Hobbes'sLeviathan: A tale of two bodies

Abstract

This article focuses on Hobbes's use of metaphor, particularly the larger structural metaphor of the artificial man in Leviathan. Hobbes claims to draw his political animal according to the figurative outlines of the natural one, despite the significant differences between these two bodies. In Part I we see the scientifically-minded Hobbes reject the old dualistic imagery of body and soul, act and will; but in Part II the politically-minded Hobbes appeals to exactly these dualistic distinctions in order to lend his radical vision of the state the numinous appeal of the medieval and Tudor formulations. An understanding of Hobbes's rhetorical strategy, and what I call his strategic use of dualism, can show how the recent linguistic turn in Hobbes studies can in fact re-open the much older debate on the overall unity of his philosophical system.

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