Reading Hobbes Backwards treats Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) as a peace theorist, who from early manuscripts of his system made by disciples in England and France, to the late Historia Ecclesiastica, saw sectarianism and Trinitarian doctrines supporting the papal monarchy as the ultimate cause of the punishing religious wars of the post-Reformation. But Hobbes was also indebted to scholasticism and the millennia-old Aristotle commentary tradition, Greek, Byzantine, Jewish and Islamic, surviving in the universities of Paris and Oxford, naming his 'English Politiques' Leviathan after the scaly monster of the Book of Job, perhaps as a decoy. Politically connected through Cavendish circles and the Virginia Company, Hobbes was a courtier's client who, until Leviathan, could not speak in his own voice. Adept at 'political surrogacy', he authored satires and burlesques which he could own or disown, while promoting the moral education of classical civic humanism against sectarianism. The Appendix provides a synopsis of his relatively inaccessible Latin Church History, an exercise in 'clandestine philosophy' from which Hobbes's intentions in Leviathan can be read off. Chapters are referenced and cross-referenced to be read independently, serving both as reference work and text-book.
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Product Details
Dimensions: 148 x 212mm
Publication Date: 01 Oct 2024
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Publication City/Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781036409180
About Patricia Springborg
Patricia Springborg (DPhil Oxon) was lecturer and Professor of Political Theory at the University of Sydney Australia (1974-2005) and most recently Guest Professor in the Centre for British Studies of the Humboldt University in Berlin Germany (2013-22). She has taught in the USA at the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley and has been a stipendiary fellow at Institutes for Advanced Study in Washington DC Berlin Oxford and Uppsala. She has authored some 80 refereed articles and 8 authored or co-authored books including The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan (2007) and the first English translation and critical edition of Hobbes's Historia Ecclesiastica (2008).