Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- I Renaissance and Counter-Renaissance
- II Religion, civil government, and the debate on constitutions
- III Absolutism and Revolution in the Seventeenth Century
- IV The end of Aristotelianism
- 16 Tacitism, scepticism, and reason of state
- 17 Grotius and Selden
- 18 Hobees and Spinoza
- V Natural law and utility
- Conclusion
- Biographies
- Bibliography
- Index of names of persons
- Index of subjects
- References
18 - Hobees and Spinoza
from IV - The end of Aristotelianism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- I Renaissance and Counter-Renaissance
- II Religion, civil government, and the debate on constitutions
- III Absolutism and Revolution in the Seventeenth Century
- IV The end of Aristotelianism
- 16 Tacitism, scepticism, and reason of state
- 17 Grotius and Selden
- 18 Hobees and Spinoza
- V Natural law and utility
- Conclusion
- Biographies
- Bibliography
- Index of names of persons
- Index of subjects
- References
Summary
Hobbes
When the Parliment sat, that began in April 1640, and was dissolved in May following, and in which many points of the regal power, which were neccessary for the peace of the kingdom, and the safety of His Majesty's person, were disputed and denied, Mr Hobbes wrote a little treatise in English, wherein he did set forth and demonstrate, that the said power and rights were inseparably annexed to the sovereignty; which sovereignty they did not then deny to be in the King; but it seems understood not, or would not understand that inseperability. Of this treatise, though not printed, many gentlemen had copies, which occasioned much talk of the author and had not his Majesty dissolved the Parliments, it had brought him into danger of his life.
(Hobbs 1839– 45a, IV, p. 414)Such was Hobbes' own account, written twenty-one years later, of the origins of his first work of political theory, The Elements of Law. Hobbes had himself been an unsuccessful candidate for election to the Short Parliament (Beats 1978, pp. 74–6), so no doubt he followed its proceedings closely. The disputed ‘points of the regal power’ emerged most pointedly in John Pym's famous speech of 17 April, which asserted fundamental constitutional rights of parliament against the crown (‘Parliament is as the soule of the common wealth’, ‘the intellectual parte which Governes all the rest’) and attacked ‘the Doctrine that what property the subject hath in any thinge may be lawfully taken away when the King requires it’. The latter point was taken up by Sir John Strangways on the following day: ‘for if the Kinge be judge of the necessitye, we have nothing and are but Tennants at will’ (Cope and Coates 1977, pp. 149, 155, 159).
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 , pp. 530 - 558Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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