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Hobbes and Hooker; Politics and Religion: A Note on the Structuring of Leviathan*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
The article compares the Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker with Thomas Hobbes's Christian Commonwealth focussing primarily on the political dimension of religious life. The comparison serves to undermine the position—still surprisingly widespread—which sees Hobbes as sacrificing religion to political stability by displaying the extent to which and the way in which Hooker takes religious practice (since Constantine) to be a matter of public policy requiring authoritative determination. Also, a somewhat novel suggestion is elaborated regarding the relationship between the “rational” and “religious” parts of Leviathan. It is suggested that the first part of Leviathan is a kind of conceptual primer—a guide to Scriptural exegesis—and that the parts of Leviathan thus form an integrated whole.
Résumé
L'objet de cette étude est de comparer la politique ecclésiastique de Richard Hooker au commonwealth chrétien de Thomas Hobbes en insistant principalement sur la dimension politique de la vie religieuse. La comparaison servira à contester la thèse, encore trop répandue, selon laquelle Hobbes aurait sacrifié la religion à la stabilité politique; on démontrera dans quelle mesure et de quelle manière la pratique religieuse (depuis Constantin) constitue pour Hooker une question relevant de la politique et exigeant une détermination autoritaire. En outre, on tentera d'établir une relation, plutôt negligée à ce jour, entre les parties « rationnelles » et « religieuses » du Léviathan. La première partie du Léviathan serait une sorte de lecture conceptuelle de niveau élémentaire—un guide d'exégèse scripturale. Ainsi, les diverses parties de l'ouvrage formeraient un ensemble organiquement intégré.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 79 - 96
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1987
References
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17 Works, III, 351. See Cross, C., The Royal Supremacy in the Elizabethan Church (Historical Problems: Studies and Documents 8 [London, 1969]), 36:Google Scholar “Hooker defended the royal supremacy for those very characteristics which Elizabeth disliked most.” See also Munz, P., The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 103–05.Google Scholar
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41 Leviathan, 344.
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49 Examples of this contention may be seen in Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes, 1: “[Hobbes] professed to accord to Scripture and only to Scripture, unquestionable authority over his mind”; and Halliday, et al., “Hobbes's Belief in God,” 418: “the art of politics consists in the imitation of the commands of an omnipotent God” and, “the covenant with Abraham,… Hobbes identified as the paradigm of all covenants.” In contrast, we would suggest that the commands of God cannot be imitated until they are understood, and the covenant with Abraham cannot stand as a model for other covenants until we understand Abraham's status as a civil sovereign and all that that entails. The covenant with Abraham is less a paradigm than an instantiation of the concept of a “covenant” elaborated in the first part of Leviathan.
50 Works, I, 267, 299, 371; Leviathan, 271.
51 Leviathan, 276; Works, I, 267, 321.
52 Leviathan, 271.
53 Pocock, “Time, History and Eschatology,” 183.
54 Ibid., 185.
55 Leviathan, 30–31.
56 Leviathan, 116.