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Thomas Hobbes

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The Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes “Puts the Century on Edge”

By: Walter Donway September 13, 2023

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• Hobbes at the OLL
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• Take a look at the 1648 edition of Hobbes's Thucydides from our Rare Book room!
• Bacon, in England, articulated the case for observation and experimentation—as contrasted with Scholasticism’s deductions from historical authorities—in books that caught the attention of Europe.
• Descartes, in France, created a philosophical system that eschewed all authority and all assumptions, beginning with radical doubt of everything, including God, and with what he claimed was a self-evident certainty (“I think, therefore I am”) and erected upon it a logical case for existence of the external world and for a benevolent God as first cause of the universe.
• Locke, in England, countered the rationalism of Descartes with a philosophy of empiricism—observation and experiment—a consistent reference to our experience—and transformed epistemology, the psychology of the mind, man’s nature (including man’s rights), and the philosophy of government as emphasizing the exercise of powers delegated to it by the people. 
• Hobbes, in works presented in terms that were blunt, articulate, utterly frank, and uncompromising, with a devastating consistency, challenged all spiritualism, the very notion of an immaterial entity, and the reality of human “free will.”
• A systematic doctrine of bodies, demonstrating that all physical phenomena can be explained without exception by reference to motion and or mechanical action. No souls, no striving for some order created by God’s design.
• Singling out man from the realm of nature, Hobbes sought to show the specific bodily motions that led to and explained sensations, knowledge, “affections,” and passions. And by means of these, man can relate to man. No reference to any immaterial element, such as a soul.
• These beliefs led to the thesis that earned Hobbes the title “father of political science”: How and why are men, being in an original “state of nature,” drawn into society where their actions are regulated by government in order to prevent them from slipping back into the “brutishness and misery” of the natural state?

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Leviathan on a Leash

• Sean Fleming

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Leviathan on a Leash: A Theory of State Responsibility

New perspectives on the role of collective responsibility in modern politics

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States are commonly blamed for wars, called on to apologize, held liable for debts and reparations, bound by treaties, and punished with sanctions. But what does it mean to hold a state responsible as opposed to a government, a nation, or an individual leader? Under what circumstances should we assign responsibility to states rather than individuals? Leviathan on a Leash demystifies the phenomenon of state responsibility and explains why it is a challenging yet indispensable part of modern politics. Taking Thomas Hobbes’ theory of the state as his starting point, Sean Fleming presents a theory of state responsibility that sheds new light on sovereign debt, historical reparations, treaty obligations, and economic sanctions. Along the way, he overturns longstanding interpretations of Hobbes’ political thought, explores how new technologies will alter the practice of state responsibility as we know it, and develops new accounts of political authority, representation, and legitimacy. He argues that Hobbes’ idea of the state offers a far richer and more realistic conception of state responsibility than the theories prevalent today, and demonstrates that Hobbes’ Leviathan is much more than an anthropomorphic “artificial man.” Leviathan on a Leash is essential reading for political theorists, scholars of international relations, international lawyers, and philosophers. This groundbreaking book recovers a forgotten understanding of state personality in Hobbes’ thought and shows how to apply it to the world of imperfect states in which we live.

" Leviathan on a Leash [is] an extremely refreshing and rewarding read; indeed, I struggle to think of any other work that so successfully draws on and revises Hobbes’s ideas to make such an important intervention into contemporary debates."—Robin Douglass, Hobbes Studies

"In this imaginative and insightful book, Sean Fleming deploys the work of Thomas Hobbes to construct a theory of state responsibility that speaks to some of the most complex and contested practices in international law and politics. Fleming sets a new standard for how to use the history of political thought to understand contemporary global politics."—Anthony F. Lang Jr., University of St Andrews

" Leviathan on a Leash is a major scholarly achievement. Fleming offers a genuinely original conceptualization of the state, showing how and why Hobbes' epochal account of state personation needs to be updated for conditions of twenty-first-century domestic and international politics."—Paul Sagar, author of The Opinion of Mankind: Sociability and the Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith

"Employing a carefully reworked understanding of Hobbes’ conception of the state, Fleming offers a new account of state personality—a matter that has vexed both international relations theory and international law—and applies it to the equally vexing question of state responsibility."—Harry D. Gould, author of The Legacy of Punishment in International Law

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The Glorious Sovereign: Thomas Hobbes on Leadership and International Relations

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• Haig Patapan  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series ((PMHIT))

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T homas Hobbes lived to the ripe old age of 91, an impressive achievement for one who lived in the most dangerous of times. 1 His long and eventful life coincided with one of the most turbulent and perilous periods in English history, marked by the execution of Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, and finally the Stuart Restoration. It is perhaps this fact, above all, that explains Hobbes’s abiding interest in securing the stability of the state, even to the neglect of international relations. From his very first writing, a translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars , to his major political works, such as Elements of Law (1640), De Cive (1642), and Leviathan (1651), to the posthumously published Dialogues (1681) and Behemoth (1682), his overriding concern was overcoming civil war and internal instability. This view gains some support from Hobbes himself. At the very end of his most well-known work, Leviathan , Hobbes states that having completed his “Discourse of Civill and Ecclesiasticall Government, occassioned by the disorders of the present time,” he will “return to my interrupted Speculation of Bodies Naturall; wherein (if God give me health to finish it,) I hope the Novelty will as much please, as in the Doctrine of this Artificiall Body it useth to offend.” 2 From this account, it seems that Hobbes is primarily a political philosopher of domestic politics and only incidentally and indirectly a student of international relations. 3

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For an overview of his life see John Aubrey, Brief Lives , ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958)

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Hobbes’s works, The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes , 2 vols, ed. Noel Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 1997).

Hobbes, Leviathan , ed. C. B. Macpherson (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968)

Thus, I take up Kant’s critique of Hobbes developed in Perpetual Peace and “Idea for Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose”—that the problem of a perfect civil constitution cannot be solved unless the problem of external relations with other states is addressed—but do so from Hobbes’s own presuppositions. On the relationship between Hobbes and Kant see Howard Williams, Kant’s Critique of Hobbes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003).

Deceptively simple because, in reducing the Law of Nations to Hobbesian Law of Nature, he implicitly repudiates stoic notions of ius gentium : see Thomas L. Pangle and Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 144–153.

For the influence of Hobbes on modern realists, such as Morgenthau, Niebhur, Carr, Butterfield, Osgood, Kennan, Beitz, and Kissinger, see C. Navari, “Hobbes, the State of Nature and the Laws of Nature,” in Ian Clark and Iver Neumann, eds., Classical Theories of International Relations , (Macmillan Press: Houndmills, 1996), 21–41

H. Williams, International Relations in Political Theory , (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1992)

M. Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986).

It became the basis of the so-called English school of international relations: see Hedley Bull, “Hobbes and International Anarchy,” Social Research 41 (1977), 717–738

Claire Cutler, “The Grotian Tradition in International Relations,” Review of International Studies 17 (1991), 41–65

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Martin Wight, International Relations: Three Traditions (London: Holmes and Meier, 1992)

Michael C. Williams, “Hobbes and International Relations: a Reconsideration,” International Organization 50:2 (1996), 213–236.

I draw on Laurie Johnson, Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 87–94.

Donald W Hanson, “Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Highway to Peace,’” International Organization 38, no. 2 (Spring 1984), 329–354

Francis Cheneval, “The Hobbesian Case for Multilateralism,” Swiss Political Science Review , 13:3 (2007), 309–335.

Ibid., 29, 363–364; 19, 240. For a discussion of these themes, including the Kantian critique of Hobbes, see Nancy A. Stanhck, “A Hobbesian View of International Sovereignty,” Journal of Social Philosophy 37:4 (2006), 552–565

Ernst B. Haas, “Reason and Change in International Life: Justifying a Hypothesis,” Journal of International Affairs , 44:1 (Spring 1990), 209

Charles Covell, Kant and the law of Peace: A Study in The Philosophy of International Law and International Relations (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998)

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On the idea of “normative prudence” in international relations, see Alberto R Coll, “Normative Prudence as a Tradition of Statecraft,” Ethics & International Affairs 5:1 (1991), 33–51.

On the rhetoric, see Quentin Skinner, “Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality,” Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1990): 1–61

Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Haig Patapan, “‘Lord Over the Children of Pride’: the Vaine-Glorious Rhetoric of Hobbes’ Leviathan ” Philosophy and Rhetoric 33:1 (2000), 74–93.

On the problem of glory, see generally: Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, its Basis and its Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)

Gabriella Slomp, Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000)

J. Hampton, “Hobbesian Reflections on Glory as a Cause of Conflict,” in Peter Caws, ed., The Causes of Quarrel—Essays on Peace, War and Thomas Hobbes (Beacon Press: Boston, 1989), 78–96

Ibid., 13, 185. Hobbes’s discussion of fear has been central to the international relations scholarship on the “security dilemma.” In this context, see John Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2:2 (1950), 157–180

Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

Edward A. Kolodziej, Security and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Andrew H. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

Hobbes, Leviathan , 15, 207. Can Hobbes the scientist account for Hobbes the author? On Shaftesbury’s ( Characteristicks , Volume I, treatise II, section I, paragraph 90; Indiana: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2001)) sarcastic assessment that, while Hobbes held that there is “nothing which naturally drew us to the Love of what was without, or beyond ourselves,” the “Love of such great Truths and sovereign Maxims as he imagin’d these to be, made him the most laborious of all Men in composing Systems of this kind for our Use; and forc’d him, notwithstanding his natural Fear, to run continually the highest risk of being a Martyr for our Deliverance” see Haig Patapan and Jeffrey Sikkenga, “Love and the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes’ Critique of Platonic Eros ”. Political Theory: An International journal of Political Philosophy 36:6 (2008): 803–826.

Haig Patapan, Machiavelli in Love: the Modern Politics of Love and Fear (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006).

See Cooper’s suggestion that Hobbes as philosopher does not show his pride, and in fact redefines the vocation of the philosopher. Julie E. Cooper, “Thomas Hobbes on the Political Theorist’s Vocation,” The Historical Journal , 50:3(2007), 519–547.

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Patapan, H. (2009). The Glorious Sovereign: Thomas Hobbes on Leadership and International Relations. In: Hall, I., Hill, L. (eds) British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101739_2

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