6. Influence

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this final module, we confront the influence of Thomas Hobbes over the generations, focusing in particular on: (i) how he did not fit easily with either the Royalists or the Republicans of his own time; (ii) that Hobbes too has not fit easily into the Conservative tradition, despite his emphasis on order, authority, and obedience; (iii) that Hobbes may better be placed within the Liberal tradition of political thought; (iv) that within his own time Hobbes would not have understood the terms “liberalism” or “conservatism” as we do (v) comparisons to Locke and the ways in which Hobbes may be said to have “set the terms of the argument”, with Locke modifying – rather than rejecting – the fundamental precepts of Hobbes’s system; (vi) a wide canon of thinkers: from Burke to Ayn Rand, Nozick to Jeremy Bentham. Ultimately, this gives us a clear sense of Hobbes’s unique, profound and radical significance within the wider history of political thought.

Course

In this course, Professor Jeffrey Collins (Queen’s University) explores the political theory of Thomas Hobbes, primarily through his best-known work Leviathan. In the first module, we are introduced to Hobbes’s life and times, and briefly place his thinking into two contexts: those of Humanism and the “New Science”. In the second module we zoom in on the historical context of the English Civil War as we attempt to make sense of Hobbes’s views on human nature and the individual. In the third module, we move on to consider Hobbes’s account of the social contract as the means by which sovereignty is brought into existence, thus creating the political state. Here we look directly at Hobbes’s own words in Leviathan, reading the text closely and picking apart its meanings. In the fourth module, we explore the precise nature of sovereignty, exploring the sorts of powers Hobbes argued the sovereign should have. In the fifth module, we explore the themes of liberty and disorder in Hobbes’s “science of politics", before, in the sixth and final module, considering Hobbes’s influence over later liberal and conservative thinkers.

Lecturer

Jeffrey Collins is Professor of History at Queen’s University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1999. He has published numerous articles on early modern religion, politics, and political thought, and is regular book reviewer for publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Times Literary Supplement. His first book, ‘The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes’, was published by Oxford University Press in 2005; his second, ‘In the Shadow of Leviathan: John Locke and the Politics of Conscience’, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. He is currently working on an intellectual history of Charles I’s purported “king’s book,” the Eikon Basilike, published immediately after his execution in 1649.