Nature, civility and eschatology: Thomas Hobbes’s progress in three acts
This paper argues that Thomas Hobbes’s theory contains an account of progressive defragmentation and unification of power, accompanied by the progression in human reasoning capacities. If the consequence of human nature is abandonment of natural condition and subjection to a sovereign, then...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
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Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Belgrade
2016-01-01
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| Series: | Filozofija i Društvo |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0353-5738/2016/0353-57381604884S.pdf |
| Summary: | This paper argues that Thomas Hobbes’s theory contains an account of
progressive defragmentation and unification of power, accompanied by the
progression in human reasoning capacities. If the consequence of human nature
is abandonment of natural condition and subjection to a sovereign, then
similar principles should apply to the sovereigns themselves, since Hobbes
sees them as continuing to exist in the state of nature. In turn, the
relations between sovereigns must also lead to defragmentation of political
authority, either by conquest or through peaceful submission. Total
defragmentation of power might also have eschatological consequences, as the
unified power of one human being over the whole world would remove “external
violence” as a cause of “the dissolution of a commonwealth” while the
perfection of reason would progressively remove the “internal” causes. This
is a hypothetical situation that could relate Hobbes’s description of the
Kingdom of God from Leviathan to his wider political theory by marking the
single sovereign representative of now immortal all-encompassing Leviathan as
the Antichrist and thus announcing the second coming of Christ. |
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| ISSN: | 0353-5738 2334-8577 |