“Leviathan” and Modern Tendencies in Thought According to Critical Theory

Introduction

Political thinkers are always products of their times. This is especially true with Thomas Hobbes, whose long life spanned the upheavals of the English Civil War (1642-51) and its aftermath, as well as the discoveries in science and math by contemporaries such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, and Marin Mersenne (World History, 98-105). Historians of political thought have long appreciated the importance of that context to the formation and nature of Hobbes's political philosophy, although they often disagree, considerably, about how exactly it played out.

Discussion

Born in Malmesbury, England, in April 1588, Hobbes's earliest formal education was with Robert Latimer, who taught him Latin and Greek. In 1603, he attended Magdalen Hall in Oxford, an experience he wrote of disparagingly. Upon taking his B.A. in 1608, Hobbes began work for the Cavendish family, first as tutor to the son of William Cavendish, later Earl of Devonshire (Hobbes, 130-144). His connections with that family were life-long. Tutoring for a noble family gave Hobbes access to a good library, facilitated travel to Europe, afforded introductions to prominent men of letters, and also provided time to work on intellectual projects, such as his translation and introduction for Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War (first published in 1629). During these years, Hobbes continued to read widely, in ancient and modern authors, giving for a time particular attention to Euclid's Elements (Goldthorpe, 21-29).

As an author on political subjects, Hobbes's first important writing was occasioned by the growing tensions between King Charles I and the parliament. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, like all of Hobbes's political philosophy, was sympathetic to absolutism, in part (Hegel, 19-25). It was not published, but circulated sufficiently in manuscript that Hobbes, fearing for his safety during the Long Parliament, fled to France in 1640.

In Paris, Hobbes worked on scientific topics and had published, in 1642, his first book on political philosophy, De Cive, a work in Latin based largely on The Elements of Law. Hobbes later wrote of De Cive that it was the first ever book of “civil philosophy (Jahoda, and Zeisel, 18-21).”

In his most famous political writing, Leviathan , or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civill (1651), Hobbes again elaborated upon ideas first conceived many years earlier. Now, in a systematic treatise “occasioned by the disorders of the present time,” Hobbes wrote that before the civil state, men lived in a “state of nature” where equal individuals engaged in a “war of every man against every man.” All lived in “continuall feare, and danger of violent death,” life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short (Kalberg, 40-53).” Rational individuals naturally desired to quit that “state of war” and to unite for self-preservation.

The creation of a “common-wealth by covenant also resulted in “the Generation of that great Leviathan, or rather … that Mortall God,” who is “called Soveraigne, and said to have Soveraigne Power; and every one besides his ...