Highlights the life and accomplishments of English philosopher, scholar, mathematician, and teacher Thomas Hobbes.

Best known for his contributions to political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes set out to develop a coherent philosophical system extending from logic and natural philosophy to civil and religious philosophy. In this introduction to Hobbes's thought, Otfried Höffe begins by providing an overview of the entire scope of his work, making clear its systematic character through analysis of his natural philosophy, his individual and social anthropology, and his political thought. He then offers an innovative examination of religious and ecclesiastical questions, touching not only on the political implications of religion so important to Hobbes, but also on his attempt to reconstruct Christianity in terms of a materialistic philosophy. He also explores Hobbes's continuous critique of Aristotle and Aristotelian Scholastics, in which Höffe argues that Hobbes and Aristotle have much more in common philosophically than is normally supposed—and certainly more than Hobbes himself acknowledged. Finally, Höffe sketches the influence Hobbes had and continues to have on the development of legal and political philosophy.

Essay from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: British Institutions (Landeskunde), language: English, abstract: Broadly speaking, Thomas Hobbes' image of man was genuinely pessimistic. The proof for this claim may be found in the first book of Leviathan, in which Hobbes explains his view of the human nature, its soul and its mechanisms. Leviathan was not Hobbes' first attempt to give such a general overview, and when he claimed that "Homo homini lupus" (Man is a wolf to man), it was firstly not him who coined the phrase (it first appeared around 1500), and secondly not in Leviathan but nine years earlier in De Cive. The idea that "Man is a wolf to man" sums up many of Hobbes' theories in a single phrase. However, it should be noted that the sentence so often quoted as summarising Hobbes' theories continues, "Man is an arrant wolf to man, and man to man is a God." The second half is often forgotten but it is vitally important to remember it in order to fully understand what might be seen as the first coherent and scientific political theory. How can man to man be a wolf and a God simultaneously? Hobbes' image of man was not only pessimistic but ambiguous too.

The eight essays in this volume celebrated the 400th birthday of the English political thinker - Thomas Hobbes.

"A collection of essays analyzing the seventeenth-century British political theorist Thomas Hobbes from a feminist perspective"--Provided by publisher.

The argument laid out in this book discusses and interprets the work of Hobbes in relation to religion. It compares a traditional interpretation of Hobbes where Hobbes’ use of conventional terminology when talking about natural law is seen as ironic or merely convenient despite an atheist viewpoint, with the view that Hobbes’ morality is truly traditional and Christian. The book considers other thinkers of the age in tandem with Hobbes and discusses in detail his theology inspired by corporeal mechanics. The position is that there are significant senses in which Hobbes can be said to be a traditional natural law theorist.

-Selected papers on Renaissance philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes offers the best work in these fields by the acclaimed historian of philosophy, Karl Schuhmann (1941-2003), displaying the extraordinary range and depth of his unique scholarship, -Topics covered include Renaissance philosophy of nature; the development of the notion of time in early modern philosophy; Telesio's concept of space; Hermetic influences on Pico, Patrizi and Hobbes; Hobbes's Short Tract; Spinoza and Hobbes; Hobbes's political philosophy, -This book brings together, in chronological arrangement, twelve papers. Though these were published before in some form, several were not easily accessible so far, -All articles have been edited in accordance with the author's wishes, and incorporate his later additions and corrections

Thomas Hobbes claimed to have founded the discipline of civil philosophy. This book offers a new reading of his intellectual development, arguing that he was dubious about the place of rhetoric in civil society and came to see it as a pernicious presence within philosophy - a position from which he did not retreat.

In this book, S. A. Lloyd offers a radically new interpretation of Hobbes's laws of nature, revealing them to be not egoistic precepts of personal prudence but rather moral instructions for obtaining the common good. This account of Hobbes's moral philosophy stands in contrast to both divine command and rational choice interpretations. Drawing from the core notion of reciprocity, Lloyd explains Hobbes's system of "cases in the law of nature" and situates Hobbes's moral philosophy in the broader context of his political philosophy and views on religion. Offering ingenious new arguments, Lloyd defends a reciprocity interpretation of the laws of nature through which humanity's common good is secured.

Pre-eminent among European political philosophers, Norberto Bobbio has throughout his career turned to the political theory of Thomas Hobbes. Gathered here for the first time are the most important of his essays which together provide both a valuable introduction to Hobbes's thought and a fresh understanding of Hobbes's place in the theory of modern politics. Tracing Hobbes's work through De Cive and Leviathan, Bobbio identifies the philosopher's relation to the tradition of natural law. That Hobbes must now be understood in both this tradition as well as in the seemingly contradictory positivist tradition becomes clear for the first time in Bobbio's account. Bobbio also demonstrates that Hobbes cannot be easily labelled "liberal" or "totalitarian"; in Bobbio's provocative analysis of Hobbes's justification of the state, Hobbes emerges as a true conservative. Though his primary concern is to reconstruct the inner logic of Hobbes's thought, Bobbio is also attentive to the philosopher's biography and weaves into his analysis details of Hobbes's life and world—his exile in France, his relation with the Mersenne circle, his disputes with Anglican bishops, and accusations of heresy leveled against him. The result is a revealing, thoroughly new portrait of the first theorist of the modern state.