wiener - quentin skinner´s hobbes
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8/11/2019 Wiener - Quentin Skinners Hobbes
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Quentin Skinner's HobbesAuthor(s): Jonathan M. Wiener
Source: Political Theory, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Aug., 1974), pp. 251-260Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/190779Accessed: 13-08-2014 23:34 UTC
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8/11/2019 Wiener - Quentin Skinners Hobbes
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POLITICAL
THOUGHT
AND
POLITICAL
ACTION:
A
Symposium
on Quentin Skinner
1. QUENTIN SKINNER'S HOBBES
JONATHAN M.
WIENER
University of California (Irvine)
OR
A
LONG
TIME
it
has
seemed to
many
that
Hobbes
must
be
understood in
the
context
of
social and
political change
m
seventeenth-
century
England,
particularly
in relation to the Civil War, which so
frightened
and
preoccupied
him.
Aubrey
wrote that
Hobbes's interest
in
politics
and the
war
was
so
great
that
"for ten
years
altogether
his
thoughts
were
much,
or
almost
altogether,
unhinged
from the mathemat-
ics,"
and Hobbes
himself
wrote,
"if
in time as in
place,
there
were
degrees
of
high
and
low,
I
verily
believe the
highest
of
time would be that which
passed
betwixt
1640
and
1660."'
While
many
have considered the
links between Hobbes's
thought
and
his
time,
a recent
senes
of articles
by
Quentin
Skinner
has made an
important
contribution
to the
argument.
Sklnner has
placed
Hobbes's
political
thought
in the context
of
mid-seventeenth-century English
political
and intellectual
history,
arguing
that
those
who have
not
done
so-particularly
Warrender-have
come to
"historically
absurd"
nterpreta-
tions
of the
texts,
and that those who
previously
made
the
effort
have
seriously
exaggerated
he
extent of
Hobbes's
solation
from his
contempo-
raries.
EDITORS' NOTE. This Symposium was organized by Professor Benamin Barber, at
the time our
Modern
Political
Theory
Editor,
now
an
editor
Political
Theory,
Vol. 2 No.
3,
August
1974,
?
1974
Sage
Publications,
Inc.
[2511
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[2521
POLITICAL
THEORY
/ AUGUST 1974
Skinner'smost
recent
article
begins
with
the
political
situation
m
1649
The
king
had been
executed,
the House of
Lords
abolished,
and
Cromwell
declaredhead of the new Commonwealth;he newgovernment's irst task
was to
persuade
moderate
and hostile
groups
that
the
revolution
was
really
over.
That
is,
Cromwell
needed
a
theory
of
political
obligation
which
could
persuade
Presbyterians
and
Royalists
to
abandon
their
sworn
obligations
to
protect
the life
of the
king,
take
the
oath of
allegiance
to
the
Commonwealth,
and
obey
what
they
considered to
be
a
usurping
power.
Such
a
theory
was formulated
by
a
group
of
moderate
intellectuals,
first
uncovered
by Zagornn
nd often called the
"Engagers",
n their
own
day,
many
were considered
"Hobblsts,"
but their
relations with
Hobbes
were
virtually
unknown
until Skinner's
studies.2
For
Skinner,
this
group
"provides
the
context
within
which the main
alms
and
severalof
the most
characteristic doctrines
of Hobbes's
political
philosophy
can best be
understood."3
The earliest
form of
their
argument
was that
the
Pauline
njunction
to
obey
the
powers
that be
as ordained
by
God
was
valid
even
for
usurping
powers.
But
Royalists
and
Presbyterians
could
argue
on
good
scriptural
authoritythat God neverordainsbut often permitsthe wickedto rule,and
that the
Apostle
does
not
require
hat
tyranny
not be resisted.
The
politically
necessary
reply
to this
argument
was
formulated
first
by
Anthony
Ascham,
not
by
Hobbes. Ascham wrote in
1649,
shortly
before
Leviathanwas
published,
that men
were
obligated
to
obey
whatever
power
existed,
simply
because
it was
protecting
them from each
other,
which
was
its
essential
duty,
and
that
the alternativewas a war
of
all
against
all. This
argument
was
then
taken
up
by
MarchamontNedham and
a series of
intellectuals Skinner
identifies
and
discusses,
all of whom
managed
to
"avoidquestions about providenceby focusing instead on the questionof
what
political
society
is
for,
and
answenng
that
it
is
essentially
a
product
of
necessity
and a
means
to secure
peace
and
protection,"
and
that such
protection required
absolute
power.4
But while these
"de
facto"
theonsts
as Skinner calls
them,
made
their
new
theory
of
obligation
explicit,
"none of them
argued
for
it
in
a
very
systematic
way,
and
few of
them
ever
stated,
except
in
a
very fragmentary
manner,
the
pessirmstic
view
of
man's
political
nature
upon
which the
theory
depended."
Only
one,
in
fact,
managed
to
"elirmnate
all
invoca-
tions of God's
providence,
and to
predicate
a de facto theory of
political
obligation
entirely
on an account
of
the
political
nature
of
man."5 That
man
was
Thomas
Hobbes.
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[2531
Between
February
1650 and the
middle
of
1651,
five of Hobbes's
political
works
were
published,
the
last of which was
Levauthan.
According
to Shknner,"they were immediatelyrecognizedby the other lay defenders
of
de
facto
powers
as
giving
the most authoritative
presentation
of
a
view
of
political
obligation
at which
they
had all
independently
arnved."
Hobbes,
in
Skinner's
view,
"endorses
all
the most
characterstic
claims of
the
de
facto
theorists",
his doctrines
represent
"a somewhat belated
though highly important
contribution to
the
lay
defense of
'engage-
ment.'
"6 And it was Hobbes's
explicit
intention to
provide
such
a
defense,
Slknner
wntes,
pointing
to
Hobbes's
proud
claim in
1656
that the
Levtathan
"framed
the
minds
of a thousand
gentlemen
to a conscientious
obedience to
present
government,
which otherwise
would
have
wavered
on
that
point,"
and
to the
conclusion
of
Leviathan,
where Hobbes wrote that
his book
was
motivated
by
the
discovery
that "the civil warshave
not
yet
sufficiently
taught
men
in
what
point
of time it is
that a
subject
becomes
obliged
to
the
conqueror;
nor what is
conquest;
nor how it
comes
about,
that
it
obliges
men to
obey
its laws."7
"There is
nothing
unusual or even
particularly
onginal
about Hobbes's
most characteristic
political
beliefs,"
Skinner
concludes.
Yet
the
'Hobblsts'
of the 1650s were second- and third-ratethinkers, the ideological troops
who
forged
the
intellectual
weapons
for
Cromwell's
cause,
whose own
work
is
distinctly
unmemorable.
Does Skiner
mean
to reduce
Hobbes to
their level? On
the
contrary;
Skinner's
conclusion is that Hobbes's
"special
status
as a
political
writer" is a
consequence
of
his
method,
"the reasons
he
gave
for
holding
his
political
beliefs,
rather than in the
beliefs
themselves."8
The
question
then becomes
whether
Skinner's
historical
perspective
on
Hobbes
changes
our
reading
of his
political thought,
or whether it
provides
simply "another dimension," one of interest to political and intellectual
historians,
but not
necessarily
to
political
theorists and
philosophers.
Skinner
takes
his
analysis
to
indicate that
the
interpretation
offered
by
Taylor,
Warrender,
and F
C.
Hood,
who
depend
exclusively
on
a close
reading
of the
texts
to
argue
that
Hobbes saw
the
laws
of
nature
as
commands of
God,
can
be
shown to
be
"historcally
absurd."9 The
understanding
of
texts,
Skinner
writes,
"presupposes
the
grasp
both
of
what
they
were intended to
mean,
and how
this
meaning
was
intended
to
be
taken."
The social
context
provides
"an
ultimate
framework"for this
"recovery of
intentions."'0
If Warrender's
nterpretation
of Hobbes is
correct,
then
"every
contemporary-every
follower,
every
opponent,
every
sympathizer-all equally
missed
the
point
of
his
theory
All of
them,
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POLITICAL
THEORY
/ AUGUST
1974
moreover
(surely
an
astounding
coincidence),
were
mistaken n
exactly
the
same
way,"
since
every
single
contemporary
cited
Hobbes
as
having
"located the groundsof political obligation in the paramountneed for
protection,"
tself a
consequence
of
man's
nasty
and brutish
nature.
1
If
Warrender's
nterpretation
s
correct,
Hobbeshimself
must
be
seen
as
having
presented
"a
traditional
type
of
natural
aw
theory
in
a
mannerso
convoluted that
it
was
everywhere
taken for
the
work
of
a
complete
utilitarian,"
yet
Hobbes "failed
altogether
either
to
disown
the
alarmungly
radicalwriterswho
cited
hLs
uthority,
or
to disarm
his
innumerable
ritics
by
pointing
out their
misconceptions
of
his
intentions."
To
prove
this
point,
Skinner has
published
a
previously
unknown
manuscript
of
Hobbes's,
his
only
known
reply
to a
critic,
in which he reiteratesthe
preeminentplace
of self-interest
n
his
theory
of
obligation.i
2
Skinner's
work thus constitutes
a
most
impressive
demonstration
of the
argument
hat
"the
question
of
what Hobbes's
theory
is" is neither
"prior
to"
nor
separate
from
the
question
of its historical
location;
Warrender's
demand
for
an
exclusive
adherenceto
the text should
be
rejected
because
it
has
led
to
"historically
absurd" conclusions
about the intentions
of
everyone
present,
including
Hobbes;
we
need
"less
philosophy,
and
more
history"
n
the
study
of
Hobbes.1
From this
perspective,
MacPherson's
work
on
Hobbes
is
plausible
but
incomplete.
His
method
for
uncovering
the
assumptions
governing
Hobbes's
thinking
is the same
as Warrender's:
closer
reading
of
the
text.
But,
Skinner
argues,
if
MacPherson
is
to
prove
that certain
social
conditions influenced
and
limited Hobbes's
assumptions
about
man,
he
must
go
outside
the
text and
provide
historical
evidence
that
a
"possessive
market"
society
actually
existed m
Hobbes's
day
and thereforecould
have
determined
Hobbes's
assumptions.1
Skinnersees S. I. Mintz'sHuntingof Leviathanas the most important
recent
interpretive
work
because
it
goes
outside
Hobbes's
text to
locate
him
"within
contemporary
ethical
debate."
The
problem
with Mintz
is
that
he
is
simply
wrong
in
supporting
the
conventional
interpretation
of
Hobbes
as
having
been
important
m
his
time
only
for the "intense
opposition"
he
provoked.
His
influence,
Skinner
shows
conclusively,
was
not
entirely
negative,
and he was
not
an isolated
figure.
Here
Skinner
presents
some
fascinating
vidence
that
Hobbes
was
widely
read in
his
day,
apparently
a best-seller.
Skinner
cites a
catalogue
of "the most
vendible
books in England" or 1658 which lists Hobbesas the thirdbiggest-selling
writer,
surpassed
only
by
Bacon
and
Raleigh.
Samuel
Pepys
as
late
as
1668
found Leviathan
"so
mightily
called
for"
that
he
had to
spend
three
times
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[2551
the
original
price
to
get
a
copy,
even
though
two additional editions had
been
published
that
year.
Hobbes was
widely enough
known so that the
"Hobbist"becamea familiar
figure
on the Restoration
stage.
6
But
Mintz's
problem
is not
just
his
conclusions;
his method too
is
faulty
Skinner
observes
that Mintz's concern is
exclusively
for
the
reactions
of
other intellectuals
to
Hobbes,
rather
than
his
relations
with
them;
Mintz fails to
"include some account of
political theory
as a social
activity
"'
7
But
it
is at
precisely
this
point
that
Skinner's own
analysis
is least
complete.
His
conception
of
"political
theory
as a social
activity"
is
restricted
too
narrowly
to the
political positions
of
the
intellectuals
on
the
issues
of the
early
1650s,
without
considering
their
location in the
larger
society,
their own
experience
of social
change
and
political
unrest,
and
their
relations to
particular
social
classes and
political
groups.
Skinner
shows
convincingly
that Hobbes is
part
of a
group
of
ideologists,
but he
never
says
precisely
whose
ideology
it is-whether
their
particular
defense
of the Commonwealth
was
based
on the
world
view of a small
circle
of
rootless
intellectuals,
unrelated to
any
of
the
significant
social
and
political
forces
of the
time,
or whether
they represented
particulargroups.
A study dealing with these questionswould requirea knowledgeof the
political sociology
of
seventeenth-century
England;
uch
a
study
is
possible
now
more
than
ever
before.
We
now
possess
a
substantial
body
of
secondary
literature
on the
relationship
among
politics,
social
structure,
and social
change
m
seventeenth-century
England,
more than
we have on
any
other historical
period.i
8
We not
only
have some
of the
necessary
secondary
sources;
we
also
have some models for how the
necessary
ideological analysis
could
be
carried out. If we are to take
seriously
Skinner's claim that Hobbes's
theory was not the work of an isolated individual,but ratherthe mutual
creation
of a self-conscious
group
of
intellectuals,
then we
should consider
that
group
m the
terms
set
by
Lucien
Goldmann's
tudy
of the
Jansenists
and Michael Walzer's
work on
the Puritan
clergy;
both
writers
deal with
the
ways
small
groups
of
self-conscious
itellectuals
create new world
views
out
of
particularexperiences
of
social
change,
which
bnng
them to
distinctive
political
positions.'
9
Skinner's
focus
on
Hobbes's
intentions
m
publishing
Leviathanm
1651
puts
his
political theory
in too narrowa
historicalcontext. Skinnershows
convincingly what those intentions were; but Leviathan was not only a
defense
of
the Commonwealth. The
argument
m it is
remarkably
lose
to
that
of the Elements
of
Law
and
De
Cive,
which were
written much
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earlier,
and
published
in
1640
and
1642;
Hobbes's
political
philosophy
seems
to
have been worked
out,
not
at
all
as a
response
o the
engagement
controversy,but much earlier, in the 1630s, and it seems to have been
substantiallycomplete
before
he 'fled'
England.
Hobbes
In
the
1630s could not have been
intending
to
provide
a
philosophical
defense of
future
regicides.
Even
in terms
of
Skinner's
own
rather narrow interest
in
"intentions,"
it is
necessary
o look at Hobbes
in
a
broaderhistorical
context
and to
examine
at
least the
political
character
of
his
philosophy
in
the 1630s. It
was first
of all
absolutist,
a defense
of
the recent moves
toward
absolutism
by
Elizabeth,James,
and Charles-a
theory
of absolutism
distinguishedby
an
absence of
religious
content;
a
theory
perhaps
informed
by
Hobbes's
knowledge
of
continental
absolut-
ism,
which
he observed
on his travels
to France
n
the
1630s.
Skinner
touches
on some
of these
separate
points,
but never
puts
them
together.
He observes
that the
"need
for
absolute
power"
was
the
"most
notable
feature"
of
Hobbes's
theory
in
its
day;
he uncovers
impressive
evidence
in
Hobbes's
correspondence
that uhs
political
ideas were
"widely
accepted"
on
the
continent,
particularly
among
French
scientists,
who
"recognized
and
sympathized
with his most
ambitious
hopes
for
a
Science
of Politics."20 Moreprecisely,
it was Hobbes's
science
of absolutism
that
aroused
the enthusiasm
of French
scientists;
they
seem to have
recognized
the
intellectual
importance
of
replacing
the Divine
Right
justification
of
the
French absolute
state
with a
more
modern
and rational
one.
Further
study
of Hobbes's
relations
with French
society
and
politics
would
illuminate
this
point.
The
view
of Hobbes
as
having
orginally
developed
his
philosophy
as
a
defense of
absolutism,
particularly
hat of
James
and
Charles,
s
not at
all
incompatible
with
Skinner's
picture
of
Hobbes
in
1651
arguing
for
Cromwell,as R S. Petershas suggested.He sees Hobbesas arguingthat,
since
Charles's
move
toward
absolutism
had
been
defeated,
the
next
best
thing
for
England
was
an
absolute
government
headed
by
Cromwell-who
"should
become
king by
common
consent
and
dispense
with
incompetent
Parliamentarians."2
If
we are
to
have
a full
account
of
the creation
of
this science
of
absolutism
"as
a
social
activity,"
we
need
to examine the
relationship
between
Hobbes's
own
experience
in
society
and his distinctive
world
view,
to
determine
whether
there
is an
identifiable
social
position
from
which he gaied his particularperspectiveon politicsandsociety Skinner
does an
outstanding
ob
on Hobbes's
intellectual
milieu
in the
1650s,
but
he
does
not
consider
Hobbes'srelations
with
society
in the
first
fifty years
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SYMPOSIUM
[2571
of uhs
ife,
the
penod
before 1640 when he was
developing
his science
of
absolutism
as a member of the household of the
great
aristocratic and
royalist family of the Cavendishes.Hobbeshad been "one of the common
people,"
as he himself
admitted,
before
entering
the Cavendish
household;
in exile after
1640,
he tutored the future Charles
II,
and later the Earlof
Clarendon
wrote of Hobbes's close
relationship
with the
"nobility, by
whose
bread
he
hath been
always
sustained."22
Thus
Hobbes's
own social
position,
at least to the time he was
fifty,
was
that
of a
common-bor
intellectual
who "made it"
into the
heart
of
aristocratic and
royalist
circles. He
was
as close as
any
commoner
could be
to
the
top
of
Englishsociety;
this
position
must
have
played
a
significant
role in
the formation
of
his ideas about
man's
nasty
and
competitive
nature,
and about the
resulting
need
for
absolute
power.
A
clearer
conception
of the
relationship
between social
class
and absolutism in this
period
would
clarify
Hobbes's
position considerably
23
An
alternative
to
viewing
Hobbes
primarily
n
terms of his
relationship
to the
top
of
English society
is to
consider
his
own
experience
of
social
mobility
in a time of
rapid
social
change
and
widespread political
unrest.
Such
an
interpretation
of Hobbes is
suggested
in Michael
Walzer's
Revolution of the Saints. Walzer suggests that Hobbes's science of
absolutism
can
best be
interpreted
as an
"ideology
of transition"
which
"met
the human
needs that
arise whenever
traditional
controls
give way
and
hlerarcuhcal
tatus and
corporate
privilege
are called into
question."
Hobbes
responded
to
social
"unsettledness"
by
calling
for an absolute
central
power,
on
the
one
hand,
and a
narrowing
of
people's
energies
rom
political
to
economic
competition,
on the other.
In this
view,
Hobbes
was
responding
not so much to
particular
elements
of
the
traditional
order,
such
as the
monarchy
and its
interests,
as he was
to
the
"disorder
of the
transition period." The old order was only a part, and not the most
important
part,
of his
experience;
he
lived
most
of
his life amid the
breakdown
of
that
order and in
exile from that
breakdown. The
advocacy
of
absolutism
can
be seen
as one of the
ways
in
which
some men seek
to
cope
with their
experience
of
the breakdown
of the
old
order;
Puritan
sainthood is
another
way
24
In
Slknner's
work
on
Hobbes,
then,
he has
considered
the
methodolog-
ical
problem
of
the
relationship
of
political thought
to
history
and
argued
that
political
ideas cannot be
understood
apart
from
their historical
context. His studies of Hobbes's
relationship
o the
engagement
controver-
sy
of the
1650s
can be
considered
a
case
study
of the method
he
is
advocating
for
the
history
of
political
theory
as a
whole.
These
studies,
it
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[258]
POLITICAL
THEORY /AUGUST
1974
seems to
me,
identify conclusively
the
contemporary
political
and
intellectual context
of Leviathan and
demonstrate
that
an
exclusive
reliance on textual analysis eads to a faulty understanding, articularly f
Hobbes's
heory
of
obligation.
Skinner
has
thus
made
an
important
contribution
to
the
study
of
Hobbes.
However,
his
conception
of
the "historical context"
must
be
broadened-from
a focus on the
political
intentions
of the
Hobbist
intellectuals in relation to
the
Commonwealth,
to
a
concern for
the
social
origins
of Hobbes's
philosophy
before
the Civil
War,
and more
generally
o
the relations between
social
change,
the
new
science,
and
the
politics
of
absolutism
in
the
sixteenth
and seventeenth
centuries.
This
would
appear
to
require
a
way
of
doing history
ratherdifferent fromSkinner's-one tied
less
exclusively
to the intellectual
history
of the
1650s,
one
explicitly
comparative,
peculative,
and theoretical.
NOTES
1.
John
Aubrey, Brief
Lives,
ed. A.
Clark,
2
vols.
(Oxford, 1898), I,
333;
The
English
Works
of
Thomas
Hobbes,
ed.
W
Molesworth,
11
vols.
(London, 1839), VI,
165.
2. Perez
Zagorn,
A
History of
Political
Thought
in
the
English
Revolution
(London, 1954).
3.
Quentin
Skinner,
"Conquest
and
Consent:
Thomas
Hobbes
and
the
Engage-
ment
Controversy,"
in
G.
E.
Aylmer
(ed.),
The
Interregnum:
The
Quest
for
Settlement,
1646-1660
(London,
1972),
80.
This
group
is
also
discussed
by
Skmner
in
"History
and
Ideology
in
the
English
Revolution,"
Historical
Journal
8
(1965),
151-178,
and
"The
Ideological
Context
of Hobbes's
Political
Thought,"
Historical
Journal
9
(1966),
287-317;
this article has
been revised:
"The
Context
of Hobbes's
Theory
of Political
Obligation,"
in
Maurice Cranston
and Richard S.
Peters
(eds.),
Hobbes
and Rousseau
(Garden City,
N.Y., 1972),
109-142.
4.
"Conquest
and
Consent," 88,
91.
5.
"Conquest
and
Consent,"
94.
6.
"Conquest
and
Consent,"
94, 95,
96.
7
EW
VII,
335-336,
Thomas
Hobbes,
Leviathan,
ed.,
C. B.
MacPherson
(Baltimore,
1968),
719.
8.
"Conquest
and
Consent,"
97-98.
9.
"Context
of Hobbes's
Theory,"
142;
A.
E.
Taylor,
"The
Ethical Doctrine
of
Hobbes,"
Philosophy
103
(1938),
109;
H.
Warrender,
The
Political
Philosophy
of
Hobbes
(Oxford,
1957);
F C.
Hood,
The Devine
Politics
of
Thomas
Hobbes
(Oxford,
1964).
Hood
is
important,
Skinner
writes,
for
making
"only
the most colorful
and
least plausible contribution to a type of study which is itself misconceived." Skinner,
"Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
Historcal
Journal
7
(1964),
322.
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SYMPOSIUM
[2591
10.
Quentin
Skinner,
"Meaning
and
Understanding
m
the
History
of
Ideas,"
History
and
Theory
8
(1969),
48-49
11. "Context of Hobbes's Theory," 137-138.
12. "Context
of Hobbes's
Theory,"
141,
Skinner,
"Hobbes on
Sovereignty
An
Unknown
Discussion,"
Political Studies
13
(1965),
213-218.
13.
"Hobbes's
Levtathan,"
333.
14. C. B.
MacPherson,
The Political
Theory
of
Possessive Individualism
(Oxford,
1964);
"Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
323.
15.
Samuel
1.
Mintz,
The
Hunting
of
Leviathan
(Cambridge,
1962),
155. This is
the
analysis
of
virtually
all
commentators until
Skinner;
for
references
see
"Context
of Hobbes's
Theory,"
109-110.
16. "Context
of Hobbes's
Theory,"
113,
115-116.
17
"Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
333.
18.
The
most
important
works include
Lawrence
Stone,
Causes
of
the
English
Revolution,
1529-1642
(New
York,
1972),
and
Criss
of
the
Aristocracy,
1558-1641
(Oxford,
1965);
R. H.
Tawney,
"The Rise of the
Gentry,"
Economic
History
Review
11
(1941),
1-38;
H.
R.
Trevor-Roper,
"The General
Crisis of
the
Seventeenth
Century,"
Past
and Present
16
(1959), 31-64,
Christopher
Hill,
Century of
Revolution
1603-1714
(London,
1961);
Patrick
Collinson,
The
Elizabethan Puritan
Movement
(Berkeley,
1967);
Robert
Brenner,
"The Civil
War
Politics
of London's Merchant
Community,"
Past
and Present
58
(February,
1973).
19.
Luclen
Goldmann,
The Hidden
God
(New
York,
1964);
Michael
Walzer,
Revolution
of
the
Saints
(Cambridge,
1965).
20. "Conquest and Consent," 92; Quentin Skiner, "Thomas Hobbes and His
Disciples
in
France
and
England,"
Comparative
Studies in
Society
and
History
8
(1965-66),
164.
For Hobbes's relations with
English
scientists,
see
Skinner,
"Thomas
Hobbes and
the Nature
of
the
Early
Royal Society,"
Historical Journal
12
(1969),
217-239. Skinner
does
not
place
the
seventeenth-century
French
scientists
with
whom Hobbes
associated
in their own
political
context;
for
instance,
the
patron
of
Mersenne's
circle was
Richelieu,
who
played
a definitive role m the
development
of
French
absolutism. Hobbes's influence
on
subsequent
continental
absolutist
theory
has
been
noted
by
Skinner;
"the
apologists
for absolutism
in
France
accepted
the
relevance of Hobbes's doctrine."
"Ideological
Context,"
289
21. Richard
S.
Peters,
Hobbes
(London, 1967),
35.
22. Cited In
Christopher
Hill,
The World Turned
Upside
Down
(London, 1972),
313. The Cavendish
family
is discussed
frequently
m
Stone, Crisls
of Aristocracy.
23.
The
starting
point
for a consideration of
social class
in relation
to
absolutism
is
Barrington
Moore, Jr.,
Social
Origins of
Dictatorship
and
Democracy
(Boston,
1966),
esp.
chs.
1,
2,
7
24.
Walzer,
Revolution
of
Saints,
312-313.
Selected Works
by
Quentin
Skinner
"Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy," in G. E.
Aylmer
(ed.),
The
Interregnum:
The
Quest
for
Settlement,
1646-1660
(London,
1972).
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8/11/2019 Wiener - Quentin Skinners Hobbes
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[260]
POLITICAL
THEORY
/
AUGUST 1974
"The Context
of Hobbes's
Theory
of
Political
Obligation,"
in
Maurice
Cranston
and
Richard
S.
Peters
(eds.),
Hobbes and
Rousseau
(Garden
City,
N.Y.,
1972),
109-142.
"History
and
Ideology
in
the
English
Revolution,"
Historical Journal
8
(1965),
151-178.
"Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
Historical
Journal
7
(1964),
321-333.
"Hobbes
on
Soverelgnty
An
Unknown
Discussion,"
Political Studies
13
(1965),
213-218.
"The
Ideological
Context
of
Hobbes's Political
Thought,"
Historcal
Journal 9
(1966),
286-317
"The Limits of
Historical
Explanations,"
Philosophy
41
(1966),
199-215.
"Meaning
and
Understanding
in the
History
of
Ideas,"
History
and
Theory
8
(1969),
3-53.
"Thomas Hobbes
and
His
Disciples
in France and
England," Comparative
Studies
in
Society
and
History
8
(1965-66),
153-167
"Thomas
Hobbes
and the
Nature
of
the
Early Royal
Society,"
Historical Journal
12
(1969), 217-239.
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