Hobbes on Public Ministers

Abstract

Until recently, scholars paid relatively little attention to chapter 23 of Leviathan, in which Hobbes discussed “the public ministers of sovereign power.” In the past few years, however, political theorists have used chapter 23 extensively in discussions of Hobbes’ concept of the state. But what was the significance of the chapter in its own time? This article suggests it served two purposes. First, it allowed Hobbes to bolster and elaborate arguments made elsewhere in Leviathan. Second, it responded to 1640s debates between royalists and parliamentarians over the role of subordinate magistrates in a polity. By the time Leviathan was published in 1651 these debates were no longer pressing, which explains the chapter’s rapid descent into obscurity. Nonetheless, recovering this polemical context helps to understand the genesis of this small but significant part of Hobbes’ political thought.