Political Psychology in Hobbes’s Behemoth
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Description
Although cast as a dialogue, Behemoth is unmistakably Hobbesian in style as well as theme. The explosiveness of the language reflects the crotchety impatience of the author's mind. As his perverse contribution to the “act of oblivion” of 1660, meant to inhume twenty years of animosity, Hobbes skewered all parties in the English Civil War: lawyers, merchants, soldiers, city-dwellers, Commons, Lords, bishops, Presbyterians, king's advisers, and of course, the people. Stupidity and corruption are ordinary human failings, but seldom have they seemed so effortlessly combined. His censorious, although nonpartisan, approach reveals Hobbes's modest talents as a coalition builder. It also helps explain Charles II's reluctance to license prompt publication of the work. Completed in manuscript around 1668, Behemoth represents Hobbes's mature understanding of political breakdown and the reestablishment of authority. This time his theory of “human nature in general” is not filtered through a set of political recommendations. Instead, it is expressed in a description of the way human beings behave—not the way they might behave under imaginary or ideal conditions, but the way they actually did behave in England between 1640 and 1660. Not surprisingly, an anatomy of disorder is more realistic than a blueprint for order. Particularly noteworthy is Behemoth's fine-grained account of human motivation. The psychological assumptions inspiring its historical narrative may not be totally consistent, but their richness and subtlety are compelling.
Source Publication
Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory
Source Editors/Authors
Mary G. Dietz
Publication Date
1990
Recommended Citation
Holmes, Stephen, "Political Psychology in Hobbes’s Behemoth" (1990). Faculty Chapters. 817.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/817
