Reclaiming the Rights of the Hobbesian Subject PDF Download

Author: Eleanor Curran
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230592740
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
'There are no substantive rights for subjects in Hobbes's political theory, only bare freedoms without correlated duties to protect them'. Curran challenges this orthodoxy of Hobbes scholarship, and argues that Hobbes's theory is not a theory of natural rights but rather, a modern, secular theory of rights, with relevance to modern rights theory.

Author: Marcus P. Adams
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119634997
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
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.

Author: Susanne Sreedhar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139488309
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Hobbes's political theory has traditionally been taken to be an endorsement of state power and a prescription for unconditional obedience to the sovereign's will. In this book, Susanne Sreedhar develops a novel interpretation of Hobbes's theory of political obligation and explores important cases where Hobbes claims that subjects have a right to disobey and resist state power, even when their lives are not directly threatened. Drawing attention to this broader set of rights, her comprehensive analysis of Hobbes's account of political disobedience reveals a unified and coherent theory of resistance that has previously gone unnoticed and undefended. Her book will appeal to all who are interested in the nature and limits of political authority, the right of self-defense, the right of revolution, and the modern origins of these issues.

Author: S. A. Lloyd
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139851330
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century brings together an impressive group of political philosophers, legal theorists and political scientists to investigate the many ways in which the work of Thomas Hobbes, the famed seventeenth-century English philosopher, can illuminate the political and social problems we face today. Its essays demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Hobbes' political thought on such issues as justice, human rights, public reason, international warfare, punishment, fiscal policy and the design of positive law, among others. The volume's contributors include both Hobbes specialists and philosophers bringing their expertise to consideration of Hobbes' texts for the first time. This volume will stimulate renewed interest in Hobbes studies among a new generation of thinkers.

Author: S.A. Lloyd
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441190457
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is widely held to be one of the most important thinkers in the history of philosophy. His contributions to ethics, political philosophy and psychology in particular were hugely innovative and he was regarded by his contemporaries as a major intellectual figure. This comprehensive and accessible guide to Hobbes's life and work features 120 specially commissioned entries written by a team of leading experts in the field of seventeenth-century philosophy and political thought, covering every aspect of Hobbes's ideas. The Companion presents a comprehensive overview of the major themes and topics in Hobbes's work, in particular within the fields of language, political philosophy, moral philosophy and psychology, religion, law and science. It concludes with a thoroughly comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources. This is an essential reference tool for anyone working in the fields of seventeenth-century philosophy and political theory.

Author: Andrews Reath
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521472407
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy.

Author: Larry May
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191505277
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Thomas Hobbes wrote extensively about law and was strongly influenced by developments and debates among lawyers of his day. And Hobbes is considered by many commentators to be one of the first legal positivists. Yet there is no book in English that focuses on Hobbes's legal philosophy. Indeed, Hobbes's own book length treatment of law, A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, has also not received much commentary over the centuries. Larry May seeks to fill the gap in the literature by addressing Hobbes's legal philosophy directly, and comparing Leviathan to the Dialogue, as he offers a new interpretation of Hobbes's views about the connections among law, politics, and morality. May argues that Hobbes is much more amenable to moral, and even legal, limits on the law—indeed closer to Lon Fuller than to today's legal positivists—than he is often portrayed. He shows that Hobbes's views can provide a solid grounding for the rules of war and international relations generally, contrary to the near universal belief that Hobbes is the bête noir of international law. To support these views, May holds that Hobbes places greater weight on equity than on justice, and that understanding the role of equity is the key to his legal philosophy. Equity also is the moral concept that provides restrictions on what a sovereign can legitimately do, and if violated is the kind of limitation on sovereignty that could open the door for possible international institutions.

Author: Eleanor Curran
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498547885
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Re-thinking Rights: Historical Development and Philosophical Justificationtakes a new look at the history of individual rights, focussing on the way that philosophers have written that history. The scholastics and early modern writers used the notion of natural rights to debate the big moral and political questions of the day, such as the treatment of Indigenous Americans under Spanish rule. John Locke put natural rights at the centre of liberal political thought. But as the idea grew in strength and influence, empiricist and positivist philosophers punctured it with attacks of logical incompetence and illegitimate appeals to theology and metaphysics. Philosophers then turned to law and jurisprudence for the philosophical analysis of rights, where it has largely stayed ever since. Eleanor Curran argues that the dominance of the Hohfeldian analysis of (legal) rights has restricted our understanding of moral and political rights and led to distorted readings of historical writers on rights. It has also led to the separation of right from the important related notion of liberty—freedoms are now seen as inferior to claims. Curran looks at recent philosophy of human rights and suggests a way forward for justifying universal moral and political rights and separating them from legal rights.

Author: David Dyzenhaus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139576941
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Hobbes's political thought provokes a perennial fascination. It has become particularly prominent in recent years, with the surge of scholarly interest evidenced by a number of monographs in political theory and philosophy. At the same time, there has been a turn in legal scholarship towards political theory in a way that engages recognisably Hobbesian themes, for example the relationship between security and liberty. However, there is surprisingly little engagement with Hobbes's views on legal theory in general and on certain legal topics, despite the fact that Hobbes devoted whole works to legal inquiry and gave law a prominent role in his works focused on politics. This volume seeks to remedy this gap by providing the first collection of specially commissioned essays devoted to Hobbes and the law.

Author: Luciano Venezia
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113749025X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Hobbes on Legal Authority and Political Obligation develops a new interpretation of Hobbes's theory of political obligation. According to the account developed in the book, the directives issued by the sovereign as introducing authoritative requirements, so that subjects are morally obligated to obey them.