- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Preamble
- 1 Liberalism
- 2 Freedom
- 3 Culture and Anxiety
- 4 The Liberal Community
- 5 Liberal Imperialism
- 6 State and Private, Red and White
- 7 The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
- 8 Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
- 9 Hobbes and Individualism
- 10 Hobbes, Toleration, and the Inner Life
- 11 The Nature of Human Nature in Hobbes and Rousseau
- 12 Locke on Freedom
- 13 Mill’s Essay On Liberty
- 14 Sense and Sensibility in Mill’s Political Thought
- 15 Mill in a Liberal Landscape
- 16 Utilitarianism and Bureaucracy
- 17 Mill and Rousseau: Utility and Rights
- 18 Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty
- 19 Bertrand Russell’s Politics
- 20 Isaiah Berlin
- 21 Popper and Liberalism
- 22 Alexis de Tocqueville
- 23 Staunchly Modern, Nonbourgeois Liberalism
- 24 Pragmatism, Social Identity, Patriotism, and Self-Criticism
- 25 Deweyan Pragmatism and American Education
- 26 John Rawls
- 27 Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
- 28 Hegel on Work, Ownership, and Citizenship
- 29 Utility and Ownership
- 30 Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing
- 31 The Romantic Theory of Ownership
- 32 Justice, Exploitation, and the End of Morality
- 33 Liberty and Socialism
- Index
Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
- Chapter:
- (p.159) 8 Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
- Source:
- The Making of Modern Liberalism
- Author(s):
Alan Ryan
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter examines some questions in Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy, with the objective of identifying what, if anything, Hobbes thought to be the central problem, or problems, of politics. It links these questions to an account of why the state of nature is so intolerable, of how we may leave it, and whether the manner of our leaving is well explained by Hobbes. The chapter also considers the implications for Hobbes's account of the rights and duties of the sovereign, along with the contentious issue of the subject's right, in extremis, to reject his sovereign and rebel. Finally, it analyzes Hobbes's account of the nature of punishment, his conception of the law of nature, his theory of political obligation, the role (or lack of a role) of religious belief in his political system, and his views on liberty.
Keywords: political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes, politics, punishment, law of nature, political obligation, religious belief, liberty, rights
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Preamble
- 1 Liberalism
- 2 Freedom
- 3 Culture and Anxiety
- 4 The Liberal Community
- 5 Liberal Imperialism
- 6 State and Private, Red and White
- 7 The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
- 8 Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
- 9 Hobbes and Individualism
- 10 Hobbes, Toleration, and the Inner Life
- 11 The Nature of Human Nature in Hobbes and Rousseau
- 12 Locke on Freedom
- 13 Mill’s Essay On Liberty
- 14 Sense and Sensibility in Mill’s Political Thought
- 15 Mill in a Liberal Landscape
- 16 Utilitarianism and Bureaucracy
- 17 Mill and Rousseau: Utility and Rights
- 18 Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty
- 19 Bertrand Russell’s Politics
- 20 Isaiah Berlin
- 21 Popper and Liberalism
- 22 Alexis de Tocqueville
- 23 Staunchly Modern, Nonbourgeois Liberalism
- 24 Pragmatism, Social Identity, Patriotism, and Self-Criticism
- 25 Deweyan Pragmatism and American Education
- 26 John Rawls
- 27 Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
- 28 Hegel on Work, Ownership, and Citizenship
- 29 Utility and Ownership
- 30 Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing
- 31 The Romantic Theory of Ownership
- 32 Justice, Exploitation, and the End of Morality
- 33 Liberty and Socialism
- Index