Original scientific paper
HOBBES AND REPUBLICANISM: LEVIATHAN VERSUS COMMONWEALTH
Luka Ribarević
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The text problematizes Hobbes’s relation towards republicanism. This is carried
out in three stages. The first stage shows the form in which republican
ideas were present in English political thought in the first half of the 17th century.
It turns out that, prior to the publication of Leviathan in 1651, there was
no coherent anti-monarchic republican theory in England. Still, English political
thought was familiar with its individual elements and those elements had
a major influence on the course of the constitutional crisis and the civil war
itself. The second stage provides an analysis of Hobbes’s criticism of two republican
ideas which he deems particularly fatal to the survival of the state.
The first idea is the ideal of mixed government, which Hobbes rejects as incompatible
with the fundamental condition of state preservation, namely indivisible
sovereign power. Thereafter, relying on Skinner’s analysis, the author
outlines Hobbes’s criticism of the republican conception of liberty, which is
at the core of the attack on monarchy as a form of state incompatible with the
liberty of citizens. In contrast to such a perception, Hobbes constructs a completely
novel definition of liberty, which enables him to show that the liberty
of citizens is equal in democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Finally, the third
stage inquires into the implications of Hobbes’s criticism of republicanism
with regard to the conceptual field of his mature theory of the state. Emphasis
is put on the assertion that this criticism does not also imply a rejection of democracy
as a form of state. Indeed, the analysis shows that, within the framework
of Hobbes’s theory of the state, criticism of republicanism, perceived as
vindication of the state, is prerequisite to the existence of democracy itself.
Keywords
Thomas Hobbes; Leviathan; republicanism; democracy; monarchy; state; political liberty; England
Hrčak ID:
97874
URI
Publication date:
14.2.2013.
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