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.

Reading Hobbes Backwards treats Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) as a peace theorist, who from early manuscripts of his system made by disciples in England and France, to the late Historia Ecclesiastica, saw sectarianism and Trinitarian doctrines supporting the papal monarchy as the ultimate cause of the punishing religious wars of the post-Reformation. But Hobbes was also indebted to scholasticism and the millennia-old Aristotle commentary tradition, Greek, Byzantine, Jewish and Islamic, surviving in the universities of Paris and Oxford, naming his ‘English Politiques’ Leviathan after the scaly monster of the Book of Job, perhaps as a decoy. Politically connected through Cavendish circles and the Virginia Company, Hobbes was a courtier’s client who, until Leviathan, could not speak in his own voice. Adept at ‘political surrogacy’, he authored satires and burlesques which he could own or disown, while promoting the moral education of classical civic humanism against sectarianism. The Appendix provides a synopsis of his relatively inaccessible Latin Church History, an exercise in ‘clandestine philosophy’ from which Hobbes’s intentions in Leviathan can be read off. Chapters are referenced and cross-referenced to be read independently, serving both as reference work and text-book.

This book approaches Hobbes's philosophy from a completely new perspective: his creativity. Creativity is the production of something which experts consider to be original, valuable and of high quality. James Hamilton explores Hobbes's creativity by focusing on his development, personality, and motivation in the context of his culture and environment, and on the ways in which he thought creatively, as inferred from his writings. Identification of the ideas which Hobbes drew upon is an important part of the study for two reasons. First, they are necessary to determine which of Hobbes's ideas and theories are original and which are not. Second, analysis of his creativity requires an understanding of the ideas from which he drew. Hamilton concludes that Hobbes became a great philosopher because of his creative virtuosity.

This is the first major work in English to explore at length the meaning, context, aims, and vital importance of Thomas Hobbes's concepts of the law of nature and the right of nature. Hobbes remains one of the most challenging and controversial of early modern philosophers, and debates persist about the interpretation of many of his ideas, particularly his views about natural law and natural right. In this book, Perez Zagorin argues that these two concepts are the twin foundations of the entire structure of Hobbes's moral and political thought. Zagorin clears up numerous misconceptions about Hobbes and his relation to earlier natural law thinkers, in particular Hugo Grotius, and he reasserts the often overlooked role of the Hobbesian law of nature as a moral standard from which even sovereign power is not immune. Because Hobbes is commonly thought to be primarily a theorist of sovereignty, political absolutism, and unitary state power, the significance of his moral philosophy is often underestimated and widely assumed to depend entirely on individual self-interest. Zagorin reveals Hobbes's originality as a moral philosopher and his importance as a thinker who subverted and transformed the idea of natural law. Hobbes and the Law of Nature is a major contribution to our understanding of Hobbes's moral, legal, and political philosophy, and a book rich in interpretive and critical insights into Hobbes's writing and thought.

The essays in Private Libraries and their Documentation revolve around the users and contents of early modern private book collections, and around the sources used to document and study these collections. They take the reader from large-scale projects on historical book ownership to micro-level research conducted on individual libraries, and from analyses of specific types of primary sources to general typologies and overviews by period and by region. As a result of its comparative approach and active engagement with questions regarding the nature, selection and accessibility of sources, the volume serves as a guide to sources and resources in different regions as well as to state-of the-art methods and interpretational approaches. Publication of this volume in open access was made possible by the Ammodo KNAW Award 2017 for Humanities.

Thomas Hobbes claimed to have founded the discipline of civil philosophy (political science). The claim did not go uncontested and in recent years the relationship of philosophical reasoning to rhetorical persuasion in Hobbes's work has become a significant area of discussion, as scholars attempt to align his disparaging remarks about rhetoric with his dazzling practice of it in works like Leviathan. The dominant view is that, having rejected an early commitment to humanism and with it rhetoric when he adopted the 'scientific' approach to philosophy in the late 1630s, Hobbes later came to re-embrace it as an essential aid to or part of philosophy. Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Thomas Hobbes proposes that Hobbes was, from first to last, dubious about the place of rhetoric in civil society, and came to see it as a pernicious presence within philosophy - a position from which he did not retreat. It offers a fresh and expanded picture of Hobbes's humanism by examining his years as a country house tutor; his teaching and his translation of Thucydides, the influence on him of Bacon, and the range of his early natural historical and philosophical interests. In demonstrating the distinctively Aristotelian character of his understanding of rhetoric, the book also revisits the new approach to philosophy Hobbes adopted at the end of the 1630s, clarifying the nature and scope of his concern about the contamination of philosophy and political life by the procedures of rhetorical argumentation.

This book argues that sovereignty is the first-order question of political order, and that seventeenth-century England provides an important case study in the roots of its modern iterations. It offers fresh readings of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell, as well as lesser-known figures and literary texts. In addition to political philosophy and literary studies, it also takes account of the period's legal history, exploring the exercise of the crown's feudal rights in the Court of Wards and Liveries, debates over habeas rights, and contests of various courts over jurisdiction. Theorizing sovereignty in a way that points forward to later modernity, the book also offers a sustained critique of the writings of Carl Schmitt, the twentieth century's most influential, if also most controversial, thinker on this topic.

Offers comprehensive treatment of Thomas Hobbes’s thought, providing readers with different ways of understanding Hobbes as a systematic philosopher As one of the founders of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes is best known for his ideas regarding the nature of legitimate government and the necessity of society submitting to the absolute authority of sovereign power. Yet Hobbes produced a wide range of writings, from translations of texts by Homer and Thucydides, to interpretations of Biblical books, to works devoted to geometry, optics, morality, and religion. Hobbes viewed himself as presenting a unified method for theoretical and practical science—an interconnected system of philosophy that provides many entry points into his thought. A Companion to Hobbes is an expertly curated collection of essays offering close textual engagement with the thought of Thomas Hobbes in his major works while probing his ideas regarding natural philosophy, mathematics, human nature, civil philosophy, religion, and more. The Companion discusses the ways in which scholars have tried to understand the unity and diversity of Hobbes’s philosophical system and examines the reception of the different parts of Hobbes’s philosophy by thinkers such as René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Presenting a diversity of fresh perspectives by both emerging and established scholars, this volume: Provides a comprehensive treatment of Hobbes’s thought in his works, including Elements of Law, Elements of Philosophy, and Leviathan Explores the connecting points between Hobbes’ metaphysics, epistemology, mathematics, natural philosophy, morality, and civil philosophy Offers readers strategies for understanding how the parts of Hobbes’s philosophical system fit together Examines Hobbes’s philosophy of mathematics and his attempts to understand geometrical objects and definitions Considers Hobbes’s philosophy in contexts such as the natural state of humans, gender relations, and materialist worldviews Challenges conceptions of Hobbes’s moral theory and his views about the rights of sovereigns Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Hobbes is an invaluable resource for scholars and advanced students of Early modern thought, particularly those from disciplines such as History of Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Intellectual History, History of Politics, Political Theory, and English.

This book, translated from Italian, discusses the influence of Galileo on Hobbes’ natural philosophy. In his De motu, loco et tempore or Anti-White (~ 1643), Thomas Hobbes describes Galileo as “the greatest philosopher of all times”, and in De Corpore (1655), the Italian scientist is presented as the one who “opened the door of all physics, that is, the nature of motion.” The book gives a detailed analysis of Galileo’s legacy in Hobbes’s philosophy, exploring four main issues: a comparison between Hobbes’ and Mersenne’s natural philosophies, the Galilean Principles of Hobbes’ philosophical system, a comparison between Galileo’s momentum and Hobbes’s conatus , and Hobbes’ and Galileo’s theories of matter. The book also analyses the role played by Marin Mersenne, in spreading Galileo’s ideas in France, and as a discussant of Hobbes. It highlights the many aspects of Hobbes’ relationship with Galileo: the methodological and epistemological elements, but also the conceptual and the lexical analogies in the field of physics, to arrive, finally, at a close comparison on the subject of the matter. From this analysis emerges a shared mechanical conception of the universe open and infinite, that replaces the Aristotelian cosmos, and which is populated by two elements only: matter and motion.

This volume explores the early modern manuals on travelling (Artes apodemicae), a new genre of advice literature that originated in the sixteenth century, when it became communis opinio among intellectuals that travelling was an important means of acquiring knowledge and experience, and that an extended tour abroad was a vital, if not indispensable part of humanist, academic and political education. In this volume, the formation of this new genre, between 1550 and 1700, is studied in its historical, social and cultural context. Furthermore, the volume examines the impact of this new genre on the acquisition and collection of knowledge in the early modern period, empirical or otherwise. Contributors: Justin Stagl, Karl Enenkel, Jan Papy, Thomas Haye, Robert Seidel, Gabor Gelléri, Bernd Roling, Harald Hendrix, Jan L. de Jong, Kerstin Maria Pahl, Johanna Luggin, Marc Laureys, and Justina Spencer.