Hobbes in Dialogue : Historical and Philosophic Insights into Political Thought

Bringing together expert contributors in a range of disciplines from the UK, the USA and Europe, Hobbes in Dialogue shines a much-needed light on the political and philosophical dialogues of Thomas Hobbes. The book is divided into three major parts that address earlier dialogues, which shaped the background to Hobbes’s own, Hobbes’s dialogues themselves and the wider context of his philosophy in relation to the dialogue form, and lastly two later dialogues that criticised Hobbes. The various chapters explore how the dialogue form allowed Hobbes, as one of the eminent thinkers who shaped early modern political thought, to present his political philosophy in a different guise. How do his dialogues tally with his other often more systematic works? Do they complement his earlier writings? Does he expect the readers of his dialogues to know about his key positions and arguments as notably developed in De Cive and Leviathan? These are some of the leading questions Hobbes in Dialogue considers in a collection that reveals much about Hobbes’s thinking and the intellectual history of Europe in the early modern age more broadly.