Aspects of Hobbes

657 Pages·2004·5.555 MB·English

by  Noel Malcolm

Aspects of Hobbes
Aspects of Hobbes
Noel Malcolm, one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars, presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of
aspectsofthelifeandworkofthisgiantofearlymodernthought.Thegreaterpartofthisvolumeispublishedherefor
the first time. Malcolm offers a succinct introductionto Hobbes's lifeand thought, as a foundation for his discussion
of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic
world-view,andhissubversivebiblicalcriticism.SeveraloftheessayspayspecialattentiontotheEuropeandimensions
ofHobbes's life, his sourcesand his influence;thelongestsurveys theentireEuropeanreceptionofhisworkfromthe
1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking new
discoveriesaboutHobbes's life,his manuscripts andtheprintinghistoryofhisworks. AspectsofHobbeswillbeessential
readingnotonlyforHobbesspecialists,butalsoforallthoseinterestedinseventeenth-centuryintellectualhistorymore
generally, both British and European.
Aspects of Hobbes
Noel Malcolm
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1. Hobbes, Thomas,1588 1679. I.Title.
B1247 .M352002192 dc212002074932
ISBN0 19 924714 5
For I. L. M.
in memory
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Preface
This bookgathers togetherfourteenessays. Sevenhave previouslybeenpublished as articles injournalsor chaptersof
collectivevolumes, and seven—most of them much longer than the previously published items—are printed here for
the first time. All of them relate more or less directly to the life and works of Thomas Hobbes, but some extend into
other areas of subject-matter too, such as Virginian history, Comenianism, Spinoza, or the development of biblical
criticism. (In just one case, that of the essay on Pierre de Cardonnel, the Hobbesian element in the essay plays a
secondary role; I hope readers may share my feeling that the story of de Cardonnel himself is of sufficient interest to
justifytheattentiongiventoithere.)Someofthestudiesare biographical,and someare bibliographicalor textual;this
is partlya reflectionof thefactthatseveralof these essays are ‘parerga’, preparatory or supplementary labours carried
out while working on two larger projects—a biography of Hobbes, and a critical edition of Leviathan.
Withtheexceptionofthetwointroductoryessays(onHobbes's lifeand hispoliticaltheory),thisbook does nottryto
provide any sort of general survey of Hobbes's life and works; the topics handled here are ones that happen to have
caught my interest during many years of research on Hobbes, and on which I have thought I had something new to
say. But I hope that the variety of subjects dealt with here will at least give a sense of the range of Hobbes's own
interests and activities, from epistemology, optics and scientific method to biblical interpretation and international
relations theory. While the flow of new books and articles on Hobbes grows larger year by year, the vast majority of
themconcentrateonjustasmallrangeoftopics(inhispoliticalphilosophy)andonanevensmaller rangeoftexts.His
politicaltheory is not,I hope, neglected inthisbook; but I also hope thatthese essays willhelp readers tosee Hobbes
not as an isolated political philosopher, but as someone connected in all sorts of different ways with the cultural and
intellectual life of his age.
With the exception of the two introductory pieces, the essays in this book are arranged in a rather approximate
chronologicalorderofsubject-matter.However,eachessayisaself-containedpieceofwork:nocumulativeknowledge
is presumed in the reader, and the items may therefore be read in any order. (Those who do not already have some
specialist knowledge of Hobbes may prefer, nevertheless, to read the two introductory essays first.) No changes have
beenmade to the texts of the previously printed items, apart from typographical correctionsand the standardizing of
the references to sources. On a few points—the dating or attribution of some manuscripts, for example—I have
revised my opinions since those itemswerefirst published. But I havefeltthat itwouldbeunfair toreaders, whomay
wish to refer
viii ASPECTS OF HOBBES
equally to this printing or the original publication of these pieces, to oblige them to hunt for tiny textual differences
between the two. Therefore, I have left the unrevised opinions in the text, and have merely added, at the end, an
‘Additional Note’ in which the revised judgement (or, in some cases, new information) is presented to the reader.
During more than two decades of research on Hobbes, I have accumulated very many debts of gratitude. I am
particularly grateful to PeterDay, the Keeper of Collections at Chatsworth, for his unfailinghelp; I should also liketo
thankhisGracetheDukeofDevonshire,and theTrusteesoftheChatsworthSettlement,for permissiontostudyand
tocitetheHobbesmanuscriptsintheircollection.Iamgratefultothestaffofalltheotherarchivesandlibrarieswhere
I have conducted Hobbes-related research (including, but not only, the ones whose collections feature in the ‘List of
Manuscripts’attheendofthisbook);inparticular,Ishouldliketosingleoutthestaffoftherarebooksreading rooms
in the British Library and Cambridge University Library. Several of these essays contain acknowledgements of help
received from various individuals in connection with specific points; here I should just like to add a more general
expressionofthanks toTim Raylor for muchhelpfulinformationand criticism, and toQuentinSkinnerand SirKeith
Thomas for advice and encouragement over many years. And I am especially grateful to Peter Momtchiloff, of the
Oxford University Press, for taking such an interest in this book and not once flinching as its length just grew and
grew.
N.M.
Acknowledgements
The permission of the copyright-holders of the following items is gratefully acknowledged:
Chapter 1, ‘A Summary Biography of Hobbes’, first appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. T. Sorell
(Cambridge, 1996), pp. 13–44: copyright Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 2, ‘Hobbes and Spinoza’, first appeared in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. J. H.
Burns and M. Goldie (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 530–57: copyright Cambridge University Press.
Chapter3,‘Hobbes,Sandys,andtheVirginiaCompany’,wasfirstpublishedinTheHistoricalJournal,24(1981),pp.
297–321: copyright Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 5, ‘Hobbes's Science of Politics and his Theory of Science’, was first published in A. Napoli, ed., Hobbes
oggi (Milan, 1990): copyright Franco Angeli Libri.
Chapter 7, ‘TheTitlePageofLeviathan, Seenina Curious Perspective’, first appeared inTheSeventeenthCentury, 13
(1998), pp. 124–55: copyright the Centre for Seventeenth-Century Studies, University of Durham.
Chapter 8, ‘Charles Cotton, Translator of Hobbes's De cive’, first appeared in the Huntington Library Quarterly, 61,
for 1998 (2000), pp. 259–87: copyright the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.