Hobbes and the Law of Nature

by Perez Zagorin

This is the first major work in English to explore at length the meaning, context, aims, and vital importance of Thomas Hobbes's concepts of the law of nature and the right of nature. Hobbes remains one of the most challenging and controversial of early modern philosophers, and debates persist about the interpretation of many of his ideas, particularly his views about natural law and natural right. In this book, Perez Zagorin argues that these two concepts are the twin foundations of the entire structure of Hobbes's moral and political thought.


Zagorin clears up numerous misconceptions about Hobbes and his relation to earlier natural law thinkers, in particular Hugo Grotius, and he reasserts the often overlooked role of the Hobbesian law of nature as a moral standard from which even sovereign power is not immune. Because Hobbes is commonly thought to be primarily a theorist of sovereignty, political absolutism, and unitary state power, the significance of his moral philosophy is often underestimated and widely assumed to depend entirely on individual self-interest. Zagorin reveals Hobbes's originality as a moral philosopher and his importance as a thinker who subverted and transformed the idea of natural law.



Hobbes and the Law of Nature is a major contribution to our understanding of Hobbes's moral, legal, and political philosophy, and a book rich in interpretive and critical insights into Hobbes's writing and thought.

Genres: Philosophy

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Perez Zagorin was an American historian who specialized in 16th- and 17th-century English and British history and political thought, early modern European history, and related areas in literature and philosophy. From 1965 to 1990, he taught at the University of Rochester, New York, retiring as the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of History Emeritus.

Reviews

[N Perrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An accessible introduction to understanding how Hobbes reworked the natural law tradition in his own political thought. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything original or novel about Zagorin's readings or contextualization of Hobbes, but perhaps that was not the purpose of this work.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good, charitable reading of Hobbes. Takes him seriously on whatever he writes about, including religion, natural law etc.