Hobbes On Civil Association

Hobbes on Civil Association thomas hobbes michael oakeshott Hobbes on Civil Association Michael Oakeshott 9= foreword by paul franco Liberty Fund indianapolis This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as the design motif for our endpapers is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 b.c. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash. q 1937, 1975 Liberty Fund, Inc. Frontispiece of Michael Oakeshott courtesy Estate of Angus McBean. Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes courtesy of Corbis Bettman. 04 03 02 01 00 c 5 4 3 2 1 04 03 02 01 00 p 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oakeshott, Michael Joseph, 1901– Hobbes on civil association/Michael Oakeshott; foreword by Paul Franco. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-86597-290-7 (hc: alk. paper) ISBN 0-86597-291-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679—Contributions in political science. 2. Civil society. I. Title. JC153.H66 2000 3209.01—dc21 00-035410 Liberty Fund, Inc. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 Contents Foreword vii Preface xiii Author’s Note xv 1 Introduction to Leviathan 2 The Moral Life in the Writings of Thomas Hobbes Appendix 80 133 3 Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes 141 4 Leviathan: a Myth 159 Index 165 1 Foreword Though Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) is best known as a political philosopher in his own right, he was also a profound student of the history of political philosophy, and he was a major scholar on the thought of Thomas Hobbes. Oakeshott’s interest in Hobbes emerged quite early in his career—he wrote a reviewessay of recent Hobbes scholarship in 19351 —and it continued throughout most of his life—he published a lengthy review of a book on Hobbes in 1974.2 It seems at first strange that this last gasp of the British idealist school—in his first book, Experience and Its Modes (1933), Oakeshott named Hegel and F. H. Bradley as his greatest influences—should have turned to Hobbes for inspiration, but the development of Oakeshott’s political philosophy gradually revealed the deep affinities he had with his seventeenth-century predecessor. The themes Oakeshott stresses in his interpretation of Hobbes are, for the most part, themes that animate his own political philosophy: skepticism about the role of reason in politics, allegiance to the morality of individuality as opposed to any sort of collectivism, and the idea of a noninstrumental, nonpurposive mode of political associa1. Michael Oakeshott, “Thomas Hobbes,” Scrutiny 4 (1935–36), 263–77. 2. Michael Oakeshott, “Logos and Telos,” Government and Opposition 9 (1971), 237–44; reprinted in