In recent years, numerous scholars have turned their attention to the theological component of Hobbes's thought, long neglected because judged to be a cover for the author's materialistic rationalism. Sokolowski adds to this body of work. Sokolowski contends that Hobbes is best understood as seeking a divinely ordered, absolute truth with which to escape the contingencies of time and space. ... Read moreThe author further contends that the continuation of identity, more so than the preservation of self, is the contingency that Hobbes mainly addresses—all of this being an especially abstract way of saying that contracts among strangers are tricky affairs. Locke, according to Sokolowski, is not an acolyte of Hobbes, as some scholars maintain; rather, he is Hobbes's antithesis, insofar as individuation for Locke is an ineluctable fact of the human condition. Individuation cannot be recreated as a thing impervious to chance, though it can be manipulated. Manipulation is a less certain way of negotiating the continuous-identity problem—by which is meant that majority rule governs the Lockean state, taking the place of Hobbes's totalitarian sovereign. Distinguishing Locke from Hume and Smith is a further concern of this analysis, as is relating liberalism to nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
CHOICE
Show Less