Beneath the Contract: On Hobbes, Locke, and The Social Contract
For this semester I’ll offer my reflections on an introductory, freshmen-level course on western core texts that I am teaching. It is difficult for a person…
Thomas Hobbes: Natural Law Theorist? A Review of Kody Cooper’s “Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law”
Kody W. Cooper. Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law. Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2018; 2022. Thomas Hobbes occupies a special place in the…
Leo Strauss and the Crisis of Modernity (II): the Necessity of Virtue
One of Leo Strauss’ most famous contributions to the study of modern political theory is his known idea of the “three waves of modernity”, in which Strauss…
The Origins of Political Science: Leo Strauss’s Analysis of the Thought of Thomas Hobbes in Natural Right and History
Until Thomas Hobbes boldly claimed that his Leviathan was the first true work of political science, most political philosophers had long believed that it was Socrates who…
The Subversiveness of Desire: Descartes, Hobbes, and the Suppression of the Erotic in Modern Thought
While images of philosophers floating among the clouds, untethered from real-world concerns, or falling into wells while gazing at the stars, having allowed their abstract speculations to…
Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes: Dead Body Politics
No one would dispute that Shakespeare was interested in political questions. Much of his theatrical output focuses on medieval monarchs and ancient Roman civil wars. Plays such…
Hobbes in the Context of Modern Political Thought As Interpreted by Oakeshott, Strauss and Voegelin
The thought of Thomas Hobbes is a living force in philosophic reflection on modern politics. Yet many insist that an era of political philosophy, roughly beginning with…
Politics as Melodrama
Politics is indeed melodrama, if politics is understood as a relation between friend and foe; as a compulsion to take sides in a struggle for power. Insofar…
Shaken by Nominalism: The Theological Origins of Modernity
The Theological Origins of Modernity. Michael Allen Gillespie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. One of the most substantial contributions to the discussion about the nature…
Freedom of Conscience
The humanists may well be right if they do not follow the classical philosophers in developing principles based on the bios theoretikos, or Christian thinkers into a…