Suchergebnisse

The text problematizes Hobbes's relation towards republicanism. This is carried out in three stages. The first stage shows the form in which republican ideas were present in English political thought in the first half of the 17th century. It turns out that, prior to the publication of Leviathan in 1651, there was no coherent anti-monarchic republican theory in England. Still, English political thought was familiar with its individual elements and those elements had a major influence on the course of the constitutional crisis and the civil war itself. The second stage provides an analysis of Hobbes's criticism of two republican ideas which he deems particularly fatal to the survival of the state. The first idea is the ideal of mixed government, which Hobbes rejects as incompatible with the fundamental condition of state preservation, namely indivisible sovereign power. Thereafter, relying on Skinner's analysis, the author outlines Hobbes's criticism of the republican conception of liberty, which is at the core of the attack on monarchy as a form of state incompatible with the liberty of citizens. In contrast to such a perception, Hobbes constructs a completely novel definition of liberty, which enables him to show that the liberty of citizens is equal in democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Finally, the third stage inquires into the implications of Hobbes's criticism of republicanism with regard to the conceptual field of his mature theory of the state. Emphasis is put on the assertion that this criticism does not also imply a rejection of democracy as a form of state. Indeed, the analysis shows that, within the framework of Hobbes's theory of the state, criticism of republicanism, perceived as vindication of the state, is prerequisite to the existence of democracy itself. Adapted from the source document.

In Hobbes' Theory of Authorization I it was shown how Hobbes, by means of his theory of authorization, managed to resolve the difficult points which, in the previous formulations of his science of politics, weighed on the issue of creation of the state conceived as a doubly impersonal apparatus relying on the representative relation between the sovereign & the subjects. In this text the author re-examines both the approach & the conclusion of his research through critical inquiry into Quentin Skinner's & Hanna Pitkin's interpretations of Hobbes' understanding of representation. In his recent works, Skinner attempted to demonstrate that it had to be interpreted, above all, as an instrument in the ideological conflict between the republicans & the monarchists in England in Hobbes' time. Hanna Pitkin, in turn, brought into question the representative character of sovereign power. As opposed to both of them, the author expounds the thesis that, in order to be understood properly, the theory of authorization must be examined within the more comprehensive framework of Hobbes' science of politics & thus brought in connection with other important elements of its problem-matter, such as the right to punish, the relation between the sovereign's rights & the subjects' freedom, & the duties of the sovereign. By interpreting the theory of authorization primarily as part of a system which is conditioned by & co-formative of the logic of the study as a whole, this text strives to show that the authorization-based relation between the sovereign & the subjects, in spite of the fact that one-sided authorization on the part of the subjects established a sovereign who has no legal obligations to them, is indeed determined by the logic of representation. Adapted from the source document.