Hobbesian Equality

Hoekstra, Kinch

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139047388.007

Cited by 17 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…24 Society relies, as a condition of possibility, upon its members' mutual acknowledgement of their natural equality as men: equality is for Hobbes a political, rather than a physical, metaphysical or ontological imperative. 25 In their natural condition, (some) men's pride precludes them from this act, thereby generating a "contest for dominion", whereas "it is necessary for the obtaining of peace" that all members of a community "be esteemed as equal" (or "accounted by nature equal to one another"). 26 Only thus will they recognize their obligation to play by the same rules as everyone else.…”

Section: Hobbes: Recognition Inequality and The Problem Of Sociabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

9 The Problem of Sociability after Hobbes: Pufendorf and Locke on the Politics of Recognition

Haara¹,

Stuart-Buttle²

2020

Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society

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Thomas Hobbes's place in the history of modern political thought is somewhat curious. Hobbes is perhaps the most 'political' of all political philosophers, focusing as he did primarily on the origins, nature, and authority of the state as an "artificial person". 1 Yet the period ca.1650-1800 witnessed a notable expansion of the scope of the political, with an increased attentiveness to how broader social and economic forces exert themselves on individuals in such ways as to render them susceptible to 'government', understood in a Foucauldian sense as "the conduct of conduct". 2 As Foucault argued, sociability (socialité)-how individuals coexist with one another-became a new matter to "police" from the seventeenth century onwards. 3 Hobbes is implicated in this turn away from a narrow focus on the state and its monopolization of disciplinary power, because to a considerable extent it was undertaken to confront a question that Hobbes had himself made pressing-but one to which his own political theory was held to offer an inadequate solution. 4 This was the problem, in Kant's memorable formulation, of "unsocial sociability". 5 By what means might human beings, with all their antisocial characteristics, be induced to exercise the kinds of 1

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Section: Hobbes: Recognition Inequality and The Problem Of Sociabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

9 The Problem of Sociability after Hobbes: Pufendorf and Locke on the Politics of Recognition

Haara¹,

Stuart-Buttle²

2020

Passions, Politics and the Limits of Society

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“…Equality, as Kinch Hoekstra emphasises, was for Hobbes a political, rather than a physical, metaphysical or ontological imperative. 29 As he declared in De Cive (1642): "Whether therefore men be equal by nature, the equality is to be acknowledged; or whether unequal, because they are like to contest for dominion, it is necessary for the obtaining of peace that they be esteemed as equal." Hobbes's eighth law of nature was "that every man be accounted by nature equal to another," and he noted that "the contrary to [this] law is pride."…”

Section: Hobbes On Glory Pride and Concordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Justice: Pufendorf and Locke on the Desire for Esteem

Haara

Stuart-Buttle

2018

Political Theory

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It is widely accepted that the seventeenth-century natural lawyers constructed the minimal requirement for social coordination between self-seeking individuals animated by the desire for self-preservation. On most interpretations, Grotius and his successors focused on the “perfect” duties (rules of justice) and had little to say about the “imperfect” duties of love and civility. This essay provides an alternative reading of post-Grotian natural law by reconstructing Pufendorf’s and Locke’s understanding of how the duties of civility and love might be realised in civil society. The essay argues that, for Pufendorf and Locke, the desire for esteem offers an explanation of how people recognize the content of the reciprocal duties of social morality and motivate themselves to act accordingly. The reconstruction of their views on the beneficial effects of esteem-seeking points towards a new interpretation of how, and why, philosophical interest in an economy of esteem and the social nature of the self emerged, prior to their treatment by eighteenth-century authors such as Hume and Smith.

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“…based on race or gender, or appeals to self-justifying hierarchical structures that generate disadvantage (more generally, see Sagar, 2016: 370–374). Measured against these criteria, there is nothing illiberal about Hobbes’s theory of legitimacy, especially as he placed considerable emphasis on recognising others as equals – largely for political reasons ( L , xv.21/324; see also Hoekstra, 2013). Liberals may nonetheless be worried about a theory that potentially subsumes all morality under politics, but Hobbes’s overriding point is that the amount of space left for private morality outside of politics can only be determined by attending to the exigencies of politics and must, therefore, be decided by the sovereign.…”

Section: Ethics and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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Hobbesian Equality

Cited by 17 publications

References 19 publications

9 The Problem of Sociability after Hobbes: Pufendorf and Locke on the Politics of Recognition

9 The Problem of Sociability after Hobbes: Pufendorf and Locke on the Politics of Recognition

Beyond Justice: Pufendorf and Locke on the Desire for Esteem

Hobbes and political realism

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