Thomas Hobbes

Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics

Häftad, Engelska, 2002

AvRichard E. Flathman,Richard E Flathman

739 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 11-20 vardagar. Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

As its subtitle "Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics" indicates, this book is an exploration of and a largely favorable engagement with salient elements in the thinking of a theorist who is widely regarded as the greatest Anglophone political thinker and among the top rank of philosophical writers generally. In emphazing Hobbes's skepticism, Richard Flathman goes against the grain of much of the literature concerning Hobbes. The theme of individuality is more familiar, particularly from the celebrated writings on Hobbes by Michael Oakeshott, but the idea of a chastened politics challenges the widely influential view that Hobbes was not only an authoritarian but an incipient or proto-totalitarian.Although primarily an account of Hobbes's thinking, Flathman contends that Hobbes's formulation speaks valuably to issues that remain very much with us. For this reason Thomas Hobbes will be of interest to a wider audience than Hobbes specialists.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2002-04-08
Mått151 x 225 x 16 mm
Vikt313 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieModernity and Political Thought
Antal sidor216
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9780742521490

Tillhör följande kategorier

Richard Flathman is one of today's most provocative and lively political theorists. And Thomas Hobbes is arguably the most interesting political thinker in the Western canon. Put the two together so that you have Flathman on Hobbes and the result is a work that is wonderfully unsettling, undoing some of the standard readings of Hobbes and building the strongest case to date for a liberal/Hobbes theory of politics. Flathman's Hobbes is more complicated than any of those versions in which Hobbesian politics comes down to a question of choosing between the state of nature and the absolute state. In contrast, Flathman quite properly insists that Hobbes saw political life as far more complex—as necessary and regrettable, fearful and inspiring, individualizing and absolutist. In an example of textual exegesis put to work for reasons that can matter to us, Flathman argues that in fact the state of nature and the state of civil society are frequently commingled in Hobbes's thought. This gives rise, in turn, to an entirely original analysis of how dependent the powers of Leviathan are upon its limited ability to use those powers. Flathman's larger ambition in drawing a map of this Hobbesian (dis)order, is to celebrate citizens who both affirm and deny their