SOURCE: "The Ideological Context of Hobbes's Political Thought," in The Historical Journal, Vol. IX, No. 3, 1966, pp. 286-317.

The modern reputation of Hobbes's Leviathan as a work 'incredibly overtopping all its successors in political theory'¹ has concentrated so much attention on Hobbes's own text that it has tended at the same time to divert attention away from any attempt to study the relations between his thought and its age, or to trace his affinities with the other political writers of his time. It has by now become an axiom of the historiography² that Hobbes's 'extraordinary boldness'³ set him completely 'outside the main stream of English political thought' in his time.⁴ The theme of the one study devoted to the reception of Hobbes's political doctrines has been that Hobbes stood out alone 'against all the powerful and still developing constitutionalist tradition',⁵ but that the tradition ('fortunately')⁶ proved too strong for him. Hobbes was 'the first to attack its fundamental assumptions',⁷ but no one followed his lead. Although he 'tried to sweep away the whole structure of traditional sanctions',⁸ he succeeded only in provoking 'the widespread re-assertion of accepted principles',⁹ a re-assertion, in fact, of 'the main English political tradition'.¹⁰ And the more Leviathan has become accepted as 'the greatest, perhaps the sole masterpiece'¹¹ of English political theory, the less has Hobbes seemed to bear any meaningful relation to the ephemeral political quarrels of his contemporaries. The doctrine of Leviathan has come to be regarded as 'an isolated phenomenon in English thought, without ancestry or posterity'.¹² Hobbes's system, it is assumed, was related to its age only by the 'intense opposition' which its 'boldness and originality' were to provoke.¹³

The view, however, that Hobbes 'impressed English thought almost entirely by rousing opposition',¹⁴ and that consequently 'no man of his time occupied such a lonely position in the world of thought'¹⁵ seems to be much in need of re-examination. For it can be shown that complex and ambiguous relationships between Hobbes and the other political writers of his age have in this way become misleadingly oversimplified. It has not been recognized that to set against the hostility of his numerous critics there was also a popular following for Hobbes's doctrines, particularly on the continent. It has not been realized that Hobbes's theory of obligation was also critically studied at the same time, and treated as authoritative, by a whole group of de facto theorists in the English Revolution. The fact that these aspects of Hobbes's contemporary reputation have been overlooked, moreover, can be shown to have given rise to a misleading view about the intentions even of his critics.

These affinities between Hobbes's doctrine and its intellectual milieu have never been investigated.¹⁶ The attempt to see Hobbes against this ideological background, however, will not only produce an historically more complete picture. It can also be shown to be relevant in itself to questions about the nature of Hobbes's own contribution to political theory. For Hobbes's views have tended to get evaluated in a misleadingly unhistorical way. He has been treated as a figure in complete isolation, the inventor of 'an entirely new type of political doctrine'.¹⁷ He has thus come to seem an inevitable influence, a necessary point of departure, for other political writers of the time, including Harrington and even Locke.¹⁸ All such judgements, however, become arbitrary or unhistorical when it is shown that Hobbes was in fact drawing on and contributing to existing traditions in political ideology, as well as helping to refine and modify them. The prevailing view, moreover, about the meaning of Hobbes's own political doctrine depends in effect on discounting all such evidence about his contemporary intellectual relations. It can be shown, similarly, that this in itself must reduce considerably the plausibility of such interpretations. It is the aim, in short, of the following study to show from an investigation of Hobbes's contemporary reputation that it is not possible to disconnect questions about the proper interpretation of Hobbes's views from questions about the ideological context in which they were developed.

The accepted view of Hobbes as a complete outcast from the intellectual society of his time, 'the bête noire of his age,"¹⁹ has arisen at least in part from a misleading restriction of the investigation. Although there have been valuable studies of the numerous attacks made on Hobbes by his clerical enemies in England, there has never been any study²⁰ of Hobbes's reception in his own time on the continent. It has in general been assumed that Hobbes's views 'proved equally noxious and combustible'²¹ abroad, and that he 'received the same hard usage' as in England.²² It is clear, however, that there is in fact an important distinction to be drawn between the many critics whom Hobbes provoked at home and the many admirers he was to gain on the continent, especially in France.

Hobbes himself remarked with some bitterness in his later years on the contrast between his reputation abroad, which 'fades not yet',²³ and the opposition he continued to arouse in the English universities and in the Royal Society. The Royal Society always contrived to ignore him. But the foreign savants were to show no such hostility. When Pierre Bayle came to summarize so much of their achievement at the end of the century, in his Dictionary, he was to single Hobbes out as 'one of the greatest minds of the seventeenth century'.²⁴ And perhaps the greatest of the foreign savants, Leibniz himself, cited 'the famous Hobbes' with his 'extreme subtlety' on many points.²⁵ Leibniz completely disagreed with Hobbes's ethical and political theory, 'which, if we were to adopt it, would bring nothing but anarchy'.²⁶ Yet he still placed Hobbes among the highest, for (as he remarked in one of the Meditations) 'what could be more acute than Descartes in physics, or Hobbes in ethics?'²⁷

Hobbes had first gained this high reputation among the continental savants a generation earlier, during his eleven years' exile from the civil wars in England. He was then a frequent visitor at Mersenne's cell, which served during the 1640s as perhaps the most important salon for the learned. Many of the scientists and philosophers Hobbes is known to have met there were to become avowed followers and popularizers of his political theories. Several of them corresponded with Hobbes and even visited him after his return to England in 1651.²⁸ Hobbes met there the physician Sorbière, who was to publish the first French translation of Hobbes's De Cive, as well as a translation of De Corpore Politico, both with fulsome prefaces in praise of Hobbes's political system.²⁹ He also met the mathematician Du Verdus, who was later to produce a further translation of De Cive, with a preface recommending it to Louis XIV as suitable for use in all French schools.³⁰ He met Gassendi, whose remarks about the freedom and clarity of Hobbes's political thought were to be inserted in the second edition of De Cive. ³¹ Mersenne himself wrote similarly of 'the incomparable Hobbes', whose De Cive had shown that politics could be made a study as scientific as geometry.³² A large number of letters sent to Hobbes at this time by other French admirers reveal the extent of his popularity and ideological relevance in France, as well as the efforts which these disciples made to ensure that the works of 'this great politician' became widely known.³³

This continental acceptance of the relevance of Hobbes's doctrine was to be reflected in the political propaganda of the De Witt party in Holland³⁴ as well as among the apologists for absolutism in France. In Holland Velthuysen welcomed the publication of De Cive with a dissertation in the form of a letter to its 'most celebrated' author, pointing out 'how much you will see my own views bear the closest affinity to the views of the great Hobbes'.³⁵ 'The famous Hobbes' is cited throughout this Dissertatio as the authority on the nature of man, on the relations between natural and human laws, and on the power of the civil magistrate.³⁶ In France Merlat similarly used the viewpoint of 'that famous Englishman, Hobbes' as a basis for the argument of his Traité du Pouvoir Absolu. ³⁷ Although he claimed to disagree strongly with Hobbes on the question of man's natural unsociability, his own view of the origins and the necessary form of political society both cited and closely followed Hobbes's characteristic account. Hobbes was 'undoubtedly correct' to see that 'the malice of most men would ruin a Society', and so was correct to deduce not only that this 'established in general the need for political power', but also that it required that such power should be absolute. And for further elucidation Merlat simply referred 'the curious' to Hobbes's own works.³⁸

Hobbes's political theory was to be critically studied as well as merely popularized among his contemporaries on the continent. His sympathetic readers, moreover, included some of the greatest names. It is a commonplace that Spinoza's Tractatus Politicus shows the effects of 'a critical reflection on Hobbes's theory' in 'its content and terminology as well as its method'.³⁹ The affinity was recognized at the time, particularly by critics, who often bracketed Spinoza together with Hobbes in a general denunciation.⁴⁰ It is known from his correspondence that Spinoza himself recognized his affinities with Hobbes.⁴¹ It is known from Aubrey's biography that Hobbes himself (anticipating much modern commentary)⁴² recognized in Spinoza's political theory an equally pessimistic but even more rigorous development of his own assumptions.⁴³ It was among the continental jurists, however, that Hobbes's political doctrines were to set off the strongest echoes. Even the hostile traditionalists were to acknowledge his immediate impact. Samuel Rachel, professor of Law at Holstein in the 1660s, remarked—very instructively—on the dangerous fact that while 'many learned and good men in England have been roused' against 'this novel philosophy of Hobbes', yet it 'has been greedily swallowed by some in France and the Netherlands, and even in Germany'.⁴⁴ The jurists were sometimes hostile to Hobbes's views, but in their works he none the less joins the ranks of the great—a name to cite with the Ancients, and to stand with Grotius and Pufendorf among modern authorities. Gundling was to use Hobbes as a source throughout his works, and in his De Jure Oppignorati Territorii cited Hobbes as his authority both in discussing the problems of establishing political society and on the need for a monopoly of power within it.⁴⁵ Textor in his Synopsis Juris Gentium gave Hobbes, along with Pufendorf, as the authority to be cited in discussing both the distinction between 'the Natural Law of Man and of States' and 'the origins of Kingdoms and the ways in which they are acquired under the Law of Nations'.⁴⁶ Beckman in his Meditationes Politicae gave a list of authorities on political theory in which he singled out, as 'the two incomparable men to be consulted in these matters', Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes.⁴⁷ Grotius was conventionally the greatest name to cite in discussions about ius gentium, but Beckman was later to decide that it was Hobbes's name which 'deserved to be praised before all others'.⁴⁸

The most careful student of Hobbes among the seventeenth-century jurists was to be Pufendorf himself, in his effort to construct a systematic jurisprudence out of a 'reconciliation between the principles of Grotius and Hobbes'.⁴⁹ His great treatise of 1672, De Jure Naturae et Gentium, treated Hobbes throughout as an authority on many of the points at which (in Pufendorf's favourite phrase) 'scholars are not yet agreed',⁵⁰ as well as providing perhaps the most intelligent analysis by a contemporary of Hobbes's political theory. Pufendorf was frequently critical of Hobbes, whose basic political axiom, he felt, was 'unworthy of human nature'.⁵¹ He was prepared, nevertheless, to defend even this part of Hobbes's system, since he felt (as did Leibniz)⁵² that Hobbes had been unfortunate in being 'interpreted with very great rigour, and with very little reason, by some learned men'.⁵³ Pufendorf remained close and sympathetic to Hobbes's views, moreover, at two important points, corresponding to Book II of his Treatise, on man and society, and Book VII, on the establishment of States. In Book II, although Pufendorf remained sceptical about 'that War of all men against all which Hobbes would introduce', he conceded that Hobbes 'has been lucky enough in painting the insecurities of such a state', and concluded that if the theory is treated 'only by way of hypothesis' it may well have a distinct relevance and cautionary value.⁵⁴ In Book VII Pufendorf is even closer to Hobbes—closer, perhaps, even than his acknowledgments suggest. He begins by agreeing that 'what Mr Hobbes observes concerning the genius of Mankind is not impertinent to our present argument: that all have a restless desire after power'. And, though he remained hostile to the theory of obligation which Hobbes deduced, he concluded (with extensive quotation from Leviathan) that 'Mr Hobbes hath given us a very ingenious draft of a civil State, conceived as an artificial man'.⁵⁵

It becomes clear that the immediate reception of Hobbes's political theory on the continent was much less hostile than in England. There was a clearer sense of the relevance as well as the importance of his doctrine. The distinction has been largely ignored in modern commentary. It was recognized at the time, however, not only by Hobbes himself, but by the first of his biographers, his friend John Aubrey. When Aubrey came to draw up his list of Hobbes's 'learned familiar friends' for his biography, he treated it as a sad but undoubted fact that 'as a prophet is not esteemed in his own country, so he was more esteemed by foreigners than by his countrymen'.⁵⁶

The relations of Hobbes's political thought to the ideologies of the English Revolution have been obscured as well as illuminated by the tendency of scholars to concentrate exclusively on the fulminations of Hobbes's numerous clerical opponents. It is true, of course, that among his contemporaries Hobbes was particularly marked out for his originality, particularly denounced for his heterodoxy. It is evident, none the less, that his impact has been viewed in a misleading perspective. It can be shown (quite apart from the central issue of Hobbes's following) that the treatment of Hobbes's critics as 'representative' of political theory at the time has been misleading in two important respects. It is a view based, in the first place, on a misleading oversimplification of the nuances and complexities of different political ideologies of the time. For despite the many attacks Hobbes also gained a serious reputation as an authority on political matters among many of the learned—even among the learned orthodox who remained uncommitted to any of his views. The accepted view of Hobbes's reputation has been based, in the second place, on a mistaken impression of the assumptions, and even the intentions, of Hobbes's critics. It has not been recognized how much they feared not merely Hobbes's dangerous doctrines, but their serious ideological purchase, not to mention their popular following.

The serious reputation of Hobbes among 'the solemn, the judicious' was conceded at the time even by his enemies.⁵⁷ By the end of the century Hobbes had come to be accepted as an authority even among philosophers of avowedly opposed temperament. 'Tom Hobbes', as Shaftesbury was to admit, 'I must confess a genius, and even an original among these latter leaders in philosophy.'⁵⁸ By this time Hobbes had attained the recognition he had always hoped for, in having his works placed (though amidst much controversy) in the libraries of his own university.⁵⁹ Within his own lifetime he was not without a similar recognition. Selden and Osborne, who both revealed in their writings a markedly 'Hobbesian' strain, were also (according to Aubrey) amongst the earliest serious students of Hobbes's political works. Osborne wrote of Hobbes as one of the men who had 'embellished the age',⁶⁰ while Selden is known to have sought Hobbes's acquaintance on the strength of reading Leviathan. ⁶¹ In a similar spirit Hobbes's friend Abraham Cowley 'bestowed on him an immortal Pindaric Ode',⁶² the fulsome sentiments of which were to be echoed by Blount's remarks on Hobbes as 'the great instructor of the most sensible part of Mankind'.⁶³

Although such tributes to Hobbes mainly came from his less conventional friends, his recognition was not confined to them. Hobbes had a number of clerical admirers, ⁶⁴ among whom must be counted that very type of a Restoration bishop, Seth Ward. Ward was suspicious of Leviathan, disliking its attack on the universities. Yet he acknowledged 'a very great respect and a very high esteem' for its author, ⁶⁵ and possibly wrote the Epistle prefacing De Corpore Politico, in which Hobbes's 'excellent notions' on 'the grounds and principles of Policy' are 'commended as the best that ever were writ'.⁶⁶ James Harrington wrote of Hobbes in a very similar way. Although suspicious and critical of Leviathan he nevertheless agreed 'that Mr Hobbes is and will in future ages be accounted the best writer at this day in the world'.⁶⁷ And, while Harrington looked to future ages, a reference by Webster to Hobbes and the Ancients completes the eulogy. There was no need, Webster claimed, to revere too much the views of the Ancients on statecraft. Although they had produced works 'of singular use and commodity', yet 'even our own countryman Master Hobbes hath pieces of more exquisiteness and profundity in that subject than ever the Grecian wit was able to reach unto'.⁶⁸

These anticipations of Hobbes's modern reputation were echoed at the time even among his critics. These acknowledgments of Hobbes's stature have been suppressed in modern commentary. Even the critics agreed, however, in seeing Hobbes not only as 'a man of excellent parts',⁶⁹ a man 'singularly deserving in moral and socratical philosophy',⁷⁰ but even as a writer 'of as eminent learning and parts as any this last age hath produced'.⁷¹Leviathan, as even its bitterest critics allowed, was the work of 'a universal scholar'.⁷² The recognition of its author's 'mighty acumen ingenii',⁷³ moreover, caused the critics to move with some circumspection in their attacks. Hobbes was 'a man with so great a name for learning', as one critic admitted, that the best he could hope to do was to 'fling my stone at this giant, and I hope hit him'.⁷⁴ Clarendon, too, prefaced his statemanlike attack by conceding how difficult it was to contest the 'great credit and authority' which Leviathan had gained 'from the known name of the author, a man of excellent parts'. As much as any follower, he joined the other critics in acknowledging Leviathan—with whatever alarm—to be a work 'which contains in it good learning of all kinds, politely extracted, and very wittily and cunningly digested, in a very commendable method, and in a vigorous and pleasant style'.⁷⁵

It is clear, moreover, that what disturbed the critics was not merely the serious reputation or even the alarming content of Hobbes's doctrines, but their ideological purchase, and their even more alarming popularity. This point has been submerged under the weight given to the contemporary attacks on Hobbes—though the number of attacks might in itself be thought to offer some paradoxical guide to Hobbes's continuing popularity. The popular acceptance of Hobbes's views, however, was a point which weighed with his critics from the start. As early as 1657 Lawson was to note how much Leviathan was 'judged to be a rational piece' both by 'many gentlemen' and by 'young students in the Universities'.⁷⁶ Within two years of its publication Rosse had expected to be attacked himself for denouncing so fashionable a work.⁷⁷ By 1670 Tenison felt obliged to admit that 'there is certainly no man who hath any share offer the curiosity of this present age' who could still remain 'unacquainted with his name and doctrine'.⁷⁸ Clarendon noted at the same time how much Hobbes's popularity continued to weather every attack, how much his works 'continue still to be esteemed as well abroad as at home'.⁷⁹ By the time of his death Hobbes had grown 'so great in reputation', as Whitehall angrily remarked, that even apparently 'wise and prudent' men had come to accept his political views, which 'are daily undertaken to be defended'.⁸⁰

Hobbes's enemies doubtless wished to emphasize the menace, but there is independent evidence about the extent of Hobbes's contemporary popularity. A catalogue of 'the most vendible books in England' which happens to survive for the year 1658 included all of Hobbes's works on political theory, and showed him one of the most popular of all the writers listed under 'humane learning', surpassed in the number of his entries only by Bacon and Raleigh.⁸¹ Twenty years later Eachard was to make the figure of Hobbes in his Dialogue reply to his detractors by pointing out that despite their strictures on his works they 'have sold very well, and have been generally read and admired'.⁸² The printing history for all of Hobbes's political works certainly bears this out.⁸³De Corpore Politico, originally published in 1650, reached a third edition by 1652, was immediately translated, and in its French version went through two further editions within the year. De Cive was first published in a very small edition in 1642, but on being re-issued five years later it went through three editions in one year. It was published again in 1657, again in 1669, as well as appearing in the two-volume collection of Hobbes's Opera Philosophica which went through two editions in 1668. Translated into French in 1649, it had attained a third edition by 1651 and a new translation by 1660. Leviathan went through three editions in its first year of publication, and by 1668 the book (as Pepys noted) was so 'mightily called for' that he had to pay three times the original price to get a copy, ⁸⁴ even though there had in fact been two further editions of the work in the same year. It is a record of publication not even rivalled by Locke (to take the most famous case from the next generation), within whose lifetime the Two Treatises reached only three English and two French editions.⁸⁵

The failure to acknowledge this element of popularity has tended to give a misleading impression of the intentions of Hobbes's contemporary critics. They have been treated as attacking a single source of heterodox opinion. It can be shown, however, that they concentrated on Hobbes not because he was seen as the 'single-handed' opponent of tradition, but rather because he was seen to give the ablest and most influential presentation to a point of view which was itself gaining increasingly in fashionable acceptance and in ideological importance. To the more hysterical critics it even seemed possible to believe that 'most of the bad principles of this Age are of no earlier a date than one very ill Book, are indeed but the spawn of the Leviathan'. ⁸⁶ By the time of the 1688 Revolution, when the question of allegiance to de facto power was again (as when Leviathan was first published) the central issue of political debate, it seemed to the last exponents of passive obedience that the 'authority and the reasons' of Hobbes's political theory 'are of a sudden so generally received, as if the doctrine were Apostolical'.⁸⁷ By this time (according to Anthony à Wood, Hobbes's old Oxford enemy) Leviathan had already 'corrupted half the gentry of the Nation'.⁸⁸ The suspicion of Hobbes's leading contribution to 'the debauching of this generation' ⁸⁹ was the moving spirit even with some of Hobbes's most statesmanlike critics. Richard Cumberland excused his long philosophical attack on Hobbes with the hope that he might limit the increasing acceptance of Hobbes's political views.⁹⁰ Even Clarendon, from the bitterness of his second exile, claimed to trace 'many odious opinions' back to Leviathan, 'the seed whereof was first sowed in that book'.⁹¹

A more realistic—and more revealing—assumption was that the reason for Hobbes's doctrines being so 'greedily sought and cried up' ⁹² was rather 'the prevalence of a scoffing humour' in 'this unhappy time'.⁹³ When Francis Atterbury came to reflect a generation later on the ease with which the 'false and foolish opinions' of that age had 'gotten footing and thriven', he had no doubt that there had been 'something in them which flattered either our vanity our lust or our pride, and fell in with a daring inclination'. And he particularly mentioned Hobbes as a man who had 'owed all his reputation and his followers' to this 'skill he had in fitting his principles to men's constitutions and tempers'.⁹⁴ Earlier critics had nearly all made the same point. According to Lucy the popularity of Leviathan merely indicated 'the genius that governs this age, in which all learning, with religion, hath suffered a change, and men are apt to entertain new opinions in any science, although for the worse, of which sort are Mr Hobbes his writings'.⁹⁵ And according to Eachard—Hobbes's rudest, shrewdest critic—the age itself had thrown up so many 'who were sturdy, resolved practicants in Hobbianism' that they 'would most certainly have been so, had there never been any such man as Mr Hobbes in the world'.⁹⁶

To some Hobbes was the leading symptom, to others the sole cause, of the increasingly rationalist temper of political debate. But the point on which all critics agreed was that Hobbes's popularity reflected a more widespread endorsement of his outlook. It was not Hobbes himself whom they were even mainly concerned to denounce, but rather Hobbes as the best example of the alarming and increasing phenomenon of 'Hobbism'. Within Hobbes's own lifetime the word 'Hobbism' was already in popular currency to denote 'a wild, atheistically disposed' attitude to the powers that be, ⁹⁷ while the 'Hobbists' were recognized as wanting to 'subvert our laws and liberties and set up arbitrary power'.⁹⁸ The 'Hobbist' villain became a familiar parody on the Restoration stage: in Farquhar's Constant Couple he reads what appears to be The Practice of Piety, but is in fact Leviathan under plain cover.⁹⁹ The 'Hobbist' was also recognized, more seriously, as the political rationalist who assumed that God had left it 'arbitrary to men (as the Hobbeans vainly fancy)' ¹⁰⁰ to establish their own political societies 'according to the principles of equality and self-preservation agreed to by the Hobbists'.¹⁰¹ Locke in his Essay contrasted the 'Hobbist' with the Christian, as a man who would justify his keeping of 'compacts' not by saying 'because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us', but 'because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not'.¹⁰² Bramhall similarly addressed his Catching of Leviathan not merely to Hobbes, but to the man 'who is thoroughly an Hobbist', with the aim of showing him that 'the Hobbian principles do destroy all relations between man and man, and the whole frame of the Commonwealth'.¹⁰³

The 'Hobbists' and the followers of Hobbes, so alarming to contemporaries, have been almost totally discounted by modern commentators. The positive ideological affinities between the political views of Hobbes and his contemporaries have in consequence received no attention. The one analysis of the relations between 'Hobbes and Hobbism' has claimed, in fact, that in Hobbes's own time there was to be only one 'favourable' as against fifty-one 'hostile' published reactions to Hobbes's political views.¹⁰⁴ It is evident, however, that a great deal of information has been missed here. It has not always been recognized, in the first place, that most of Hobbes's critics (apart from the mathematicians) were concerned not so much with his political doctrines as with the allegedly atheistic implications of his determinism.¹⁰⁵ Only half of the twelve tracts entirely aimed at Hobbes during his own lifetime were even mainly concerned with his political thought.¹⁰⁶ This did not mean that Hobbes's specifi cally political doctrines were to receive less notice in his own time. It can be shown that Hobbes had important affinities and connexions with other strands of contemporary political debate, and that these were both recognized and sympathetically discussed. It can also be shown that Hobbes came to be cited and accepted within his own lifetime—independently of any close critical study—simply as an authority on matters of political theory, even among writers who might never have read his works, or had read only to confute them.

It was his famous attempt to explain political association in terms of man's need to mediate his nasty and brutish nature which was to give Hobbes his immediate place in the accepted canon of writers on political theory. He became labelled as the writer who had thought of deducing the necessary form of the state from the imagined chaos of a 'state of Nature'. Just as Aristotle retained a reputation in the seventeenth century—even among his fashionable denigrators—as the first writer who had emphasized man's natural sociability, so Hobbes gained a reputation as the first writer to reverse this traditional emphasis. The point was often made even by writers who wished to repudiate it, or who wished to leave it an open question (as one writer put it) whether 'as it was said of old' man was 'naturally sociable', or whether 'as a learned modern has said' he is 'compelled into Society merely for the advantages and necessities of life'….¹⁰⁷

Notes

¹ R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan (Oxford, 1942), p. iv.

² For studies of Hobbes's reception, see J. Laird, Hobbes (London, 1934), part III, pp. 243-317, esp. 247-57; H. R. Trevor-Roper, 'Thomas Hobbes' and 'The Anti-Hobbists', in Historical Essays (London, 1957), pp. 233-8, 239-43; J. Bowie, Hobbes and his Critics (London, 1951); S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962), and incidental discussions in other works cited below.

³ Trevor-Roper, 'Thomas Hobbes', p. 233.

⁴ Bowie, op. cit. p. 13.

⁵ Ibid. p. 42.

⁶ Ibid. p. 47.

⁷ Ibid. p. 42.

⁸ Ibid. p. 43.

⁹ Ibid. p. 13.

¹⁰ Ibid. p. 14.

¹¹ Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. M. Oakeshott (Oxford, 1946), Introduction, p. x.

¹² Trevor-Roper, 'Thomas Hobbes', p. 233.

¹³ Mintz, op. cit. p. 155.

¹⁴ Leslie Stephen, Hobbes (London, 1904), p. 67.

¹⁵ G. P. Gooch, Political Thought in England: Bacon to Halifax (London, 1915), p. 23.

¹⁶ Bowie's book simply treats Hobbes's critics as 'representative' of a political tradition which Hobbes is alleged 'singlehandedly' to have challenged. For a brilliant discussion, however, of the relations between Hobbes's intellectual assumptions and their appropriate social context, see Keith Thomas, 'The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought', in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C. Brown (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 185-236.

¹⁷ Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), p. 182.

¹⁸ For this assumption, see esp. ibid. pp. 202-51; C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962), pp. 265-70; R. H. Cox, Locke on War and Peace (Oxford, 1960), esp. pp. 136-47 on the relations between Commonwealths, where it is claimed that Locke's doctrine 'tacitly follows Hobbes', p. 146.

¹⁹ Mintz, op. cit. p. vii.

²⁰ Except for the brief, though valuable, remarks in Laird, op. cit. part III.

²¹ Mintz, op. cit. p. 62.

²² Ibid. p. 57.

²³ Thomas Hobbes, 'Considerations', The English Works, ed. Sir W. Molesworth (London, II vols., 1839-45), IV, 435.

²⁴ Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (Rotterdam, 4 vols., 1697), III, 99-103. Note: in this and all following quotations from seventeenth-century sources all translations are mine, all spelling and punctuation are modernized.

²⁵ G. W. Leibniz, Opera Omnia (Geneva, 6 vols., 1768), I, 5, 256.

²⁶ Ibid. IV, 360.

²⁷ Ibid. VI, 303.

²⁸ On visits, see Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society (London, 4 vols., 1756), I, 26-7; S. Sorbière, A Voyage to England (London, trans. 1709), pp. 26-7.

²⁹ See, in Elements Philosophiques du Citoyen (Amsterdam, 1649), Sorbière's translation of De Cive; Le Corps Politique ou les Elements de la Loi Morale et Civile (Amsterdam, 1652), his translation of De Corpore Politico.

³⁰ See, in Les Elements de la Politique de Monsieur Hobbes (Paris, 1660), Du Verdus's translation of De Cive.

³¹ Gassendi to Sorbière: printed in Thomas Hobbes, Elementa Philosophica De Cive (Amsterdam, 1647), sig., 10a-b.

³² Mersenne to Sorbière; printed in ibid, sig., IIa-b.

³³ For a special study of this group and its correspondence with Hobbes, see my article, 'Thomas Hobbes and his Disciples in France and England', Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII (1966), 153-67.

³⁴ See Johan de la Court, Consideratien van Staat (n.p., 1661); A. Wolf, 'Annotations', Correspondence of Spinoza (London, 1928), p. 446.

³⁵ Lambertino Velthuysen, Epistolica Dissertatio (Amsterdam, 1651), p. 2.

³⁶ Ibid. pp. 35 ff., 136 ff., 175 ff.

³⁷ E. Merlat, Traité du Pouvoir Absolu des Souverains (Cologne, 1685).

³⁸ Ibid. pp. 219-22.

³⁹ Benedict de Spinoza, The Political Works, trans. and ed. A. G. Wernham (Oxford, 1958), Introduction, pp. 1, 12.

⁴⁰ E.g. Richard Baxter in The Second Part of the Non-Conformists Plea for Peace (London, 1680); William Falkner in Christian Loyalty (London, 1679); and Regnus à Mansvelt, as cited in the Introduction to The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes (London, 1750), p. xxvi n.

⁴¹ See Wolf, op. cit. Letter 50, p. 269.

⁴² E.g. S. Hampshire, Spinoza (London, 1951), pp. 133-6.

⁴³ See John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark (Oxford, 2 vols., 1898), I, 357.

⁴⁴ Samuel Rachel, Dissertation on the Law of Nature and of Nations (1676), trans. in J. B. Scott (ed.), The Classics of International Law (Washington, 2 vols., 1916), II, 75.

⁴⁵ N. H. Gundling, De Jure Oppignorati Territorii (Magdeburg, 1706), p. 16. Also mentioned Hobbes in De Praerogativa (n.d.) and in Dissertatio de Statu Naturali (1709).

⁴⁶ J. W. Textor, Synopsis of the Law of Nations (1680), trans. in L. von Bar (ed.), The Classics of International Law (Washington, 2 vols., 1916), II, 9 and 82.

⁴⁷ J. C. Beckman, Meditationes Politicae (Frankfort, 1679), p. 7.

⁴⁸ J. C. Beckman, Politica Parallela (Frankfort, 1679), p. 417.

⁴⁹ Laird, Hobbes, p. 276.

⁵⁰ Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations (London, trans. 1710). Cited Hobbes as authority on Law of Nature (in Book II, ch. IV, and in VIII, I); on consensus (II, III); on contracts (V, II); on sovereignty (VII, VII).

⁵¹ Ibid. p. 87.

⁵² Leibniz, op. cit. V, 468.

⁵³ Pufendorf, op. cit. p. 112.

⁵⁴ Ibid. Book II, pp. 84-8.

⁵⁵ Ibid. Book VII, pp. 518-26.

⁵⁶ Aubrey, op. cit. I, 373.

⁵⁷ J. Eachard, Some Opinions of Mr Hobbes Considered. Introduction distinguished Hobbes's serious and popular following, anatomizing 'Hobbists' into pit, gallery and box 'friends'. See sig. A, 4a-b.

⁵⁸ A. A. Cooper, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen, ed. B. Rand (London, 1900), Letter to Stanhope, p. 414.

⁵⁹ See Thomas Hearne, Remarks and Collections (Oxford, 11 vols., 1885–1921), X, 75 and 322.

⁶⁰ Francis Osborne, A Miscellany (London, 1659), sig. A.

⁶¹ Aubrey, op. cit. I, 369.

⁶² Ibid. p. 368.

⁶³ Charles Blount, The Oracles of Reason (London, 1693), p. 104.

⁶⁴ Aubrey's list of Hobbes's closest friends included four clergymen (see Aubrey, op. cit. I, 370).

⁶⁵ Seth Ward, A Philosophical Essay (Oxford, 1652), sig. A, 3a.

⁶⁶ Thomas Hobbes, 'To the Reader', De Corpore Politico (London, 1650). Cf. Thomas Hobbes, The Elements merits of Law, ed. F. Tönnies (London, 1889), Introduction, p. VII.

⁶⁷ J. Harrington, 'The Prerogative of Popular Government', Works (London, 1771), p. 241.

⁶⁸ J. Webster, Academiarum Examen (London, 1654), p. 88.

⁶⁹ Alexander Rosse, Leviathan Drawn out with an Hook (London, 1653), sig. A, 12a.

⁷⁰ Philip Scot, A Treatise of the Schism of England (London, 1650), p. 223.

⁷¹ Roger Coke, A Survey of the Politics (London, 1662), sig. A, 4a.

⁷² John Dowel, The Leviathan Heretical (Oxford, 1683), sig. A, 2a.

⁷³ William Lucy, Observations, Censures and Confutations of Notorious Errors in Mr Hobbes his Leviathan (London, 1663), p. 117.

⁷⁴ William Lucy, Examinations, Censures and Confutations of Divers Errors in the Two First Chapters of Mr Hobbes his Leviathan (London, 1656), sig. A, 5a.

⁷⁵ Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, A Brief View and Survey of… Leviathan (Oxford, 1676), sig. A, 1b.

⁷⁶ George Lawson, An Examination of the Political Part of Mr Hobbes his Leviathan (London, 1657), sig. A, 2b.

⁷⁷ Rosse, op. cit. sig. A, 4b.

⁷⁸ Thomas Tenison, The Creed of Mr Hobbes Examined (London, 1670), p. 2.

⁷⁹ Clarendon, op. cit. sig. A, 3a.

⁸⁰ John Whitehall The Leviathan Found Out (London, 1679), p. 3.

⁸¹ W. London, A Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England (London, 1658), sig. T, 3a, to sig. Z, 1b.

⁸² John Eachard, Mr Hobbes's State of Nature Considered, ed. P. Ure (Liverpool, 1958), p. 14.

⁸³ For following details, cf. H. Macdonald and M. Hargreaves, Thomas Hobbes: a Bibliography (London, 1952), pp. 10-14, 16-22, 30-6, 76-7.

⁸⁴ Samuel Pepys, The Diary, ed. H. B. Wheatley (London, 8 vols., 1904-5), VIII, 91. The 'three editions' of Leviathan in 1651 may of course be slightly misleading, as the second two are evidently false imprints—contemporary, but precise dates unknown.

⁸⁵ See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, 1960), Introduction, appendix A, pp. 121-9.

⁸⁶ Charles Wolseley, The Reasonableness of Scripture-Belief (London, 1672), sig. A, 4a.

⁸⁷ Abednego Seller, The History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation (Amsterdam, 1689), sig. A, 4a.

⁸⁸ Anthony à Wood, 'Thomas Hobbes', Athenae Oxoniensis (London, 2 vols., 1691-2), II, 278-483.

⁸⁹ J. Lymeric, life of Bramhall in Works of… John Bramhall (Dublin, 1676), sig. N, 1b.

⁹⁰ Richard Cumberland, A Treatise of the Laws of Nature (1672) (trans. London, 1727), Introduction, sect, xxx.

⁹¹ Clarendon, op. cit. sig., 3a.

⁹² Baxter, op. cit. p. 8.

⁹³ Anonymous, Inquiry, cited from Mintz, op. cit. p. 136.

⁹⁴ Francis Atterbury, Maxims, Reflections and Observations (London, 1723), p. 66.

⁹⁵ Lucy, Examinations, sig. A, 3b.

⁹⁶ Eachard, Some Opinions, sig. A, 3b.

⁹⁷ R.F., A Sober Enquiry (London, 1673), p. 51.

⁹⁸ John Crowne, City Politics (London, 1683), p. 50.

⁹⁹ T. Farquhar, The Constant Couple (London, 1700), p. 2: Vizard, 'This Hobbes is an excellent fellow'. On this point generally, see L. Teeter, 'The Dramatic Use of Hobbes's Political Ideas', E.L.H. III (1936), 140-69.

¹⁰⁰ Anonymous, A Letter to a Friend (London, 1679), p. 6.

¹⁰¹ Anonymous, The Great Law of Nature or Self-Preservation Examined (n.p., n.d.) (B.M. Catalogue gives 1673), p. 6.

¹⁰² John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1690), Book I, ch. 3, para. 6.

¹⁰³ John Bramhall, The Catching of Leviathan (London, 1658), heading to ch. II, p. 503.

¹⁰⁴ S. P. Lamprecht, 'Hobbes and Hobbism', American Political Science Review, XXXIV (1940), 31-53, esp. p. 32.

¹⁰⁵ A point excellently made in Mintz, op. cit. p. vii, but also passim.

¹⁰⁶ See checklist in ibid. pp. 157-60.

¹⁰⁷ Anonymous, Confusion Confounded (London, 1654), p. 9.