Revisiting Hobbes: on freedom, political authority and civil disobedience

• Autores: Marta Nunes da Costa
• Localización: Aufklärung: revista de filosofia, ISSN-e 2318-9428, Vol. 5, Nº. 2, 2018, págs. 59-74
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.18012/arf.2016.39473
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This paper has two main sections. First, I argue that Hobbes was capable of providing a convincing model of political authority that strengthened the absolutist monarchy, due to two main factors: on the one hand, Hobbes’ conceptualization of freedom, which allowed him to offer a new light upon the relationship between obedience, obligation, freedom and servitude; on the other hand, Hobbes’ redefinition of sovereignty via the concept of representation. I show how Hobbes was aware of the intrinsic tension derived from the attempted convergence of these two distinct logics and I question the kinds of political rupture that are possible under Hobbes’ design, in such a way that would keep a democratic instinct and impulse in political life. After I revisit the relationship between freedom, power and civil disobedience, by looking at the relationship between the sovereign’s and the subjects’ capacity of judgment and by reflecting upon contemporary democratic challenges.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • BYRON M. (2015). Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth, London/NY: Palgrave Macmillian.
  • FLIKSCHUH K. (2012). Elusive Unity: The General Will in Hobbes and Kant. Hobbes Studies 25: 21-42
  • GUYER P. (2012). Hobbes is of the Opposite Opinion. Kant and Hobbes on the Three Authorities in the State. Hobbes Studies 25:91-119.
  • HOBBES T. (1984). De Cive. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • HOBBES T. (1998). Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.
  • HAMILTON L. (2014). Freedom is Power – Liberty through political participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • JAKONEN M. (2016). Needed but unwanted. Thomas Hobbes’s Warnings on the Dangers on the Dangers of Multitude, Populism and Democracy. Las Torres...
  • SALZBORN S. (2015). No sovereignty without freedom: Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Global Order on the Twenty-first century. Theoria, 144, vol.62...
  • SKINNER Q. (2008). Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • SREEDHAR S. (2010). Hobbes on Resistance – Defying the Leviathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • VENEZIA L. (2015). Hobbes on Legal Authority and Political Obligation, London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.