Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
The Making of Modern Liberalism$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
The Making of Modern Liberalism

Alan Ryan

Print publication date: 2012

Print ISBN-13: 9780691148403

Published to Princeton Scholarship Online: October 2017

DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691148403.001.0001

Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM PRINCETON SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.princeton.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Princeton University Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in PRSO for personal use.date: 28 February 2021

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
DOI:10.23943/princeton/9780691148403.003.0009

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

Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.