No study in the history of seventeenth century thought is completed without some mention of Richard Cumberland, one of the many writers who aimed to refute Hobbes. Cumberland remains on of the few important writers of his century on whom, until now, nothing of substance has been written In the past Cumberland has been somewhat unfairly overshadowed by his fellow anti-Hobbists. His one important work, De Legibus Naturae, first appeared in Latin in 1672 and has never been satisfactorily translated into English. That he published so little in such a prolific age was unusual, but his influence through his work continued to be felt well into the nineteenth century. It is now clear that he went further than both Grotius and Pufendorf in devising a system which prefigured classical utilitarianism, propounding a cosmology based upon the reconciliation of charity and self-interest. In this study, Cumberland is placed for the first time, in his intellectual and historical setting. The author describes Cumberland's life, his work as Bishop of Peterborough, his book and above all his position in the development of natural law theory.

Hobbes's concept of the natural condition of mankind became an inescapable point of reference for subsequent political thought, shaping the theories of emulators and critics alike, and has had a profound impact on our understanding of human nature, anarchy, and international relations. Yet, despite Hobbes's insistence on precision, the state of nature is an elusive concept. Has it ever existed and, if so, for whom? Hobbes offered several answers to these questions, which taken together reveal a consistent strategy aimed at providing his readers with a possible, probable, and memorable account of the consequences of disobedience. This book examines the development of this powerful image throughout Hobbes's works, and traces its origins in his sources of inspiration. The resulting trajectory of the state of nature illuminates the ways in which Hobbes employed a rhetoric of science and a science of rhetoric in his relentless pursuit of peace.

State of Nature or Eden? Thomas Hobbes and his Contemporaries on the Natural Condition of Human Beings aims to explain how Hobbes's state of nature was understood by a contemporary readership, whose most important reference point for such a condition was the original condition of human beings at the creation, in other words in Eden. The book uses ideas about how readers brought their own reading of other texts to any reading, that reading is affected by the context in which the reader reads, and that the Bible was the model for all reading in the early modern period. It combines these ideas with the primary evidence of the contemporary critical reaction to Hobbes, to reconstruct how Hobbes's state of nature was read by his contemporaries. The book argues that what determined how Hobbes's seventeenth century readers responded to his description of the state of nature were their views on the effects of the Fall. Hobbes's contemporary critics, the majority of whom were Aristotelians and Arminians, thought that the Fall had corrupted human nature, although not to the extent implied by Hobbes's description. Further, they wanted to look at human beings as they should have been, or ought to be. Hobbes, on the other hand, wanted to look at human beings as they were, and in doing so was closer to Augustinian, Lutheran and Reformed interpretations, which argued that nature had been inverted by the Fall. For those of Hobbes's contemporaries who shared these theological assumptions, there were important parallels to be seen between Hobbes's account and that of scripture, although on some points his description could have been seen as a subversion of scripture. The book also demonstrates that Hobbes was working within the Protestant tradition, as well as showing how he used different aspects of this tradition. Helen Thornton is an Independent Scholar. She completed her PhD at the University of Hull.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Originally published in 1992. This arresting and innovative book combines political theory with the history of political thought to question the conceptual conventions and tacit assumptions which surround the concepts of private and public. In seeking the foundations of the modern liberal conception of private and public, she traces it to modern Natural Law thinkers, in particular Locke and Hutcheson. By developing a revised interpretation of seventeenth-century natural jurisprudence, which recognizes that every adult controls an individual or private domain, as well as engaging in political, community or public interaction, Gobetti raises interesting questions about the politics of participation in modern society.