin argues that these two concepts are the twin foundations of the entire structure of Hobbes’s moral and political thought.
Jelen tanulmány a Hobbes-i természeti állapot négy aspektusát helyezi reflektorfénybe. Egyrészt, arra a kérdésre keresi a választ, hogy vajon tekinthetjük-e a Hobbes által ábrázolt eredeti állapotot ...időtlen helyzetnek, amelyben nem az időtartamon, hanem csupán a szerző által felépített logikai konstrukció kimenetén van a hangsúly, vagy időtartammal rendelkezőnek kell (lehet) ezt az állapotot tekintenünk, amelynek sajátos fejlődési íve is van. Másrészt, az eredeti állapotba helyezett embert vizsgálja meg annak érdekében, hogy megállapíthassuk a természetes környezet emberének valóban „természetes” voltát, és e kettő (ember és állapot természetessége) közötti összhangot. Harmadrészt, az eredeti helyzet emberei között fennálló lehetséges viszonyok tanulmányozása képezi az elemzés tárgyát. Negyedrészt, az előző kérdéshez közvetlenül kapcsolódva, a természeti állapot többféle értelmezésének bemutatására kerül sor. E szempontok kibontásával – úgy tűnik – jobban rávilágíthatunk a Hobbes-i természeti állapot ambivalens jellegére is.
