Difference without Disagreement: Rethinking Hobbes on “Independency” and Toleration

Bejan, Teresa M.

doi:10.1017/s0034670515000856

Cited by 28 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…12. In this sense, Bejan's (2016) recent focus on the conditionals (e.g. 'if it be without contention') in the passages invoked in the 'tolerant Hobbes?'…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Gray (2000: 25), by contrast, the liberal association is based on the idea that a ‘Hobbesian state extends to private belief the radical tolerance of indifference’. The ‘tolerant Hobbes?’ debate has attracted much scholarly attention since the 1980s (Bejan, 2016: 1–6), much of which turns on his apparent endorsement of ‘Independency’ towards the end of Leviathan ( L , xlvii.20/1116). This is not the place to attempt to resolve the debate one way or another, but two points bear emphasising.…”

Section: Ethics and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…12 In this sense, Bejan’s (2016) recent focus on the conditionals (e.g. ‘if it be without contention’) in the passages invoked in the ‘tolerant Hobbes?’ debate is most welcome, although her conclusions (especially 22–25) for how we should theorise his ideas on toleration take a slightly different direction to those suggested here.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Hobbes and political realism

Douglass

2016

European Journal of Political Theory

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Thomas Hobbes has recently been cast as one of the forefathers of political realism. This article evaluates his place in the realist tradition by focusing on three key themes: the priority of legitimacy over justice, the relation between ethics and politics, and the place of imagination in politics. The thread uniting these themes is the importance Hobbes placed on achieving a moral consensus around peaceful coexistence, a point which distances him from realists who view the two as competing goals of politics. The article maintains that only a qualified version of the autonomy of the political position can be attributed to Hobbes, while arguing more generally that attending to the relation between ethics and politics is central to assessing his liberal credentials from a realist perspective. Against the prevalent reading of Hobbes as a hypothetical contract theorist, the article proceeds to show that the place of consent in his theory is better understood as part of his wider goal of transforming the imagination of his audience; a goal which is animated by concerns that realists share.

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“…12. In this sense, Bejan's (2016) recent focus on the conditionals (e.g. 'if it be without contention') in the passages invoked in the 'tolerant Hobbes?'…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ethics and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Hobbes and political realism

Douglass

2016

European Journal of Political Theory

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“…While the emphasis of Hobbes’s argument in his Leviathan is on the legitimation of absolute authority, the premises of his state of nature introduce the notion of human equality and autonomy as preconditions for governing. It is therefore not surprising that Hobbes’s ideas have been adapted in favor of diversity and tolerance (Owen, 2005; Bejan, 2016), cosmopolitism (Gallarotti, 2008), or for understanding dynamics of armed conflict and peace (Abizadeh, 2011). In international relations, the Hobbesian Leviathan was of fundamental relevance for the realist theories of Carr (1939) or Morgenthau (1948).…”

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confidence: 99%

Hobbes in the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the State of Nature in Its Relevance for Governing

Lakitsch

2021

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

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The theoretical work of Thomas Hobbes marks the dawn of political modernity and thus also the beginning of modern reasoning about governing. In his Leviathan, Hobbes creates the modern space of the political through the exclusion of the world’s social and natural abundance. This crossroads of political thinking might not least be of relevance for the Anthropocene. After all, affirming the Anthropocene returns mankind to a cosmos of infinite human–nature interrelationships, which strongly resembles Hobbes’s conceptual depiction of the premodern state of nature and its incomprehensible, contingent, and precarious world, a world that Hobbes had intended to ban for good. In this context, this article reconsiders the state of nature’s internal dynamics in its relevance for governing in the Anthropocene—at the expense of the normative claims of modernist governing. After all, embracing the complex ontologies of the Anthropocene and the state of nature disperses agency among the human and nonhuman world, which questions the idea of ethical and political accountability. Without such a reference, governing runs the risk of becoming arbitrary and thereby another shallow projection of modernist conceptions. This article develops an interpretation of political subjectivity as a reference for governing, deriving from the materialistic world of the Hobbesian state of nature. On this foundation, the article elaborates on how this reading of subjectivity reconfigures the conception of political space and how this shift affects the scope of governing.

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“…See in particular Collins (), but also the recent objections to Hobbes's image as an “Erastian Independent” made by Bejan ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Hobbes's genealogy of private conscience

Frilli

2020

European J of Philosophy

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This contribution aims at reconstructing Hobbes's critique of the language of private conscience and at evaluating the relevance of this critique for Hobbes's political philosophy. Hobbes, I argue, radically subverts the traditional moraltheological notion of private judgment by turning it into a natural and social fact: conscience becomes nothing more than a shared opinion. This drastic redefinition allows him to condemn the seditious uses of the language of conscience: Hobbes's criticism of Papists and Presbyterians can be read, I contend, as an attempt at a genealogical analysis of private conscience. Yet, while always constructed by powerful rhetoric, conscience is not insignificant to Hobbes, since it becomes-in a way that neither "liberal" nor "absolutist" readings of Hobbes's politics have satisfactorily accounted for-the ambivalent dimension of the construction of political consent.

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Difference without Disagreement: Rethinking Hobbes on “Independency” and Toleration

Cited by 28 publications

References 6 publications

Hobbes and political realism

Hobbes and political realism

Hobbes in the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the State of Nature in Its Relevance for Governing

Hobbes's genealogy of private conscience

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