PS 931: Hobbes and Political Theory
Spring 2013
Thursday, 3:30-5:30 422 North Hall
Daniel J. Kapust
Associate Professor
Office Hours: Wednesday, 9:30-11:30
311 North Hall
Department of Political Science
UW-Madison
djkapust@wisc.edu
I. Scope and Purpose
Why devote a graduate seminar to Hobbes and his place in political theory?
It is not an exaggeration to say that Thomas Hobbes is the most important English language
political thinker. Our own political and moral vocabulary have been profoundly shaped by his
writings, and one can certainly make the case that political theorists writing after Hobbes Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Hegel, and Schmitt, to name a few – are writing in
response to or in light of Hobbes.
In addition to his importance for subsequent political theory, Hobbes is an important thinker in
his own time, and serves as a vital entry point to – and interlocutor with – 17th century
conversations about sovereignty, the relationship between political and religious authority,
obligation, rights, republicanism, and constitutionalism. Hobbes engages, and is engaged by,
many of the most important political, moral, and legal figures of the 17th century.
Finally, Hobbes was, and continues to be, a polarizing figure. As such, there is a wide array of
scholarly opinion surrounding his work, which makes for a prime opportunity to read and think
about different ways of doing political theory. Thus, the bulk of the course will be spent reading
scholarship – most of it published within the last decade or so - dealing with Hobbes’s thought
from a wide range of perspectives.
II. Course Requirements
Students enrolled in the course for credit will write a staged seminar paper. The paper, along
with the in-class presentations on May 9, will be worth 70% of the course grade.
The first goal in writing the paper is for you to identify a problem or gap in the Hobbes
scholarship that you find to be interesting and worth addressing. The second goal is to produce a
paper that can be presented at a conference and eventually be suitable for publication. You will,
in short, be preparing your own contribution to Hobbes scholarship.
The paper will be broken up into 4 stages:
1. Meeting with me to discuss the topic and a preliminary bibliography. To be completed
no later than Wednesday, February 27.
2. A 10-12 page literature review, to be turned in to me or placed in my departmental
mailbox by Wednesday, April 3.
3. A detailed outline of the paper (3-5 pages), to be turned in to me or placed in my
departmental mailbox on or before Thursday, April 11.
4. The final seminar paper (20-35 pages), to be turned in to me or placed in my
departmental mailbox no later than Wednesday, May 7.
You will receive a grade for the paper as a whole, and not for the individual components, each of
which is designed to help you produce a stronger paper. In order to receive credit for the paper,
however, you need to complete each of the components.
The last day of the course will be reserved for presentations of seminar papers. You should view
this as, in essence, a practice conference presentation, and will be allotted 10 minutes to present
your paper. We will then have 10 minutes of class discussion of the papers. The goal of this
exercise is to familiarize you with the basics of presenting at conferences, to provide further
feedback on your papers, and to further enrich the mutual learning experience of the seminar by
incorporating peer feedback. The paper itself should be viewed as a future conference paper, and
eventual publication.
In addition to the seminar paper and presentation, participation will be worth 30% of the course
grade. This involves closely and carefully reading the assigned material, and participating in
seminar discussion. It also requires each participant to lead discussion once during the semester.
This will involve identifying an argument or passage from the day’s reading that you find to be
theoretically significant, interesting, or provocative, discussing the passage and its relationship to
the broader arguments or themes of the day’s reading for roughly minutes, and then presenting
three issues for discussion centered on that day’s reading.
Auditors will be expected to do all the readings and to lead one discussion during the semester.
III. Incompletes and Academic Dishonesty
Incompletes for this course will only be granted under extraordinary circumstances. Academic
dishonesty will not be tolerated, and will be subject to severe penalties.
IV. Texts
I have ordered the following books for the course. While we will be doing additional readings, I
have not ordered them because they were either out of print or cost prohibitive. Those readings
(marked by an asterisk) will be available in the Graduate Reading Room of North Hall.
Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Richard Tuck
C.B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism
Quentin Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty
James Martel, Subverting the Leviathan
V. Recommended Readings
The scholarship on Hobbes is, of course, massive, and we can barely scratch the surface in this
course. My goal is to provide participants with a very basic introduction to some of the broad
debates and major figures in Hobbes scholarship. Below are recommended additional readings;
this list is also quite short, and far from exhaustive.
A. Editions of Hobbes’s Writings
The standard edition of Hobbes’s English works is the Molesworth edition. There is also a
Clarendon edition. De Cive is available from Cambridge University Press, while the Elements is
available from Oxford. Behemoth is available in a Clarendon edition.
Malcolm has recently published a magisterial 3 volume edition of Leviathan (Oxford University
Press, 2012).
B. Collections/Edited Volumes
This is a very small sample of recently published edited volumes and collections of essays on
Hobbes.
Carey, D. and Festa, L (eds). The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-century Colonialism
and Post-Colonial Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009.
Dietz, M., (ed.), 1990, Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, Lawrence: University of Kansas
Press.
Foisneau, L. and T. Sorell, (eds.), 2004, Leviathan after 350 years, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Lloyd, S.A., (ed.), 2001, “Special Issue on Recent Work on the Moral and Political Philosophy
of Thomas Hobbes”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 82 (3&4).
Rogers, G.A.J., (ed.), 1995, Leviathan: Contemporary Responses to the Political Theory of
Thomas Hobbes, Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
Sorell, T. (ed.), 1996, The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Springboard, P., (ed.), 2007, The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
C. Articles and Monographs
This is a small and selective sample of scholarship on Hobbes.
Allen, Danielle. Talking to Strangers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006.
Armitage, D., 2007, “Hobbes and the foundations of modern international thought”, in
Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Ashcraft, R., 1971, “Hobbes's Natural Man: A Study in Ideology Formation”, Journal of Politics,
33: 1076-1117.
Baumgold, D., 1988, Hobbes's Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Collins, J., 2005, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Curley, E., 1994, “Introduction to Hobbes's Leviathan”, Leviathan with selected variants from
the Latin edition of 1668, E. Curley (ed.), Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Curran, E., 2006, “Can Rights Curb the Hobbesian Sovereign? The Full Right to Selfpreservation, Duties of Sovereignty and the Limitations of Hohfeld”, Law and Philosophy, 25:
243-265.
–––, 2007, Reclaiming the Rights of Hobbesian Subjects, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Garsten, Bryan. Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 2006.
Gauthier, D., 1969, The Logic of 'Leviathan': the Moral and political Theory of Thomas Hobbes,
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gert, B., 1967, “Hobbes and psychological egoism”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 28: 503520.
––– 1978, “Introduction to Man and Citizen”, Man and Citizen, B. Gert, (ed.), New York:
Humanities Press.
––– 1988, “The law of nature and the moral law”, Hobbes Studies, 1: 26-44.
Herzog, Don. Happy Slaves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1989.
Hoekstra, K., 1999, “Nothing to Declare: Hobbes and the Advocate of Injustice”, Political
Theory, 27 (2): 230-235.
–––, 2003, “Hobbes on Law, Nature and Reason”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 41 (1):
111-120.
–––, 2007, “A lion in the house: Hobbes and democracy” in Rethinking the Foundations of
Modern Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
___, “Hobbesian Equality.” In S.A. Lloyd, ed., Hobbes Today. Forthcoming. Cambridge
University Press.
Johnston, D., 1986, The Rhetoric of'Leviathan': Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural
Transformation, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kapust, D. and Turner, B. “Democratical Gentlemen and the Lust for Mastery: Status, Ambition,
and the Language of Liberty in Hobbes’s Political Thought.” Forthcoming. Political Theory.
LeBuffe, M., 2003, “Hobbes on the Origin of Obligation”, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy, 11(1): 15-39.
Lloyd, S.A., 1992, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's 'Leviathan': the Power of Mind over Matter,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malcolm, N., 2002, Aspects of Hobbes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martinich, A.P., 1995, A Hobbes Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell.
–––, 1999, Hobbes: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridg University Press.
–––, 2005, Hobbes, New York: Routledge.
Miller, T. Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes.
University Park: Penn State Press, 2011.
Mills, C.W. The Racial Contract. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Oakeshott, M., 1975. Hobbes on Civil Association, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pateman, C. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.
Ryan, A., 1986, “A More Tolerant Hobbes?”, S. Mendus, (ed.), Justifying Toleration,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Q., 1996, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
–––, 2002, Visions of Politics Volume 3: Hobbes and Civil Science, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sommerville, J., 1992, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context, London:
Macmillan.
Sorell, T., 1986, Hobbes, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Sreedhar, S. Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010.
Thomas, K., “The Social Origins of Hobbes’s Political Thought,” in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C.
Brown (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965),
Tuck, R., 1979, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
–––, 1989, Hobbes, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 1991, “Introduction”, Leviathan, R. Tuck, (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 1993, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Warrender, H., 1957, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: his Theory of Obligation, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
VI. Schedule of Seminars and Reading
Thursday, January 24: Course Introduction
Reading: Aubrey, Life of Hobbes*; Hobbes, Verse Autobiography*; Hobbes, On the Life and
History of Thucydides*
Thursday, January 31: Leviathan, Part I
Reading: Hobbes, Leviathan (Dedicatory Letter, Introduction, and Part I)
Thursday, February 7: Leviathan, Part II
Reading: Hobbes, Leviathan (Part II)
Thursday, February 14: Leviathan, Part III
Reading: Hobbes, Leviathan (Part III)
Thursday, February 21: Leviathan, Part IV
Reading: Hobbes, Leviathan (Part IV)
Thursday, February 28: Strauss’s Hobbes
Reading: Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and its Genesis
Thursday, March 7: Skinner’s Hobbes
Reading: Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism
Thursday, March 14: Hobbes and Religion
Reading: Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan*
Thursday, March 21: The Possessive Hobbes
C.B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism
Thursday, March 28: No class; Spring Break
Thursday, April 4: Hobbesian Radicalism, or Radical Hobbism
Reading: Martel, Subverting the Leviathan
Thursday, April 11: No class; Midwest Political Science Association
NOTE: I highly encourage everyone to attend, as there will be a panel on recent Hobbes
scholarship featuring Al Martinich, Deborah Baumgold, Ted Miller, and Brandon Turner (my
co-author and a UW-Madison PhD). There will also be at least two other panels on Hobbes, and
no doubt several Hobbes papers scattered about.
Thursday, April 18: Leviathan as Paper Tiger
Reading: Flathman, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics*
Thursday, April 25: No class
Thursday, May 2: Feminist Readings of Hobbes
Reading: Hirschmann, Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes*
Thursday, May 9: Presentations