Thomas Hobbes

Otfried Höffe is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Director of the Research Center for Political Philosophy at the University of Tübingen. His many books include Aristotle (translated by Christine Salazar) and Immanuel Kant (translated by Marshall Farrier), both also published by SUNY Press. Nicholas Walker has translated many books, including Kant's Moral and Legal Philosophy (edited by Karl Ameriks and Otfried Höffe) and Hegel on Ethics and Politics (edited by Robert B. Pippin and Otfried Höffe).

• Abbreviations1. Introduction: Thomas Hobbes: A Pioneer of Modernity1.1 Three Challenges of the Epoch1.2 A Pioneer in Three Senses1.3 The Continuity of Hobbes’s DevelopmentI. Hobbes’s Career and Philosophical Development 2. Beginnings2.1 Student, Tutor, and Traveling Companion2.2 Euclid and Galileo2.3 The English Civil War2.4 Exile in Paris3. Leviathan and Behemoth3.1 A Fractured Relationship to Rhetoric3.2 The Symbol of Leviathan3.3 The Return to EnglandPart II. The Encyclopedic Character of Hobbes’s Philosophy4. Science in the Service of Peace4.1 The Principal Aim of Hobbes’s Philosophy4.2 The Complex Method4.3 The Mathematical Paradigm and Its Limits4.4 Ethics and Political Authority4.5 Analysis and Composition5. Natural Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge5.1 Empirical Realism5.2 Levels of Knowledge5.3 On Dreams5.4 Prudence6. Language, Reason, and Science6.1 Language 1: The Pre-communicative Dimension6.2 Language 2: The Political Dimension6.3 Realism and Nominalism6.4 The Framework of Language and Reason6.5 Science6.6 Hobbes’s Division of the Sciences7. An Anthropology of the Individual: The Passions7.1 A Naturalistic Hedonism7.2 A Topography of the Passions7.3 Freedom, Self-Preservation, and Determinism7.4 Power8. An Anthropology of the Social: The Possibility of Peace in a Condition of War8.1 The Conditions of Peace8.2 "Man Is a Wolf to Man"8.3 A Prevailing Inclination for Peace?9. Legitimating the State9.1 The Laws of Nature9.2 A Moral Philosophy?9.3 The Original Contract9.4 Absolute Authority9.5 A Right to Rebellion?10. Law10.1 "Not Truth but Authority"10.2 The Division of Laws10.3 A Theory of Commands10.4 Laws of Nature as a Corrective?10.5 Authorized Power11. Religion and Church11.1 A Twofold Political Question11.2 The Anthropological Foundations of Religion11.3 The Kingdom of God11.4 The Principles of a Christian Politics11.5 A Materialistic Theology11.6 Hobbes’s Critique of Other Churches12. An Excursus: Hobbes’s Critique of Aristotle12.1 The "Vain Philosophy" of Aristotle12.2 An Aristotelian in Spite of Himself12.3 Inevitable Strife or the Social Nature of Man?13. History13.1 Translating Thucydides13.2 The History of the Church and the Kingdom of God13.3 BehemothPart III. The Influence of Hobbes 14. From His Age to Our Own14.1 The Early Reception and Critique of Hobbes’s Work14.2 A Continuing Debate14.3 The Modern DiscussionChronology of Hobbes’s Life and WorkBibliographyName IndexSubject Index

"A thoroughly successful introduction to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes…" — Reinhard Brandt, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, in praise of the German edition