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Leviathan After 350 Years edited by Tom Sorell, Luc Foisneau (Oxford University Press) Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau bring together original essays b the world's leading Hobbes scholars to discuss Hobbes's masterpiece after three and a half centuries. The contributors address three different themes. The first is the place of Leviathan within Hobbes's output as a political philosopher. What does Leviathan add to The Elements of Law (1640) and De Cive (1642; 1647)? What is the relation between the English Leviathan and the Latin version of the book (1668)? Does Leviathan deserve its pre-eminence?

The second theme concerns the connections between Hobbes's psychology and Hobbes's politics. The essays discuss Hobbes's curious views on the significance of laughter, evidence that he connected life in the state with passionlessness; the Ways in which such things as fear for one's life entitle subjects to rebel; and the question of how the sovereign's personal passions are to be squared with his personifying a multitude.

The third theme is Hobbes's views on the Bible and the Church: contributors examine the tensions between any allowance for ecclesiastical and (differently) biblical authority on the one hand, and political authority on the other.

These essays attest to the enduring importance of Hobbes's Leviathan in the history of political thought. The 350th anniversary of the publication of the book fell in zoo', and it has been continuously in print in many languages and in a whole host of editions since it first appeared. Several new editions in English have been published since 1980; at least two more are planned. And this is to say nothing of the vast secondary literature that the book has sustained. This collection brings together contributions from some of the most distinguished Hobbes scholars, and some promising newcomers. There are three sections. The first considers how Leviathan stands among Hobbes's political treatises, and whether it deserves its undoubted pre-eminence. This is not just a question about the English Leviathan, since an interestingly distinct Latin version of the work appeared in 1668. Most of the contributors agree that Leviathan makes various kinds of advance on the earlier De Cive (1641, 1647) and The Elements of Law (1640). The second section explores various connections in Leviathan between the human passions and politics, including the ways in which sovereignty and subjection are responses to problems posed by the passions. And the third section takes up selected questions about the treatment in Leviathan of theology and religion. There is a controversy over the correct interpretation of Leviathan on covenanting with God, a further essay on the significance for Protestants and Catholics of Hobbes's denial that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, and a final contribution on the relation between Leviathan and Protestantism.

Leviathan After 350 Years is a book which anyone working on Hobbes or on this period of intellectual history will want to read because of its insightful essays into the historical, political and intellectual contexts that Leviathan after 350 years addressed and still addresses. 

The Hunting of Leviathan: 17th Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbs by Samuel I. Mintz (St Augustine Press) Mintz examines the contemporary reaction in England to the "Monster of Malmesbury," with a particular focus on his materialism and moral philosophy. He argues that most scholars have ignored the contemporary reaction to Hobbes and thus have failed to realize the importance of the historical context against which the analysis of Hobbes's ideas can be measured.

Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hobbes and Leviathan by Glen Newey (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks: Routledge) (Hardcover) The "Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks" introduce students to the classic works of philosophy. Each book considers a major philosopher and a key area of their philosophy by focusing upon an important text - situating the philosopher and the work in a historical context, considering the text in question and assessing the philosopher's contribution to contemporary thought. Hobbes is one of the most important and key figures in the history of ideas and political thought. His "Leviathan" is widely recognized as one of the great works of political philosophy. This book introduces and assesses: Hobbes's life and the background of the "Leviathan"; the ideas and text of the "Leviathan"; and the continuing importance of Hobbes's work to philosophy and political thought.
The Leviathan marked the beginning of modern political philosophy, and is the most famous single work in English political thought. This guidebook offers a clear, accessible and judicious account of Hobbes, as a philosopher and theorist of state, and guides the reader through the major interpretations of the Leviathan. The book covers discussions of epistemology, scepticism, law, right and the state of nature, and the main problems of contract, authority and representation, legality, liberty, tolerance, reason and rhetoric.
 

Hobbes, Realism, and the Tradition of International Law by Charles Covell (Palgrave MacMillan) Review pending. Charles Covell considers the political thought of Thomas Hobbes in relation to the tradition of international law, and with the intention to challenge the reading of Hobbes as the exponent of the realist standpoint in international thought and practice. The relation of Hobbes to international law is explained through attention to the place that he occupies among the modern secular natural law thinkers, such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Wolff and Vattel, who founded the modern system of the law of nations. 

Karl Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Renaissance Philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes by Karl Schuhmann, Piet Steenbakkers, Cornelis Hendrik Leijenhorst (Kluwer Academic Publishers) Review pending. offers the best work in these fields by the acclaimed historian of philosophy, Karl Schuhmann (1941-2003), displaying the extraordinary range and depth of his unique scholarship.

Topics covered include Renaissance philosophy of nature; the development of the notion of time in early modern philosophy; Telesio's concept of space; Hermetic influences on Pico, Patrizi and Hobbes; Hobbes's Short Tract; Spinoza and Hobbes; Hobbes's political philosophy.

This book brings together, in chronological arrangement, twelve papers. Though these were published before in some form, several were not easily accessible. All articles have been edited in accordance with the author's wishes, and incorporate his later additions and corrections

• Contents: Preface.

• Karl Schuhmann, 19 March 1941 - 18 March 2003.

• Francis Bacon und Hobbes' Widmungsbrief zu De Cive.

• Gedankenschnelle und Himmelflug: einige hermetische Motive bei Hobbes.

• Methodenfragen bei Spinoza und Hobbes: zum Problem des Einflusses.

• Zur Entstehung des neuzeitlichen Zeitbegriffs: Telesio, Patrizi, Gassendi. |/li>

• Telesio's Concept of Matter.

• Le concepte de l'espace chez Telesio.

• Giovanni Pico della Mirandola und der Hermetismus: Vom Mitstreiter zum Gegner.

• Francesco Patrizi und die hermetische Philosophie.

• La notion de loi chez Hobbes.

• Hobbes and the Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle.

• Hobbes und Gassendi.

• Le Short Tract, Premire uvre philosophique de Hobbes.

• Karl Schuhmann - Bibliography (December 2003).

• Index.

 

Natural Law, Religion, and Rights: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Natural Law and Natural Rights, With Special Emphasis on the Teachings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke by Henrik Syse (St. Augustine's Press) Review pending. discusses some of those ethical and political questions that puzzled several of the great minds of the twentieth century, such as Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Jacques Maritain, and John Finnis: the question of natural law and its relationship to a teaching of individual freedom and rights.

The main aim of the book is to interpret anew the relationship between law and rights in Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, two important founders of modern rights doctrines. But in order to put their teachings into the right perspective, Syse also portrays and discusses other models of law and rights, from Aristotle, through Thomas Aquinas, to John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, with detours to the teachings of Plato, Cicero, and Augustine. Throughout the discussion, the role of religion and revelation is given center stage as a complex, yet fascinating picture of the relationship between natural law, religion, and rights emerges one which is neither as simple nor as complicated as often imagined.

Natural Law, Religion, and Rights should be of interest both to students struggling with the meaning and contents of the natural law tradition, as well as to teachers and researchers working on the many-faceted problems of natural law and natural rights.

Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political Philosophy by Ross Harrison (Cambridge University Press ) (Hardcover) In this major study of the foundations of modern political theory, the eminent political philosopher Ross Harrison explains, analyzes, and criticizes the work of Hobbes, Locke and their contemporaries. He provides a complete account of the turbulent historical background that shaped the political, intellectual and religious content of this philosophy. The book explores the limits of political authority and the relationship of the legitimacy of government to the will of its people in non-technical, accessible prose.

Leviathan: Contemporary Responses to the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes by G. A. J. Rogers (University of Chicago Press) The scandal that first attracted attention when Leviathan first appeared in 1651 was the book's advocacy of an unequivocal materialism with its implication of atheism. Another controversy surrounded its total rejection of the traditional justification for the exercise of political power, namely, the authority of kingship ordained by a deity. Third, in its apparently self-centered hedonism, it was seen as rejecting all traditional ethical codes. In this collection of contemporary responses to Leviathan, attention is focused on its critics - Hobbes had virtually no defenders - who attacked his moral, political, and religious ideas in a blistering series of pamphlets and short books and, in their criticisms, bring out powerfully the importance and originality of Hobbes's theory. 

Aspects of Hobbes by Noel Malcolm (Oxford University Press) These essays are the fruit of many years' research by one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars. Noel Malcolm offers not only succinct introductions to Hobbes's life and thought, but also path-breaking studies of many different aspects of his political philosophy, his scientific and religious theories, his relations with his contemporaries, the sources of his ideas, the printing history of his works, and his influence on European thought.
The author presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of aspects of the life and work of this giant of early modern thought. Malcolm offers a succinct introduction to Hobbes's life and thought as a foundation for his discussion of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic world-view, and his subversive Biblical criticism. Several of the essays pay special attention to the European dimensions of Hobbes's life, his sources and his influence; the longest surveys the entire European reception of his work from the 1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking discoveries about Hobbes's life, his manuscripts and the printing history of his works. "Aspects of Hobbes" is intended not just for Hobbes specialists, but also for all those interested in 17th-century intellectual history more generally, both British and European. 

Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory by Gabriella Slomp (Palgrave) Hobbes's philosophical discourse is deconstructed as the interplay of the drama of individual behavior as perceived by rational agents and the detached analysis of conflict a by a political geometer. The author solves some long-standing problems in Hobbesian political philosophy (e.g., the role of glory, Hobbes' pessimism) and shows the consistency of Hobbes's attempt to derive absolutism as the only stable political association. The author offers solutions to some long-standing problems in Hobbesian political philosophy (for example, the role of glory, Hobbes' pessimism) and shows the consistency of Hobbes' attempt to derive absolution as the only stable political association. Although based on extensive textual analysis of Hobbes' works and correspondence, the text is an exercise in political philosophy that students should find iconoclastic and experts challenging.

Contents: Introduction: The Political Geometry of Glory * Part I: Elements of Political Geometry * The Co-Ordinates of Man: Time and Space * Fatal Equality * The Axiom of Glory * Glory: Parallels and Intersections * Ambition: Paradoxes and Puzzles * The Dilemma of Fear and Hope * The Trajectory of Glory * Glory and the Excellent Sex * The Determinants of the Citizen: Nature and Nurture * Part II: Theorems of Political Geometry * The Rational Actor at Play * Hobbes's Impossibility Theorem * The Ideology of Political Geometry T

The Discourse of Sovereignty, Hobbes to Fielding: The State of Nature and the Nature of the State by Stuart Sim, David Walker (Ashgate Publishing) examine a range of theories about the state of nature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, considering the contribution they made to the period's discourse on sovereignty and their impact on literary activity. Texts examined include Leviathan, Oceana, Paradise Lost, Discourses Concerning Government, Two Treatises on Government, Don Sebastian, Oronooko, The New Atalantis, Robinson Crusoe, Dissertation upon Parties, David Simple, and Tom Jones. The state of nature is identified as an important organizing principle for narratives in the century running from the Civil War through to the second Jacobite Rebellion, and as a way of situating the author within either a reactionary or a radical political tradition. The Discourse of Sovereignty provides an exciting new perspective on the intellectual history of this fascinating period.

Review pending.

Contents: Preface; Introduction: From revolution to rebellion; REVOLUTION TO REPUBLIC: Hobbes: absolutism and the state of nature; Harrington: Oceana and the state of nature; Diggers, levellers and ranters: The Bible and the state of nature; Milton and the state of nature; RESTORATION TO REVOLUTION: Locke, Sidney and the Whig state of nature; Neville: The Utopian state of nature revisited; Behn and the paternal state of nature; Dryden: Don Sebastian and the ideal ruler; POST-RESTORATION and THE HANOVERIAN SETTLEMENT: Calvinism and the state of nature: Robinson Crusoe; Manley, Defoe and the politics of self-interest; Bolingbroke: party and the state of nature; Henry and Sarah Fielding: Hobbes restated; Conclusion: the narratives of sovereignty; Bibliography; Index.

Explaining the English Revolution: Hobbes and His Contemporaries by Mark Stephen Jendrysik (Lexington Books: Rowman & Littlefield) no review available. 

Narrative Power and Liberal Truth: Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, and Mill by Eldon J. Eisenach (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) (Paperback) Liberal political thought-from its origins in the seventeenth-century through today's rights discourse-is grounded in the ideal of the autonomous individual. As the theory holds, these individuals are ""born in freedom"" from religious, political, social or economic obligations and then construct these systems through individual and collective choices. Over the past thirty years, however, this understanding of freedom has been challenged from a variety of perspectives. Eldon J. Eisenach has been at the forefront of that challenge, stressing the centrality of religious elements and assumptions in liberal writings that many scholars suppressed or ignored. In Narrative Power and Liberal Truth: Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, and Mill Eisenach brings together eleven of his previously published essays to demonstrate that many ""postmodernist"" ideas of persons and freedom are already present within the tradition of liberal political philosophy and that liberalism itself is more capacious of human experience and meanings than modern critiques allow. 

Visions of Politics: Regarding Method by Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University Press) The first of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important philosophical and methodological statements written over the past four decades, each carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of seminal essays Professor Skinner sets forth the intellectual principles that inform his work. Writing as a practicing historian, he considers the theoretical difficulties inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and interpretation, and elucidates the methodology which finds its expression in his two successive volumes. All of Professor Skinner's work is characterized by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognized classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. 

Ideals As Interests in Hobbes's Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter
by S. A. Lloyd (Cambridge University Press) (Paperback) proposes a radically new interpretation of Hobbes's Leviathan that shows transcendent interests - interests that override the fear of death - to be crucial to both Hobbes's analysis of social disorder and his proposed remedy to it. Most previous commentators in the analytic philosophical tradition have argued that Hobbes thought that credible threats of physical force could be sufficient to deter people from political insurrection. Professor Lloyd convincingly shows that because Hobbes took the transcendence of religious and moral interests seriously, he never believed that mere physical force could ensure social order. Lloyd's interpretation demonstrates the ineliminability of that half of Leviathan devoted to religion, and attributes to Hobbes a much more plausible conception of human nature than the narrow psychological egoism traditionally attributed to Hobbes.

The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol by Carl Schmitt, George Schwab, Erna Hilfstein (Contributions in Political Science: Greenwood Press) Carl Schmitt, the Thomas Hobbes of the 20th century, joined the Nazi party in 1933 and aspired to become the crown jurist and political philosopher of the Third Reich. But, because of his anti-Nazi past, friendship with Jews and Marxists, and contempt for biological racism, Schmitt was severely attacked by the SS in 1936 and warned to stop posing as a National Socialist thinker. Fearful of what this might imply in the rapidly evolving one-party SS state, Schmitt began to distance himself from his National Socialist adventure--even tempered his recently acquired anti-Semitism--and carefully started to reconnect himself in 1937 and 1938 to the pre-1933 Schmitt. Writing in 1938 under the pretext of studying the significance of the symbol of the leviathan in Hobbes' theory of state, Schmitt alludes to the demise of the Third Reich because of its rapid transformation into a totalitarian polity. As Schmitt recognizes, in this state, the Hobbesian protection-obedience axiom is being heavily tilted in favor of obedience at the expense of protection. When this occurs, Schmitt observes, "the soul of a people" betakes "itself on the 'secret road' that leads inward. Then grows the counterforce of silence and stillness," and public power and force "may be ever so completely and emphatically recognized and ever so loyally respected, but only as a public and only an external power it is hollow and already dead from within." Schmitt still remains an important political theorist and his views of Hobbes are central to his own political project.

At a first reading there are many similarities between Hobbes and Schmitt and so one might be tempted to agree with the view that Cark Schmitt is the Hobbes of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt himself acknowledges Hobbes as one of the finest true political thinkers, one of the few who grasped the nature of the political. In most of his writings Carl Schmitt refers directly to Hobbes (we find references in Political Romanticism, Catholicism as a Political Form, the Concept of the Political, Political Theology, Parliamentary Democracy, to name but a few). Indeed, Carl Schmitt devoted a whole book to The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. My aim today is not to compare Hobbes and Schmitt in general (I do not have the time for that), but rather I want to concentrate on the one concept that all interpreters, from Leo Strauss onward, have claimed to be common to both Hobbes and Schmitt. My hope is to show that behind a prima facie similarity lies an altogether different concept of politics.

The major common concept that we find in Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes is the obedience/protection principle. For both, sovereignty resides where there is power to provide protection from enemies in return for obedience. As Carl Schmitt puts it, `protego ergo obligo' is the 'cogito ergo sum' of the state. Carl Schmitt himself voices his admiration for Hobbes for having grasped this principle as the foundation of sovereignty and legitimacy, and openly acknowledges his own debt to Hobbes on this crucial point.

Here it is not my concern to investigate this Hobbesian principle and its implications (the absolute state), nor the use that Carl Schmitt makes of it (the total state). Rather, I should like to suggest that by examining the reasons why Hobbes introduced this principle we can shed a different light on Carl Schmitt's own enterprise. For Hobbes, outside the political state, individuals die. They are unable to safeguard their physical identity, let alone any more sophisticated form of identity. The Leviathan is supposed to create the condition for the protection of at least a minimal identity, physical integrity. The foundation of Hobbes's protection/obedience principle is this over-riding concern for personal integrity. It can be argued that the agreement between Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes on the obedience/protection principle is implied by a more fundamental agreement, in so far as they both see identity as a problem, not a fact. For both, politics is about the establishment and safeguard of identity.

It is my contention that by examining the views held by Hobbes and Carl Schmitt on politics and identity, we can highlight a number of substantive differences that far outweigh the apparent similarity. It is on these differences that I now want to concentrate.

The first difference is that the agency struggling for an identity is different for Hobbes and Schmitt. For Hobbes, the agent is the individual. For Schmitt, the agent struggling for identity is a group. Carl Schmitt was fully aware of this major difference between himself and Hobbes. Especially in the book on Hobbes's Leviathan, he makes it clear that one of Hobbes's weaknesses was his individualism.

Secondly, for Hobbes, the individual owes obedience to the state, as long as his own self-preservation is safeguarded. Not so for Carl Schmitt, for whom the over-riding concern is not personal self-preservation, but the preservation of a group's political identity, a set of goals, a way of life.

Given this change of perspective, it follows that the set of circumstances that a Schmittean agency regards as endangering for its own identity and thus allows it to disobey is much wider. Conversely, precisely because Carl Schmitt cares about the preservation of the way of life of a group, the loss of life of a single individual becomes acceptable. In Hobbes's individualistic world this possibility is horrendous, so much so that Hobbes acknowledges to the individual the right to resist obedience if this can imply the loss of his life.

A third difference is that for Hobbes after the creation of the state, the Leviathan and he alone is entitled to nominate the enemy, internally by the prosecution and censorship of doctrines and externally by waging wars. It can be argued that for Hobbes enmity is natural (homo homini lupus) and that politics is an artifice created specifically to prevent individuals from choosing and nominating their enemy and to act on that choice. In other words, politics is created to make real enmity impossible. Schmitt's position is altogether different. Enmity is not a concept that can be attributed to the personal relationship between individuals. Enmity is never personal; it is the relationship of a group against another. Politics can never abolish enmity, as the latter is the very essence of politics.

For Schmitt the political is any force that brings people together as friends against other people regarded as enemies. The friend/enemy antithesis is the essence of the political, an antithesis that has always existed and is likely to persist in the future. For Carl Schmitt, politics as a struggle of friends against enemies is in our history as well as our destiny.

This is not the place for even a cursory analysis of the friend/enemy antithesis in Carl Schmitt's theory, of why it plays a fundamental role in his construct, etc. I merely wish to underline that the concept of friend/enemy is crucial for Carl Schmitt's definition of identity. Some brief quotations will suffice to illustrate this point: "The enemy is he who questions our own Gestalt (Der Fiend ist unsere eigene Frage als Gestalt) [... ] The enemy is not something that for some reason we should do away with or destroy as if it had no value [... ] The enemy places himself on my own level. On this ground I must engage with the opposing enemy, in order to establish the very measure of myself, my own boundaries, my own Gestalt." (Carl Schmitt, Theorie des Partisanen, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1962).

Of course, the notion that the consciousness of the self emerges from the comparison with the `other' can be found also in Hobbes (as well as in other philosophers). But Carl Schmitt goes beyond this. For him, identity emerges not from simple comparison nor from competition. It is established instead through psychological and physical confrontation with the enemy and, conversely, through the psychological and physical collaboration with friends.

This emphasis on confrontation leads to a fourth difference between Hobbes and Schmitt. For the latter, action will take precedence over thought and deliberation. Hobbes's commitment to rationality is, in Schmitt's view, misguided. Carl Schmitt detests the liberal rhetoric of objectivity, neutrality, and abstract rationality. In a conflict only the parties directly involved can know what is reasonable. For them the distinction between friends and enemies is a matter of instinct. Hence the political materialises naturally, not through the Hobbesian notion of rational construction.

In theory Carl Schmitt agrees with Hobbes that a strong state (an absolute total state) that applies correctly the obedience/protection principle is the only agency that can nominate the enemy both externally and internally.

Another quotation from Theorie des Partisanen: "the legal government decides who the enemy is. Whoever arrogates to himself the prerogative of deciding the enemy by so doing affirms his own legality and challenging the legality of the existing government."

In this way, peace is not regarded as the negation of war and politics is not understood as the negation of civil war. Carl Schmitt re-interprets Clausewitz's view that war is a continuation of politics as meaning that politics contains enmity and war is latent in peace. Not the same for Hobbes. Hobbes believes in a marked separation between politics and civil war, as the latter is the collapse of the former. Although Hobbes does mention that the distinction between war and peace in the state of nature is not clear-cut and that momentary peace can contain war, he does believe in the mutual negation of politics and civil war.

To sum up the argument so far, it can be said that the shared view that politics is about the safeguard of identity is only a superficial similarity between Hobbes and Schmitt, in so far as they have theories of identity that are to a large extent incommensurable. This different notion of identity brings about a different notion of enmity and a different approach to the problem of coping with the enemy, a different meaning of politics.

Rightly or wrongly, Carl Schmitt believes that Liberalism fails to see that politics is above all a struggle to establish our identity. In his view, Liberalism does not see identity as a problem, but as a starting point, as an assumption. As identity and rights are not questioned, but assumed as given, politics for liberals becomes just one field of human interaction, one among many, and in some respects less important and less fundamental than, for example, economic interaction. Exactly because liberals do not feel that identity is at stake, their politics is marked by never-ending discussions, procrastination, indecision, and general gossiping. Liberal politics becomes a discourse on matters of minor concern; tradeoffs and compromise are always considered possible because what is discussed in never existential. As a result, Liberal politics is never serious. Only when identity, life and death are at stake, we have according to Carl Schmitt a real concern, a real commitment, a real determination to find solutions, a real need to take decisions. When identity is at stake, compromise and tradeoffs are inconceivable. According to Carl Schmitt, the struggle for identity is real and not a product of philosophical imagination; it is a struggle that takes place all the time, both at a national and international level.

From this briefest of accounts, we can see why, although most readers of Carl Schmitt regard him as a thinker with a remarkably penetrating mind, his concept of political has not been taken seriously (at least, in the Anglo-Saxon world). Some have claimed that liberalism can accommodate the problem of identity as defined by Carl Schmitt, others have dismissed his views as irrelevant in the Western democratic world. My own view is that Carl Schmitt's concept of political (his concept of identity, enmity, friendship, etc.) may not be useful to understand the political experience in a liberal democracy, but does shed light on one phenomenon that the liberal world is trying to cope with at the moment, namely international terrorism.

The claim by Carl Schmitt that a liberal state with its rule of law can cope with everyday politics but not with a state of emergency has to be taken seriously. And so is his view that a liberal democracy, with all its checks and balances, with its divisions of powers and competences, with its complex bureaucracy and decision-making processes, can never cope adequately with the exception. I would argue that terrorism is the prime exception that disrupts the regularities of everyday politics.

Whether the liberal state can cope with it without renouncing its liberal and democratic principles remains to be seen. (Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes on violence and identity: by Gabriella Slomp) 

The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics by A.P. Martinich (Cambridge University Press) As well as being considered the greatest English political philosopher, Hobbes has traditionally been thought of as a purely secular thinker, highly critical of all religion. In this provocative new study, Professor Martinich argues that conventional wisdom has been misled. In fact, he shows that religious concerns pervade Leviathan and that Hobbes was really intent on providing a rational defense of the Calvinistic Church of England that flourished under the reign of James I. Professor Martinich presents a close reading of Leviathan in which he shows that, for Hobbes, Christian doctrine is not politically destabilizing and is consistent with modern science.

Whatever line we end up taking on Hobbes' religious beliefs, we need to explain why he devoted so much space in Leviathan to discussing religion and church-state relations. An important point here is that in the first two parts he claims that he has proved there must an absolute, unlimited, and indivisible sovereign in every state. From this it follows that the church cannot possess power that is independent from the state and its sovereign. Yet a central theme of the last two parts of the book is precisely that churches do not have independent power. Why did Hobbes argue for this at such length in the last half of the book if he had already proved it to his own satisfaction in the first half? One idea is that he spent so much time arguing from Scripture and from religious principles because he was a sincere Christian believer. However, some of the things he says in the last two parts have been seen as pointing in a different direction. Firstly, he is a materialist and applies material explanations to things like spirits and angels in chapter 34; can you be a Christian and a materialist at the same time? Secondly, he is very skeptical about miracles (chapter 37), and about claims that God has revealed his will to people in visions or dreams (chapter 36 and especially chapter 32). Although Hobbes does not spell this out, the last point is potentially very significant indeed, for if we cannot rely on claims by people nowadays to have had a revelation from God, why should we place any more reliance on the similar testimony of some ancient Jews whose claims to have received special communications from God are recorded in the bible. And linked to this is the further question of what is the bible (or Scripture). Why should I treat some and not other books as having special divine authority? Note that there is disagreement between Protestants and Catholics about just what books are canonical and which ones are apocryphal. How are we to resolve such disagreement? What rational grounds can I have for supposing that God inspired the writing of some books? Chapter 33 is highly relevant here.

Some key concepts and distinctions that Hobbes uses in parts 3 and 4 are counsel and command, and belief (or faith) and knowledge. To what uses does he put them? In the last part of Leviathan Hobbes argues that to further their ambitions the clergy have systematically concealed and distorted truths, with devastating effects on science, learning and scholarship. How do his attitudes here prefigure or differ from those characteristic of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century? 

Hobbes and Christianity by Paul D. Cooke (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) (Hardcover) Although Thomas Hobbes was widely regarded by his contemporaries to be an atheist, scholars in the late nineteenth century reconsidered his works and reclaimed him as a sincere exegete of scripture. During the twentieth century a growing number of Hobbes scholars agreed with this revised interpretation. Paul D. Cooke's well-documented and thorough new study aims to reestablish the seventeenth century view of Hobbes by arguing that "Leviathan" is profoundly antipathetic to orthodox Christianity. 

The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation by David Johnston (Princeton University Press) (Paperback) is a deep study about the systematic construction of Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy. The author leaves of an unusual analysis of the theory of history of young Hobbes and sustains, differently of classics like Leo Strauss, that effective rupture doesn't exist in uncoiling of the historical thought for the scientific-philosophical thought. Both base on the causal idea. Johnston notices Hobbes as the ideologist that indeed was. It demonstrates that the objective of its political theory was to do the common, ignorant and irrational man, to accept the idea of the state of nature, rational indicator of the need of an organized State. He sees the rhetoric of the political theory of Hobbes as a technique of cultural transformation that objectified to impede the sedition and the civil war in the England of seventy century. An imaginative and thoughtful book.

The best writings on Hobbes have always been those that boldly sought to unify the warring elements in his thought. Professor Johnston has written a book belonging to this category. It is unquestionably essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Hobbes ". . . a new Leviathan has sailed into view. . . . The Rhetoric of Leviathan presents an original and suggestive interpretation of Hobbes's political thought. Indeed, it is the best book on Hobbes in recent years, and, hopefully, it will help to redirect Hobbes scholars toward new paths of interpretive exploration. More importantly, it ought to be read by anyone interested in exploring "the ideological or cultural foundations of political power,' and the ways in which political theorists contribute to or seek to undermine those foundations." --Richard Ashcraft, Albion "With this lucid, perceptive, and original work, David Johnston . . . moves into the forefront of students of Hobbes." --Roger W. Smith, Perspective "The best writings on Hobbes have always been those that boldly sought to unify the warring elements in his thought. Professor Johnston has written a book belonging to this category. It is unquestionably essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Hobbes."--Timothy Fuller, International Hobbes Association Newsletter 

Sovereignty and the Sword: Harrington, Hobbes, and Mixed Government in the English Civil Wars by Arihiro Fukuda (Oxford University Press) places the political thought of mid-seventeenth-century England within the context of the English civil wars and offers fresh insights into the principles on which two of the great figures of political thought, Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington, constructed their main arguments. Arihiro Fukuda shows Harrington to have been, no less than Hobbes, a theorist of absolute sovereignty. But where Hobbes repudiated the mixed governments of classical antiquity, Harrington was convinced that mixed government, far from being the enemy of absolute sovereignty, was its essential foundation. Fukuda shows how Harrington, in recasting Hobbes's thought, achieved an originality and profundity as striking as his rivals. The English civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century produced two political thinkers of genius: Thomas Hobbes and James Harrington. They are known today as spokesmen of opposite positions, Hobbes of absolutism, Harrington of republicanism. Yet behind their disagreements, argues Arihiro Fukuda, there lay a common perspective. For both writers, the primary aim was the restoration of peace and order to a divided land. Both men saw the conventional thinking of the time as unequal to that task. Their greatest works - Hobbes's "Leviathan" of 1651, Harrington's "Oceana" of 1656 - proposed the reconstruction of the English polity on novel bases. It was not over the principle of sovereignty that the two men differed. Fukuda shows Harrington to have been, no less than Hobbes, a theorist of absolute sovereignty. But where Hobbes repudiated the mixed governments of classical antiquity, Harrington's study of them convinced him that mixed government, far from being the enemy of absolute sovereignty, was its essential foundation. 

The Consolations of Philosophy: Hobbes's Secret, Spinoza's Way by Henry M. Rosenthal and Abigail L. Rosenthal (Temple University Press) Posthumous study of the social contract in Hobbes's Leviathan and Spinoza's Ethics. No review.

Rhetoric and Philosophy in Hobbes' Leviathan by Raia Prokhovnik (Taylor & Francis) no review

A Literary Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes's Masterpiece of Language by Charles Cantalupo (Associated University Press) no review 

Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory by Gregory S. Kavka (Princeton University Press) Both conflict and cooperation are ubiquitous features of human social life. Interests of individuals conflict with those of their neighbors because (among other reasons) material resources are scarce, ideals and values are diverse, and people care about their reputations and relative standing among their fellows. At the same time, individuals share a number of common interests and concerns, and this makes social cooperation possible. Among the most important of these common interests are the prevention and limitation of violent conflict and the protection of personal possessions. When these interests are secured and when environmental and economic conditions are reasonably favorable, people generally can live out their lives and engage in cooperative (and competitive) social activities without constant concern for their own survival and that of their loved ones. But it is not easy to secure persons and possessions when others may gain by attacking the former or seizing the latter. In fact, it requires two major social institutions--morality and government--working in a coordinated fashion to do so. This is one of the main themes of Hobbes's philosophy that is developed in this book.

One of the classical sources for a statement of psychological egoism is Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (1651); it is available on the web at gopher://gopher.vt.edu:10010/02/98/1. For a contemporary reinterpretation of Hobbes which partially challenges the belief that he was a psychological egoist, see Gregory S. Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), especially Chapter Two. Bernard Gerts "Hobbes and Psychological Egoism," in Hobbes' Leviathan: Interpretation and Criticism, edited by Bernard Baumrin (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1969), pp. 107-26, introduced the term "tautological egoism;" Gert argues against reading Hobbes solely as a`psychological egoist. For a vigorous defense of Hobbes place in English philosophy, see David Gauthier, "Thomas Hobbes: Moral Theorist," in his Moral Dealing. Contract, Ethics, and Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 11-23. Also see F. S. McNeillys "Egoism in Hobbes," Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 16 (July, 1966), pp. 193-206. On empirical criteria for evaluating psychological egoism, see Michael Slote, "An Empirical Basis for Psychological Egoism," in Egoism and Altruism, edited by Ronald Milo (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1973), pp. 100-07.  

Hobbes by Robert Shaver (The International Library of Critical Essays in the History of Philosophy: Ashgate) Hobbes is a collection of the best journal articles on Hobbes. It concentrates on his moral and political philosophy but also covers his work on law, religion, rhetoric, and science. No review pending.

Contents: The Received View: Moral Theory:
David Gauthier (1979) Thomas Hobbes: Moral Theorist;
Gregory S. Kavka (1983) Right, Reason and Natural Law in Hobbess Ethics;
Jean Hampton (1992) Hobbes and Ethical Naturalism.
The Received View: The State of Nature:
Gregory S. Kavka (1983) Hobbess War of All Against All;
Jean Hampton (1985) Hobbess State of War;
Marshall Missner (1983) Skepticism and Hobbess Political Philosophy.
The Received View: The Sovereign:
David Gauthier (1988) Hobbess Social Contract;
David Copp (1980) Hobbes on Artificial Persons and Collective Actions;
M.M. Goldsmith (1980) Hobbess "Mortal God": Is There a Fallacy in Hobbess Theory of Sovereignty?;
Edwin Curley (1989-90) Reflections on Hobbes: Recent Work on his Moral and Political Philosophy.
The Debate over the Received View:
Bernard Gert (1967) Hobbes and Psychological Egoism;
A.E.Taylor (1938) The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes;
Howard Warrender (1962) Hobbess Conception of Morality;
Quentin Skinner (1966) The Ideological Context of Hobbess Theory of Political Thought;
Mark C. Murphy (1994) Deviant Uses of "Obligation" in Hobbes Leviathan;
Method, Rhetoric and Law:
C.B. Macpherson (1945) Hobbes Today;
William Lyons (1977) Against an Orthodox Interpretation of Hobbes;
Quentin Skinner (1990) Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality;
David Gauthier (1990) Thomas Hobbes and the Contractarian Theory of Law;
Mark C. Murphy (1995) Was Hobbes a Legal Positivist?
Index.

Thomas Hobbes: Critical Assessments edited by Preston King, 4 volumes (Routledge) Thomas Hobbes is arguably the greatest of all English philosophers. In the second half of the twentieth century, he has been the subject of sustained critical attention. Hobbes was capable of powerful argument on virtually any level, whether logical, scriptural or historical. And he has attracted attention in all these areas and more questions of historical method, language and linguistics, metaphysics, ethics, law, politics, science and religion.
Hobbes has been examined from a great variety of perspectives as an ethical positivist and a deontologist, as a bourgeois advocate and a supporter of the aristocracy, as an absolutist and a proponent of parliamentary government, as a ``conservative'' and a ``modern,'' as an atheist and a believer. The periodical literature on Hobbes is accordingly very rich, but it is also difficult to access. The four volumes of these critical assessments assemble an important array of material which will be invaluable to all students of Hobbes.

Contents: Volume 1 Texts and Contexts (28 essays); Volume 2 Ethics (28 essays); Volume 3 Politics and Law (45 essays); Volume 4 Religion (21 essays)

The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism: The Late Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes's Natural Philosophy by Cees Leijenhorst (Medieval and Early Modern Science, 3: Brill Academic) studies the natural philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in the light of Renaissance and early modern Aristotelianism. Hobbes, for his part, would veto such a project. He repeats ad nauseam that the writings of the "schoolmen or metaphysicians ... have troubled my head more than they should have done, if I had known that amongst so many senseless disputes, there had been so few lucid intervals. Nevertheless, although he complains that he found little of value in the sterile books of the "schoolmen," he also acknowledges that he has read quite a few of them. The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism sets out from the claim that Hobbes' reading of the Aristotelians provided him with more than just a headache.
The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism is less a study about Hobbes and Aristotle, than an examination of how Hobbes relates to sixteenth and seventeenth‑century interpretations of Aristotle. Thanks to such scholars as Schmitt, Lohr and others, we have become aware that sixteenth and seventeenth‑century Aristotelianism was not the uniformly conservative tradition Descartes and Hobbes depicted. In practice, university curricula generally continued to explain the works of the great Stagyrite. Nevertheless, these commentaries were by no means uniform, as they encompassed a great diversity of genres. The question is therefore; with which kinds of Aristotelianism was Hobbes familiar and how did he respond to it? The answer is difficult. Although the philosophia prima contains an impressive amount of Aristotelian definitions and hidden or overt references to Aristotelian discussions, it is difficult to establish the precise origins of these materials, because Hobbes seldom quotes his sources. Thus, in Leijenhorsts search for Aristotelian works relevant for understanding his philosophy, he relies heavily on circumstantial evidence. Of course, academic curricula and the distribution of commentaries and textbooks in Britain approximately convey what Hobbes might have read as a student at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. However, the measure in which these particular works influenced him is unclear, as Hobbes only started writing philosophy in his early forties. Two lists of books are known to be linked with Hobbes, but their exact status is far from clear.' Nevertheless, we do know that Hobbes examined a number of Aristotelian works while writing his own philosophy. This is attested by a Hobbesian quote from Suarez.

Leijenhorsts discussion of the contents of the philosophia prima is preceded by two chapters of a more general nature. Chapter one investigates Hobbes' definition of philosophia prima and the way it relates to Aristotelian views on the matter. Since Hobbes' doctrine of sense perception is crucial to understanding his philosophia prima, sense perception and imagination are Leijenhorst Leijenhorsts initial discussion. The bulk of The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism corresponds to the chapter sequence of De Corpore's philosophia prima. Leijenhorsts third chapter parallels chapter seven of De Corpore, "De Loco et Tempore," which develops Hobbes' concepts of space and time. Chapter four runs parallel to chapter eight of De Corpore, "De Corpore et Accidente," in which Hobbes reinterprets the basic concepts of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Chapter four also incorporates Hobbes' discussion of the principle of identity, developed in chapter ten of De Corpore. Lastly, chapter five reflects Hobbes' chapter nine, "De Causa et Accidente," which develops his ideas concerning the causal framework binding natural bodies together. 

Hobbes' De Corpore responds in four different ways to Aristotle and the Aristotelians. Leijenhorsts finds passionate invective, unorthodox readings of familiar Aristotelian materials, philosophical argumentation against Aristotelian doctrines, and finally  full integration of these new doctrines. Although the Leviathan is best known for Hobbes' invective, De Corpore comes a close second. As Leijenhorst shows, De Corpore denounces various scholastic doctrines as "insignificant speech." Concerning scholastic speculations about the void, Hobbes for example, states that "I find that most of those that affect metaphysical subtleties wander from truth, as if they were led out of their way by an ignis fatum."  De Corpore applies a considerable range of rhetorical techniques. Hobbes invariably quotes Aristotelian sources when defining basic terms of his philosophia prima. In itself, this might be explained simply as a rhetorical strategy. Descartes' advice to Regius springs to mind: cloak a non‑Aristotelian content in familiar Aristotelian language, so as to avoid scaring off the readers. Thus, they will gradually become accustomed to the new interpretations ‑ so one hopes. In fact, with respect to political philosophy, Sommerville has drawn attention to how Hobbes deals with Aristotelian materials: "one of his most characteristic techniques was to take commonly held views, and, by introducing a few changes, employ them to reach unfamiliar conclusions." Examples of this technique are also found in Hobbes' natural philosophy. Take for instance Hobbes' discussion of sensory judgement: it repeats the orthodox view that complete sense perception includes sensory judgement, but offers a mechanistic view of how this judgement actually comes about.

Nevertheless, Hobbes' engagement with the Aristotelians goes beyond mere rhetorical strategy. He openly explains why the Aristotelians are wrong, and why he is right, in an attempt to win over his readers by argument rather than by conceit. A case in point Leijenhorst shows is Hobbes' doctrine of motion, in which he undermines the Aristotelian distinction between natural and violent motion and invalidates the precedence of rest over motion. Finally, Hobbes integrates Aristotelian materials into his own natural philosophy. Hobbes, for example, adopts the late Aristotelian concept of spatium imaginarium into his own doctrine of space. He also claims that his concept of time is identical to Aristotle. Hobbes reproduces an idealist reading of Aristotle's notion of time common to late Aristotelians.

Hobbes' engagement with Aristotle and the Aristotelians is complex as Leijenhorst shows. Hobbes insults the Aristotelians, while using their vocabulary and even their definitions. This complexity is perhaps characteristic of any struggle with such a dominating father figure as the Stagyrite and the enormous tradition he inaugurated. Perhaps here, the degree of rebellion reflects the dependence.

We are left with a baffling mixture of old and new elements. This is especially true of the Short Tract. Brandt portrays this work as a Munchhausen‑like emancipatory act from the Aristotelian tradition. According to Brandt, Hobbes invented the anti‑scholastic polemics of the Short Tract. This thesis is wrong according to Leijenhorst. The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism demonstrates that the Short Tract is still largely Aristotelian. There are only two points at which Hobbes departs from Aristotelianism. First, unlike the Aristotelian determinists he clearly follows, Hobbes does not confine his determinism to agentia naturalia. Rather, he extends it to agentia voluntaria. He thus rejects the definition of free agent and human free will propounded by Suarez. Hobbes finds no reason to limit the identification of sufficient and necessary causes to the natural realm. He thus inserts human volition into the formal framework of universal determinism, in contrast to Aristotelian determinists who expressly refrained from this. Secondly, the Short Tract offers a psychology that reduces both sense perception and "Understanding" to no more than local motion in the corporeal spirits. This psychology gives rise to the only innovative element of the Short Tract's doctrine of motion, which is the reduction of qualitative change to local motion.

Also according to Leijenhorst, Brandt is also wrong about Hobbes' supposed lack of sources. Hobbes' anti‑scholastic psychology is clearly indebted to Renaissance naturalism. He adopts the semi‑corporeal, substantial species from Fracastoro, while his physiological account of the act of sense as motion within the corporeal spirits depends on Telesio and Campanella.

The Short Tract was probably written before 1634. In that year, Hobbes came into contact with the new science cultivated by the Mersenne Circle. This encounter had a profound impact on Hobbes' later natural philosophy. Inspired by the Galilean science of motion, Hobbes concludes that motion should no longer be conceived as an actualisation of inner potentialities. Instead, motion is a state that a body acquires by the action of other bodies. Since the acquisition and loss of this state is due to other bodies, motion loses its inherent finality. Moreover, Hobbes reduces all kinds of change to local motion.

Hobbes is not satisfied to reduce the natural world to matter in motion. If it is true that the world consists of nothing more than chunks of matter colliding with each other, our perceptions of sensible qualities must by necessity be subjective. In contrast, Aristotelians consider sensible qualities to be real attributes inhering in bodies. These are understood as matter‑form composites. For Hobbes, the reduction of nature to matter in motion parallels a reduction of sensible qualities to mental phenomena. In this respect, he undergoes the influence of Kepler, who discovered that perceptual images are not projected isomorphically on the lens but appear upside down on the retina. Hobbes used the sense‑sceptical implications of this discovery.

With these new developments, Hobbes reinterprets philosophia prima. Hobbes' first philosophy distinguishes between ens (body) and phantasma (idea). Phantasmata can be considered from a phenomenalist and a realist perspective. According to the phenomenalist perspective, phantasmata are representations of external reality. They are not real beings themselves, but only apparent beings. In the realist perspective, phantasmata are simply local motion in our bodies, mechanically provoked by external bodies. Despite Hobbes' own claims, the realist perspective dominates philosophia prima. Hobbes holds that our phantasmata causally depend on external bodies, which act on us by means of local motion.

This is hardly Aristotelian. Yet, as the central argument of The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism has shown, Hobbes' innovations are framed in Aristotelian vocabulary and arguments. It thus becomes difficult to individuate clear breaks and sharp discontinuities. Hobbes often follows specific developments within late Aristotelianism, adding just a small twist of his own. In so doing, however, he does effectively move beyond the Aristotelian tradition. As the Aristotelians knew, motion not only has an ad quem, but also an a quo. Hobbes sometimes reaches a mechanistic ad quern, leaving behind the Aristotelian a quo. In many other cases, he simply stopped somewhere in between. A case in point is his concept of matter. This may be considered to be the culmination of a late Aristotelian trend to accord a higher status to matter, to the detriment of form. However, since Hobbes' concept of matter renders substantial form superfluous, he contributes to the gradual downfall of Aristotelian hylomorphism. However, Hobbes still retains all the basic vocabulary of hylomorphism.

The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism confirms recent work on Descartes and other moderni. These indicate how difficult it is to characterise the relation between Aristotelianism and early modern natural philosophy in dichotomous terms. Some self-proclaimed Aristotelians, such as the Jesuit Honore Fabri, in some cases came closer to Descartes than to Aristotle. And some self‑styled moderni, such as Descartes and Hobbes, had no qualms about subscribing to standard Aristotelian definitions. The main "paradigm shift" probably lies in the very fact that the moderns style their philosophy as "new" and "modern." Upon delving deeper, the patient historian detects but few of the announced radical ruptures. To say that Hobbes "mechanised Aristotelianism" is therefore only an apparent paradox. To the modern reader, Hobbes' natural philosophy appears more like a hybrid than like a revolution. Leijenhorst has managed to find more subtle variety in the philosopher than out textbooks usually admit.

Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes by Quentin Skinner (Cambridge University Press) This major new work from Quentin Skinner, one of the foremost philosophical historians currently writing, presents a fundamental reappraisal of the political theory of Hobbes. For the first time using the full range of manuscript as well as printed sources, Skinner documents an entirely new view of Hobbes' intellectual development, and reexamines the shift from a humanist to a scientific culture in European moral and political thought. Part I of the book focuses on the teachings of rhetoric in the grammar schools of Hobbes' youth, and provides an original survey of the reception of the classical theories of eloquence in Renaissance England. In Part II Skinner discusses the nature of Hobbes' contribution to early modern debates about the human sciences. By examining Hobbes' philosophy against the background of his humanist education, Skinner rescues this most difficult and challenging of political philosophers from the intellectual isolation in which he is so often discussed.

THREE DISCOURSES: A critical modern Edition of newly identified Edition of the Young Hobbes by Thomas Hobbes, edited by Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene W. Saxonhouse (University of Chicago Press)

This edition of Hobbes’s Discourses owes its origins to a 1988 conference where Noel Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse met and discussed Hobbes and Saxonhouse's almost forgotten dissertation on the Horae Subsecivae: Observations and Discourses. Saxonhouse told Reynolds of her efforts to argue that the small volume was the work of Thomas Hobbes, and of her difficulty in convincing others on the basis of historical, archival, and textual evidence that this was the case. Prospective publishers complained that there was no "smoking gun," that they could not risk publishing such a work by a recent Ph.D. who was not yet, as one editor put it, "a scholar of overriding distinction." Finding herself in a Catch 22, Saxonhouse let the thesis lie largely ignored, and efforts to publish the Horae Subsecivae in a modern edition were abandoned.

Fortuitously, Reynolds was closely involved with statisticians at Brigham Young University who have done some of the most important work in developing statistical techniques for identifying authorship for disputed texts, or "wordprinting." Reynolds persuaded John L. Hilton to join him in what became a four-year project, the many findings of which have been reported in conferences and journal publications over the last two years.

The results relative to the Horae Subsecivae were both exhilarating and disappointing. The three discourses published here could confidently be attributed to Hobbes, but the volume's twelve shorter essays or observations which draw heavily on Baconian themes and language, portraying the passionate young aristocrat with all his foibles, and the fourth discourse, were authored by someone else—perhaps Hobbes's tutee, but clearly not Hobbes himself.

The identification of the three discourses as previously unrecognized and unacknowledged Hobbesian works is of major significance because they give us direct access to Hobbes's intellectual concerns and motivating interests at a point almost two decades earlier than was possible through his previously recognized writings.

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