Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics

As its subtitle Skepticism, Individuality and Chastened Politics indicates, this work is an exploration of and a largely favorable engagement with salient elements in the thinking of a theorist who is regarded as an Anglophone political thinker and among the top rank of philosophical writers generally. In emphasizing Hobbes’s skepticism, Richard Flathman goes against the grain of much of the literature concerning Hobbes. The theme of individuality is more familiar, particularly from the celebrated writings on Hobbes by Michael Oakeshott, but the idea of a chastened politics challenges the widely influential view that Hobbes was not only an authoritarian but an incipient or proto-totalitarian. Although primarily an account of Hobbes’s thinking, Flathman contends that Hobbes’s formulation speaks valuably to issues that remain very much with us. For this reason Thomas Hobbes should be of interest to a wider audience than Hobbes specialists.