Hobbes on Barbarism and Civilization

Abstract

Hobbes' political science is based on the claim that civil society hitherto has been founded improperly and is apt to dissolve into civil war. The historical evidence for this claim, however, is not presented systematically in Hobbes' political treatises; it must be reconstructed from his diverse historical writings. In these writings Hobbes analyzes the history of man from barbarism to civilization, and shows that the evolution of political authority from its original basis in natural force to its later foundation on opinion has been the ruin of civilization. This account, I argue, constitutes a genuine theory of history and reveals the problem of civilization which Hobbes' political science is designed to solve.

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